We completed our first week of teaching Level 1 English Connect to Spanish speaking adults. We teach the lesson twice on Tuesday at 5 and 7, and then we review the lesson on Thursday at 5 and 7. We have people from Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Mexico in our class. Since this was lesson 1, we went over the alphabet, vowel sounds and some basic words. Velyn put together a very nice worksheet for them with a picture that they had to fill in the missing letter and then determine if the vowel sound was long or short. For the word "Old", I had Velyn take a picture of me. They thought it was pretty funny. In Mexico, it is common for the wife to call her husband, "mi viejo" which basically means my old man. One of the class members saw Velyn's missionary tag which said "Sister Corbett" on it and he wanted to know how to pronounce her first name (sister). Everyone laughed when I explained to him that it meant "hermana." Anyway, he learned a new word that wasn't in our lesson. 

After class was over on Tuesday, the young missionaries spent 10 minutes singing some songs in Spanish and finished up with La Bamba. Everyone really got into singing that one. Following is a picture of this:

There were two men from Turkey and one from Thailand there that were at a loss for the words to La Bamba but they enjoyed it anyway.

Velyn and I are both really enjoying this teaching English. I have a deep love for the Hispanic people and it is very rewarding to help them learn English. It is also nice to teach someone who actually wants to learn.

We also had two people this last week that came into the Employment Center that only spoke Spanish. So I am definitely being able to use my Spanish on our mission which in one of the things i wanted to be able to do. 

The software system that the Church has developed to keep track of the job seekers really makes it easy to keep in touch with them on a regular basis and make sure that there needs are being met. Velyn snapped a picture of me in my office at the Employment Center:

Many of the people that come in are very depressed and frustrated about not being able to find a job, or being laid off of a job that they have had for many years. The older people, which I will classify as 50 years old or older, have a much more difficult time finding a job. There seems to be a stigma about them that makes employers not want to hire them. The success rate of them finding jobs is significantly lower than younger people. I have one man who is 60 that has sent his resume to over 50 companies and has only gotten 2 interviews, neither of which amounted to any job offers. 

I finally figured out why the ducks quacking was so loud. This one pair of ducks will fly up to the top of the apartments in the morning and have a major quacking spree. I have never seen ducks that will fly up on buildings or trees. They are different looking that any duck I have seen before, but they do have webbed feet. I was able to get a picture of them up in a live oak tree:

Spring has sprung here with all the trees blossomed out. It seemed like the leaves on the trees practically came out overnight. Everything is very green now. The temperature has gotten up above 80 a few times already. I think we will have a little struggle in getting use to the hot and humid summer, but at least we work in an air-conditioned office. Their are 7 million people in Houston, so it must not be that difficult to get used to it. That's about all I have for this week.