Wayne & Jan Haws: Monday in Peru * Family Home Evening * Memorial Day At Home

Another Monday in Peru

Toady was another Monday in Trujillo. Wayne and I went to the Apiat to get some Peruvian souvenirs to take home. Wayne bought me a sweater, a big red table cloth, some bird whistles, and a red hoodie. We had lunch at Chili's then came home and go ready for family home evening.

Family Home Evening

Tonight Wayne was in charge of family home evening. He decided to do the lesson about Family History and Family Search. He has been very involved in helping to get a lot of family names done. Greg, Danny, Natalie, and Tami have been sending him names and we've been doing them while we're in the temple.

Wayne showed and talked about our family fan charts. Our family lines go back past the 9th generations. Our charts only have a few names missing on them. The temple work for our Great grandparents has all been done, that would be all the names on our fan chart. We really didn't have much temple work to find for our ancestors. Family Search had made it easier to find relatives to do temple work for. We can look back oat cousins, aunts and uncles and their kids. There is temple work to be done. Wayne showed the stack of names that we've been blessed to get done and then he put them on top of the fan chart and said that none of the names on the temple cards are names on our chart, they are all names of those cousins, aunts, and uncles of the people on the chart. He also showed his Dad's life history book and his electronic version of his own life history. He talked about how important it is to keep our own life history. We had a really good participation as it was all discussed. It was really neat for me to watch Wayne teach and discuss this with our temple missionaries, they were so interested and payed attention to what he was saying. It was just really neat to feel and share the spirit of our family home evening. For our activity, we decided to sing the primary song "Family History, I am Doing It!" We sang it in Spanish first and then in English. I lead and Wayne played the piano. It was fun. The last verse of the song's simple message was the conclusion. " Family living now and the ones who've died, Can all be sealed to me, And someday I'll meet every one of them, I'm sure as I can be, Oh what joy we'll have when they say to me, We're all a family, I am yours and you are mine now, Through all eternity."

We are very blessed to be serving our mission here in the beautiful Trujillo

Sister Casos

Brother and Sister Wood - (Brother Guevara behind)

Brother and Sister Gomez

Brother Gomez looking at the fan charts

Memorial Day At Home

Decoration Day

As a little girl, Memorial Day was a fun time. It was the day we went to decorate the graves of our relatives, all of them. I have great memories of Memorial Days growing up. On the evening before, decoration day, mom and grandma Verlie would gather the vases and containers to put flowers in ready for the next morning. I remember waking up finding dad cutting flowers from our yard, Iris, Snow Balls, Lilacs, Roses, Peonies, Yellow Belly Buttons, Honey Suckle. and any other flowers that might be out in bloom. Mom and Grandma Verlie made the bouquets. They always cut the flowers from our yard and they made a lot of bouquets. There was a baby carriage that was a special container for Susan's grave. It was filled with belly buttons, pansies, and maybe a few honeysuckle flowers. We'd start with Grandpa Amasa and Susan's graves and then on to all of the other relatives in the Roy cemetery.

We also took Grandma Gladys to decorate graves. We'd go pick her up to take her to the Smithfield and Taylor cemeteries. She'd have several bouquets of flowers made from her yard, ready to load in the car. Mom would have packed a lunch with homemade fried chicken, potato salad, and some cookies. We went to Aunt Veda's grave ( Grandma's sister) in Taylor first then up to Smithfield where we decorated Grandpa Eldis and Grandma Cannell's graves, then all the other relatives. We stopped to see Aunt Esther's while we were in Smithfield. We'd eat the lunch mom packed and Aunt Esther usually gave us ice cream cones.

My mom and Dad have always and still do honor our relatives by decorating their graves on Memorial Day. I'm so grateful for this tradition. Wayne and I take flowers to decorate graves too. We've taken our family to decorate graves, Barrett and Marie's graves and my grandparents. We tell stories and remember them.