Hotel Don Jesus

Here is some fruit our friend Carlo gave us from his place. The oranges around here are always this color. They are real juicy but they are impossible to peel and full of seeds. I call them amarillos because they are not orange. He also gave us grapefruit, limes, star fruit, guava and mangos. Not all of them were as good as you might think. No one really takes care of their fruit trees around here or tries to improve their production or anything. Once they produce something you just pick the ones that are ripe and sell them on the street.

This is our Chitre district. The Elders (Johnson and Espinosa) are actually the Zone leaders but since they are the only Elders in this district they are also the District Leaders. We took this picture because this week was transfers and we were afraid of losing of our District. Luckily All of the Las Tablas people remained in tact. I really like our  hermanas. I like them so much sometimes I even forget they don't speak a word of English. I will rattle off something in English and they will look at me like I am some sort of an alien. I guess I am. Ha!

I wanted to show you a little bit of our church. This was once the Primary room but lately we have been having investigators class and Relief Society in here. This picture really makes it look better than it is. I don't know how long the paintings have been on the walls but it is old and scratched up. The chairs all need to be scrubbed and the windows are those little slat windows that you wind open and closed with bars on the outside of them. If there was a fire and you needed to get out of this room but you couldn't use the door you would just die--unless someone could knock a hole through the wall. The walls are all pretty thin.

This is one of the 2 bathrooms in the church and this picture makes it look way better than it is. First of all the door doesn't lock and of course there is no hot water (that is a given) and the shower has never been used or cleaned since the church bought the building. I shouldn't complain because it does have water, soap, paper towels and toilet paper that flushes!

This is our chapel. Sorry I didn't get the picture before everyone put most of the chairs away but you get the idea, I'm sure. The room holds about 45 people and just above what you can see in the picture there are 3 oscillating fans on each side of the room. Also the door to the outside and the bus stop and the street are just in back of this man where I am standing taking the picture. Without the fans going and the door open it would be unbearable to be in the room with 45 people in attendance. With the door open it is pretty noisy with buses and taxis and cars and people coming and going.

You guessed it--this is where I sit for Sacrament and play this lovely keyboard. It kind of matches my piano skills. There is not room in the chapel room for this little table, keyboard and me so I am in a little adjacent room where extra people can sit if there is an overflow. You can actually see the speaker from here but not the congregation, This table you see in the left hand corner is the sacrament table.

This is the plaza in the center of town. I wish you could see the giant scaffolding they have put up all around 3 sides of the plaza getting ready for Carnaval. Dad is standing by stairs that go up about 3 stories. I do kind of wish I could be here to see all of the festivities but the closer it gets and the crazier the traffic and crowds and street closing and loud amps everywhere--I'm glad we are leaving in the morning.

More and more of the streets are beginning to look like this. Everyone is trying to sell their wares but most of it is a lot of junk. However I did buy a pair of sandals the other day I quite like. They charged me $10. If my skin had been a little darker I probably could have gotten them for $5. I am working on the darker skin but it is coming very slowly.

This is the small veranda outside of our hotel room at the Hotel Don Jesus. You can see a little of the pool down below. Unfortunately we never spent any time at all out here because it was just too uncomfortably hot and humid. Once we got home we were dieing for air conditioning. The hotels around here have no air conditioning in their lobbies or their common areas. They must think we are just crazy that we can't live without it. They also must wonder why no one uses their really nice common areas and verandas.

Here is Dad poking his head through a papaya tree as we walked back from a lesson we taught this afternoon. He thought he was so cool being in the picture but then he had to ask what they were. Still haven't tasted your Cherimoya Joel, but they do say they grow them here.   Tomorrow we are off to David for a mission conference with Elder Amado. He is the father of our Elder Andres Amado that came to our mission. I'm sure he will want to meet us for that very fact. Ha. Then we will go to Boquete with the Presleys who are the only other Sr. Proselyting Couple in the mission. We have never met them but they have been "assigned" to take care of us during Carnaval. We will be there 5 nights which is longer than we like to stay with our kids. Is should be interesting.  So long, love you all, Mom