October and November 2014

Panamanians love parades! These floats were made by the people in the small barriados around LasTablas. Kind of like sub-divisions or really small towns. Each barriado has it own Patron saint that is kind of their mascot. This parade was to celebrate 'All Saints Day'.

A lot of times they have children dressed in costumes to honor the day.

All of them have ornate flower sprays. They are just gorgeous!

This parade was for their '4th of July" celebrating their separation from Spain.  These uniforms may resemble Revolutionary soldiers but they are actually the Bomberos squad. Yes these are the firemen. They even have a complete marching band. I guess it would be worth it to have a band if you got to march 4-5 times a year.

This is the Youth auxiliary for the Bomberos squad. 

This is a local high school. I have no idea where they get enough money for these nice uniforms and expensive instruments.  They play pretty well too. 

Every school marched. This group is from a local elementary school. One of their teachers is my piano student and she tells me how much work she does to prepare for the parade.  The regular classroom teachers put it all together.

Almost every group has thier king and queen. These High School kids are dressed in the traditional Panamanian Pulletas

This is the local bilingual school. I thought Joel's kids would get a kick out of seeing Alison. She is a member of our branch.

Royalty for an elementary school

Impressive Las Tablas High school. Might I add it was blazing hot that day and the kids are wearing wool jackets. Every time they stopped they had water boys run into their ranks and pass out water.

I thought you all would get a kick out of this one. Dad bought these shorts at a second hand store to go for his walks in the morning. He hated them because of the thick elastic on the top. Joel however loved them and ripped his clothes off as fast as he could to try them on. He even taped his hands up. What a crazy!

This is breakfast at the hotel in David. I don't know how their hotel was in PanamaCity when they got there but this was pretty much the last of civilization we saw when we were with them. It all went downhill from this.

Grandpa took the kids to the Plaza while we were waiting to leave town.

All the locals are really excited to get their pictures taken with the very white Americans. People stare at Dad and me because we are white and have a plaque on our chest. They stare at these guys because they are freakishly white. I always felt like I was part of a circus when I walked around town with these guys.

I might add the brown skin was strange to Caroline. She couldn't quite get over how brown their babies were. Here she is touching this little girl. Thank goodness no one could understand what she was saying and all of the questions she was asking.

This is our only proof we were in Costa  Rica. We didn't get our Passports stamped because we would have had to stay overnight. Sorry we didn't get a license plate for Alan, but we have this picture and a few mugs and flags to document our short visit.

We had Joel's three youngest while the rest of the family went to a near by Island and got stranded there for hours.

This is your crazy Dad. The reason he has his shoes on is because he is carrying the kids up to the car and the sand is hot and there are rocks where we are parked.  Isn't he a beauty!

Ammon reading to a baby at the orphanage. All of the kids did really well interacting with the babies.

Joel is holding Angel. One of our favorites

You know me, I can't get enough of babies.

Caroline loved the 'brown babies' as she called them.

Quite a color contrast. Savannah carried around babies that weighed almost as much as she does

Here is Wesley doing his thing at the Bilingual school. Wish you could have been there when he turned around and drew in great detail what it was like when they came to butcher the cow in his back pasture!

Here is my friend Edna (a less-active) holding my granddaughter and her granddaughter. She loved that we took the time to have the whole gang of us stop by.

Here is Emery at the cattle sale. Seems like he should have on a cowboy hat. You can see the man's Panamanian hat in the foreground. That's what they wear around here.

Savannah at the temple grounds in Panama City

Emery in front of the temple. The grounds are so beautiful!

We had to go to David to help with the multi-zone conference meal and we stayed with the other missionary couple in Boquete. This is a natural climbing wall we saw on a drive we took up one of their canyons.

Amazing carvings on the tree trunk

And on the rocks nearby

A gorgeous little waterfall

And a beautiful river

This is a coffee plant. These beans are still green. When they are ripe they turn red. There is a huge coffee plantation here called Cafe Ruiz.  Adam, have you been holding out on us?

September 2014 Saving the Turtles

September was a big month for us. We had a baptism, 2 branch parties, we saved the turtles and we had an engagement and a new baby. All of that in 30 short days.

This is the piñata that Hermanas Cuellar and Chavez made for our branch birthday party. I had to make the cakes. I don't know why I didn't take pictures of them. I guess because they didn't look like something Aunt Jolynne would make. At any rate everyone around here thinks I am related to Betty Crocker because everything I make is "amazing"

We told the property manager of our place that we and the hermanas would be willing to paint the cement fence around our house if he would get us the paint.  He was glad to take us up on that and the six of us painted for hours one day. Unfortunately when Dad took them home they got some paint on the upholstery of the car. It took me almost as long to get it out as the painting took. Ha!

This is Marianela Rodriguez. She was our first baptism. I am happy to report she is still on fire with the Gospel and everything she can learn about it. We will take her to the temple in November to do baptisms for her grandparents

This little guy is Angel Prado. Dad also baptized him the same day. His parents are members but still aren't married so they asked Dad to preform the baptism. He IS married.

This was our District in September. Two of our Sisters have since gone home. This is the group we took to Save the turtles. We drove the sisters. The Elders had to take a bus. It is about an hour an a half from here.

Guanico Abajo was quite a beautiful place.

You can see why the missionaries might want this to be their P-day every week

All of the "saving" had to be done in the middle of the night so the evening was just spent relaxing.

The tracks in the sand are made by the female turtles who drag themselves up onto the beach to lay their eggs in the sand. The night we were there there were probably 60 sets of tracks we could see in the sand

These turtles were weighed and measured and tagged before they went back into the sea.  I'll bet they will think twice before coming back here to lay their eggs.

Just to give you an idea how big theses Mama'a are.

They dig their hole and then lay their eggs--between 80 to 120. Then they cover them up and drag themselves back to the sea. We touched the eggs. They look like round, hard boiled eggs but they are softer. They have no shell when they are first layed.

You can see their tracks going back out to sea. Dad and one of the workers at the station took a little, somewhat dangerous hike out to this rock off in the distance.

Big news for our family. Dillon and Emily Hedelius got ENGAGED and will be married in the Mt. Timpanogos Temple on December 30. I don't know  how he ever talked her into it. We are so happy for them both

At the branch beach party Dad wasn't planning on swimming, of course, so he didn't bring a suit. But as soon as he found some takers that were willing to go in with him you couldn't get them out of the water---clothes and all! Anyone surprised?

At first it was really hard for me to be gone when the babies came. Now I am just happy they get here safely. Little Abel Lawrence Flake was born on Sept. 25. Congratulations to Justin and Kelsey and their family.  Our third baby born since we left on our mission.