We had 983 at Senahu District Conference on Sunday, over 100 of them participated in the choir. Pres. Watts met with all of the youth after conference on Sunday and told them they need to start learning English. We have been assigned to start again, and had our first class last night in Senahu. We get to start doing the housing inspections for the missionaries now in the Polochic, Poptun, part of Alta Vera Paz and the Coban area. They have to be done 4 times a year, or better said once every three months - so we will be getting to visit with a lot of our amazing Elders here. I help set up the appointments, but Elder Spradlin is going to mainly be taking care of the inspections and writing up all the reports to email in. It is neat as we call to set up these appointments in some of the areas where we are also working with the Leaders, and the Elders let us know things we can help their branches with, one needs some support with geneology, another with setting up a reactivation plan. When we went up to Chulak this week for the inspections we also met with the Future Missionaries there, two Branch Presidents and the District President. We are trying to help the branches with a new plan of organizing their youth and having the youth organize themselves, they will make a commitment to read from the Book of Mormon every day to their families, then report back once a week to one of the youth who will keep the records and be the "cheerleader". We have explained to the branches we are working with that in the goal of all families reading the Book of Mormon daily, our youth are a great strength. They will be as the Army of Heleman in leading and supporting their families, by doing so they will strengthen themselves and their families. Up here where many of the parents are illiterate it will be a great strength.
This weekend will be our first trip up to the Poptun area, not only will we be doing the housing inspections there but getting to know the leaders to see how we can be more support to them. This is their District Conference weekend so it should be great! We also have received a list of young people that are the age of future missionaries that we are going to work with the leadership to try and locate throughout the area and see how they are currently doing.
We have been real involved for the last week trying to help make reservations and arrangements for the Kekchi Choir tour coming through the Polochik, and also for the Dental clinic that will be held the last week in Teleman.
A funny to close on, last weekend we were visiting with a family and singing with their daughters. They began playing with my hair, then one of them asked me who had cut it (I got an amazing Aline cut about 2 weeks ago finally) I told her one of the sisters, and asked if she liked it. She responded, "oh no sister, esta bien feo" (its really ugly) Then she let her hair down and told me, "but if you let it grow long, it can be beautiful, see. Really Sister, you can do it!!" It was so sweet and cute! Very rarely do you see a female here with short hair, and almost never do you see a boy or man with long hair. Lots of barbers, but no beauticians.
