Sunday was another one of those really nice, slow days where church didn't start until 2:00 and was in Spanish. Yeah, I'm most definitely at the point where I'm done with this idea of afternoon church and of hanging around the center with only three other people in the whole building. Although I'm still digging the idea of having the entire floor to myself to get ready, so I took the time to pull my hair up into a bun. I'm starting to learn that if I want my hair down I'd better take a hairbrush with me because as soon as we go to take the Tube it's going to get messed up.
But this last Sunday was different because the branch president (almost put the president of the branch, a sign of too much Spanish thinking) asked Catherine and I if we could help out with Primary. So we asked the Primary president what she wanted us to do and she said to come back third hour. So we went to our normal Sunday school class where I was again asked to give the opening prayer (WHY? I did that last week! Did I mention that? I was shaking last week when I sat down because I've never actually been taught how to pray in Spanish. So I give very grateful prayers.) before we went to Primary.
Primary was very disorganized. The biggest problem was that some of the children only spoke English and some spoke mostly Spanish with some English, and a couple spoke basically just Spanish and the whole thing was conducted in Spanish. The teacher/primary president doesn't know English, so kids were translating for kids. They also seemed to have a great lack of adults in the room and the kids were very bad at keeping quiet, but then again, it IS primary. I sat with the group that only spoke English and helped translate the lesson for them (I was pretty proud of myself for being able to do that and they were pleased to see English scriptures because they couldn't read Spanish) and engage them in our small group activities.
I've never been in a place where the church is so new. The teacher, who was the primary president, kept looking to me for confirmation about the things that she was saying (for example, that Oliver Cowdery also received the priesthood along with Joseph Smith) which was so totally unusual for me. And after primary was over the other boy who was helping out in primary who seems to be about my age was asking me for suggestions about how to better organize the primary to get the kids to listen. It was so completely intimidating. I have a feeling that next week will be better though.
Monday was classes as per usual, but then the very best part of everything (I keep feeling that way about everything, but this time I really mean it) was when we went to see Les Miserables!
Here we are before the musical started.
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