Youth Conference

Petey and Critter participated in their first Youth Conference. The Irbid branch (northern Jordan) and the Cairo branch youth traveled here to Amman where our branch hosted. They had a lot of fun. It went amazingly well even though the organizers had only 4 weeks to get it all together. Petey and Critter especially had fun meeting members of the Cairo branch since that is where we'll be moving. Unfortunately, many of the members they met are moving this summer and won't be there when we arrive. Hopefully new members will move in over the course of the summer.

Todd was asked to be a chaperone so he was heavily involved in the YC as well. Todd's parents had already made their plans to visit us before we even knew there would be a YC so it was unfortunate that Todd, Petey, and Critter couldn't spend more time with Grandma and Grandpa. The other kids and I became the tour guides for Grandma and Grandpa for the few days of YC.

One day we took the Amman tour bus. I don't recommend it. If you've ever been to bigger tourist friendly cities they have these buses. You hop on and hop off at the sites you want to see. You can spend as much time as you want then catch another bus later. Usually there is some guide that tells you where you are and what makes that place noteworthy. Apparently Amman's bus started this way but there wasn't enough demand so it's kind of a "by appointment" bus. We only stopped at two places and we only got to look around for less than 30 minutes. The rest of the time was spent driving around Amman and seeing different shopping districts. I could've done this tour on my own for Todd's parents and saved 50 JD.

One of the events for YC was to visit the Baptismal site (purported) and Mt. Nebo. I brought the other kids and Todd's parents and we followed the bus around to these sites so we got to spend a little time with them that way.

We also in our home hosted 3 members of the Irbid branch and 2 members of the Cairo branch. They were a very polite group of boys. We didn't see much of them as they had to be to the church early every morning and came home late every night. I broke out the recipe book and frying pans, etc. for breakfast every morning they were here but all they really wanted to eat was cold cereal. Why wouldn't teenage boys want Egg Frittata?

Todd and T walking near baptismal site

Nic at Mt. Nebo

The group that stayed in our home