Sunday, October 24th

This is one of our out of town groups of Future Missionaries that we did on our days off this week. This group is from Patzicia. The papers they are holding are their carpetas or
missionary applications that we sign.

This has been a very busy week. We still had our volunteer, Ken with his son David, so we were able to schedule some future missionaries from stakes outside Guatemala. Actually, we thought we were going to have a holiday on Wednesday because none of our mi casa kids could come because it is a federal holiday. However, we got a call from a stake president asking if he could bring 12 future missionaries in. So we worked all day on Wednesday doing full mouths on the kids that came. That usually means some of the kids are in the dental chair for 2 and 3 hours--intense. We have to try to do their work in one day if we can because they have to come from so far away. They often get on a bus at 3 or 4 in the morning to get to the clinic. Then after we finish torturing them for 3 hours, they get up and hug us and say thank you. Amazing.

I haven't been able to go to Spanish class this week because it was our turn to stay on Tuesday and We had some more future missionaries from out of town that took us all morning. There wasn't time for Paul to bring me back to the apartment so I could go to class. I usually go with the Toblers on Thursdays but they were out of town with our volunteers seeing the sights. On Friday I went to Spanish and then we went by ourselves to diagnose the new missionaries at the CCM. It is always fun to see the new missionaries that come in. This time their teeth were in pretty good shape and we only have to have about 16 come out to the clinic. On Saturday we had another group of future missionaries come in from out of town.
So, it has been a busy week. We did manage to take a walk in the Embassy neighborhood.

This is a picture of the Venezualen Embassy. It is really grander than it looks in the picture.

The British and Russian homes are really beautiful.
Today we had our neighbors the MacArthurs and the Hatch's for dinner. Sandy MacArthur has been out of town for 10 days and just returned and it was President Hatch's 82nd birthday. He is absolutely amazing.
We had a roast beef dinner with rolls and delicious lemon cream cheese pie for dessert. I am getting fat. I need to go on a lettuce and apple diet. If I could just find that self-discipline I mis-layed somewhere.

This group of girls from mi casa came in to look at the pictures I put on the bulletin board of them.

The little girl in front came up to me and put my arms around her. She just wanted me to give her a hug. She is only about 7 years old and yet she lives her away from her mother. Sometimes it makes me very sad to know they don't have a mother here to tuck them in bed at night. When we come in the mornings, the older girls are helping the younger ones with their clothes and their hair. They are very sweet. Although mi casa is called an orphanage, most of the children have families--some very far away. They can't afford to take care of them or educate them so they bring them and drop them off at mi casa. Most of them go home for two weeks at Christmas time.