Conference Weekend and Copa Loyola

This weekend had been a long one for us. Saturday was Copa Loyola, a daylong sports event at the kid's school. We dropped the kids off at 8am to start getting ready for the event and showed up at 9am for the kick-off. Various events were scheduled for the different ages. Their school is from ages 18 months to pre-college, so there is a wide range of ages. First the Kindergarten, three grades from age 3 to 5, competed first while everyone else watched. Then the older kids split up to compete on the nearby fields. The whole school was split in half between the blue and red teams. They even had t-shirts. Jane was Roja, Riley, Azul. Parents were all in attendance and we split up our family - boys, blue and girls, red - so they both would have a cheering section.

Here are some favorite pictures from the day.

Jane running a sprint:


Riley doing the shotput:


Azules won the most events in the school, so they got a gold medal to take home and Rojos got the silver. After the winner was announced the school director told everyone that school was canceled for Monday as a reward for all of their hard work. Needless to say, more cheering.



My kids are not very competitive in sports, but it turns out Mexicans are. All day long there were cheers and whistles for one team or another. The parents got more excited than the kids. But it was a happy, encouraging excited that I liked. We finished at about 3pm and we were all exhausted.

On Sunday, Riley and I traveled on a bus to Guadalajara to watch a broadcast of our church's leaders from Salt Lake City, called General Conference. This conference occurs every 6 months and it's something I look forward to. It used to be that, growing up in California, my family would watch the broadcast at a nearby church building, but after going to college in Utah and ending up staying there, I got lazy watching it on TV. I was glad that Riley was willing to go with me and Dave was willing to stay home with the younger children who make it hard to watch. Even though Riley didn't watch it all, it was the most he's ever paid attention, and I hope he got something out of it.

It's always overwhelming for me when I enter a room filled with members of the church and it made me doubly happy to be there with so many Mexican members. I didn't sit in the same room to watch, because there was a separate room with the conference in English for us Americans, but I loved being around them.

One of the talks I appreciated most was from Carlos A Godoy. He talked about testimony and the fact that a testimony of Jesus Christ does not always come from some spectacular event but usually by small and simple steps and little by little. I've always felt strongly about my testimony, but had a hard time expressing it and why. And sometimes let my testimony be unspoken because of this. I will try to share it more.