Our Final Days in Panama

Leaving Panama brings bittersweet feelings but the time to go home inevitably comes and it is time to say goodbye to people and places you have grown to love. We will always have fond memories of what we have learned and loved and done here in Las Tablas.

Here are our seminary boys on the last day of seminary. A lot of times they will bring one or more of their little brothers. We just go ahead and include them like they were a part of the class.



Here are the men in the branch on Father's Day. They fed them a meal and gave them all gifts. The Panamanians love parties!

Our mission surely added to the strength of our marriage. I guess spending all day, every day together would either make or break it. This is the El Valle de Anton where we spent our 40th wedding anniversary. Here you can see the valley of the ancient volcano and the majestic mountains surrounding it on all sides.

The place we stayed in was an old chateau. It was called La Casa de Lourdes. The whole place was gorgeous.

Here is the restaurant

It had terraced gardens in the back and around the pool.

Here is our room and the adjacent veranda.

This was also part of the Chateau and had two sleeping rooms in it. We looked in the windows and it wasn't nearly nice as our room.





This was the view out our veranda. The whole place was incredibly beautiful and so quiet and peaceful. 

We took time to go downtown and visit the open air market. It is one of our favorite things.

The next morning we visited the zoo and this guy was begging to have his picture taken.





They had a really nice frog pavilion of the strange local creatures.

This isn't my best photo but this area is known for its Golden Frogs. In fact the Hotel that Justin and Kelsey stayed in when they came to Panama was called the Golden Frog.

These things will never cease to amaze me. They always look like prehistoric animals that somehow got left behind. 

My Gnobi Indian friends made me a traditional dress as a going away gift. They had me come over to try it on when we got home. It really is a nice gift and was so much work. Knowing that sometimes their kids don't have bus money to go to school, I asked if I could pay for the material and they were almost offended. It really was a wonderful gift.

The branch had an investigator lady make us traditional Panamanian shirts so we could wear them to the party. Dad will probably never wear his again but I will.

At the party most of the people had on tradition clothes of one sort or another. They had all kinds of food and had anyone that wanted to, come and say nice things about us. It was really tender. They gave us a framed memento thanking us for coming and being a part of them. It was quite a fiesta.

Once everyone had a chance to talk and to eat then the real party started. We had recorded music, of course, but we also had our own locals taking part in the singing and dancing. Even your dad and I danced. We are actually getting quite good at their traditional dances after all the parties we have been to----Not!

Our Last Month--June 2015

Panama has been an adventure for sure but there are so many things about it I won't miss. 

I won't miss dead animals in the street. Derek, you and Dillon are our animal experts. What is this?! I am just grateful I found it outside of my house and not in my kitchen. Yuk!

I won't miss bats in the church. You remember our bat incident. This was quite an interesting adventure with having bats for a few days. I love how the Physical Facilities people said they "took care of the situation". What does that mean exactly?!

I won't miss how they do things around here. This is part of the Panamerican Hiway between here and David. Are they really not going to move the telephone pole and just leave it in a pile of dirt in the middle of the road. That is probably not a good idea.

I won't miss babies having babies. It is so common here. Here are Saskia and Christian (both 16) with their baby Dylan. We haven't met Saskia's younger sister Larisa's baby. She is 14. How will sweet babies ever make it?

I will miss the unique nature of this foreign land around us. I don't want this in my house but I am willing to take pictures of it as it posses for me. 

I will miss the romance of the countryside that sometimes looks like a tropical rain forest and other times looks like an African desert.

 I will miss the unique beauty of the nature. This little crab looks like someone took a paint brush and painted his back. He lives on a deserted island. Who is even supposed to enjoy his beauty?

I will miss making new things. Their food here is nothing I will ever long for when I go home but I am willing to try almost anything. These empanadas I made were way better than anything I ever bought off the street. I will also miss what a big deal they thought my chocolate chip cookies were. No one at home ever thought I was amazing!

 I will miss how these people love to celebrate everything and are always willing to have a party. They have magnificent floats for the minutest of festivals and have holidays for almost anything people can come up with.

I will miss finding the remains of a float just hanging around on the street days after the parade is over. This thing is totally made of Styrofoam and could be knocked over with a strong wind.

I will miss  Dad's favorite trees. Since it never gets cold here the blossoms on all the flowering trees and shrubs last forever---I mean months and months. It is so beautiful.

I will miss being surrounded by a tropical paradise with beautiful beaches,   Usually the beaches are deserted or visited only by tourists. I guess they would rather just sit on their porches which they do everyday and all evening.

I will miss the Hermanas.  We almost always loved working with the missionaries. Here are the four Hermanas we have here currently. From left to right we have Hermana Ramerez (Guatemala) Hermana Hendley (Provo), Hermana Martinez (Texas) and Hermana Toki (Tonga) It is a little strange to see these brown faces struggle with Spanish. They are good girls though and hard workers.

I will miss baptisms. You never get sick of baptisms. These two young girls are sisters Belkis and Briselda. They are Gnobi Indians. They were baptized three weeks ago.

And, of course,  I will miss the children. You never get sick of the babies. The people have such beautiful children here. The people are not hard to love. I will miss the people.

April and May 2015

                                             Easter, Derek and Clara's visit and Mother's Day

You see a lot of this in Panama. It is just a homemade cross with a shroud around it. People have them in front of their houses on their front porches. The shrouds can be any color with white, red and purple being the favorites. Sometimes they even have lights on them. These are put up for Lent and Easter, of course,  but also for All Saints Day and other religious holidays.

We had visitors right after finals were over in Provo. Happy Day! Here are Derek and Clara and her brother Isaac standing by the railing at the Panama Canal as a huge ship passes by.

I thought Derek and Clara would post but since they didn't I guess I should. Here is Derek at the museum at the Canal acting official as he runs the ships through.  Who wouldn't feel important?

Our three Amigos at the giant mall we stopped at for lunch. The Mall is so huge they have different animals at each entrance so you can make some sense of where you are and not get too lost.

I am sure one of them have a better picture than this one because I had to take it from the driver's side of the car, but you can see this cute monkey sitting on the guard rail along side the road. He didn't seem to care a bit when we stopped the car next to him to take pictures. He was probably mad we didn't feed him.

Clara standing in front of some very interesting tree roots on our Nature hike. If you look closely you can even see a tiny baby bump on our model.




We got into a boat to go up the river and into the Canal. The first thing we spotted was a Capan that looks like a tiny alligator swimming quite close to our boat.

This and our boat were actually in the Panama Canal together. They were making their way up to the locks to go through we were just on a little joy ride.

That night we went to dinner at Las Tinajas and watched their traditional show after our meal. Derek and Clara were drug up on stage to dance with them. Little did they know they had a famous BYU Folk dancer in their midst.  That night was our last night together. We had a short stay at the hotel and then a very early trip to the airport the next morning. Thanks for coming guys. We loved it!

Me with my Mother's Day Flowers. It was a great day with calls from all of my kids. Thank you guys. I love you so much!