Another Thanksgiving

November 30,  2015

Today is Monday. We had a busy day.

A week ago Wayne and I went to a Sastreria (Taylor). Wayne wanted to get a custom fit suit while we are here in Peru and since his brown suit pants tore, we decided now is a good time for that.  So today we went back to get the suit fit to him. Our friends Bill and Sandy Hartman decided to go with us since Bill wanted to get a custom fit suit too.

This is a picture of the Sastreria. Wayne left his white suit to have hem make it fit him better and he took his dark suit to have them make it smaller to fit him better.  That was fun.

Our missionary friends, Jim and Patti Fackrell cooked Thanksgiving lunch for the missionaries in Chocope, they invited us, and the Hartman's to join them. So we did. Chocope is about an hour and a half away. We rode the bus, some other missionaries got on our bus too so we had fun talking to them on the way.

This is Bill Hartman getting on the bus.

The Fackrells

Wayne and the Elders in Chocope

The Elders in front of the Fackrell's house.

There were 24 of us in their tiny apartment. We had a great time and the food was great !

This is the Hartman's if front of some of the houses.

The yummy pies! Banana cream, apple, and cherry.

We got on the bus and got back to Trujillo at about 6:00pm. We stopped at Wongs and got some groceries before we got home. We had a great day. The Fackrell's were great. We always have fun with them and the Hartmans. We had a great day!

You can follow the Hartman's blog it is billandsandyhartman.blogspot.com. Sandy takes much better pictures and her blog is very fun to see. She sees the same things we see everyday and is better at documenting it all, so check it out.

I hope you all have a great week. It will go by fast!

Thanksgiving in Peru!

November 26, 2015

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!  There are so many things to be thankful for.  My list is big and much like everybody else's but this year added to that list is this wonderful experience of being temple missionaries. It has been a very great blessing. 

We had our Thanksgiving dinner at the home of our mission president. The Marler's are wonderful people. They are amazing as I watch only a tiny bit of what they do. I can always feel the spirit when I'm around them. They are so welcoming, warm, and happy to see us.  

The Marler's home for Thanksgiving lunch. The Marler's are on the left. 

These are the known as the Sister, Sisters.  They are sister missionaries who are really sisters. Sister Angell in the red, Sister Vaughn in the striped shirt. They work in the mission office so they were making sure all the food was ready to serve.  We had a traditional dinner. We even had green bean casserole, cranberries, pumpkin pie, and cherry pie, thanks to Sister Marler for bring the ingredients from the USA and the Fackrell's for making the pie. It was all delicious.  We had fun because we sat by the office Elders. They were great company. 

Elder Olson is from Smithfield. He helps with the emigration and travel stuff in the office. 

 

Elder Romero.  He works with all the emigration details too. 

Elder Croft. He is one of the assistants. 

Elder Marshall. He is an assistant. 

Elder Bond is an assistant until Nov. 30th his parents are coming to pick him up. We will miss him!

 

These are the deserts, delicious!

This is our temple matron, Sister Casos. She had to have seconds on the yummy green salad the office Elders made.

Thank you President and Sister Marler for your hospitality.

We had a great time!  

Now on to Christmas.

The Wall of Tiles and Shined Shoes

We are starting another week. I know I always say that they go by fast but they really do.

We went to see the wall of tile murals that go around one of the Universities. These murals are made out of 1" tiles. It really is beautiful and amazing. You can see for yourself.

Just a few of the scenes. It was fun to see.

Wayne has talked about getting his shoes shined when he was here as a young missionary. We thought it would be fun to find someone now who could keep his shoes looking good. We found this shoe shiner, Jose.  He is a great guy. His shop is just down the sidewalk from the temple.

He is a happy guy and did such a good job on Wayne's brown shoes, we came right back for him to shine his black shoes too.

Just like new. He only asked for a sole and a half. I think Wayne gave him much more than that.

This is what happens when your suit pants are too big and you have to stretch and squeeze to get in a little taxi.

I fixed them. We'll see how long they last.

I thought this was funny!  This is a motor taxi. He has furniture on it and some mattresses. I am always amazed at the things I see around here.

We are both well and happy. We love serving in the temple and helping the members who attend. It is a great blessing.   I hope you have a great week and hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!  We will miss being home. I can't imagine not being there but it will be ok. We will be working in the temple in the morning and President and Sister Marler invited us to their house for Thanksgiving lunch. It should be yummy and fun.
See ya next week!
Wayne and Jan

November 22, 2015

Hello everybody!
On our way to church, it rained!  The first change of weather we've seen since we've been here.

Today the Hartman's went with us to the California ward for our church meetings. It was good to see the members there.

Several weeks ago I talked about Ziomi who was investigating the church. She got baptized during the week and was confirmed today in sacrament meeting. I am glad we were there.  She has a sweet spirit about her. President Marler baptized her. Sister South and Sister Roach taught her.

The primary did the program for Sacrament meeting. It was good.

Sister Angell and Sister Vaughn are in this ward so they prepared a Sunday School lesson in English for us. It was a great lesson. We talked about a lot of things. I enjoyed it! They are sisters serving together. The work in the mission office.

Tonight the missionaries sponsored a fireside at the same church.  It was centered around Coming to Christ. It was very good. Several of them played violins, guitars, and even a saxophone. The choir was great too. It was very good. Elder Olson lead the choir. He is a fun missionary!

This shows our couple missionary friends. The Nield's and Hartman's, on the third row back and in front of them is Elder Olson. If you zoom in you can see he waved. On the front row you can see President Marler, President and Sister Casos.

Elders Marshall, Bond, Croft
We love being missionaries with these wonderful young people. They are great!  The church is in good hands.

I appreciate this day. I enjoy being with the Peruvians they are wonderful people.

We had a great Sunday!

Primary Program in Peru

Hello from Trujillo!

We had another fast week.  It is such a great blessing for us to be here. We are enjoying every day. Wayne has been going over to help at the temple when we aren't scheduled to be there, he always finds ways to help.  We are so happy to be here and we are enjoying it.

Being of service has always been a blessing to me.  I learned a long time ago that you grow to love those you serve and those you serve with. It always makes me happy too. Serving in the temple is great!

Yesterday we went to the Laureles ward for our meetings. They were doing the primary program and we wanted to be there for that. They did a really good job.

This is the Primary Presidency. They were so sweet to us and were so happy we were there.

These are two sweet sisters. Carmen Leon is on the left. She works at the temple. She introduced us to Gilda Leon who is next to her. Gilda was baptized by Jaden Mecham when he served his mission here a couple of years ago. They are wonderful ladies.  Jaden said this about it ,"We visited them consistently for about a year. Gilda swore the first day we met her she would never be baptized into the church. Little by little she took small steps of faith and the ward was great to welcome her to activities by giving her small responsibilities. She felt needed and felt the spirit as she served. Since she didn't have any kids of her own, she always fed us and took care of us and considers us her children."

I love this story.  Thanks Jaden for being persistent and for serving.  For those of you who don't know Jaden, he belongs to Nicole Stoddard and Rod Mecham.  They lived in Hooper many years ago and now live in Morgan.  When their kids were little and Nicole went to work she let the kids play at our house. We were very excited when we knew Jaden was going on his mission to Trujillo. Little did we know we would serve here too a few years later.

Brother Bustamonte is in this ward too. He serves in the temple with us, Wayne has been helping him learn how to officiate a session.

These missionaries were at the meeting too.
Elders front to back--- Gardenas from Arequipa, he is going home tomorrow, Pacherras from Callao Peru, Ashcroft from Oregon, we met him at Wongs one Monday, he lost his card in the ATM, Weber from Oregon, and Meeker from Washington, he goes home tomorrow. They are from the Trujillo South mission.  We love it when we see the missionaries.

This is the Lonting family.  We walked with them part of the way home after church and got this picture. They teach English here so I can talk to them all.  The family sang Come Follow Me in the primary program. They sang the first two verses on Spanish then they repeated the verses in English. It made me cry.

We are so blessed to be serving here with these wonderful people. We love them and know that we are all brothers and sisters of a loving Heavenly Father who wants us to return to his presence.  We are so blessed!

All Saints Day

We had another great week.

 Last Sunday November 1st was All Saints Day (Dia de Todos los Santos Vivos) and Day of the Dead (Dia de los Difuntos).  It is a National Holiday. They celebrate by picnicking with the deceased and decorating the graves.  The belief is that souls visit the earth on this day and it inspires families to to bring offerings and share meals with departed family members.  Large cemeteries throughout the country suddenly fill with color, vendors, street musicians, flowers, families and food. The holiday begins on the evening of 31 October and ends at the close of 1 November.

That is exactly what happened here.  Since the temple is next to a big cemetery, our street was full of people walking,cars, taxis, bikes, motorcycles, and buses. There were a lot of people honoring their dead. I tried to capture the craze with these pictures.

The cars are backed up way down the street. The cemetery is to the right of the picture. This is in front of the temple.

It was so crowded and busy around the temple that they have added more security and policemen on the streets

This is one of many selling flowers.

These people are cooking food.

If you can zoom in it shows better the crowd.

More of the cemetery

It was interesting to see this event. When we got back to the temple, it looked like this. Calm and quiet!

A big event started here on Tuesday. We now have a cafeteria and can eat downstairs. They are open from 7:30 am to 7:30 pm. Tuesday thru Saturday. There is a company that comes in and cooks the food here. It is Peruvian food and the cost is very reasonable. It is for the people who work at the temple and any of the people who come to the temple.

It is good food and it is nice to not have to figure out what we will eat.  We have been eating lunch there.  It costs about 5 soles or about $1.85 for a meal.

We get one meal and share it because there is so much food.

This picture is of two meals.

This is Brother and Sister Rodriguez. They both work in the temple. He is a sealer and was just called to be the Patriarch in his stake.

We have enjoyed the cafeteria.

Monday we went to the mall and we saw a bunch of missionaries. This is just one group. We always like seeing them. They are always happy to see us and I can usually talk to most of them.

It is fun being a missionary and being a part of this mighty army of young people serving the Lord.
It is a great work!


Jan Haws