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!