We're Getting Warmer!

 

We are seeing more rain these days.  We are not into the rainy season yet so we´ve been a bit surprised.  They say it rains every day during the months of December, January & February.  Right now we´re seeing rain about two times a week.  It has also warmed up a bit here.  That does not mean higher temps during the day.  That means it doesn´t get nearly as cold at night.  Rather than 30 to 32 degrees low at night, it is now more like 36 to 40 degrees low at night.  It´s enough that we have noticed a difference in our apartment in the mornings, but it is still chilly.  Here´s a view close to our house right after a rainstorm.

Notice the side of the building is just red brick.  They only finish off the front of the buildings and make them look nice.  The sides and back are always unfinished like that.

This week I continued to try to fully recover from being sick.  I worked the first half of the week, but had a relapse on Thursday where I had to stay in bed the whole day.  Thursday is one of our busiest days, but Dave had to handle it all himself.  I am now fully recovered but it really took me until the 15th to feel completely normal.

Here are a few photos of some of the food we have enjoyed here.

 This is a photo of the granadia fruit that we mentioned previously.  The black seeds are crunchy and sweet at the same time. They are inside a clear sack membrane that makes it look a bit like snot but it tastes good.

We found a bakery that makes these huge croissants.  Cost?  One sol which is about 37 cents.

This same bakery makes these called Donas, which translates to Donuts.  No hole in the middle, but it is fried dough.  They put this filling called manjar in the middle.  It is like frosting and has a caramel flavor, sort of.

Our lunch one day.  You can see the bacon Dave scored sitting on top of the chicken and the size of the avocado is pretty big as well.  You can eat avocado every day here if you want.  It´s awesome.

Speaking of money, here is a shot of some of the most common coinage.

The two sol piece is just like the 5 except smaller.  One sol equals  US 37 cents.  50 centavo is half of that.  20 centavo is about 7 cents.  Five soles would be about $1.83 US dollars.

We continue to visit as many of the wards as we can here in Cusco so they can get to know us and build up awareness of the Self-Reliance center.  We still have not made it to all of them.  But we are seeing parts of the city we haven´t visited before.  The ward building we go to for the Career Workshop presentation to the Pichu ward members is in the Santiago neighborhood and it appears to be a bit poorer section of town.  Here are some views we see as we travel to this chapel.

Not sure if you can make out the person that is washing up there under those coverings.  They are right on the very edge of the hill.

How would you like to have to climb up those stairs every time you came and went from your house?

Our second class of the workshop had significantly fewer number of people in attendance.  We had fourteen and probably 4 were new.  It had been switched to Sunday rather than Saturday due to a stake activity I´m going to talk about later. It didn´t help that a big downpour started about a half hour before the workshop was to start.  I think it hurt our attendance.

We continue with our English classes as well.  Our 7 pm Tues-Thursday class has grown so large that we have to split the group up and both of us teach that hour.  Dave had to teach 14 by himself Thursday night.  It doesn´t work real well with that large of a group.  Dave took some photos of me teaching that class on Tuesday.  You can see how big it is getting.

 

The center is also getting busier.  Our visits to the different wards must be paying off.  Dave took a photo on one of our busy days.  The six laptops they brought for our office are starting to be a necessity and that is a good thing.

Saturday since I was feeling better, we took off on some sightseeing in the city.  We went to the Plaza San Blas and spent most of the morning there.  We bought an entrance ticket for a number of religious sites in the city.  It is valid for 10 days.  We figured we could go on our lunch breaks to a number of the places since they are walking distance from our center.  They didn´t allow you to take any photos inside the church.  But we´ve got some photos of the parts we could take.

This is the outside of the church.  It is not very impressive.  It is not that big of a church but it has the most impressive pulpit in all of South America they say.  It is made of wood and the amount of carving that went into it is amazing.  The best I can do is post a photo of a postcard to give you some idea of what it looks like.





You can see only two of the levels, there is one below the circular part of the pulpit.  It is suppose to represent, hell, earth and heaven.  The funny part is we were told the figures at the bottom represent Calvin, Luther, etc.  those that left the Catholic church and the Catholics believe they are now in hell whereas we see them as forerunners to the restoration of the gospel .  Then at the top is St. Peter up in heaven.  The whole thing is just covered with carvings.

The backdrop to the altar is very impressive as well, all covered in gold leaf.  We were not able to take any photos of that.   We were, however, able to take some photos up on the second floor.

Here is an example of one of the bishop robes that they would wear to perform mass.

There are two bell towers and this is one of the bells.
We took some photos from the tower.  This is looking down on the plaza.

And these are looking off over the city.  You can see the many church spires at the Plaza de Armas.

I took this photo trying to show the two hills that have designs mowed into the side.  We live just below these hills.  The tall white building on the right side is like two buildings down from our place, but it is alot taller than our building so it stands out. 

We also had someone "volunteer" to show us an art gallery of a very famous artist from Cusco, Antonio Olave Palomino.  Volunteer meant we owed him a tip for his guided tour of the gallery.  It cost us 10 soles.  Antonio Palomino's work was pretty impressive but very expensive.  We couldn´t take photos inside the gallery but the patio was very beautiful and they allowed us to take photos there.  Again the woodwork was incredible. 

 

The wood balcony went all around the patio area.  It was gorgeous.

 Kelan, make sure you enlarge these photos so you can get a good view of the wood carvings.  I think you would be impressed.

 

Saturday evening we attended the Inti Raymi dance festival.  We didn´t dance in this one like we did in July with the Cusco stake.  It was fun to just watch.  We were surprised that there was only one dance that was the same as was done at the Cusco stake dance festival.  There must be a lot of folk dances here in Peru.  We took tons of photos.  Here are a few, well, relatively speaking.

 

One of our English students was part of this group.  He was the best dancer of the bunch and he is so timid in our English class.  He is on the right closest to the foreground (above).

                      This was a really fun dance and the men danced with so much energy.

 



These gals are from barrio Picchu where we are giving our workshop.

 

 

 

                   They have such pretty dance costumes.




We got a good shot of the stake president looking back before he headed out onto the dance floor.  Pres. William Carrasco of the Inti Raymi stake.  He is a medical doctor.








Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Out of necessity, most of us are involved in earning money and acquiring some of the world's goods to be able to sustain our families.  It requires a good part of our time and attention.  There is no end to what the world has to offer, so it is critical that we learn to recognize when we have enough.  If we are not careful, we will begin to chase after the temporal more than the spiritual.... I bear testimony that our priorities, tendencies, inclinations, desires, appetites, and passions will have a direct bearing on our next estate.  Let us always remember the words of the Savior:  "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  Elder Michael John U The, April 2014 General Conference  "Where Your Treasure Is"

Three Month Mark

Three months we've been serving as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or should I say la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias.

We had a much better week.  It took me until Thursday to be back to mostly full steam and able to handle a full day's worth of work.  Tuesday Dave had to go it alone.  I was in bed the whole day.  I think my sickness helped Dave to become more fluent in Spanish and more confident in his abilities.  He didn't have me to rely on so he was forced to do it himself.  It was good for him.  I've noticed that he is doing a much better job with his Spanish now. 

We made up for a slower start to the week by working extra hard over the weekend.  On Friday we learned that all the branch presidents in the mission and the district presidencies were in Cusco for training meetings on Saturday.  We finagled our way onto the program so we could hopefully get the priesthood leaders to help us get good current contact information for our PEF recipients from their units.  So we quickly had to come up with a 10 minute talk.  So we decided to review what President Hinckley´s vision for the PEF program was when he introduced it and talk to them about how that isn´t always how it turns out.  We asked them to please emphasize to their members that PEF is a loan and they need to have integrity to pay it back.  Of course, I was the one to deliver that message.  I was willing to do it so we could get all this contact information at one time rather than having to make multiple phone calls.  This was Saturday afternoon.

Dave took this photo from the back before our presentation.

Then Saturday night we held our first Career Workshop with the Picchu ward.  We prepared for 31 as that is how many had signed up but never believed we would get even close to that number at the class.  Boy were we surprised!  We had 24 come.  That is about 2/3rds.  We took two hours to go over the first class.  Most are wanting help either starting or improving their own businesses.  The Career Workshop is more for job seekers and the lessons are geared towards helping them with interview skills, networking, writing a good resume, etc.   The church doesn't have material out in Spanish for self-employment until the end of September, so I hope the members aren't too disappointed.  We will encourage them to continue with the new workshop once they complete this one.  Dave was back up support but I really had to handle the whole two hours.  It went pretty well.  I will be really glad when Dave can present parts of each workshop.

The full-time missionaries helped us out as well and we are grateful for that as a number of them are native speakers.  One of them took photos and shared them with me.

Here is Dave welcoming the members to the class.  As you can see we only have one row of participants at this point.  As the priesthood holder I always try to get Dave to at least welcome the class and call on someone for prayer.

Here is what the workshop ended up looking like once everyone got there.

He got a good shot of us in action.  I'm walking them through how to do one of the activities in the workbook.


Sunday we attended our home ward for the first time in a long time so could be sure to pay our tithing and fast offerings.  We decided to take some photos of the mural that we walk by everytime we go to that meeting house.  It is a pretty cool mural depicting different areas and locations that are of interest to tourist.

 This one above shows the jungle area of Peru.

 In this one you can see Sacsayhuaman or sexy woman whichever way you want to say it.

 Of course the famous Macchu Picchu.

Close up of the Sacsayhuaman with Cusco in the background.

 Close up showing a condor flying over the inca ruins.

 Dave having a stare down with one of the natives.

 This Peruvian lady and I are good buds.

 Here depicts Tipon, a city where the Incas built very complex water systems.  We've been told it is a must see.  As well as this one below that depicts Moray, another archeological site that is a popular tourist site close to Cusco.

 

This one is at the corner where the mural curves around.  It shows the golden disc that you can see everywhere and then has a saying that is also popular, "Cusco ombligo del mundo".  It cracks me up because ombligo means navel or belly button.  A literal translation would be Cusco, belly button of the world.  But apparently they use the expression ombligo del mundo to communicate the idea that the world revolves around that object.  I think the idea is to say Cusco is the center of the world after all, Cusco was the center of the Inca empire.

After attending fast and testimony meeting and breaking our fast, we headed out to Sicuani, a small town about a 2.5 hour drive from Cusco for a PEF fireside.  We have a new PEF specialist for that stake.  The one we trained back in July didn´t work out. But this one is really dedicated and got this organized right off the bat.  We were supposed to be there at 5 pm but didn't get there until 5:45.  We kept having to pull over on the drive out to take phone calls from the church leaders in Puerto Maldonado (the big city out in the jungle).  Our PEF specialist there, who is 34 years old,  had what appeared to be an anuersym burst earlier that day and they were seeking advice on what to do for him.  Carlos Hale & Javier kept asking Dave for advice.  Dave's medical training and background came in handy as he was able to tell them to have the brother do a few activities to test the damage.  He apparently had facial paralysis on the left side of his face but equal strength in each of his hand grips, which Dave said was a good indication that the damage was not as severe.  But the hospital out in Puerto Maldonado is not well equipped and had only recommended that he seek some physical therapy for his paralysis.  They were able to convince him to fly in to Cusco on Monday and see a neurologist and get a tomography of the brain done.

We met him today just before he was flying home.  It turns out that he has an inflammed nerve that is pinched, thus causing the paralysis.  Dave was stumped because one of the questions he had them ask was if he had a fever because that indicates inflammation.  But their response to that had been no.  But we were relieved to hear that it wasn´t anything more serious.

Back to our Sicuani activities.  So we started the Sicuani fireside about 5:45 pm and didn't finish until 8 pm.  Long fireside huh?  But we had good attendance and they had a lot of questions we were able to answer.  I played the piano for the hymns and I was excited to play on a real piano.  Most of the chapels have electric pianos.  This was a Yamaha and it was actually in tune and had a very nice touch.  It seemed fairly new.  It is the best piano I have played on here in Peru.  Funny, that a small town in Peru would have the best piano I've seen.

I also gave a talk, which I had to change when we were about a half hour away from Sicuani since that is when I found out what they really wanted me to talk about which was not the same thing I had presented at our last fireside in Puno back in July.  Good thing I've given a few other talks since then.  I was able to quickly adapt my talk to the branch presidents for this fireside.  I introduced ourselves, told them how we can help them, then reviewed what President Hinckley's vision was for the PEF when he first announced about it 13 years ago.  I spent quite a bit of my time emphasizing to them that this is a loan and the need for them to be true to the commitment to pay it back.

Dave gave the same talk he prepared for our Puno fireside, but this time did a much better job.  He didn't make very many pronunciation errors and he was able to pause and give better inflection to his sentences so his delivery was so much better.

The stake president talked after Carlos Hale gave his presentation and we were quite impressed with him and his advice to the members to quit buying items that drain them financially or going into debt too soon and focus on buying items that generate income and hold off making big purchase items (like a house) until they are better off financially.

We had good attendance and they all stayed the whole time.  Here is some photos Dave took somehow.

We had to stay the night in Sicuani.   I was a bit nervous as to what type of accomodations we would have due to the small size of the town.  We pulled up and it wasn't much to look at, but to our amazement, it was a VERY nice place.  We took quite a few photos so brace yourself.


 The photo above shows the view we had as we walked out of our room.

 This is the inner patio/courtyard area.  Very pretty, huh?

 A sitting area.

They had a lot of wrought iron and plants around which gave it a very pretty atmosphere.  The paintings they had were of dancers in native costume.  Here are some samples.

This last one shows a dance where the men wear masks.  The one with the long nose is a caricature of a Spaniard.  They were seen as having big noses compared to the Indian population apparently.

The owner is an antique afficionado and had many of his antiques on display. Here are some samples.

 For Alyssa & Kelan, here are some reminders of your England/London days.

 This was my favorite.  A really old sewing machine where you turn the handle on top to make the needle go up and down.  Anyone have any idea what era that comes from?

These were on display in the reception area.  Pretty cool typewriter, don't you think?

Then for the older generation, does this bring back memories?

We also were in for another surprise when we briefly turned on the TV and channel surfed and found ourselves watching BYU television....in Peru!!  Crazy.  I never expected to see that.  Here's the proof.

We had to get up bright and early to head back to Cusco as Monday was the returning missionary seminar that starts at 9 am.  On the way back we drove past a pretty bad accident.  Why we don´t see more of them with the way people drive here is beyond me.  A small pick up truck had flipped over.  It was full of boxes and things in the back that were scattered and all the cab´s windows were shattered out.  We didn´t see any people in the truck so they must have taken care of that before we got there. 

We got back just in time for Carlos Hale to start the seminar.  We headed home to shower and change.  Our part of the seminar didn´t start until 11 am.  We teach the Career Workshop during a two hour time frame so it really is just an introduction and hit the highlights enough to hopefully get them to check out the full class at their local center. 

This group of returning missionaries was mostly sisters.  We had 8 missionaries in all, 6 of whom were sisters and only one of the missionaries was from the states.  The rest were all latinamerican.  We actually knew two of the missionaries.  The one from the states had served in the Cusco zone as his last area and the other sister that we knew was the sister I had gone out with during the missionary invasion that took place during our first week or two here in Cusco.   I had been pretty impressed with Hermana Gomez.  She had been very confident, and easily taught the members we had visited.  She used the power of testimony well. 

I was much more comfortable teaching a group made up of mostly sisters.  I was smart enough to have them introduce themselves a bit and I was able to find out that most of them were well into their studies and some even had jobs already liined up for them upon their return.  This helped me adapt the presentation to what they needed.  I also am now much more confident with my Spanish speaking ability.  At the lunch break I asked the sisters how I could improve my Spanish and they thought I was kidding.  They said I do great right now.  I had really hoped for some suggestions for improvement.  Dave was my technical support for the videos we showed.  He has six weeks before the next round and I hope he will be able to teach part of that.  I think he should be ready.

Here is the photo of this group of returning missionaries.

L-R  Sister Parraga, Hermana Rhoades, Elder Rhoades, Elder Ortiz, Elder Jones, Presidente Harbertson.  Middle row L-R  Hermana Del Rio, Hermana Huaman, Hermana Enriquez,  Front row L-R Hermana Oliveras, Hermana Gomez.

This weekend we had the opportunity to get to know the other senior couple that is serving in the Cusco mission, the Sandbergs.  They are serving in the area of member support services and were asked by the mission president to serve out in Abancay.  He is serving as a branch president and his wife works a lot with the sister missionaries and the members.  They had come in for the branch president seminar.  We went out to eat Friday night with them when they first arrived.  They were interested in eating American food so we took them to Chili's.

This is their second mission together, the third for him.  He served originally as a youth in Central America.  Their first mission was in the mountains of Guatemala, pretty rough conditions, but it didn't deter them from serving again and this time they find themselves in Peru.

We also got together with them and Elder & Sister Hasler on Monday night for another dinner, this time at an Italian restaurant near the Plaza de Armas (tourist central) so it was a bit pricey, relatively speaking.  My lasagna was still under $15 but I guess we've become accustomed to the more typical prices of around $5 a plate.

Before hooking up with them Monday evening, I finished up working with a gal from Sweden who is a member of the church and had come over to do some humanitarian projects.  She needed some help translating so I helped her on two different occasions.  She was gathering stories from a small village and plans on publishing a book.  From the sales of the book, she is hoping to make enough money to purchase a vehicle for the village to use to help them transport their products to the market for sale.  Look what she gave me as a thank you present!

A huge bar of Swedish chocolate.  She says Daim is a real popular brand of chocolate over there.  It is much better than any chocolate I can find here in Peru.  It tastes a lot like a Hershey symphony bar.  And since I've lost 15 pounds since being here in Peru, I don't feel a bit guilty if I eat the whole thing myself!

Here is a photo of her with the Haslers in the Plaza de Armas on Monday night as we went our separate ways.  She was leaving to return to Sweden the next day.  Her name is Jenny Geuken and she is now part of our mission experience.

We took quite a bit more photos this week round about Cusco and our daily lives, but since this is now quite long already, I think those will be part of next week's post.  I don't think we will have quite as active of a weekend or week for that matter.

Spiritual Thought:  Not every prayer is answered so quickly.  But truly our Father knows us and hears the pleadings of our hearts.  He accomplishes His miracles one prayer at a time, one person at a time.  We can trust that He will help us, not necessarily in the way we want but in the way that will best help us to grow.  Submitting our will to His may be difficult, but it is essential to becoming like Him and finding the peace He offers us.  C.S. Lewis said, "I pray because I can't help myself.  I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping.  It doesn't change God.  It changes me."  General  Conference talk, "Fear Not; I Am With Thee"  April 2014  Jean A Stevens

Enough Already!!

For all of you who think we are having too much fun on our mission, this past week was for you.  We spent the whole week sick between Dave and I which I can guarantee you was NOT very fun.  Therefore, there is not much to report this week, as we really did minimal work.  We just managed to keep the ball in the air but didn't make much progress with it.

Dave was sick from Sunday through Thursday with a major cold.  He felt bad enough that he spent the whole day in bed on Wednesday.  The stomach bug stayed with me until Wednesday and caused me to drop a bit more weight.  Then Dave was kind enough to share his cold with me and Thursday night  I started to feel a sore throat come on and by Friday I had congestion, a lack of energy and felt achy all over.  On top of that I had two large cold sores break out, one in the center of my upper lip and the other in the right corner on the bottom.  Sorry, no photo will be included of that.  I spent another Saturday laid up in bed.  Dave was a busy beaver and did a lot of household errands and chores.  I think he was so glad to be feeling back to normal he was anxious to be busy again.

He made a shopping trip alone to Plaza Vea, a major supermarket here and came back with many American food items, among them

1- a large box of Kellog's Corn Flakes
2- Hunts ketchup
3- Kraft mayonnaise
4- Pringles

And the biggest prize of all - bacon!!!  He probably paid a minor fortune for all that.

Our week of review with our Cusco stake English classes went well.  It was good for them to see how much they have progressed in just one month and how much they can say.  The English classes in the Inti Raymi stake are in the second week and are slow to pick up momentum.  The 7 pm class is doing well, the 8 pm class is just about dead.  The Wednesday night class, I had to teach on my own due to Dave being sick and the Friday night class Dave taught on his own because by then I was feeling pretty crappy.

Our center is getting more volunteers but they come with problems.  One of our volunteers quit coming because she was intimidated by the computers.  She doesn't have much experience with them.  If we hadn't been so sick, we would have gone to visit her to assure her we are there to help her and help her see what a good skill it will be for her to learn.  Another volunteer was supposed to start this week, but never showed up.  Again, if we hadn't been so sick, we would have given him a call to help push him into action.  The one dependable and gun-ho volunteer we had, has had to stop coming.  We hope to work things out with her, if possible, but not sure where that will go.

We are starting to get some success with  our phone calling.  We were able to complete a few (6) graduation surveys.  I know it doesn't seem like much but to just get any done still takes a lot of work as it often requires multiple calls (we have alternative contact persons we try to call and if that doesn't work, we look up their bishop or stake president and call them to ask for the recipient's phone number and then we can finally call and speak to the person we originally wanted to call) just to locate our PEF recipient.  One of our volunteers is very willing to do the calls, but is computer challenged as well, so I helped her enter the data and she did the calling.  Hopefully, the ice is broken and we will be able to pick up speed on this.

Since we are the model Self-Reliance center for the mission we are responsible to call PEF recipients from all over the mission.  Here is a map that shows the mission boundaries.  I thought I had posted it before, but it looks like I may have missed doing it.

Not the best photo, but you can see it covers quite a bit of area and very diverse as well.  The darker green section is jungle, the lighter green section is mountains and the browner area is the altiplano, then you can see the blue on the far right which is Lake Titicaca.

This weekend was Cusco's stake conference with another area seventy visiting.  Dave had to attend the Saturday night session by himself as I needed to work on getting better for a presentation we were scheduled to do on Sunday, something I just wasn't going to be able to hand over to Dave to fill in.  The visiting area seventy, Winsor Baldarrama, from Cochabamba, Bolivia apparently was fairly young (we looked him up and he is only 37 years old) and as part of his talk he asked all the full-time missionaries to stand up and started to count them.  He got to 19 and was confused as to why it was an odd number.  Dave went like this

and he figured things out.  Dave said he had so many members come up to him afterwards and give him medical advice to help me get better.

One of the wards here in Cusco invited us to present a self-reliance lesson to their ward members this Sunday.  Even though I don't have a lot of experience with preparing Power Point presentations, I am proud to say I put together a very basic, but thorough self-reliance presentation.  We needed this to help us remember what to say and how to say it in Spanish.  Here are a few samples of our slides.
This was our introductory slide.

Then this is the slide teaching the four basic spiritual principles of self-reliance.

In case you can´t read Spanish or deduce what we are talking about the basic principles are 1-Faith,
 2-Obedience, 3'Individual Responsibility and 4-Unity & Service.

We found some very good quotes to use in our presentation but they were only in English.  I had to work at translating them and some of them weren´t easy.  One claimed to have it translated in Spanish on their website which got me excited, but when I looked closely at what the translation was saying it wasn´t anywhere close to a accurate, so I had to tweak it quite a bit.

Dave gave his short talk about self-reliance and the pre-existence again and this time was much iimproved in his pronunciation and wasn´t nearly as scared.  We used our story from 2 Kings about the widow, her debt, the cruse of oil and the instructions from the prophet Elisha as an example of the four self-reliance principles in action and they seemed to catch the vision.

The ward members were very grateful for our presentation and at the end were invited to attend the Career Workshop that will be given at their building the following four Saturdays.  The priesthood leaders did a good job selling this opportunity talking about how this type of instruction would cost hundreds of dollars through any other organization but this is free because it is through the church.  They also told them to take their commitment seriously and plan on attending all four sessions if they signed up.  After the closing prayer, there was a long line to sign up and at the end we left with 31 members signed up for the workshop! 

It made me think of the early missionaries who went out to preach the gospel and found whole congregations ready and prepared to accept the message of the restored gospel.  It seems this ward is like the field that is white and ready for harvest.

Then an even bigger miracle occurred later that day.  Our native instructor, who has been on no show, no contact, disappear off the face of the earth status, called us! He apologized and claimed he had an emergency that caused him to leave town and he didn´t have the opportunity to call us to let us know.  He also claimed that where he was at did not have any access to internet or cell phone and he just got back and heard my messages and got my email.  Whether it is true or just an excuse, we don´t know but we were able to tell him about this ward and asked if he was available to teach.  He said he would come in and coordinate but believes he can help.  I sure hope so.  We´ll keep our fingers crossed and prayers and faith working.

Sunday evening we had invited Javier Caseros, a service missionary at the Self-Reliance, and his family (wife and 3 year old daughter) to dinner.  Dave also invited a young returned missionary to dinner as well.  Since I´ve been under the weather, Dave was the cook and chose to prepare pancakes, hash browns, fried eggs and the precious bacon.  It was a hit with everyone except the 3 year old.  I should have taken a photo of the feast but forgot.

After dinner we taught them how to play Yahtzee.  They enjoyed it very much, especially the young man.  Just for the record, I had 3 Yahtzees in one game.  That never happens to me and I had 4 witnesses of this accomplishment.  So of course,  I won the game.  No one came even close to my score of 486.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  The Lord has placed currents of divine influence in your life that will lead you along the individual path He would have you fulfill here on earth.  Seek through the Spirit to identify it and carefully follow that direction that the Lord has put in your life.  Align yourself with it.  Choose willingly, to exercise your agency to follow it.  - Richard G Scott  August 2014 Ensign  "Act Upon This Land as for Years".