Sunday, January 13, 2013

1-13-13
This week...
This morning, Sunday, Walt was up at 5:45 and President López drove him and President Majano, Walt's first counselor, at 6:30 to the Regional Correlation Council Meeting with the Area Seventy, Elder Duarte, and the 10 stake presidents in this mission.
    The other mission: El Salvador Santa Anna-Belize is where they will meet with the other 9 stake presidents in two weeks.
     He got back about 2:00, to find we'd saved him a plate from our 1:00 Sunday Dinner.

Here he is with Elder Kitley...

Elder y Hermana Wall - Frank & Diane cooked both chicken and beef enchiladas.  Everything is always delicious at our pot luck dinners served each Sunday on the terrace.

Here are some of the others at dinner--Elder y Hna. Thompson, Lon and Nancy, and Hna. Wall, Diane...

Elder y Hna. Gibbons, Dave & Marilyn...

The Gibbons and Kitleys just have one more Sunday with us before their 18-month mission is finished.  We are sad to have them leaving but we know their families are excited to have them return back home.

Here's today's Sunday dinner...

And these are the sides...
Oh, rats! I didn't get a picture of the marvelous double chocolate bundt cake Hermana Kitley--Arlene baked for dessert.

After dinner we dashed to the temple for a 3:00 training meeting.  I didn't get any photos there, but here is what we saw when we walked back to our apartment at 5:20...
    ...a dark cloud with a beautiful silver lining--just before sunset.

1-12-13: Last night the Kitley's invited us over to their apartment after she and Trent had served dinner to seven of the Montepeque family.  Hermana Montepeque and her two daughters did some typical local native dances.  Both of these daughters work in the temple--Ana Milagro volunteers in the temple office 4 afternoons a week, and her sister Cecelia is a coordinator on Saturday afternoon shift, plus works another shift during the week.  Everything is volunteer work.

The Kitley's posed with the mother/grandmother, Hna. Montepeque who comes 4 afternoons each week as a volunteer to help in the Temple laundry...

1-11-13: Friday we came home exhausted from our early morning shift...

1-10-13: Thursday, we were invited to lunch with Brother Carbajal and Brother Whitesides, here from the Temple Department in Salt Lake...

Lunch was at the Hacienda Real, our very favorite restaurante here in San Salvador, as well as in Guatemala City when we served there for two years--March 2005 to February 2007..

Here's the open kitchen where they grill their tender meat...

A closer view of the open pit fire...

1-09-13: Wednesday we had the afternoon shift from 12:30 noon to 9:30p.m., but Walt was there from 8:30 until 9:30, because his weekly Presidency meeting is from 9:00-noon, so he had a 13-hour shift that day.  I'm only at the weekly meeting for about an hour.
I didn't get any photos that day.
1-08-13: Tuesday, we had the morning/afternoon shift, so we opened the temple at 5:30 a.m. and were walking home at 2:30p.m.
There was a group of missionaries, and several wanted to take a photo with us...

1-07-13: Monday...P-day, we did grocery shopping, then had lunch at the Merilott Mall, which we had not been to before.

It's a loaded grocery cart (which friends donated to be at the apartment complex in 2011 when they helped the building missionaries put the finishing touches on the beautiful apartments) when 5 couples get to shop on Mondays...

The highlight of each P-Day is our Family Home Evening on Mondays...

The first Monday of the month, the Kitleys host; the second Monday the Thompsons; the third Monday the Walls; the fourth Monday the Gibbons; and the fifth Monday the Petersens.

Mostly we have a lesson, and occasionally a game night.  This night Elder Kitley had put together some of the photos he has taken here in El Salvador.  It was a fun walk down the 18-month memory lane here...  Sister Kitley served her delicious home-made scones.

And always our focus for our mission here is to work with exactness and correctness in the House of the Lord -- His Holy Temple...

"It may seem to some to be a very bold doctrine that we talk of -- a power which records or binds on earth and binds in heaven.  Nevertheless, in all ages of the world, whenever the Lord has given a dispensation of the priesthood to any man by actual revelation, or any set of men, this power has always been given." (Doctrine and Covenants 138:9)" 
The Holy Temple by Boyd K. Packer, 1980, p. 81.

Tomorrow I am going to blog about my Mother's 93rd birthday:
She was born 1920, Jan. 14, in Rigby, Idaho.
She is living with our daughter, Julie and Julie's husband John and family
in Saratoga Springs, Utah.
We are so grateful for their tender care of
"Grama A."