Widening Out With a Fiesta

We had our CO visit this week and he said something that made me think.  We are working really hard for our English group to become a congregation.  He said that when the change does finally happen, it should be bitter sweet, not a relief.  I go through my ups and downs of frustration in trying to learn Spanish so admittedly, the thought of total English would be a relief.  Hey I haven't totally understood special needs or announcements in 8 months! But  it's true I will miss having the best of both worlds when and if the split does happen. I had been thinking of different ways to reach out to our Spanish speaking brothers for awhile so, I figured, why not have a little gathering.  One of the families in English had a gathering to practice the new songs and it went really well, so I decided to do the same.  Here are some of the pictures!

Eliezer printed bible search-a-word puzzles

Eliam made sure everyone was clear on the rules.

More games!

Ruth came early to help me.  

She and Eliam decided sunglasses would keep the onions from making them cry :-) 

Setting up for another game

I was on a tight budget so we decided to serve hot dogs.  But, lots more people started to show up than expected so what did we do to stretch the food?  Cut the hotdogs lengthwise in half! 

In teams playing bible trivia

Hurry, I wanna win this one!

Cook faster!

Everybody loves UNO!

Me in the background playing hostess.

I think the hot dogs went over well :-)

To end the night, Nazareth played her viola and we sang our favorite Kindgdom Melodies.  

She is very talented.

Everyone is a critic!

Some of the brothers got a little shy when it came time for them to sing on their own :-)

My Moment of Shame

Last week, I made an embarrassing mistake at a meeting.  I knew something was wrong when I got a call from our school overseer at 9:30 PM the night before our service meeting.  It seems that there was a mistake in the date he had written on the slip he had given me for a talk.  Instead of my talk being next week, it was tomorrow.  Being the procrastinator I am with talks, I hadn't even looked over it yet.  I decided to stay in from service the next morning to write it out.  That night, I was more nervous than normal, trembling when I had to stand up.  The talk went well though....or so I thought.  After the meeting, some of my friends couldn't wait to tell me what I had unknowingly done in my talk.  Although the talk was in English, I threw in a few commonly used Spanish terms.  Well, it seems that one of the terms I used, although innocent here in Nicaragua, is one of the worse curse words you can use in surrounding areas.  We had some visiting friends who were shocked to here me use the term in the talk.  To make matters worse I said it not once.....but twice......AND the Circuit Overseer was in the second row.  Shining moment, indeed.