Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Family News !!!!





Greg and Darlene had a baby boy on the 26th of January. He is 22 inches long and weighed 8 lbs 5 oz. He is beautiful. All went well and Greg and Darlene are very happy. I think they are pretty sweet parents as well. They live in San Francisco and so we are only able to give digital hugs and kisses thanks to Skype.

January 20th


Haiteses Nat'l Park




Wow! I am getting behind, like a month behind. I'll see what I can do about it. We went to Samana over the four day holiday with the idea to see the whales. They are seen from January to March on the north east side of the island. We went with Daniel and Rebecca Mehr who are the Public Affairs Missionaries here. They do a wonderful job. They are here through April but will return for a 6 month new mission (technically) to Puerto Rico in the middle of the summer. Anyway, we stayed at the Bannister Hotel, which had only been open one month. Ihave never seen anything like it here on this island. It is an exclusive marina/ resort. The down side is, no beach but the up side is beautiful, cleanrooms, good food and an infinity pool.


We rented a boat one day to take us across the bay to Hiateses Nat'l Park. You can really only see some parts of it by boat. Many little islands with dense vegetation and unique birds. The bad news is that one of the twin engines went out on us half way across and it slowed us down immensely. The good news is that going so slow we saw many flying fish, stingrays and dolphins. It was pretty amazing even though we thought the other engine might go at any time. The boat was a beautiful clean boat which goes to show you that you can't tell a book by its cover or is it beauty is only skin deep but in this case, paint deep. We did have a wonderful day and I will post a few pictures of our adventure we saw some interesting birds and even a cave.
Because our boat ride got cut short we decided to take a trip up to Salta de Limon ( a beautiful waterfall in the mountains. We rode horses not because it was so far but it is so muddy and all of the mud is not mud. It was interesting. The water did not look all that clean to me but Ed and Daniel had a good swim. We also road over to Las Terrenas a beach resort town along the Atlantic. The next morning, Sunday, we left early to get to church in Gonzalo where the Joneses served in a small branch. It was the best part of the trip. About ten people in this little ply-board church, but such faithful, faithful members. The Lord loves these very remarkable people, I know he does. Elder Swapp and Elder Mehr spoke at the meeting but only after a 16 year old gave a talk, quoting memorized scripture as if he were a returned missionary. Sister Mehr and I each bore our testimonies. The people in the small towns have very little but they do have families and for the most part they are a very happy people. It was a memory not soon to be forgotten.
Gonzalo Branch!



Thursday, February 3, 2011

January 18th

I need to tell you a little bit about the office. I believe I had said that the original assistant to the presidency was in the hospital with complications in her pregnancy. The young man who took her place started the same day we did. She was not their to train Alex so he pretty much had to teach himself and we would help all we could with our vast experience in office work. Anyway we moved to a new office on top of it all and we have all learned together. The young man is Alexis and about 10 days after we started together, a group of men from his stake came and preformed a wonderful FHE Christmas Program for us. His brother also has a great voice. They both speak very good English. Alex has set a personal goal that I am going to learn Spanish. I actually have homework that he gave me for tonight so I better get busy.

I also believe I have stated that there is an MTC, called the CCM, on the fourth floor. We became particularly close to four of the missionaries. They are Elder Wright going to Santiago, from LaGrand OR., Elder Turner going to the Santo Domingo East, from SLC (Sugarhouse), Elder Sawyer going to the West Mission, from Sacramento/Yuba City, and Elder Richins going to Santiago, from Shelly ID. We loved those young men, we will miss them now they are headed for the field.