Week 7: Camarillo, CA

I'm supposed to write to all of you on Monday, and yes, today is Wednesday. Of course, we have had a crazy week! Last week, we took some missionaries to the Santa Barbara airport, which is beautiful. We taught several lessons. One memorable lesson was a young man who slipped up and drank way too much over the weekend. It was nice to tell him that everyone slips up and that we love him dearly. That's our message -- love. We took a couple of hours on Friday to visit the Santa Barbara aquarium, and we loved it! On Saturday night we found a really fun restaurant and ate dinner while watching the sun set. We love living here.

Our weekend was crazy! The couple we are replacing have just gone home. So our Spanish groups threw them big parties, and the people here really know how to party! First, we made tamales at a member's house. I LOVED learning how to make them. Then, we practiced our musical performance. We were singing Away in the Manger, and a man who is a professional musician was leading the music, but we sounded so bad that I could barely keep from laughing. We tried to add a junior high student who plays the flute, but he can't read notes, so his "melody" was pretty crazy! We all tried to transpose to the key of B-flat so he could play more easily. Yikes! Then, we tried to have the men sing the harmony, and that was not working. Our conductor kept making people change seats to see if the music might sound any better, but alas, no. Finally, he gave up.

Both groups had goodbye celebrations for the couple who went home. We ate at Golden Corral with some lovely members, and we had a posada feast with others, complete with a pinata. These were the choir members, and they decided to sing Feliz Navidad. They sang with all their hearts, using all sorts of noisy instruments and laughing so loud. Our conductor made them record themselves and he asked if they could hear the singing over all the maracas, tambourines, scrapey things, and other instruments. At this point, our choir is scheduled to perform Feliz Navidad and Away in the Manger next week. We shall see how it goes! Our conductor will probably have a panic attack. 

Yesterday, we moved into a new place. This one is a duplex with two bedrooms. It is beautiful. We were swamped with cleaning and moving, but everything went well, and now we are preparing to take a sick sister missionary up to see the doctor. We took a sick missionary to the LA airport on Monday to go home for treatment. His mom flew from Utah to meet him in the airport because he was too sick to fly alone. He had a positive attitude and we loved him. As he was saying goodbye, he told us that he signed on to be University of Utah's kicker when he returns from the mission, so we should watch for him. We were impressed. We had a little time in LA so we went to the Santa Monica Pier and to see the Christmas lights at the temple.