Youth Conference

I use this term very loosely. The church here has been asked to do four youth conferences this year similar to EFY's in the states. All youth from the country of Panama are invited, that is about 15oo kids. This is the second one I have attended since arriving in January and they are NOTHING like EFY or youth conference. All activities (which they had very few because nothing is planned) separated the boys and the girls. Our ward was constantly in trouble for eating and talking to the boys in our own ward (something I have not been in trouble for since I was 16). I felt like a teenager sneeking around just to talk to our own boys. I don't know what horrible thing they thought would happen just by talking and eating breakfast together but they didn't seem too concerned that some of the boys tents were 10 feet from girl tents. Sleeping in close quarters good--talking bad. GO figure. Can you hear the frustration in my voice and I have two more to attend before December!! Calgon take me away.

Here is Kalie trying to get some sleep since she got up at 1:00am to shower. Her assigned shower time was 4:00am but at that time she would have had to shower in the communal shower with three other girls. That's a little awkward.
This is the really cool craft we did. We ripped strips of newspaper-folded them -and weaved them into a blanket. It was so much fun I don't know why the girls didn't like it. Kalie's age group sewed buttons on a piece of material; another incredibly fun activity. (this was the only activity planned for the day--are you beginning to get the picture)

This is where everyone was suppose to sleep. We were assigned a 6ftx6ft space on the floor for all nine of us. I put the kabosh on that and headed outside and pitched a tent. I learned from the first "youth conference" I attended to come prepared. They fit 600 girls in this space. Just picture those drawings of slave ships from your junior high world history book and you'll begin to understand what it looked like when everyone went to sleep.