WHITE SHIRTS

Abogado

Our dear friends we have met here, Cisely and Miguel, well Miguel, after working on It for 22 hears, graduated as a lawyer (Abogado).   Over these years, he got married, full time job, family, and all the rest.  Several years ago, he was getting nowhere with his progress.  He was in the temple and prayed about becoming a lawyer, he was very discouraged, he got clear insperation that he could do it.  After that, His boss allowed him to move his work hours around to accommodate classes, and, he worked his homework in without sacrificing his family time.   And, he finally completed all his classes and thesis.  He invited us to his graduation.  It was very formal.  Of course, in the middle of the procession, Gary swallowed wrong and almost passed out trying not to cough too much.  Finally, Miguel got the five judges ok and was awarded his degree.  

Here is Miguel and Cisely after the ceremonies.

Here are the judges and Miguel 

Pati

There is a lady in one of our wards.  Her name is Pati.  Her husband died about two years ago. (They have been sealed in the temple.) She has three teenage boys living with her.  She works very hard to pay the rent and other expenses and care for her family.  We pay her to clean our house once a week. She does an amazing job.  We are usually gone the morning that she cleans, but this past week, we left a little late and she came while we were here.  We were in our bedroom while she was beginning her work.  We went to open the door to our bedroom, and there was Pati, nealing down praying before she started work.  It was a touching view for us.  What a great lady!  We were humbled again and had to swallow any complaints about our work.

The white shirt.

We might have mentioned this, but several weeks ago, we attended a tiny branch and the people were very poor.  We noticed that the branch president's white shirt was very frayed and worn.  The next day we told the missionaries in the branch that we wanted to buy a white shirt for the president. They said said "great" but you need to buy fine.  All the priesthood in the branch need white shirts, So, we bought five white shirts, and, wrapped them individually as gifts so they would not be viewed as a donation.  That all happened some time ago.   Well, yesterday we had a meeting with the district president, president Rodas.  He is responsible for this branch and to others.   He said he was attending church at a branch last Sunday, not the branch we are talking about here.  But, the branch president of the branch he attended is from this tiny branch.  They had no priesthood men to be president so the called this man.   He bore his testimony about tithing.  He said he paid his tithing but had no money for a shirt, and then here was this gift.  He said he was blessed with a new white shirt because he paid his tithing.  We were a bit emotional when we heard this.  It is true that every good thing we do for others is due to inspiration from our Heavenly Father.

SPENCER W KIMBALL SCHOOL

Two brothers and a sister

One afternoon we joined two Latino missionaries to work with them.  Elder Castillo and elder Castro.   Their area is is small beautiful city nestled in the mountains.   We started walking down a street then turned up a cobble stone road that was very steep.   It didn't take us to long before Kathy and I were really sucking air!   And, even though the words "cobble stone road" has a bit of romance about it, what it really is, is a pain in the foot.  Really hard to walk on.  After about 30 minutes, we arrived at the little house.  10 minutes later Kathy and Gary could finally talk. We taught the gospel of Jesus Christ to a young boy of about 12.   His brother and sister that are close to his age were with us.  They were baptized about a month ago.  They sat on the bed and we sat on plastic stools. It is hard to describe the wonderful spirit that these young people radiated.  They all new a lot about the gospel and scripture stories.  We were given a chance to say a few words that we kind of understood.  The missionaries always follow with an explanation of what we said.  Then, like all houses we visit, they fed us a drink and some chips.  Even though they are literally dirt poor, these great people will always feed you something.  The boys name is minor, and he has agreed to be baptized next week.  They have a mom and a little brother and a really cute German shepherd dog.  The dad is not there, he is an alcoholic, like many families, leaving the mom to fend for themselves.  When we left, they give us a few eggs from there chickens.   Going back on the cobblestone road was just as painful.  But, what a wonderful afternoon.  Here is the family:

Baptizing the dad

We have a missionary that just joined us.  Before his mission, his parents separated because his dad was an alcoholic.  His twin brother and him were called on missions to Guatemala but in different places.  It turns out that his dad lives in a city in our mission.  This missionary arrived and was assigned to a neighboring city to where his dad lived.  After his first change, he was assigned to the same city where his dad lived.  The missionary's goal before coming on a mission was to baptized his dad.  Well, he got the dad off the booze and baptized him.  We thought this was a great story.

Spencer W. Kimball school

There is a school here named Spencer W. kimball, and it has nothing to do with Mormons.   Go figure?  Well, missionaries went to the school and talked to the head man about the book Book of Mormon.   He was very interested to have his students read the book for educational purposes.  He wanted each student to have a book.  The missionaries handed out 400 books!  We have many contacts already.

Why we don't speak Spanish really well

(we might have mentioned this before)

Kathy mentioned some time ago why it was important that we didn't speak fluent Spanish.  If we did, we may be a bit over bearing and not humble.  As it is, we could not be much more humble.  As a result, the spirit carries our testimony to the people.  Every time we have struggled through a testimony, it has been received very well.

Here we are eating Grandma Nettie's recipe, called shells.  Nettie is Gary's mom and "shells" are a family favorite.

KATHY VS THE SHOWER

KATHY VS THE SHOWER

The water is very cold here and so everyone has these little heaters, here is our little beast.

Our problem is that both the water and the electricity are not consistant.   The water flow is up and down as well as the electricity.   Here is what our power pole looks like.

Every morning Kathy goes to battle.  Armed with nothing but her Jamies and hands, she adjusts and re-adjusts the water valve to get the warm water to start.  To much flow and it is cold to little flow and it real hot and shuts off and she has to start over again.  We have learned that when we do get into the shower, to wash hair first, so, if it shuts of you don't have to have cold water pouring down your head. But, Kathy does a great job and about 3 day out of seven the water is reasonable.   Here is our warrior.

GARY AND THE PODIUM

Gary is strange.  He gets into strange situations, not on purpose, but, he initiates them.  For example, when he was a young man and got his first leadership assignment as a supervisor, he had his very first meeting with another manager.   He went to the managers office, entered, and they did their business. It was a bit aukward but he got through it.   He went to leave the meeting, said all the normal goodbys and opened the door out of the office.  To everyone's surprise, he had the wrong door and walked into the broom closet.  He laughed it off after a few years.  

Well, Sunday, we attended a delightful little ward.  It so happens that it was ward conference, and, the stake presidency was there.  They asked us to come and sit on this very crowded little podium.  The stake presidency, the bishopric, and a few others all crammed together on folding chairs.  Gary was on the end with Kathy.  During the opening hymn, Gary was shuffling around because his big body didn't quite fit, well the two legs of the chair slipped off the edge of the podium and he fell off the podium.  He was not hurt.

THE CHOIR

this little ward put together a choir.  The women were all dressed traditionally and looked just beautiful.   They sang several songs, all practiced, but, they where a bit off tune, however, their spirite made up for it.  Here they are.

Here is a picture of this really old and frail couple.  However, the missionaries told use that they are at church every Sunday and they live very far away.  They walk for an hour then take a bus.  They are sealed in the temple and are just wonderful.

Dedi

Dedi is a young women the missionaries found working at a members house.  Dedi is in her her teens and has a small baby with no dad around. Dedi has been molested by her parents and others.  She lives with her grandmother who treats her very badly.  Luckily, she spends most her time with these members.  She can not read or write.  The missionaries have been teaching her and she loves their lesson.  However, not reading is a problem.   After our visit with her, we were very upset by her condition.  We got home and realized that we had a full set of the Book of Mormon on CD.  The next day we got the set to the missionaries.   This was all a few weeks ago.  This past Sunday, at this little ward we were talking about.  There was Dedi with the missionaries.  The missionaries said that she listens to the Book of Mormon every day during her lunch and is just "eating it up".  She will be baptized the 29th of this month.   We were just thrilled.

EGGS OFF THE ROOF

Rosio

We might have mentioned Rosio before, she is a young single mom that we visited with the missionaries, but, she didn't progress much so the missionaries moved on.  We decided to continue visiting her.  We stopped by Sunday and had a great chat.  She has lots of questions and we are going back prepared.  The good news is that she is interested and wants to talk.  So, in a few days we will cook up some brownies and visit her.  We sort of like to follow up on those that were not progressing.  Maybe we can get them to be interested in having the missionaries again.

Blessings

We have learned a bit about priesthood blessings.  It seems whatever The Lord asks us to do or we ask him, there is an associated lesson for us.   Months ago we gave Kathy a blessing for her eye problem.  It was very red and hurting.  We were really worried because we knew nothing about the medicine here, so we had faith that her eye would be healed.  Well, it was not healed.  But with much prayer and faith we were led by inspiration to a great eye doctor.  He cured the infection and after weeks and weeks of treatments, this week the doctor put in tiny plugs in her tear ducts and the eye is doing great.  So, the blessing came through.  And our lesson was, that we needed to increase our faith that The Lord would lead us to a solution, we did, and we were blessed.   The Lord has a wonderful way of teaching us.  In a very small way, it is like a dad and a little son.  The son brings a toy truck to the dad with a wheel off.  The dad could simply push the wheel on and the boy would be happy.  Or, he could teach a lesson.  He could ask the boy what could he do to fix it.  Then, he could guide the boy to learn how to put the wheel back on.  Maybe the boy would ask the dad to do the final push to put the wheel in place.  The wheel got fixed in either case but what a difference.

Eggs on the roof.

We buy eggs here and the eggs have feathers and poop on them.  Well a few days ago, we got really bad food poisoning.  After questioning all the past food we ate including a few restaurants, Kathy said, maybe it is the eggs.  So, we went to the Internet and found that eggs right from the chicken have lot of salmonella on the shells.  The lining of the shells keeps the salmonella out but they have to be cleaned really carefully or the cleaning can push the salmonella into the egg.  Well  Kathy admitted that she had eggs on her table just rolling around and after removing the eggs, cut vegetables in the same place!  She tried to kill us!! Gary told her that if she wanted to go home early, poisoning us is not the way.  So, we had 30 eggs that we just were not going to have around the house.  How do you get rid of 30 eggs.  If we put them in the garbage, in a few days the house would smell horrible.  (There is no place to put garbage cans outside, and if you did, the packs of stray dogs would have the garbage spread all over).  We thought about flushing them down the toilet, but that is not going to work.  In fact, the slightest thing plugs up our whole system.  So, early in the morning, Gary went up on the roof and threw the eggs into the field next door.  He thought it was a great idea.  Here is a picture of the roof and where the eggs went.

THE CONTACT MACHINE

ILL

We have been ill for two weeks.  Gary the first week and Kathy the next.   Kathy was not doing well.  So, we got her a blessing then went to this great old doctor.  Doctor Juarez.  A tiny little office, pink concrete walls will cracks filled with white plaster (probably from the earth quake last year), the patient bed had the same sheets on it we saw several weeks ago when we brought a missionary in.   No replaceable plastic cover on the thing that he checks ears and throat.  But, he is the nicest kindly man and very caring, which compensates for his lack of equipment.  He wrote several prescriptions and we got the medicines.  You don't need a doctor's prescription here, but, we had to know what to get.   Then, we locked down for three days.  We didn't go out of the house.  Wow, we felt like we had been put in jail!  

You can learn something from every event in your life.  We were really worried about Kathy.  She was really sick.  We gave her a priesthood blessing and instead of being healed on the spot we were led to a great doctor with the right medicine that got her better.  ( keep in mind, that here, going to the doctor, or worse, going to the hospital is like deciding to donate your organs while your still alive, it is suicide!)  Heavenly Father wants us to use our intelligence and the medicines and innovations he has blessed us with.   What a great Father!!

Here is a picture of Kathy on the roof.  We had to escape some where.

LESSONS

We were having such a hard time with the language.  It seemed like we had hit a wall in our progress.  We read some where that the human mind in older people could learn just as well as younger minds.  That it maintained its plasticity.  Well, we felt as though some one had poked a hole in our brains and pumped in concrete.  We finally contacted the senior missionary training center in Provo.  We knew this was going to help, because, like everything on a mission if you are going to do something that is really good, expect an attack from the dark side.  Our really bad internet service doubled their price, our computers we having problem, we couldn't get Skype going.  However, we have learned, the greater the attack, the more we fought back with prayer and faith.  We are getting help, with a great program that is professional and has focused our learning.  We are making progress for the first time in months.  And, what a blessing to be sick  locked in the house.  We got lots of studying done to give us a good head start.  We have been blessed with wonderful, amazing church! 

WHITE SHIRTS

We attended this little branch.  It has about 40 people that attend in this tiny little building.  The priesthood amounts to five men.  Now, the way most people wash their close is with a pila.  It is a concrete thing that has a sink on one side and a concrete washboard on the other ( we have one, photo included).  The women scrub the clothes on this wash board.  They scrub really hard. And, the result, is, the white shirts on the priesthood holders in this little branch were very badly frayed.    We bought five white shirts and wrapped them like presents so that it was not a donation but a gift and gave them to the elders to take to the branch.  We called the elders this morning to see how the white shirts were received.   Well, they loved them, they went home and changed into their new shirt and came back to church.  ( their homes are right next to the church).  We were so happy, we shed a few tears.

CONTACT MACHINE

Kathy has turned into a contact machine.  Every time we go to the market, usually to get items to keep missionaries warm,  Kathy will start talking to someone.  Then she asks if they know about our church, pointing to her plaque.  Everyone knows about Mormons. She then asks for their name and number to have the missionaries contact them to tell them more about our church.   Gary hasn't quite got the picture,  he kind of hides behind Kathy until it is time to say goodbye.  Then, we take the names and give them to the elders. 

Here is a picture of a contact.