Here We Go Again

Video Example

2012-01-22T14:40:00.000-08:00

Well yesterday and today have been interesting. We are going to do the family home evening lesson on Monday night for the Senior Couples and we decide to teach them how to do some things with their pictures both on and off the internet. We also want to show them some of the resources the Church has available and also some ways to use your mission experiences as a missionary tool on the internet.

We decided to make our bbq sauce base and video it and then make a video combination video and add it to our blog. So we made the sauce and videoed it and tried to upload it to YouTube. Wouldn't you no we had major difficulties. Because I have a 4 hour meeting on Monday and can't spend all day on it, I wanted to get it done on Saturday but Youtube did not cooperate. It said that my video had already been uploaded (somewhere). However, I don't remember uploading it and it did not land in my uploaded videos and I don't have time to re edit another movie, so I am putting up Dad's whole wheat sour dough pancake recipe and giving them a basic tour or the internet stuff and a quick, how to on picasa. If anyone, wants of needs more, I will do a class. So this post is just a way to get the video of dad's pancake recipe up on this blog. It should be below.

Know that we are healthy and happy. The work here seems to be never ending but I have decided that I can only do what I can do and that I am going to start looking for more resources in each mission. Dad is doing really well with Portuguese and when I have to talk to a mission president he is right at my side coaching me with the vocabulary that I don't know. His pronunciation is a lot better than mine and he has a handle on the grammar just like he does in Spanish. (I should have had another year of spanish under my belt and maybe it would be so confusing). Buy for now. We will try to get the bbq lesson up later.

2012-01-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

Well today is Jan 2, 2012. I can tell you it has been an exciting and exhausting week. We had couple of firsts yesterday. Darwin drove us (yes in São Paulo Brazil) to church. The senior couples have several cars checked out to them so we can get to the MTC (across the city) without taking a taxi (costs about $60.00 round trip) or the bus (which means 4 transfers). We have been riding with one of the other couples but everyone here has to learn how to drive in the city so yesterday was Darwin's first day behind the wheel. We made it, no accidents. Sunday is a slow traffic day but we have to go to the MTC one day for me to observe the teaching of the stress management material to the new missionaries. I can't wait to drive through this city on a regular traffic day.

It is interesting here. They have cameras at various places along the way and they take pictures of you and figure your speed. If you are speeding they send you a ticket through the mail but usually it takes 4 months to get to you.

The second first was that Darwin was called to be a counselor in the Branch Presidency of the 4th branch. The 4th Branch is an English speaking Branch with all American Elders and Sisters. He also played the piano for Sacrament meeting (that was a first here because he has been having trouble seeing the notes with the macular tear he has in one eye).

I thought you might like to see some pictures of where we are. I hope you read the rests of the posts, no pictures but alot going on here.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T12:48:00.001-08:00

For those of you who follow our blog especially those of you who are not members of our church, I hope this post will help you understand some things about us and our dedication to people of the world who come from cultures different than our own. Let me say that we love diversity and have many friends from many different cultures both in the church and out of the church. Today as part of our Celebration of Christmas we went to Church at the Missionary Training Center here in São Paulo. There are 197 missionaries here all learning the basics of missionary services and some learning Portuguese for the first time.

They come from Brazil already speaking Portuguese and will serve in various parts of Brazil away from there home area. Many are in a big city for the first time (like an Idaho or Montana farm kid coming to São Paulo, it is different and scary even thought they know the language). We also have both Elders and Sister from several Spanish speaking countries in South America, including Chile, Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay who speak Spanish and are learning Portuguese in order to serve throughout Brazil. There is also a contingent from the United States many of whom have come straight from home to São Paulo to begin their missions and learn the Language that they will be speaking for the next 2 years. We also have a contingent from Africa who will be working in Mozambique (also in Africa) and speaking Portuguese but who now speak a combination of Portuguese and Creol, and we just sent out a group who came from various parts of Germany speaking German and learning Portuguese and who are now spread out in various of the 27 missions here in Brazil. Brazil has both a large German population and a large Japanese population.

This diverse group is attended to by equally diverse group of instructors and leaders. The MTC (Missionary Training Center) president is an American who has lived and served in Brazil more than once, his wife is an immigrant to Brazil as a young child from Czechoslovakia and speaks Portugese, Czech, and English natively as well as some German (She was a great help with the German speakers, especially one who was experiencing some significant adjustment issues). One of President Clark's counselors (assistants) is Japanese and speaks Portuguese, Japanese, and Engish, has a beautiful Tenor voice and sang "Requiem" in Latin for the Staff and Leader Christmas Party. The other Counselor is Brazilian. The instructors here are all Brazilian but many speak more than one language and have had experience in different cultures.

The missionaries are divided into Church Units called branches and the branch leadership for each of the branches comes from here in São Paulo, native Brazilians or from the Senior Couples who are serving here in other capacities. As we have compared our experiences and that of our children we can see the real diversity that becomes a part of you as you grow and serve in the Church. We have people who have served in or were raised in Japan, Hong Kong , many of the countries of Europe and Eastern Europe, all over South America, and Africa. At the moment we don't have anybody here that has served in India (although Darwin and I have a friend who served his mission in India and married a girl from India).

It is fun to compare stories about driving in various places in the world. How you navigate in Africa is entirely different than how you navigate in Russia.

The following poem was shared today in Sacrament meeting. It was written for an Elder who served in Russia from the ward (home church congregation) of the sister who gave the talk.

I know this post is long, but I hope you can feel this as much as we did today as we Sat with 19 to 23 year old young men and women (the simple things of the earth) who are about to go out into Brazil and Mozambique to serve people as representatives of Jesus Christ.

Who are you boy?
You are a boy who journeyed to this land of ours.
This land where I've endured my days and felt oppression kill my soul
And fit me into some tight mold.
And teach me that I should not hope
Unless I care to smell the smoke of the dreams that the Red Army tamed.

Who are you Boy?
From a land of plenty, teaching of God,if there is any,
You have all, we have none.
Do you know what that feels like,son?
And yet, you ask me to believe in something that I cannot see.
Some force you say will bring me joy.
Do you know what that feels like boy?

Where you're from, faith is free,
But it has a price for me.
When I have pain, I have my bottle.
Hurt kills quickly, when you drown it in vodka.
That's enough to warm my soul.

I work, I sleep, the days go by.
I'm waiting for the day I die.
You don't understand this place.
You talk and give.
Here in Russia, we just live.

Who are you boy?
Why do you come?
To save a soul who once was numb?
To teach a wretched hateful man who cursed your help,
Refused you hand.
I thought that we were worlds apart.

So how is it that you knew my heart?
A fraction of my age, you calmed my rage;
Mercy paid my generous wage.
I should have been left behind.
It is hard to love my kind.

Hope in your heart,
Power in your hands.
Why did you come to this distant land?
I know now, it was for me.
The Red Curtain fell, but I was still not free.
Until a boy from nations away, brought me my Lord.
I bless the day!

He led me to weep at my Master's feet,
The American boy I met on the street-
New and naive, still in his teens,
With a message to bring the world to its knees.
I thought that truth would come from another-
I did not know, this boy was my "brother".

First Post from São Paulo

2011-12-10T02:53:00.000-08:00

Well here we are again on foreign soil and getting settled in for another 18 months as mental health advisers to the area presidency and 27 mission presidents and one MTC president. Since we were on visa hold for so long we actually started working while we were still in the US. I was consulting with presidents and talking to missionaries starting in early Sept.

We touched down here on Nov 29th and immediately began to understand that there is a big difference between Portuguese and Spanish. (Native speakers here can understand Spanish pretty well but it is difficult for Spanish speakers, native or otherwise to understand spoken Portuguese. The pronunciation is significantly different (More like French -- our son-in-law Anthony will be happy to hear that). We are making progress -- Darwin especially, since his Spanish is so good. We had our first really successful experience with a neighbor last night. She came to our door to talk to us about some plans for Christmas in the Apartment complex and with lots of patience on her part and good cheer we were finally able to understand what was going on. It was really pretty cool. She invited us down to get better acquainted later.

Will post more later. I need to see if this works. Bye for now. Vicki

Directing the Lord's Work

2011-01-24T13:40:00.000-08:00

I found this from Elder Bednar today. I think it has been up for a while but I hadn't seen it before. I thought it was really good and thought you all might enjoy it.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-15T19:54:00.001-08:00

Since we are home and will be for a while, I have changed the design of our blog. This post is to let you know that we are still around and wish you a Merry Christmas. Below is a link to a great resource for families wishing to simplify their Christmas in focus on the birth of our Savior.

Update

2010-10-12T13:36:00.000-07:00

It is now October and we have been back in the US since May. I can't believe that I have not updated things on this blog. I have been incredably busy learning to design in the new dreamweaver CS4 package and getting a new website prepared. Unfortunately, I broke my leg along the way and all things became a little more difficult. I really am working hard to get up a new website called DarVicDoings but it is still in the redesign phase so it may be until Christmas before you actually see it. In the mean time I have a new Video below with some of the Bogota pictures added at the end. I updated our original from the last post, so the front part looks the same but it is shorter and with more pictures. Hope you enjoy and I will try to keep you posted on our new website. In the new website I hope to point out good free or inexpensive spanish language learning resources, share some of our pictures, teach engish phonetics, keep you posted on Darwins experiments with sourdough and yogart making and whatever other "doings" happen our way. Vicki

2010-05-10T21:14:00.001-07:00

Here we are in Guatemala studying Spanish and enjoying the rest and relaxation. My Spanish is improving but it still has a long way to go. Below is a video presentation that we did for the Senior Missionaries in Bogota just before we left. I will be putting together another presentation on just Bogota because it is not included in this presentation, but this may give you some idea about what we did and where we got to go. It is just under 9 min long. I hope you enjoy it. The bigger you can get it the better because the many of the pictures are collages.

2010-03-12T11:35:00.000-08:00

Sorry we have been so long. It has been more than a bit hectic. I think missions get more involved the longer you are out. You understand your job better and have more ability to handle more. In addition, you are more capable of moving around in your area or areas and so there are just more things to do. In my case, I have more mission presidents who know me well now and that means that they trust me and refer more missionaries to me. That is both good, (If I get to see them and can help them in the field we don't have as many that get so bad that we have to send them home) and bad (it means my work load is a lot larger than it used to be)

Below is a slide show of the one of major attractions in Cartagena. (Cartagena is a tourist city on the Caribian in the northern part of Colombia) We were with the Abetas. They are the new area auditor couple taking over Darwins position. They came up to meet with us and observe the Assistant Auditors teach one of the new financial lessons. We went to one city in each mission area. Cali in the Cali mission, Cartagena in the Barranquilla mission, Duitama and Paipa in the Bogota North Mission and Bogota Kennedy in the Bogota South mission.

2009-12-21T10:47:00.000-08:00

Below are a few photos that we took on a family home evening outing of the lights in one of the 4 lighted areas of the city. We have set it to music and send it out as a Christmas Greeting to all our friends and family. We hope you enjoy.

And Below this is the latest video for Christmas from the Church (There already are some up and I hope there will be more). Because I love Joseph so much and because I have drawn so much inspiration during hard times from the writings from Liberty Jail, I particularly like this one.

2009-12-03T18:34:00.000-08:00

WoW!! Here it is December and I haven't written a post since late October. I have been putting things up on YouTube and linking them to our webpage and to facebook but I need to be more diligent. Christmas is coming to Bogotá again and it is exciting. Bogotá is a city that likes to celebrate Christmas. In a Christian country that is not afraid to celebrate a Christian religious holiday we get to see and hear lots of what used to be traditional in the United States. There are nativity scenes, from life sized to miniture, everwhere. All the malls have major nativities and the parks are beginning to be a blaze with lights again. We are in a new location this year so we are seeing slightly different things. Last year we watched as a life sized nativity was sculpted out of sand with some kind of additive in the park close to our apartment. They completed it all but the Christ Child before Christmas eve and then late Christmas Eve the Christ Child was finished and the nativity was complete Christmas morning. We will be heading to that part again sometime this year.

Christmas music is everywhere. Hark the Herald Angles Sing, Away in the Manger, Silient Night as well as the other types of Christmas music, Jingle Bells, Deck the halls and Felize Navidad.

Before I get anymore carried away with Christmas (I will get some pictures as we visit different parts of the city), I need to update you on our trip to the Amazon.

Yes we made it and below are 3 short videos of our still photos of that trip. It was a wonderful 4 days in the Jungle.

This second on is our first day adventure in climbing (well we almost all made it)

The last if of misc. stuff like tranancilas (sp) and pink dolphins and just great fun.

We also visited an indiginous village but I don't have the pictures of that visit put together. It was interesting. I hope I will get some of what we saw up but who knows, life just keeps flying by.

We are busy and trying to get the new assistant auditors in place before we come home. (We are now officially short timers. We will be back in April and hope to get up, down, or over to see you all). I am still busy and now offically sad that I have to leave this beautiful, wonderful places that is Colombia. I love the people and the city and the language (even if my ability is elementry) and all that we have gotten to do here. We are anxious to see our family. I think some of my grandkids think I live in a computer. Skype is wonderful but it is not like holding them. Hope all is well with you and yours and we hope you have a wonderful Christmas.

Darwin and Vicki

Sourdourgh breadman pancakes

2009-10-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

I really am going to try to get some video up of our trip. I am waiting because someone has a video of Darwin dancing at the dinner at the peruvian horse hosienda. However, I am sure they have not had a chance to edit it or get it on a DVD because they had to get back here and get back to work. President Cavanaugh, the president of the MTC here, was the one doing the video and he had just gotten a new batch of about 75 missionaries in the Bogotá CCM (MTC-- missionary training center-- for our non lds church member followers. In spanish that is centro de capacitación de misionaros CCM)

Entonces::::: I have had a request to put up our whole wheat sourdough pancake recipe so it is below from our wholewheatbreadman youtube site. (So far it is the only video on the site, however, we do have some others to put up. I just haven't had time to edit them and get them up. Be sure to check out what we do have up from Peru in the last post.

Lima, Peru SouthAmerica Northwest Area Mission Presidents Seminar

2009-10-22T16:48:00.001-07:00

This has been an exhilarating few days. We were invited to attend the mission presidents seminar in Lima, Peru. All 23 mission presidents and wives that I work with in our area were present, along with Elder and Sister Christofferson, Bishop and Sister Edgley, Brother and Sister Clayton, and our area presidency President and Sister Nash, President and Sister Gaveret and President and Sister Pino. Our area has between 2500 and 3000 missionaries in 21 missions and 2 MTC's (CCM's) in 5 countries - Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.

It was wonderful to get to meet with the mission presidents that I work with so closely over the phone and renew the friendships that we have with those whose missions we have been to and who we know and have worked with in person. (All of them in Ecuador-3, all of them in Colombia - 5, 1 in Venezuela, 1 in Bolivia, and 1 in Peru.)

I was touched by the training and the support from all of the Authorities and wives who where there. The meetings were totally in Spanish but translation was provided. I found that I could understand most of the comments by people who have learned Spanish as a second language. Elder and Sister Christofferson and Brother and Sister Clayton are all masterful in Spanish. And their Spanish is easy to listen to and easy to follow.

Darwin and I were separated for a while after we got there on Sunday while I went to the Lima Central Mission for some meetings and he went with Br. Beals to watch one of the new assistant auditors do a training. We had a welcoming dinner that night which Darwin almost missed. They got back from the Auditing training just as we were starting dessert. However, they brought out his dinner while we were finishing so he got to eat (not that either of us would have missed it, the food was wonderful and there was plenty of it).

We had wonderful Cultural Presentations from the youth of the Lima Stakes on Monday night and a Presentation of Peruvian walking horses and dancers on Tuesday night, as well as dinner on the patio of the hacienda. Below is just a few still shots. I am trying to get the video up because I have great video but I am having trouble with the editing.

I am waiting for some additional pictures from other people because my card ran out of room as we sat down to dinner. During dinner the dancers (there is a picture of us with them in the slide show below) pulled Sister Pino and Darwin out of the audiance and they got to dance with them. Darwin did a great job and had several comments from others about his fleet footedness. (He is not too sure about that, but he was a great sport and got into the swing of things. So did Sister Pino) We will put up video and more pictures when we can. You can see it on Youtube below

2009-09-23T20:55:00.000-07:00

I thought you might like to see where we have been. This picture is hard to read but each black line represents a round trip to that place if the line is just out and back. If we covered several cities than the lines may be a multicity loop. In this map you can see the 3 countries of the old South America North Area. We are now combined with the west area and there are 5 countries in our area. The solid blue lines on the map seperate the countries and the different colors within the countries are the missions. Venezuela has 4 missions, we have done the least in Venezuela. Ecuador is the littlest country and has only 3 missions and we have completed all but 6 of the stakes in Ecuador. Our last trip to Ecuador is not on this picture. It was down in the southern part. We made that trip in early July and haven't traveled since. We have traveled the most in Colombia because we have traveled for more reasons than just the auditor responsibilities that Darwin has. We will be going to Litcia some time in October and we will be doing some other traveling to the North of Bogotá soon. Colombia is about 3 times the size of Montana.

Living, Learning and Hiking in Bogotá

2009-09-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

There is a 5.5 minute video below this text about our hike. We have not been traveling as much with Darwin working on new training formates and waiting for the new assistants to be called, so we have had more time to enjoy Bogotá itself. We live really close to the eastern mountains and discovered quite by accedent a little known trail to the top of the mountain right close to us. It is a very safe hike (difficult but safe). It is actually on an ecological preserve and they train some of the 'boy scout' millitary types (16-18 year olds who are completing their 2 year military obligation)in ecology and other matters on this preserve. The wife of the new mission president in the North is quite an adventurer and walks most mornings. She has discovered a fruit and vegitable market that occures each Wed morning from 6am to 12 noon. While talking with some of the other patrons someone told her about the preserve just up from this market. She and President Hacking decided to check it out one p-day and managed to get on the trail. They only had about an hour and didn't make it all the way up but they told us how to get into the preserve and where the trail head was, so Darwin and I decided to try it on Saturday. They told us that the gate opened at 6:30 am and closed at 10 am so we had to be back down by 10 am or we would get locked in. We left our house at 8 am (we are about 7 blocks from the trail head) and didn't get back down until 12 noon. We did find another way out and we made it to the top. It was a much more difficult hike than we had thought but there were people who were able to help us get on the right trails. There were several places where it was difficult to decide which way to go and the trail is really not a tourist thing, so it was not well marked. You kind of have to know it is there. It is really kind of amazing that we got to the top because we got lost a couple of times. Luckly we always seemed to find someone, either coming down or going up that could tell us which trail to take next. It is not like we were going to get totally lost, most of the trails eventually led back down but getting to the point where you could view the city was a bit tricky and very steep in places. Hope you enjoy the slide show.

Coming down was the hardest for me. My toes kept jamming into my shoes and my feet got so tired and sore that I was having trouble keeping my ankle stable. I was really quite pleased though because this was a much more difficult hike than the Montana Wilderness hike I took and my feet and ankles held up much better.

Update

2009-08-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

I am so sorry that I have not updated this blog. We have been busy but that is no excuse. I actually take pictures and upload them to my computer and make a few videos that I have been uploading on our YouTube site. However, I really need to add text and tell you about the wonderful opportunities that we have had. As of Aug first the two areas that were comprised of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador and Peru and Bolivia have combined into one area. So our area now consists of 5 countries instead of 3. The program that Darwin has been doing is changing. He was responsible for training 118 Stakes. We have finished about 74 and figured we could finish the rest in the remainder of our mission. However, it has been decided that it would be better to have one person like Darwin in each mission area. There are 21 missions in the combined area. They are calling 21 assistants and Darwin is currently involved in developing the trainings that these 21 assistants will use. He then will supervise 11 of them up here in the North 3 countries and another Area Auditor will supervise 10 down in Peru and Bolivia. It has been a lot of work. We will not be traveling as much out to little places in each country. Instead we will be responsible for traveling to the major central city for each of the 11 areas and helping the assistants learn how to do the trainings. Since two of the missions are centered in Bogota we will train them without leaving home but we will have to travel again at least 9 more times once each to Cali and Barranquilla in Colombia, Caracus, Barcelona, Valencia, and Maraquibo in Venezuela, and Quito and Guayaquil in Ecuador. The assistants will then be former Stake Presidents or Area Authority 70,s who live in the area and know the Stakes and will be able to be more close and personal. This is a program that was piloted in Mexico and that we saw when we were in Mexico City last year and we have recommended it for here but they decided to wait until the two areas were combined. Entonces -- So -- We have been quite busy with Darwins side of our mission. In the meantime it seems like I am seeing more Elders and Sister all the time. My spanish is better so I can help more than the English speaking missionaries. Lest you think that all missionaries aredepressed or anxiety ridden, that is not true. A very small percentage have problems of one kind or another, often pre existing conditions that get worse due to the stress of the mission. Pero-- but--as small percentage of 2500 to 2700 missionaries is still quite a few for me to work with. Most of the problems are short term and easy to work with and make a difference. Below are some of our adventures.

We have learned to shop in Bogota in a whole new way. Yes there are modern Grocery Stores but they are more expensive than the specialty markets in various parts of the city. Below is a look a couple markets that we use in an area that is quite a ways north of us, but the meat and fish and produce and mushrooms are so much less expensive that it pays for our public transit ride to the area and a taxi back. I don't have any shots of the Fruit/vegitable market in this video but all of that produce on the table cost us about 20-22 dollars. We have now found another market closer to us that is only open on Wednesdays from 6 am to noon. I will try to get some pictures up of the actual tienda (store)

Bicycles are absolutely essential to the population of Bogota. I will have to wait until I get back to do justice to this topic. Here are just a few of the uses for bicycles in the economy of Bogota

The Gold Museum in Bogota is a must see if you come to visit here. People over 60 are allowed into all atractions like this in the city, the Botanical Gardin, Parks, Museums, for free. My gray hair has several advantages here. On the Trans (Public dedicated bus system like an above ground subway) people actually get out of their seats and give them to pregnent women, women with small children, people with handicaps, and "old folks" (ancianos) like us. If the bus is really crowded (and that can happen) then sometimes it doesn't happen but if a young person or adult sees me or any other older person, if there is a path they will get up and give you their seat.

Our new apartment and area of town1

2009-06-09T21:22:00.001-07:00

This is the area around where we live now. We love it.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: How Do I Love Thee?

2009-06-09T18:20:00.001-07:00

This is from one of my all time favorite talks by Elder Holland. I was so glad to see it on the Church You Tube Site. I thought you might like it too. Don't miss the videos below. There is one about our new area in Bogota and also two about our adventures in Ecuador

Center of the World The Equator

2009-06-08T10:51:00.001-07:00

Our trip to the Equator just a little outside of Quito, Ecuador. Hope you enjoy

Volcanos in Ecuador

2009-06-08T10:49:00.001-07:00

This is a video of the Vocanos in Ecuador. I can´t seem to get it into the other blog page

Adventures in Venezuela and Ecuador

2009-05-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

I am going to try to post several updates to the blog all at once or in close proximity so hopefully this all won’t be too much all at once. I can’t believe I haven’t updated anything since March 28. Well that just goes to show you that the longer you are in the mission the more occupied you are. It has been almost two months and we have been on the road again and changed apartments. (Yes, we moved from our little tiny apartment on Calle 100 to a lovely 2 bedroom (with a real kitchen) apartment closer to the office (not that we spend much time there) but it really is wonderful. This first blog has a slide show of our new area. This is a much older part of the city with old homes and hotels and buildings dating back over 200 years and also some really new and modern buildings mixed right in.

We also spent 10 days in Venezuela and 11 days in Ecuador. So there will be slides shows about our time in those two countries in coming blogs. I can tell you that I could live here in Bogota or in several other parts of Colombia but Venezuela is a different story. The members of the Church were wonderful to us and we had some great experiences with them but the people on the street are very suspicious of Foreigners and not very friendly. The cities that we were in were depressed looking and dirty, not lively like it is here and in Ecuador. Also Venezuela is very, very, very expensive. We are trying to implement a new way to get the audit trainings done in Venezuela because of the travel expenses and conditions. The hotels (even the ones that we paid exorbitant prices for) were dirty and not in good repair. We were in one that had 4 elevators only one of which functioned. Notice, I didn’t say worked. That is because when you pushed the button to get to the 2^nd floor it took you to the 3^rd, and when you pressed 3 you got 4. When you pressed 1 you did get 1 so there was no way to get to the 2^nd floor in the elevator. One of the 3 broken elevators had its door open on the ground level and the chamber was stuck between floors. The 2 other broken elevators had huge plants in front of them. Enough about Venezuela, suffice it to say that it was not like our first trip there which was ok except for the one internal flight we had to take. I will put up some pictures and hopefully a map because we were all over the place.

Let’s move to happier matters. Ecuador is an absolute wonder. If you are going to come down to visit only one country in South America I would suggest Ecuador (it is less expensive than Colombia and Colombia is much less expensive than Venezuela and Ecuador uses US currency for its national currency). We just got back from 11 days in Ecuador (From Quito to the Coast and then back to Quito and South and then back to Quito). This is our 3rd trip to Ecuador. The first was to Otavolo and points North with a quick trip to Manta and the Second was to Guayaquil. There are wonderful things to see and do and I will do a blog about our 11 days in Ecuador with pictures as soon as I can. I hope to include pictures of us standing on the equator and balancing an egg on a nail and volcano’s, volcano’s, volcano’s. Also a walking trip through the rain forest to a water fall and a visit to a butterfly sanctuary, and a gondola ride to over 13,000 feet (up 4000 feet from Quito) to see two volcano’s a little closer and look down on the city of Quito (which stands for Center of the World) about 4000 feet below us. We will also take you inside the Presidential Palace (the Ecuadorian White House) and into a Church that is totally covered in the interior in gold – I saw more gold than any one person should ever see. I now know where a big bunch of the gold that the conquistadors took from the peoples of this area went. For just a preview look at this.

Yes, everything you see that looks yellow is 23 carrot gold leaf, very thick gold leaf. The only thing that looks yellow in this picture that is not gold is the floor between the two rows of benches. The floor and the benches are wooden and reflect the brightness of the gold all around them. We were not allowed to take pictures inside so this is scanned in from the our ticket to get inside ($1.50) and I also bought some postcards with more pictures. This is one of 26 different cathedrals in Quito from this period. This one has the most gold and is classically Baroque. It was started in 1605 and completed in 1765. Much of the exterior including all of the ornamentation of the exterior was carved out of volcanic rock.

Enough for now. I will add the movie of our apartment as soon as I get a better connection

2009-03-28T20:29:00.000-07:00

This is about 3 minutes of what it is like in front of our apartment in the early mornings. We were waiting for the person from the University of Sabana where we took some spanish classes to show up to help us get to class the first day (We took off the mornings for 4 days in order to take some intensive immersion spanish classes) . The campus is about 25 miles from our apartment to the North with a bus change in the middle and on the first day they accompany you so you don't lost. All told it was a good experience. I didn't get as much out of the spanish as I had hoped. I was in a class with 8 students 5 of whom were not really serious about learning spanish. Darwin was in the advanced class with only 3. We met some neat people. A young couple from Korea were really serious about the language. The guy was in Darwins class and the girl was in a different class. They went with us on the field trip along with a gal from Germany who is in the same class as the Koren girl, one from Boston who was in my class, and one from South Caroline whoses mother livers in the states but she has 12 aunts and uncles here in Bogota. The girl from Boston is here with an NGO (non govermental agency - a non profit corporation working under the auspices of the UN) doing micro finance here in Colombia. BYU has worked with several micro finance groups. They teach financial principles to people in poverity and help them get small businesses started with small loans $5 to $20-Hence - micro finance. It is a good program and there have been some real successes with very small amounts of money. There is a great public broadcasting documentry about micro finance that you can access on the www.byutv.org web site.. Below the first slide show is another about the campus and a field trip we took to the "El Dorado" lagoon on the afternoon of the last day of class. It was a great short vacation!!

2009-03-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

Here we are again. We have been home from another major trip for just a short time and I want to get some pitures up. First we had a quick trip to Cali and then from Cali to Trijillo Peru and back to Bogotá in about 3 days. We had less then 24 hours at home and we left for Monteria, a town to the North and West not quite to the coast. We were there 2 days and back to Bogota to leave for Monizales the next day. From Monizales we went down the Caulca Valley (The Caulca is the second largest river in Colombia) with stops for trainings in Pereira, Armenia, Tulua, Palmira, for one day each and on to Cali for 3 days. Colombia is a beautiful country with rich farm land and beautiful cities. The roads were spectacular and very good with a few areas of construction (sounds like the US). We met great people dedicated to the Lord and to helping each other and their neighbors and spent time in the Mission home in Cali again. All told a great trip. We were to head out to Venezuela after a week of rest but we couldn't get all of the logistical problems worked out. (Where we stay, how we get from hotel to chapel and from one city to the next and back to Bogota in one piece) so we will postpone that trip until after general conference and the one we had scheduled in April will have to move back too. I have decided that being gone for 3 weeks of 4 and 1/2 in a month is way to much travel for me. It is hard to keep up with the laundry when you have to travel between cities by bus or taxi. (We've done both).

Venezuela Trip

2009-02-25T17:24:00.000-08:00

I Promised a look at our trip to Venezuela and here it is. Most things in Venezuela are much more expensive than in Colombia or especially in Ecuador. However, gasoline is the exception. It is .12 a gallon. That is right 12 us cents a gallon. Gasoline is cheaper than bottled water in Venezuela

2009-02-21T09:53:00.000-08:00

Hello from Guayaquil Ecuador

I can't believe a month has gone by. We have been all over the place and back again. Currently we are in Ecuador and have been here for the last 8 days. We will leave on Monday and go home (Bogota) for about 5 days and then off again on the week end for a training in a town called Monteria in Colombia. Today is our last training here in Guayaquil. We have trained 9 stakes and have one more today. Darwin has also done an audit with the Mission President on a district and I have done training for zone leaders in 2 missions and seen several missionaries at the request of the 2 mission presidents here.

It is difficult for me to believe the things we get to do and the people we get to interact with. There are wonderful people here with great strength. The church is stable in this area and there is good leadership in many of the wards but often the branches struggle. Leadership turns over frequently and that means a continuous round of training. We have had a great time here in Guayaquil and gotten to know Presidente and Sister Gamboa really well. Presidente Gamboa was not traveling this last week so we were able to spend some time with them. My Spanish improved alot since they don't speak English. Presidente Johns was traveling so we had only one day with the Johns but it was fun to work with a North American Mission President. In the 21 missions that I work in plus the 2 CCM (MTC's) about 1/3 are North American and 2/3 are Latin. Most understand some English but it is really helpful for me to have Darwin to translate. I am now able to hold my own in a conversation as long as it doesn't get two complicated and they take it slow. I have posted a video about a hike we up to some historic spots in Guayaquil on my YouTube site http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLzq8X5i_1U It was great fun. The Music is from the Bogota South Mission CD. Most of the songs were composed by an Elder in the Mission and it was sung by missionaries in the mission. It is a great CD. I will try to post more pictures later for now the picture above is a look from inside the Santa Ana Climb (444 steps plus 50 more up into the lighthouse. I did just fine - 2 days later my legs told me I hadn't done much climbing lately but, the pain only last for the afternoon of the 2nd day)

Catch up

2009-01-22T19:20:00.000-08:00

It has been a long while since I updated our blog. We have been on the road again and will be gone again tomorrow and then again next week. Two weeks ago we went to Bucaramango (the ant capital of the world -- they harvest ants here to eat-- I ate one and bought some more to bring home and share with all of you. I bet you can't wait) Darwin and I did a training for zone leaders and then at the request of the Stake president did a fireside for about 350-400 youth on how to fight the battle with Satan and win. After we talked to the youth, we let them ask questions, which ranged from "How do I talk to my parents about sex?" to "How do we get the kids around us not to offer us drugs or pornography" We than talked to the parents and let them ask questions. Which ranged from "How do we talk to our kids about sex? to How do we help them not fold under peer pressure?" All told it was a pretty good training.

Bucaramanga is a pretty little city. All cities in Colombia are large by Montana and Idaho Standards. Bucaramango is small in Colombia. It has a population of 850,000 to 1,000,000. It is a city and not a pueblo though.

This is down town Bucaramanga

This is the old city. It is over 200 years.

This is the view from our Hotel

Back in the Airport. We are getting very familiar with South American Airports.

Tomorrow we head to Venezuela for the first time. I will keep you posted. We will fly to Caracus and then another flight to a small town and then a 1 hour ride by car to get to the Stake center for training. We have a new stake presidency there and they have not had any audit training yet. Our mentor and friend and the other auditor has been called to serve as a Bishop and he has been released so it is Darwin and I now. He has been taking care of Venezuela and some of the more remote parts of Colombia. Now we have it all. I guess now that I can say Gracias with a Colombian Accent we are good to go (we still look totalimente like gringos). Oh well we will be well chaparoned by the members of the stake.

Stayed tuned for a report from Venezuela and a blog on food and food packaging in Colombia in my next post.

2009-01-05T19:50:00.000-08:00

I decided to look at the Chile pictures in another way. I am experimenting with how best to show the pictures we have in a way that is the most interesting.

Pictures of the Sand Nativity and other Christmas

2008-12-28T21:11:00.000-08:00

Some Christmas Pictures from Bogota

2008-12-20T20:34:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas - Feliz Navidad from Bogotá

Below are some of the lights that decorate our area of the city. The Nativity is sculpted in sand. Tonight they will sculpt the Christ Child and put him in the manger. Christmas here is a festive occation. The city goes all out and decorates various places. There are all kinds of things going on, including music of all kinds, roaming mimes and clowns, venders with food and lights for the children. The streets are crowded and venders are everywhere. It is really quite an experience. We have had several experiences lately that we need to put in here. We have now become very adept at riding the transmilenial, and are getting ready to travel again in January. I will be doing training for the Zone Leaders in Bucuramanga on Jan 7th and then we will be in Ecuador again probably the last two weeks in January for auditing training in the Guayaquil area. I will also be working with the 2 missions in Guayaquil. Merry Christmas to all we hope all is well for you and your family in the new year. We will be having Christmas dinner with the Shirtlifts (president of the MTC) and the Maloufs (area medical advisor) tonight and will probably call family tomorrow.

Us in Chile, a new style

2008-12-20T20:02:00.000-08:00

2008-12-07T05:00:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas from Bogota!!

I told you I thought we were done traveling until after Jan 1. Well that turned out to be rather short sighted. Two weeks ago we went back to Nieva and then to Ibagué (where Darwin served for 8 1/2 months on his first mission) and then last week we went to Boliva by way of Peru. Tomorrow we leave for Santiago Chile and a little town about an hour beyond. It has been an exciting two weeks. The first trip was with Presidente y Hermana Martinez of the Bogota South mission. He asked me to present in 4 multi zone conferences back to back ie one on Tues, Wed, Thurs and Fri. Tues Nieve, Wed Ibagé and then 2 different locations in Bogotá one Thursday and one Fri. I can tell that my Spanish would really improve if I did that every week. My presentation was in Spanish with some help from Darwin and Hermana Martinez when I got stuck. (The first day that was alot but by day 4 I did a much better job). The second trip was an emergency trip to Santa Cruz Bolivia to take home a Sister who needed more intensive treatment than we can provide in the field. The decision was made on Monday evening. We made arrangements on Tuesday, Wed we went to Barranquilla to meet her and spend the evening with her getting acquainted. Thursday morning (Thanksgiving Day in the US) we got up at 4 am to be in the Airport at 5 am. We flew out at 6:30 with Stops in Bogotá, Lima Peru, and La Paz Bolivia before landing in Santa Cruz at 1:40 am the next morning (our time 2:40 their time). We were all exhausted. We said goodby to our young sister in the airport where she was met by her stake president (who accompanied her from that point on to her home). The Mission President and his wife, Presidente and Hermana Maynes were there to pick us up. We spent the next 3 days with them in the Mission Home in Santa Cruz because there were no available seats on any returning flights. (It was between 92 and 100 degrees while we were there). We were able to attend a Stake Conference in Santa Cruz (one of several Stakes in the city). It was packed from the front of the chapel all the way back through the cultural hall to the stage. President and Sister Maynes spoke (she and I co-miserated about our lack of ability with the language). The Temple President from Cochabamba and his wife, Br and sister Gonzolez (He was a Fransiscan Monk when he joined the Church in the 1970's although we didn't find that out until we had dinner with them and at the Mission Home with Presidente and Hermana Maynes) also spoke as did the Stake President. The Choir was beautiful. I think I got some 15 sec segments recorded but my little recorder was set wrong so it would only record 15 sec at a time. All told it has been a pretty exciting, exhausting two weeks. There are some pictures below. The Andies were incredible to fly over but the pictures are not all that good. I did this post yesterday before the Christmas devotional, during the Christmas devotional I got a call from a mission president with another missionary sister who needs to go home. We have kind of been expecting this decision but things came quicker than I thought. We leave tomorrow to pick her up and take her home to a little town about an hours flight outside of Santiago Chile. Again the flights are packed so I don't know when we will be back. Probably Friday or Saturday. In the mean time I have had 7 new situations develop in the last 5 days that I am following with various mission presidents, some will resolve quickly and others may take more time. These are really the only two missionaries I have had to accompany home. It isn't always this hecktic.

On our front pourch waiting for Presidente Martinez to pick us up. The drive was gorgous

Last round of conferences the missionaries were taught about feeding the sheep. They each got at least one sheep to take care of (ovaja). This conference they had to decide what thy would scarifice for their sheep (investigators). My presentation was on effective companionship inventories where each member of the companionships protects the emotional health of his companion and himself while still discussing issues that need to solved. There is a slide show of this trip right below and then below that there is the beginning information about Christmas in Bogotá. The slide show is about 7 minutes long and shows one of Colombias active volcanos. One erupted about two days after this trip. We think it was this one but we are not sure.

Bogota is a wonderland at Christmas time. They decorate 4 major areas of the city each year to different themes. This year the themes are the seasons. We live right on the edge of one of the major areas. I will post pictures of Christmas in a couple of Days. We are watching them sculpt a life size scene in the park just down from us in Sand. It is incredible. They dumped about two dump truck loads of sand in the area and the sculptures are having a good time. It is right at the front of the park and the park it itself has been turned into a lighted wonderland. A river goes through the middle and it is lighted on both sides with blue lights like waves with huge fish swimming in the blue lights. There are huge pinwheels and lolly pops and a life size nativity in orgami fashion. The first picture below is the front page of the web site which is good but doesn’t do justice to the actual goings on. On Dec 11 the traffic will be rerouted and they will have a night cyclovia from 6pm to midnight. There will be 3 full orchastras in 3 different parks – The Bogota symphony will be in the Simon Bolivar Park which is quite a way from us. It is about a 15 mile bike ride one way so I don’t know if we will do that or not. We will probable stick in our area which is Pimivara on the map. Don’t know yet though. Enough talking. Here are some pictures.

Some of this Some of that

2008-11-15T09:11:00.000-08:00

Below is a view of the city from Montserrate

Maloufs and us at the top

Headed back down on the cable car

The angle of the cable against the trees shows you about how steep

One of the old cable cars used from 1928 to 1964

A Street Mime (not the best one we have seen but ok)

Down the street from our steps

Up the street from our steps on a Saturday - quiet no street traffic people or cars

Below a very mild bus ride in Bogota

Bike Taxis in a quiet area near the temple where my spanish teacher lives

Adventures in Popayan and Neiva

2008-10-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

Us in Neiva just before the training and then below a multiple family fiesta after the training.

I have several posts that are partially done but wanted to get some pictures up of the latest adventrues of a ¨Mormon Missionary Couple¨. We have been traveling again. In the last few weeks we have been to both Popáyan and Neiva. Both of these towns are small by Colombian standards Popayan is approximately 300,000 and Neiva is approximately 100,000. Popayan is over 400 years old. It was founded in 1532 and served as the capital of a region that is now Colombia and Equador. We stayed in a monostary that has been converted into a Hotel in Popayan. It is over 200 years old and much of the funiture is antique. Both areas are having some difficulties so road trips are off for us. We had to fly into each city seperately and then fly back to Bogota without leaving the city.

The Pan American Highway runs right outside the city in Popayan. There are a group of indiginous peoples who are protesting some government policies. They are not a part of FARC and have a different agenda but they attached the riot police with clubs and slingshots and spears on the Pan American Highway the day we were in Popayan. The riot police tried to contain them withoug using guns but there were casualties on both sides. That situation was going on while we were in Popayan but we didn´t see or hear any of it. There were extra police in the city and we had more baracades to work around then would have been usual.

Below is a map of Colombia showing the area where we were and then the next map has arrows to the two cities. I will add a brief narrative to each area because we had great experiences in both places. Neiva was even more secure than Popayan because the week before we left, FARC blew up the hotel we were supposed to stay in. (We stayed in a different hotel when we got there since they managed to level the first one), We are alive and well and will probably not be traveling out of the city until after the 1st of the year (not because of danger but because there is so much trianing going on right now.) The couple assigned to humanitarian services is traveling to several places and with the help of a humanitarian part time physicaian and his wife are putting on trainings for physicians on neonatal recessitation. The Church provides the kits, including a pactice full functioning neonatal training doll so that that the physicians that are trained can train others and all the equipment that is needed to do recessitations. That couple doesn´t really interfer with our travel because we are not training the same people. That couple works mostly with hospitals and clinics and public health services and the doctors and nurces attached. However, we also have a couple assigned to the Perpetual Education Fund and they are training the ward and stake leaders on how to help young people be ready to use the fund, what kinds of records are needed and how they pay back the fund when they have finished their education. They are training in most of the areas that we were headed to and the leaders were feeling a little overwhelmed with training since they also had training on tithing settlement issues from the area office. Since the next audit will be conducted in Februray we will do a lot of training in Jan and early February and then do follow up.

Below are shots of the downtown area of Neiva. During the day we roamed the downtown area and had fun ¨people watching¨. They were also watching us since we were obviously North American. My Spanish is getting better and I speak spanish when I am in the streets but I still sound like a gringa.

Neiva is out of the Mountains and is hot. It was 92 while we were there. Because of the Bombing last week they blocked off the hotel that we were in after dark (not just because of us but because it is the second best hotel in the city and they didn´t want to loose another one. We were out with the Stake president to a combination birthday, just got married, and one other thing fiesta. There were about 8 couples. The Stake President and his wife, two of the 6 bishops and wives and several members all of whom had worked and served together for some time. The party was planned for some time we just were last minute addtions. One of the sisters made tacos and we played Uno. Uno is the same the world around. In Colombia there are a few extra rules that I didn´t know about so I managed to accumulate a rather large group of cards. However, they also have a pass the hand to the left card so I ended up with only 4 cards (dads hand) and gave the girl next to me about 16. I still managed to loose but we had fun.

These cities are really vibrant. Most of these pictures were taken about 10 am on a Saturday morning.

Darwin doesn´t like this picture because he just stuffed something in his mouth but I think it is great.

We went to Popayan first. We flew in, had a training and then left at about 3:00 the next afternoon. Popayan is a special place for the humanitarian services department. They have partnered with a university there and put together a demonstration garden to help people in the city learn how to grow things efficiently, how to store them and how to prepare them. The garden has been wildly successful and the city really loves the Church because of what has gone on with the Garden (One of the food agencies with the UN was coming in the next day after we left to look at how the gardin is set up and how it is used to teach self sufficiency) so when the Humanitarian department proposed distributing eye glasses to those in need who could not afford them ages 6-10 and 60 and over, the people in the city who knew about the garden really got behind it.

The manager of the garden served as liason between the community and the church. and a steering committee that included the mayor´s wife, a local MD, an optomitrist and heads of several agencies who were already learning how to do gardens in their own areas was set up. The Church told the community that they would provide the glasses if the community would set up the screening and make sure that the distribution was to the most needy.

This community really got organized. The optomitrist worked with others and got the optomitirists of the city to donate eye exams for children in poverty areas, orphanages and in special programs the city already had running for children from proverty stricken families. They also provided eye exams for all nursing home residents and others over 60 who were too poverty stricken to be able to afford the exams. The MD (a really shape female named Nancy) and the mayors wife set up a record keeping program so that they could keep track of the perscriptions and what glasses needed to go where.

Over 9,000 people were screened and thousands of pairs of glasses were despensed. The morning before our flight in the afternoon happened to be a day when several hundred pairs of glasses arrived. They were totally prepared. They boxed them by agency and had the agency heads come to a ceremoney where the glasses were handed out.

Since Darwin and I were the visiting diginarities, (even though we are not with the humanitarian department and even though we did not consider ourselves dignitaries) we represented the Church at the ceremony along with the manager of the garden and a pair of Elders that are assigned to Popayan. What an experience. Darwin was interviewed by the local TV stations and we ended up on all the news stations in Popayan that day. The secretary of Health and Welfare for the district was there to thank the Church for the glasses and there were genuinly excited people there.

This was the last batch of glasses in the program all the rest had already been distributed. I think they said there were about 500 in this batch. One of the families that had children screened was not with an agency and they had two of their 3 children who recieved glasses. It was so neat when the mother took her box back to her seat after recieving it and opened it and put the glasses on her sons. The picture below with the little boy is of one of her boys and Nancy the MD who coordinated the distribution program. The only members involved were the garden manager and about 6 Mormon families who met the qualifications for poverty and had their children screened. So at the ceremoney where all these boxes of glasses were given out the garden manage (who is also the district president) received the box for the Mormon kids that were given glasses.

It really was a community project and it was so neat to see what was done because they were organized. There have been other places where the Church tried to provide glasses that didn´t work nearly as well because the community didn´t get behind it and provide the man power to get the screenings and distribution done right. In this case the Church just wants to be a part of the process, not come in and run the whole show.

Below are the pictures of the ceremony are some pictures of the converted monostarystary

Some shots in Ecuador we forgot to post

2008-10-13T15:10:00.000-07:00

This blog post is all pictures and not much talk. We had a holiday here in Colombia today and we went up to Monsarrate, a major site in Bogota with a really steap tram ride to the top of a mountain where there is a major Catholic Church and viewing area. We took a new missionary couple, who just arrived on friday night, up to see the city. I am really glad we had a day off. It was kind of fun to show off the city. We had never been up before and it was great. I think we got a few good shots.
I will post the pictures from today later, however, when I got back down and downloaded everything I found a bunch of pictures that we took at Puertolago in Equador just before doing the training for the Otovalo Stake. I have just posted the pictures below. If you want to know more about our Ecuador trip see the other Ecuador posts. This is just a visual blog.
We are leaving on Wednesday to train auditors in Popayàn (a city a little to the west and south of Bogota) for the District there. There are 6 or 7 congregations. The Church also has a major humanitarian project there in cooperation with a university I think. We will know about it when we get back.
I will try to get the Monsarrate pictures up as soon as we get back and add the pictures from Popayàn.

Street Venders

2008-09-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

I have wanted to do this post for a long time. I have lots of pictures but I don't know if pictures can ever give you the true flavor of what the street vender situation is like here. There are both good and bad aspects to this whole enterprise from my perspective and there are political issues that I am not a part of, nor do I appreciate all of the complexities nor do I understand the whole situation. The Venders are both an asset and a liability, they fill a need but can create problems. There are several different types of venders. Let's start with the upscale food cart venders.

There are two on this corner just down from us. There are well over 1000 (could be as many as 2000) people who work in the offices of our little 4 block stretch. Each morning these two help to feed them. The closest one is a juice vender and makes the juice right on the spot (fresh juice is one of the wonderful things about this city. There is an abundance of fruit of all kinds and many restaurants, and families as well as street venders make fresh juice. The guy behind him specializes in fresh cut fruit. You can buy plastic glasses full of a large variety of fruit. Mango is particularly difficult for Darwin and I to keep in our apartment because it has a strong smell when just sitting around even if it is fresh, not rotten and ripening. So although we love mango we don't buy it from a store and peel and prepare it ourselves. We buy it already cut and ready to eat from a vender when we want some. The first picture below is of two plastic cups of mango. It cost us a little less than .50 a cup. A little less then $1.00 for the 2 cups.
The picture above is of a snack food vender. For every one regular food, fruit or coconut, or hot food vender there are 5 or 6 snack food venders. They sell chips and cookies and candy and sometimes pop. Also nearly all venders of whatever kind sell cell phone minutes. There are even some venders that have cell phones on chains and sell time on them to make calls right on the street at the vender booth. The cart behind this vender is a supply wagon. It is on a bicycle and you can see these guys resupplying some of the snack food venders through out the day.

The above two are two of our favorite venders. They have a cart under a tree right on the corner of 100 and 11th just in front of the Chevrolet dealership. There are several other venders on that corner but this pair sells arepas filled with beef and mushrooms and cheese kept hot by a charcoal grill and they do a very good business. The arepas cost 3 mil (3,000 pasos) each. That is about $1.50 each. Darwin and I usually stop and get aprepas and take them to our apartment to eat about once every other week.

These guys now know us and greet us like we are regular customers along with all the rest crowding in to buy. They have a great repeat business. One of them does the cooking and the other one handles the money. The cook always has gloves on and the operation is very clean. When they see us coming all we have to do now is nod and they know exactly what we want and how we want it.

The spots where venders put their carts are an interesting story. There is kind of a code among the venders. You have to have your cart where it is supposed to be by a certain time but if you do, no one else is going to try to take your spot. Spots are actually bought and sold (and that is one of the problems that the government is trying to control- keep reading to find out more about that little situation)

What follows are several photographs of the more upscale food type carts. Hot food, cold food and everything in between can be found on the street. I have not yet seen live chickens or cuts of beef or pork, but we have seen live snails. (see below)

In addition to food, all kinds of hand crafts and convenience items are sold on the streets. It is like a cross between a farmers market and the stuff at the checkout stands at walmart or home depot. These venders sometimes use carts but more often display their wares on pieces of plastic or a blanket on the ground or on card board display racks that are leaned against a wall. This type of vender is found mostly in high traffic areas. They make walking on the street interesting because you are constantly avoiding the venders wares.

In addition to venders who really are trying to sell a product there are the assorted beggars and street people. Most people here are extremely clean and wonderfully open and friendly whether they are well off or poor. However, there is a group of beggars and street people who are not clean and can be very persistent when begging to the point of invoking a curse upon you if you don´t give them something. Others on the street are less aggressive and just seem lost and confused much like the street people in the US some of whom are mentally ill. The same situation exits here. There is one man on our way home who begs and struggles with voices at the same time and one woman who has made kind of a cave out of construction debris. I keep wondering what will happen to her when the construction project finishes and they move the stuff that she has used to make a house.

Below are some pictures of venders that actually vend in the street between the cars. When ever a taxi or car or bus stops for a light, or for whatever reason, there are venders in the street trying to sell you things through the car, bus or taxi windows.

The round blue things that the guy in both of these pictures is carrying are world globes. They vend anything and everything on the street and in the street.

The government can see that a thriving business is going on in the street and they have no way to regulate it or collect taxes on the items sold. The food you buy on the street is cheaper than what you can get in a restaurant because the venders don´t pay taxes and charge less. For that reason and many others (including that the venders can be a nuisance and danger on the street) and other reasons that I am sure I don´t understand, the government is trying to bring the venders under control. They have installed Kiosks on all the main streets and many back streets. (picture of Kiosks below). Each Kiosk will have place for at most 4 venders and will be locked up at night so they have a place for their stuff. However, there are many more venders on the street than the kiosks will accommodate and we are not sure how the space in the kiosks is being allocated. It could be that the venders currently on the street will be moved out and not have a chance for a kiosk spot. However it is done, they are saying that they want it accomplished before the end of Oct. because, in places, the venders double or triple during the Christmas season and they want it accomplished before this happens again. We are somewhat ¨preocupado¨ ie worried about what is going to happen and how it is going to happen and how it will affect us. (Will it be dangerous to walk or ride the buses, will our favorite venders get the boot, will the streets be the same without all the smells and tastes and interesting things, will the price of things rise?) We are not overly worried or cowering in our apartment, in fact we are out and about waiting and watching with the rest of the city. We will keep you informed.

Some things about security here

2008-09-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

The sign below was on one of the bus stops just down from our apartment building. It says "My city is divine." It has now changed (they change quite frequently) but it says alot about how I feel about Bogota. I love it here. The shots in this post are about some of the ways security is handled here.

The first group I want to talk about are the security police that we call the boy scouts. For us that is not a derogatory term at all. They are so young. They look to be about explorer age but they are stationed on all major streets, on the corners and in the middle of the block. On our street Calle 100 there are 4 blocks between Carrea 15 and Carrea 11 where the streets don't come through. It is a 4 block strech with a couple of alley ways that allow walking traffic to get to the streets behind the main street. These young men are stationed all along the street on both sides. (There are 4-6 lanes of traffic and a bulivard strip of grass and trees between the two sides). On one corner there is a round about with 5 spokes and on the other corner there is a one way turn that goes south into the heart of the finanacial district. This is an extremely busy area and these young men serve as watchmen. This is not the only place they serve. They are all over the city and at various events. They direct traffic when traffic gets really snarled on the round about by us or in other parts of the city. They are always there if you get lost or need to find a store or something else. The middle shot that is blurry shows a whole group of them gathering before they go out to their various posts.

The next group I have pictured is private security. Private security is everywhere. Every apartment building, hotel, office building, most businesses, medical clinics and single family deweling blocks have private security guards. Our rent is one price and then we pay an administration fee for having the guards on duty 24 hours a day. You can not get into or out of our building without being let in or out by one of the guards. People can not come into our apartment building unless we vouch for them and either go down and get them at the door or call security and let them know they are coming and when they are going to arrive and what they look like. These guys are really helpful. The first picture is of a private guard from an apartment building for older residents helping one of the tenants get a taxi. Taxi security is whole issue in itself. See Below.

This is the back side of the massive office building that is right next to our apartment building. You can not see our apartment in this picture because it is beyond this building.

These guards and dogs are at the parking entrance of that big blue building. There are two more stationed in back.

This is our apartment building. It is only 5 stories tall so it is dwarfed by that big blue building next to it. The just finished painting it so in these are the window washers cleaning things up.

These next two are security for our building. They are right there if we need them. When they see us walking up they get the door open for us. If we are coming back from a trip they are right out side to help with the luggage. This is a very friendly place to live. We have met a lot of the people in the building as we go or come. The mail boxes are right here at the front and people sometimes come down just to check their mail.

This is the building we work in. The guy in blue not on the ladder is one of many security people for our building. This building is 14 stories, with many offices and companies. To get in you have to have a magnetic key that activates a turn style. You are issued one if you work in the building. You have to use it to get in and out. All doors in and out have security systems. If you are just visiting one of the offices in the building you are finger printed and there is a finger print reader at the turn styles. The second shot is of the open air breeze way leading to the desk in front of the turn styles. Below that with Darwin are two of the guards at the front entrance. These two love to tease Darwin and I. All in fun but it can be distracting at times. If they see us coming they literally shout VEEEKEEE and ELDER and then smile. There can be 30 people trying to get through the turn styles and everything comes to a halt. We try to sneak by them quietly in the crowd. That sometimes works. The next picture is of one of the guard towers at one of the Malls. All malls have security and you have to go through a gate to get into the parking lot.

The two pictures below are of the regular police. They are a step up from the young men stationed on the street. They often patrol on motorcycles or cars and if there is an altercation they are the ones who come in to help the young guys.

The next shots are of the regular army troops. It is hard to get shots of these guys because they come out at night usually and take the place of the younger guys on the streets. They are also posted all along the streets and are within sight of each other. I don’t even notice them anymore. I have never seen a gun raised (except for the brinks truck guards). That is always a sight. The Brinks truck pulls up and there can be a hundred people on the street and out comes a guy with a silver sawed off shotgun pointed straight up but ready to be lowered. He moves quickly to the door of the building they are going to (the pedestrian traffic just kind of moves over for him and keeps going) and when he is in position a second guard gets out of the truck with a hand gun and accompanies a third guard carrying a bag to the where the first guard is. They leave another guard in the truck (also with a gun). Then they do the whole thing in reverse to get back to the truck. Someone has said that that is the way Brinks operates world wide. I just don’t ever remember seeing it before.

Below is a taxi. About every 3 or 4th car in the city is a taxi. Each taxi has its license plate number painted all over the car, on the back and both sides and on the top. The best way to get a taxi is to call one by phone. They were having so much trouble with taxi drivers hijacking people here about 10 years ago that they set up a security system. Now when you call a taxi you are given the taxi number and a security code. The dispatch knows who is going to what address and you don’t take a taxi that has a different number on it. When the taxi gets there you have to give the driver the security code so he can all it in so that dispatch knows that you are in the car. This system protects both driver and passenger. We have been told not to hail taxis on the street without using the phone system. However, there are times when we have to do that so there are some security measures for that also. It is kind of interesting getting used to all of this.

Almost all buildings have underground parking areas under them. They also have security guards. There is no on-street parking on major streets like our block. But there is plenty of parking under each building for the cars that people have for that building. Many people don’t use private cars. They take a taxi or bus to work. The following 3 shots are of the entrances to some of the buildings parking areas.

The last shots below are of a Peaceful demonstration that took place in the street by our office. The shots are taken from our office window. The government is trying to make cuts in the budget and one of the areas they wanted to cut was public school teachers health and benefits package. This protest was over that issue. There was lots of talking on the blow horn but no violence. It lasted about 4 hours. When we got ready to go to lunch we went out the back way.

Ecuador Part III - Really Quick

2008-09-13T22:16:00.000-07:00

This is a short post. Just wanted to get up the last of the Ecuador photos. I will try to do a regular post tomorrow with some shots of things and doings around here. (There really is never a dull moment)

Ecuador Part II and a little bit of everything

2008-09-07T18:53:00.000-07:00

I am sorry it has been so long. So much has happened. It is now Sept. 7 and we got back from Ecuador on Aug 25th. A 5 min clip of the middle part of the trip is below. I will try to post the last material from Ecuador in a day or two. In the mean time we did another training out at a resort just about 1 hour outside of Bogota (of course it took an hour just to get out of Bogota so it took us a couple of hours to get there). It is a big water park with water slides and a wave pool. See the pictures below. In the off season (which it is now) and during the week it really quite inexpensive so the church brought in the financial employees from Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezeuela for a training on several things. We had about 2 1/2 hours to help them understand what we were teaching the stake audit committees and the auditors and have some dialog on how they could help us. Each country is a little different and the problems have to be handled differently. These people are the ones who know who is doing what so they have a lot of good material for us. On the other hand we are the ones getting all the questions in the trainings so we had good material for them also. Of course as usual we didn't have any time to play but I can tell you if we get a chance we will go back. It was a beautiful location.

The other big piece of news is that we finally got our bicylces. Oh what an experience that was!! Here in Bogota there are areas of the city that specialize in things. So if you need lamps you go to one area of the city and there are blocks of shops one right after another with lamps. If you need plumbing fixtures, same thing, you go to an area and there are maybe 20-30 shops with nothing but plumbing fixtures. All types all prices and they are all right together. We bought the printer we now have at an electronics area like that. The electronics one was a little different because all of the electronics shops were in one building that is 3 stories high and takes up a full square city block. There were multiple shops for computers and printers and laptops and PDA's and sterios and video equipment and camera equipment, and they were all right together in one building. We checked prices on the printer we got at about 6-7 different shops and took the best one.

This last week we went to one of two Bicycle centers for the city. It is about 3 blocks long with one bicycle shop after another. You can get anything and everything you want and they can even build a bicycle to your specifications right on the spot. There are probably 20 bicycle shops in this area. I had some pretty specific needs. Because of the pedestrian traffic that gets itself into the particular bike route that we will be using to go to work, I needed a bicycle that I can stop on a dime and get off of the seat and stand between the seat and the handle bars (stradling the bike but with both feet on the ground). I don't have time with the kind of traffic we are in to get my leg over the seat and completely dismount on one side. That presents a problem. I needed to have bike that fits my body (rather wide in the middle), I also wanted good Shimano parts, brakes, gears, and good tires (wide not skinny like our road bikes). We need wide tires for the rough parts of the road and for the handling. We were taken to the bike area by a wonderful guy who works with us but who has absolutely no understanding or knowledge about bicycles. I thought I was going to die as he tried to negotiate for a bicycle for me. My spanish is bad but the kid at the bike shop where we were shopping could tell that I knew what I wanted and the guy that was doing the talking didn't know much. I looked at him and he looked at me and we both rolled our eyes at the same time. At least Darwin and I got a look at where the place was. It was only a couple of miles from where we work. Walking is nothing in this city so we didn't buy anything on the first trip, but Darwin and I went back (walked there) on Wednesday of last week and met with the same kid again. He really did have a good selection and he and I matched up a frame for me and then we fitted it with good parts. The frame was cheap and so are the handle bars and I may have to replace them because the hand grips are a little short but over all it is good bike for what we are doing here -- basic transportation and some exploring on saturdays. Below are some shots of some of the bike shops we were in. We will get a shot of us on the bikes later. Getting Darwin a bike wasn't nearly as hard as getting me one because he doesn't have the body geometry problem that I do (what a nice way to say that he isn't obese). Our bikes cost us about $200.00 a piece- a little less I think.

They had to have a day to build my bike so we picked up our bikes on Thursday. Of course it had to be in a downpour. We live about 3 miles from work and the bike area was another 2 miles beyond where we work and not on a major bike route so we road for 5 miles in a a heavy rain. We were absolutely soaked when we got home, but happy as clams. We did our training out at the resort on Friday so didn't get to really ride for fun until yesterday. Below just above the Ecuador slide show are some shots of the park that we road in. It is a fairly small park as far as parks go in this city but it was beautiful out side and we took some shots of the facilities and activities. One of things that we have noticed down here is that people interact with each other and share open space in all the cities, big and little. There is a vitality here and joy in being together. The people here treat us like they love having us here. There is not hit of anti-american sentiment (we won't talk about Venesuela). They are patient with my stubling spanish and appreciate my efforts to learn their language. The are very helpful and want to help you learn but are willing to struggle along with you when there is a communication problem.

This is our bike route to work and to the park below which is about 7 blocks from our appartment. I took this shot because on most major streets there are no overhead electrical or phone or any other kinds of lines. (There are overhead lines on the smaller residential roads) All the wires go under ground on the major streets and there are openings in the pedestrian areas (that are usually about 15-25 feet across) where workman can get in to repair or install new cabling. Ithink this guy was waiting for his partner to pull cable to the next hole.

There are all kinds of classes in the parks. I think this was a ty che (no doubt misspelled) class. But there were other kinds of classes going on as well.

This was a workout station with all kinds of equipment and there were 2 personal trainers here working with people.
The bike paths are for all sizes and all styles of bikes

Below is a 5 min slide show of the middle part of our trip to Ecuador. There is more poverty in Ecuador than in Colombia. The latest statictics have Colombia with about 42 percent of its population in poverty. It is higher than that in Ecuador and definately higher in Bolivia. Peru and Chile have less poverty than other South American Countries. You can not really see that in most of Bogota that you have seen in our pictures although there are some real poverty areas they still usually have water and basics here in Bogota. Poverty has a much different definition than in the US. There is practically no one in the US who would meet the definition for poverty that is used in South America. You can see some of that in the housing in the slide show below. The houses on stilts made of cane are better than some of the people have. One of things that we have to work with our missionaries on, particularly in Bolivia but also here, is how not to get overwhelmed by their lack of abilty to do everything that needs to be done. They see children starving and families living in conditions that are impossible to describe and they do the best they can but the situation in some places is overwhelming. There is an article that I just read about how making things safer if not richer has helped with how much happiness people enjoy. Even with a great deal of poverty there is a joy that is hard to describe. I will try to add the link to the article later. Bye for now. Hope you enjoy. Drop us an email we would love to hear from you or leave a comment on the post. Just hit the comment button and it will take you to a place to leave a comment.

Ecuador Part I

2008-08-16T19:57:00.000-07:00

We have spent the last 10 days in Ecuador. I tried to write a post on the second day but we were so busy that posting was impossible. So this is the first of a series on our trip to Equador. Below are Max and Grayson poking their little heads out of the suitcase. They didn't get to surface again until the just before the end of the trip. We did 10 trainings in 10 days. We had one day off - sort of - Monday of the first week we didn't have a training but I met with a mission president and 5 missionaries and Darwin taught a non spanish speaking senior finance secretary how to do an audit in spanish and we put together our own outline of how we wanted to do the trainings because on Tuesday we did our first training on our own. The last Saturday we did 2 trainings. (We did one and Miguel did one at the same time in another part of town.)

There are more pictures at the end of the itinerary, in a slide show that lasts a little over 6 minutes. There are some good shots of the area in and around Otavalo and Ibarra. The Otavalo Indians dress in there traditional dress. The men and boys wear while shirts and pants with a blue ruana, sweater, or vest and white sandles. Some wear western dress but most of the members of the two wards we visited in Otavalor (over 350) people were in traditional dress. The young men of Otavalo are not required to cut their hair to serve missions. They can wear their traditional hair style. We met a elder from Otavalo in Guayaquil serving in one of the wards we visited. We also have one serving in the Bogota South mission. During the week they where regular suits but on Sunday they wear their traditional clothing.

Our itinerary looked like this:

Left Bogota 6:30 pm Friday night, arrived at the hotel in Quito at about 11 pm.

Saturaday Morning Left Quito at 7 am for Otavalo and Ibarra. Did training in Ibarra and spent the night in Otavalo.

Sunday Attended two different wards in Otavalo and spot checked their financial records. Miguel did the same thing in a different building. Did a training in Otavalo for 2 stakes on Sunday night and returned to Quito after the training. Got to Quito about midnight.

Monday-Spent in the Quito office. Darwin training the finance officer for the mission and me meeting with the mission president and several missionaries (5) with problems. In addition we worked on putting together the outline and powerpoint presentations for the trainings in a way that made sense to us since we would start doing the trainings ourselves on Tuesday. Spent the night monday in Quito.

Tuesday left Quito by plane at 7 am and flew to Manta on the coast. Did training for 2 stakes/districts the Portoviejo Stake and the Jipijapa District. Stayed the night in Manta-This was on the beach - great swimming pool but we didn't have time to do any of that

Wednesday. Left Manta and went by 12 passanger bus to Guayaquil got hotel and then drove out to Milagro Stake for training that night. Stayed the night at Guayquil.

Thursday. Revised the training in the morning due to the nuances we discovered in Portoviejo, Jipijapa, and Milagro Stake. Went to Babahoyo District for a training that night. Stayed in Guyaquil.

Friday. Drove to Salinas. Was a relatively short drive. We had 3 hours to play before we needed to go to the training. We got to swim in the ocean and play on the beach. It was the first real break all week. Drove to Libertad Stake for training that night. Stayed the night in Salinas

Saturaday. Drove back to Guayaquil and split up the training. Darwin and I did Two Stakes in one building and Miguel did 3 stakes in another building. Stayed in Guayaquil

Sunday. Attended church in a different stake than we taught in. Spot checked the financial records.. Miguel went to a different building and did the same thing. In the building we attended there were mission farewells in both ward Sacrament meetings. 3 elders leaving from one ward and 1 elder leaving from the other. 4 missionaries out of two wards that week. Guayaquil has a population of about 3 million. There are 39 chapels in the city with 99 wards. I am not sure how many stakes. We were not training all the stakes in Guayaquil or any of Ecuador. We just train the ones with new leaders, or problems in their audits, or where we haven't had anyone do any checking for 2 years or more. After church we had about 3 hours before we had to be to the airport so we walked to the park of the iguanas and took pictures. Our plane left at 6:30 pm and we got home at 9:15 pm. We had a very exciting, hectic, educational, trip with great opportunity to see and do things I never expected to see and do in my life time but we were glad to back in our own bed last night. Bogota feels like home now. I love it here. I do look forward to our next trip to Ecuador. (Could be sooner rather than later, depending on the results of an audit that is going on right now)

I will do several posts with pictures of the whole trip. Below is a slide show of our first 2 days. It is just a little over 6 mins long and the title slides do not stay up long enough. You can pause it if you need longer to read the title slides.

Ciclovia and The Mall

2008-08-07T15:11:00.001-07:00

Today was a holiday in Colombia. Again we are not sure what holiday but we took advantage of it since the office was closed. I did end up with one consult in Peru but other wise it was one of those days that we joined in the activities. Ciclovia occurs on every sunday and all holidays from 7 am to 2 pm. Most of the main roads in the city are turned into bicycle and pedestrian ways and all kinds of people ride bikes or push strollers or wheelchairs, or rollerblade or skateboard or just plain walk down the street. We have a series of pictures below showing some of the doings along 15th. Remember that this is just one little part of a city that turns its main roads over. This is a hurge city and Ciclovia is a big deal each Sunday and on holidays. Parents ride with kids and hospitals take their patients out for walks. Cars are not allowed on the main roads and the traffic that does have to flow is routed around the main roads that have been turned over. We have a big round about that has 5 spokes comming off of it just down from us and most of those spokes had at least one half of the lanes open to the bikers and others. There were hundreds of people out on the streets today in our little area and we are not even the main area of the city.

Below is a Bicycle Service Station. There were two of them along the 20 or so blocks that we walked. Below somewhere is a picture of the tools at the second station. By the way. We got permission (finally) to get bicycles so we can ride to work and to shopping. We will keep you informed as to when we get our bikes. The Church has a humanitarian project in small communities and rural areas where kids have to go a long way to school. They are providing bicycles for the children (elementry and high school) so they can ride to school. They have a contract with several bike venders and get the bikes relatively inexpensively. They also provide helmuts and protective gear. We will be able to buy our bicycles and protective gear from the humanitarian project supplies for cost. The guy that is in charge says there are all kinds of colors and styles and sizes because different kids like different things and the Church tries to give them some choice so everyone is not alike. We shall see. We hope to go pick them out next week but have to wait until he is available to take us to the wearhouse. We know that we will be getting bikes with wide tires and not bikes like our road bikes. There are bike paths most of the way to work but there are also some rough areas and negotiating is easier with wider tires.

Venders along the route. I am planning to do a whole blog on street venders. They are facinating and sell everything from plumbing supplies on in the streets.

Ice Cream is a big thing here. Lots of the litte cafes on each block have very good ice cream. And there are ice cream venders everywhere

Second bike service station

A vender supply and garbage pickup wagon. I think they must get paid for recycling card board because ever one that doesn't have a full load takes out cardboard. The horse drawn carts particularly pick up cardboard and wooden crates from the streets. I can tell you stuff like that doesn't stay too long. Garbage is collected everyday but we noticed today that some of the garbage hadn't been picked up

Below and above are uniformed police. These are the ones that we call the boy scouts. They are so young. They look like about explorer age 16-18. However, it is nice to have them on the blocks. They are on the corners and sometimes direct traffic (that is rare. only when things get really messy). They are also stationed in the middle of the block. I hope to do a blog about security one of these times. It is relatively easy to take pictures of these guys but the ones that come out at night to replace them all have submachine guns or automatic rifles and it is harder to get pictures of them. You don't just go up to a guy with a submachine gun and say "Can I take your picture" At least I don't. The girl with the guy below is one of the Ciclovia workers. They have them on bikes as well and they help handle interesections where bikes have to stop to let cars go by and where cars have to give the bikes the right of way until they are told they can go on.

These are the cyclovia bike workers. I didn't get a good shot because thy were moving.

Below are some pictures of the Mall. A Mall is a mall and this is a huge very modern one. There were probably 10-12 major resturants though out the mall and then in addition there was a huge food court. I took a picture of the featured fare in the food court. In addition there was a 12 plex movie theater and a large bowling alley. There was also a bingo cacino and you can see some pictures below of the kids amusement park area with a merry go round and other rides. Through out the mall there were vidio game areas and computer cafes. All and all quite impressive. One of the other blogs I want to do is about the bags of Bogota. Everyone carries a bag of some kind. Brief cases are out to lunch because it is hard to get on a bus with a brief case but bags are every where in every shape. Darwin and I bought new bags today. I have one that I have been using that is a traditional Colombian bag. In the next blog I will show you the bags of Bogota including ours.

Mall Parking lot. Huge above and below ground facility.

Duitama

2008-08-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

It is Saturday night and I am sitting here enjoying the fact that we didn't travel this weekend. This is the first time in three weeks that we have been home on the week end. I will give you a description of the Duitama trip later but first some of the excitement of the night.
Darwin and I decided to go out to dinner to night, expecting that when we stepped out the door we would be met with the usual hussel and bussel. Our block is full of people until about 8:30 or 9:00 every night. Then it slows a little but there are still lots of people about. Tonight we left our appartment about 5:30 and it was dead outside. There was hardly anybody on the street. Earlier today we walked to a huge mall (see the mall pictures below) and there were plenty of people but tonight it was really quite. Since we haven't been here for very many saturday nights we will have to find out what it is with no activity on Saturday. We walked about 4 blocks to the World Trade Center which has about 30 resturants on the ground floor and a great park out back. We only found 1 resurant open. At least it was a good one. "Crepes and Waffles" It is a chain here and is a great place to eat. It wasn't crowded when we got there but the place livened up after a short time. A couple of family groups came in and several couples and the place was doing fine. They brought out a birthday cake for one of the children at the tables behind us and we were supprised to hear "Happy Birthday" sung in English (with a spanish accent). Shortly after the cake, while we were finishing off our desert, the place erupted with people screaming and I looked up and saw what I thought was a bird that had flown in the open doors and was flying around in the resturant. It turned out to be a bat and it decided that under the table where Darwin and I were sitting was where it wanted to land. I removed myself rather hastyly from the table but Darwin sat there quietly watching it on the floor and not really sure what to do. He decided to get up and get out of the way since we were done by that time and we moved over a little ways to wait for the bill while one of the waitresses went over to our table to check out the thing. About then it flew again and hit the woman sitting with the birthday party in the back. She jumped up and by then the whole resturant was trying to get out of the way. I moved outside because one of the things they told us in the MTC was "protect yourself from Bats". In many foriegn countries the percentage of bats that have rabies is quite high. I didn't feel like a trip to the hospital. I watched from outside as the kitchen staff and waitresses got out a large sheet of plactic and managed to down the creature. I did get a close enough look when it went under our table. It was black and red and about the size of my hand laying on the floor. In the air it looked like about the size of a sparrow. Like I said, never a dull moment, even on a quite night in this city.

The next three pictures are the outskirts of Bogota and the country side just outside the city. The two below that are the view from one of the windows in the building we have our office in. A little difference in terms of population density.

Fields and landscapes on our way to Duitama. This was a beautiful drive. It reminded me of Montana. Remember Bogota is at 8,800 ft and we went up. -it is usually about a 3 hour drive, it took us 6. There was lots of construction and we stopped to visit the battlefield of the battle that won Colombia it's independence from Spain. Miguel was so excited to show us. It was an emotional experience for him. You can tell that he loves his country and it's history and he is proud to be a Colobiano.

The Battle Field. This is a place that is talked about in 5 countries, Colombia, Venesuala, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. This region was once called greater Colombia but all 5 countries were given their independence when Simon Bolivar and his commanders won on this battle field. In one of the pictures Miguel is charging over the bridge. The river was much larger during the original battle as was the bridge and it was wooden then. But he did the charge non the less.

Below are some pictures of Duitama. There is a district here with several Branches and at least 2 chapels. This is a little town high in the Andes.

Max and Grayson. They are our mascotts and have gone with us everywhere. Max is a little rambuncious and drools a lot. Grayson is stoic and tries to keep Max under control. They are quite the pair. I think Max got fleas in Mexico so he has had to have a bath.

Sharing a treat after church

Hot water heating system. It does not work well in this area even though it workds quite well in other areas because it is not sunny much of the time. Most of the time it is overcast and they can not get enough hot water to fill the font.

Lunch on the way home.

Cartagena

2008-07-27T21:07:00.000-07:00

We did our first full training for auditors in Cartegena. Miguel Angel was with us and did the training while we watched. Next week in Duitama Darwin does the training and Miguel watches. The systems for handling church funds are a little different in this area than they are in the US because they have a cash economy. People do not use checks. They pay their donations in cash and when there is an activity that requires supplies they do not have enough liquid funds in individual families to buy the supplies and then get reimbursed after they turn in a reciept. They need to get the cash up front and then go get the items needed and then bring in the reciept (this is also hard because reciepts are not routinely given) and return any of the unused advance. As a result there are different accounting procedures in place and the twice yearly audit looks for some different things. Boring as it sounds Darwins job is to make sure that generally accepted accounting procedures are used and followed and that the auditors are trained in exactly how things should work so that any variation in procedures that could result (or has resulted) in the misuse of the scared funds of the church can be found and fixed. That is a harder task than you think when you realize that the church is relatively new in these countries. There are many very young leaders. We are working with stake presidents under 30 and stake finance clerks who are barly off their missions (or who haven't gone yet). Or ward clerks who have only been members for 6 months. Turn over is high. A person may servce as a clerk for a year and then be called into a bishopric for 2 years and end up as a bishop for 3 years and then be called as a stake president. (not an unusualy occurance). It is hard to get seasoned priesthood leaders. You just get one bunch trained and they turn over. Also the church is growing so fast that young congregations have a hard time having the kind of experienced leadership they need to learn the administrative procedures that they need to function in thier positions. (yes this is plea for more senior missionaries. You would be suprised at how much you could contribute just by being available with the wealth of experience that you have. -- How does the primary work? How do you organize a Relief Society enrichment night. How do you teach a lesson. How do you handle the funds of the church. How do you conduct a meeting. How do you lead the signing. Different places need different things and their are some wonderful skilled leaders but the depth of leadership and the subtleties of administrative function are in need of help. All the emerging areas of the church are in the same boat. Africa, Turky, Mongolia, South East Asia, Russia and others. If you are approaching retirement and want a great experience using your experience in new and different ways, call the senior missionary department and asked what you can do.
Below are some of the pictures I took in Cartagena.

Coming in from the airport along the beach

Down the block from our hotel
Old Historic Cartagena. Cartagena is definately a tourist town. However, it is also a the major exporting port for Colombia so there are huge shipyards. Cartagena away from the tourist area is like any Colombian town. Street venders and small shops everywhere and incredably happy people. It is hot (really hot) in Caragena. The taxi's are all airconditioned which I really appreciated. However, I was glad to get back to the perpetual spring like weather of Bogota.

The beaches

Typical Market from the back streets of Cartagena while we were looking for the chapel

Flowers at the hotel

A Food court in an area away from the beach Saturday night after the training.

Nicer neighborhood in Cartagena

Bicycle Taxies in just like in Bogota

One of the Chapels in Cartagena. There are two stakes in Cartagena. I don't know how many wards. We visited two chapels but there are more.

Training in Mexico City

2008-07-17T18:43:00.000-07:00

Dad and I in Central Mexico City. Mexico City is built on the ruins of another city, and that city was built on a lake. All of Mexico City sits on kind of a bed of jello. The City is sinking at the rate of 3 inches a year and the trees around town are being used as foundations. The roots are ringed with steel. The white pillers on each conor of the monument in the picture above used to sit at street level. Now the street is way below them. The population of Mexico City is 29 million. It is one of the 3 largest cities in the world. I think Toyko is larger and Sao Paulo Brazil trades back and forth with Mexico City for 2nd and 3rd. Dad and I have now been in both Sao Paulo and Mexico City. I didn't ride the city buses here in Mexico City like we did in Sao Paulo. We were really pretty sheltered. They didn't want to loose us so they kept us on a pretty short leash. Luckly our Hotel was within walking distance of Mexico City's largest park. Although we didn't get to the zoo in the park, we did get to look around and had a great time the morning we were leaving. Below are Dad and Miguel Angel by the same monument with one of Mexico City's many, many, many large modern skyscrapers in the background. This was part of the massive lobby of our hotel

The minstrals guarding the stairway The picture below was taken out of our bed room window and shows part of the hotel fitness center. The pool is right under that structure of glass. You can see my fingers taking the picture in the reflection
The picture of the swimming pool below only shows about 1/2 of the pool. It was a full 25 yards long. We didn't swim here though. We might when we go to Cartegena this weekend. Next week after Cartegena we may end up in Bolivia. I have been working with a Sister here who may need to be accompanied home. We will see. The Church Auditing Department brought together in Mexico City all the Auditor Trainers for the Areas of the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, South America North and South America West. They are trying to simplify and increase the function of the Audit forms and wanted some input from those who are working with them and training people to use them. The training was in Spanish, with a very few comments in English when I needed to get a point across. I can usually follow the conversation enough to know what they are talking about. I just don't know what they are saying about it. Luckly, Dad and Miguel were there to translate for me. Actually Dad did a good job of translating for Miguel and for me so that we could understand each other. We didn't get a seperate picture of the couple on the left side. They are from Mexico. They are like Miguel Angel and Nancy in Colombia. They have an extra church calling as Area Auditor Trainer part time Missionaries. Miguel is also on the High Council and Nancy is the Stake Relief Society president and Miguel works full time for an insurance company. I don't know what else the couple from Mexico does but it absolutely amazes me the amount of time that they and others like them put in. We could use 10 senior missionary couples for every one that is serving. The three other couples are all missionary couples serving in various areas. And the other people are either church employees supervising audits and accounting or single men serving in home area auditor trainer positions.

This couple is doing the same thing we are in the Caribbean. There are 4 languages spoken in their area. His spanish is quite good and they have some assistants that help in the other language areas. The tall guy on the left end of the group picture serves in their area. He speaks all 4 languages, French, Hatian, Spanish and English.

The couple below works in Central America. They are in Guatamala City right now. They have been out for 18 months of their 23 and both are speaking spanish enough to teach the auditors in their own language and to make themselves understood in a Spanish speaking country. She is really a dynamo and is not afraid to say anything even if she comes accross a little like a grenga. They spent 2 years in the peace corp in Ecuador, and She taught English in Japan. They rode bicycles back and forth to work in Japan. Her native language is German. She immigrated to the US in th 1950's just as she was entering high school. She does not speak Japanese. The Japanese prefer that those that come to teach English, teach totally in English. Neither their assignment in Ecuador with the peace corp or the English Teaching she did in Japan were Church related. They are planning to go out again on another Church mission after they have been home for a few months.

Enjoying the sites in Mexico City. After two days of training we had a morning to go explore. Our plane didn't leave until 4:15 so we took some sight seeing time.

2008-07-12T17:36:00.000-07:00

This evening we went over the the chapel by the temple for a festival in Migel Angel and Nancy's ward. It was wonderful. They had a dance celelebrating the Atlantic Region. They make a traditional hat out of Palms there, so there were lots of hats. They had a seminar before the dance on emergency preparedness in Bogota that was really good. They have earthquakes here so it was about earthquake preparation. The two pictures below show the set up for the dance. The room we are in is the chapel on Sunday. The Benches are movable and so they are pushed back against the wall to make dance floor.

They had a live band. I took video that I posted below but I took it with my little digital camera and there is no sound.You can see some of the hats here:
This is Miguel Angel and Nancy Bosa. They are getting to be good friends.

Typical of teenagers the girls all congrigated on one side and boys on the other.

There were old people and ninos. This little sister is 94. She and I danced for a few minutes. She is with her daughter here.

Horses

2008-07-10T19:23:00.000-07:00

This city is so very interesting. There are street vendors everywhere. There are little stands on every corner almost and in the middle of the block people lay out blankets or sheets of plastic and display items on them, Food of all kinds is sold by street venders but they also sell cell phone minutes and cell phones and umbrellas and pens and jewelry and newspapers and maps and just about anything else you can think of. One minute they may have a display of cell phones and remote controlls for TV's or game joysticks and then it will start to rain and they will bring out umbrellas and scarfs and hats. The food booths sells every thing from hot meat arapas (kind of like a peta bread stuffed with hot meat or whatever) to ice cream and fruit and every thing in between. They are resupplied by two or three wheeled bicycles that bring in supplies. The picture below shows a street vender and a resupply tricycle. You can't see the front of the resupply wagon just the back two wheels but the guy that is resuppling the vendor just rode up as we got there.

Bicycles and motorcycles and horse drawn carts are important for transportation. We have seen them carrying things you would not believe. We saw a motor cycle with 4 or 5 sticks of 1 inch pvc pipe straped to the side sticking out the front and the back of the bike. The pipes were at least 10-12 ft long. The next thing we saw was two motorcyclests working together to carry a floor polisher. Bicycles routinely pass us with push brooms and equipment for street cleaning. Both Bicycles and motorcycles serve as delivery vehicles for all kinds of resturants and local merchants. The guy below is loading up to deliver Hambergers but they also deliver pizza and chinise food and packages, as well as pipe, floor polishers, and whatever else needs to be moved. There are big trucks and major construction projects but there is a whole economy that is very family entrepernurship oriented (how do you like that for a sentence). The bicycles and motorcycles help supply this economy.

Horse drawn carts like the ones below pick up the wood crates and cardboard boxes from the venders and remove them from the area. They compete for space on the streets with the cars and buses and motorcycles. The bicycles have there own paths and watch out when then they are headed toward you with a full load.

The city is remarkably clean. The horse drawn carts provide one part of the garbage/recycle system. There are regular trucks that pick up on the major steets. Businesses and residences have certain days and times that they put garbage out on the street and then a truck and runners come by and pick it up. On the interior streets where regular truck traffic is not a good idea, hand drawn carts do the same job. See below.
Street sweepers sweep the dirt and leaves and debry from the street by hand. You can see them working along the sides of the road even in heavy traffic. People acctually wash and polish the stones outside their building. (That's why the floor polisher). On saturday especailly there are all kinds of business cleaning the tile and stone and sidewalk outside of their buildings.

The pictures below were taken on Sunday as we walked to Church. The city shuts down on Sunday. Most roads are closed to all but emergency traffic and major road ways are turned into bicycle ways so people can ride or push strollers or wheel chairs without any traffic. It is called Cyclevia and it occurs every sunday and on holidays. I stopped on the bridge over one of the main autopistas in the city and took several shots so you could see the city scape. (Remember this is our little part ie 2/12's of 1/4 review the last post for reference)

Below are some glimpses of traffic. Remeber the pictures above were taken on Sunday when traffic is blocked from major roadways.

Musings of a New Bus User in Bogotá, Colombia

2008-07-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

We are now riding the bus to work in the morning and walking home in the evening. Let me tell you in a little more detail what our part of the city is like. The area that I am talking about is definitely not the whole city.
This city is laid out on a grid. The streets that run parallel to the mountains (basically N and S) are called Carreras and the streets that run East and West are called Calles. We live on Calle 100 and we work on Calle 72. There are about 10 blocks to a mile so we live about 3 miles from work.
We live between Carrara 15 and Carrara 11. Our address is Calle 100 number 13-41. Which means that we live 41 meters from the corner of Calle 100 and Carrara 13. (There is, however, no corner for Carrara 12, 13, or 14 on Calle 100. It is just one long block between the two major Calles 11 and 15. However, right behind us those other streets do exist so they number the houses and buildings by where the corners would be if they went through. Carrara 11 is a one way heading south and Carrara 15 is a one way headed north. Both streets are full of 4 to 6 lanes of buses, taxis, motorcycles, horse drawn carts, and private vehicles. Both have the lanes of traffic separated into 2 main sections with trees and a green belt in between. There is also a bicycle route on both streets that is separate from the car lanes so the bicycle traffic is also pretty heavy and then both sides of the street have wide walkways for pedestrians.
There are hundreds of buses each hour that go down Carrara 11 toward Calle 72. Most of them never turn. They pick up and drop off passengers all along the street.
To catch a bus, you stand on the the edge of the street and stick your hand out and hope they pull over and pick you up. They only stop long enough for you to get in the front door. There is a turn style at the top of 3 stairs up into the bus and you pay the driver or an assistant and then go through the turn style. All of this takes place after the bus has started moving again and while you and maybe 3 or 4 others are precariously jockeying for position on the stairs so you don´t fall out backwards. (you can laugh or cry at this point in your Reading—It really is quite an art to get on and off a bus. We are much better at it now than the first time we tried it.)
Since there are hundreds of buses each hour, Darwin and I have gotten good at looking for one that is not too crowded and that does not have a big group of people waiting for it. We avoid getting on at the corners or bus stops and instead wait in the middle of a block until we can flag one down so we have an easier time getting on. Children are currently not in school. They tell us that once the children go back to school our ability to get non crowed buses will be non existent.
The bus ride itself is like a Disney roller coaster ride minus the up and down. But the bus moves across 3 lanes of traffic sometimes speeding along really fast but always swerving between the 3 to 5 lanes of traffic. It can be in the far left lane and see a person waive it down and swerve over to pick them up. Remember that between that bus and the new passenger may be 4 taxis and two more buses all swerving in and out of the lanes. We never go more than two or at the most 3 blocks without changing lanes and sometimes we miss the bus next to us by 2 to 3 inches. I have been so close to the people on the bus next to us that if the window was open we could not only shake hands we could kiss.
Getting off is also exciting. When you want to get off you stand up and move to the back door. Remember you may be lurching through several lanes of traffic to stop for someone so moving gracefully down the bus is impossible. You move but grace left when you got on. You stand at the back of the bus and when you want to get off you push a button on the bar by the back door and the driver swerves over to the right lane and lets you off. I am always about half panicked because Darwin gets off first so he can take my hand to get down that last step and I am never sure that the bus won't take off while I still have one leg in it. The simulated danger of a Disney ride is nothing compared to every day living in Bogota. (I guess any big South American city). Yesterday I was pointing something out to Darwin across the street and raised my hand to point. I ended up hailing down two taxis and and a bus. I have to make sure not to make any stray hand gestures or I have drivers swerving right into me.
We are beginning to get very comfortable. We have never seen a car accident and we have never seen anyone hit by a car (pushed a Little) but never hit. (Intersections between pedestrians, street venders and vehicles(all types) are really interesting.) Newtons law that says no two things can occupy the same space at the same time doesn't apply here. The cars, buses and taxis do not have dents in them and the bicycles and horse carts fit right in. Everyone knows how the system operates and it works. It absolutely amazes me every time I get off a bus in one piece or make it to a destination in a taxi after having avoided 10 accidents by a hairs breath but we do make it and really do feel very safe.
We only take the bus one way and then walk home. It costs 1200 pasos which is about .75 cents each for our one way ride. Neither Darwin or I are sure our hearts could take riding both ways especially since at night we sometimes end up having to take a taxi to work with Migel at his house or do a training at one of the stakes in the city. So in the evening after work we walk home. We have been walking back down Carrara 11 but with all the traffic it is really smoggy. It is a wonderful walk because there are lots of shops and people and street vendors but our landlord suggested that we take Carrara 13 so we tried that last night. It was like a walk in a park. So peaceful and quiet. There was some traffic but nothing like on the major streets. There were lots of areas that were just like parks. No smoke and smog. There were still lots of people and shops and some street vendors for fruit and other things. There was, however, no bike path so if we get bikes we will have to stick to 11 or 15. However, I think we will walk down 13 from now on.
I am posting this without pictures because this computer at work does not have a port for my camera card. However, I will post some pictures tomorrow.
One more thing before I go.
More of the adventures of the Stulls in South America later. We leave for Mexico City for 4 days on Sunday and then next weekend we will be in Cartagena.

First Week

2008-06-30T10:35:00.000-07:00

Vicki's putting the pictures together, so I'm going to write a little about what's been going on the last two weeks.

We arrived in Bogotá late June 13th. We had a little trouble getting through immigration at the airport, until they found our visas in our passports. We didn't have any problems with customs—we got a green light, so no inspection.

We were met at the airport by two people from my office. They took us to the temple patron housing, where they had stocked our apartment with food and made sure we had everything we needed. We were across the parking lot from the temple, so we took advantage of that.

The next day (Saturday) we met my boss and some of the members of the church. We took a walk to a mall about ½ mile from the temple. The traffic is intense and taxi rides are white knuckle experiences, but the drivers seem to get through them okay.

It took us about a week to find a permanent apartment. We're about 30 blocks from work, so we get a good hike in when we walk. Usually we take a taxi, because it isn't safe to carry our computers that far. Eventually we'll get our computers at work, then we won't have to haul ours back and forth. Once that happens we'll walk almost every day. When we get back to the US we should be in good shape.

This is a long weekend. Monday is a holiday. I asked one of the folks at work what the holiday was all about. He said no one knows (I think it's San Pedro's day). They just have lots of holidays. We expect to spend some time with my mentor/trainer doing some sightseeing on Monday.

We'll be going to Mexico City in July, as well as to a couple of other cities in Colombia (including Cartagena). In August we'll go to Ecuador for about 10 days to put on some training.

We're inviting ourselves to various areas to provide training for the stake and ward auditors. There is a high turn over, so we need to repeat that training often.

When we go out to train the auditors, the mission presidents try to see Vicki. All of them have some missionaries who need some help, and they see Vicki as a life boat. We spent four hours today with a mission president and his wife discussing some of the problems they're having. They obviously care a lot about their missionaries, and want to help them find their way in life.

We're having fun with the language. Vicki understands a lot of what she hears, and confirms the rest with me (a reversal of our usual roles). Most of the folks we work with understand a lot of English, but are limited in their ability to speak. Today's visit with Pres. & Sis. Martinez was typical. Vicki spoke to them in English, and they spoke to her in Spanish. I was able to fill in the gaps when they didn't understand, but that wasn't all that often.

We have found several stores where we like to shop. A couple of days ago we went to a place called Carrefour. It's a French owned chain like Walmart, only the store is much bigger, and the aisles aren't crowded with merchandise. It was a comfortable place to shop. After we got what we wanted to there, we went across the street to a fruit and vegetable store. It was amazing how much fruit we were able to find. We're trying new things every day. We eat a lot differently than we're used to. Our new diet is probably pretty healthy.

There's too much going on to tell all of it. We're always amazed as we watch horse drawn carts, buses, bicycles, motorcycles, cars and even an occasional truck on the crowded streets. What would be two lanes in the US becomes four lanes here. About every third car is a taxi, but we have to be careful not to hail them down when we want a ride. We call a taxi service and request a ride. They give a license plate number (which is also printed on the side of the vehicle) and a security code. When the taxi arrives, we have to give the driver the code so he can call it in.

The motorcycle laws are interesting. All the riders have to wear helmets and vests with the license plate numbers in huge letters. We never see a motorcyclist without a helmet. We've seen a lot of near accidents, but never one that actually occurred. We hardly ever see a car with a dent. Crowding in with a car seems to be an accepted way of life. We sometimes see traffic cops, but we never see them pull anyone over. If there are rules of the road, we don't know what they are. I guess the main rule is that whoever is biggest has the right of way, or whoever honks first gets to go through the intersection first.

Private security is everywhere, which is both comforting and disconcerting at the same time. We're glad to have the security, but we wish it wasn't necessary. There are police on every block, and at night they carry sub-machine guns. We have to go through security to get into our building at work, and our computer serial numbers are checked when we enter and when we leave. When we leave our apartment, the security guard at the door lets us out, and lets us back in when we return. It's kind of nice to know that strangers can't just walk into our building.

There is much to tell, but not enough time to tell it right now. We'll add more on our next blog update. We're having new and different experiences every day, and enjoying every bit of it. Wish we could have done this years ago!

Catch up

2008-06-14T18:50:00.000-07:00

Ok here we go. It has been a couple of weeks since I have been able to update this blog and a lot has happened. First of all we are finally in Bogota. We got here last night late. We were on visa hold for a while We are temporarily in housing on the grounds of the Bogota, Temple.

If you go to google and then to maps for Bogota Colombia and look at the satellite photo you can almost see us. Just put in Mormon Temple Bogota Colombia in the search box and 5 locations will come up. It is the one that is furtherist north. I don’t know what the others are. We are in the wing of the L shaped building that is closest to the Temple. Zoom in to one hash mark from the top.

This Temple is Huge. It is as long as the Salt Lake Temple and just a little bit smaller in width and just as tall. I will talk more about our adventures here so far later , (we have walked to the Mall and gone into the neighborhoods around the Temple looking for the Chapel where we will go to church tomorrow.) But first I want to talk some more about our experience in the MTC.

The MTC is an amazing place. The young missionaries are given assignments to go stop a senior couple and teach them a short principle or share their testimony in their new language. They catch us while we are between classes or in the laundry or going to meals. The senior couples are given basically the same assignment except it is to stop young missionaries and teach and/or speak to them in the language we are learning.

As a result all over the MTC grounds you see little groups of usually 4 (two elders or sisters talking to a senior couple) And you know what is going on. This gets done a lot during the first 2 weeks a new missionary is in language training. We have had several sets come up to us. Some from the US going Spanish speaking, some from Korea going English speaking. One group was from Canada and Australia going German Speaking. In addition we have seen lots of other people practicing their languages. We have several pictures in the slide show below of Elders and Sisters who have practiced their language skills with us.

The two elders in the Fiji shirts are going to Fiji but the short one, is one of three missionaries in training from a small Island just off of the Marshal Islands. He has his own native language and is here learning both English (which he had never had the opportunity to speak or hear before) and Fijian(also new to him.) There are no native speakers of his language at the MTC (which is unusual). He is one of several elders and sisters that are coming in from the Islands.

One of the problems these Elders and Sisters face is that they have never worn shoes. Even the Samoan and Tongon Elders have problems in shoes but these three from this particular Island are really having trouble. We talked to their branch president and he indicated that they are all currently in flip flops because their feet are so sore and blistered, even on the tops of the toes. He says he has had to have the medical staff attend to a couple of them because they are so excited to be here that they don’t want to complain. Their toes are all spread out instead of being bunched together like someone who wears shoes. It is hard for them to walk in regular shoes. A moccasin like shoe has been created for them and they will transition to that after they get the sores healed.

Foot issues were one of the things we got training on in the medical department. It underscores some of the problems that we deal with. Some Elders have been raised going to the Doctor about every little problem and complain about everything. They have very little tolerance for the discomfort that mission life can bring. When they struggle with the language and are sleeping and eating in sometimes less than adequate situations they get discouraged and a few have a hard time adjusting. Most of them usually make the adjustment expecially when they get into the field and can see the conditions that many people in the world live in. They develop a sense of gratitude and go to work to help make things better.

Some, however, think that God doesn’t love them if they have to experience some difficult times. Others are genuinely ill either physically or they have a major mental health challenge that can not be helped in the field. That’s where I come in. Part of my job is helping those that want to stay in the field have the help they need in the field if it is feasible. Some of these are the best ,most hard working elders. They are not slackers but the extreme stress of the mission makes the issues they struggle with worse or brings them out in the first place. If they reach a point where they can not function (and we have some guide lines for that) than we have to bring them home for treatment. There is a difference between the Elder who is suffering from the “Traditions of His Fathers” ie a life of plenty and no real discomforts in life and the one who goes over the edge into a serious mental health challenge that needs better treatment and less stress than we can offer in the field. Elders and Sisters have to be able to do the work. If they can’t than we work with them to come to some kind of an agreement that they need treatment at home.

It is always hard to send an Elder or Sister Home but sometimes it has to be done. The other part of this delimma is that we have Elders like the Island Elders and Sisters I have talked about have come from such humble circumstances that they will ignore even the worst pain in order to continue to serve. We have to be careful at both ends of the “Traditions of their Fathers” spectrum. I can tell you that we have fewer Elders from poverty areas of the globe experiencing depression and anxiety. They experience psychosis at about the same rate .

Below are the pictures I have taken so far in Colombia. My Spanish is inadequate and improving rapidly. I even bought soap (jabon) at a small neighborhood Drug store kind of on my own, ie I sort of did the talking (a lot of hand guesturing and a few words). I also bought a few things like flour and sugar at a major grocery store. (You have to go through security to park in the lot and you have to pay to get out. ) It was a as crowded and noisy as it is on a Saturday afternoon at any store in the US and they have anything and everything you could think of including US products (which cost an arm and a leg). I can’t give you any price comparisons yet. I don’t know the exchange rate well enough to figure it out.

We walked along the bike route to a big mall (see slide show below)and looked around but the grocery store is not in the Mall. Br Barlow, who Darwin will be working with (He is the comptroller for the SA North Area), took us. He is leaving Tuesday for a months vacation in the US so we don’t know who will be English Speaking down here to get us oriented. We will be shopping on Monday and Tues for an apartment. That could be interesting.

The Car situation here is interesting. Taxi’s and buses are everywhere and are cheap. There are private cars but they are given certain days when they can be on the road and other days when they can’t be. It is by licenses plate number. Br. Barlow said that right now he cannot dirve his car on Tues and Friday. That will switch to Monday and Thursday in August. On Sunday they totally shut down most major roads into the central city and make them bike and pedestrian only.

We are very much on our own until Monday when we will go into the office for the first time. They did give dad a cell phone right away so we have contact numbers. But anybody’s best bet to get us is by email. As I said we are in Patron Housing on the Temple grounds. The Temple has security personnel on duty around the clock. They have been very helpful. Everybody down here is just great. The Temple president lives in this complex but mostly these apartments are for the Temple patrons that come in from areas away from the city. There were lots of families here today(Saturday). Enough for now. More next week. Check out the pictures of the water system in the slide show
.
PS Note. While at the Grocery store I bought noodles and some canned tuna and some soup to make tuna noodle casserole. We are not going to be here in this apartment long so I wanted stuff that was simple and quick. This apartment is furnished and has utensils but after I had finished cooking the noodles I discovered that we didn’t have a can opener. Talk about “Traditions of the Fathers”. I just assumed that a stocked kitchen would have a can opener but they don’t use that many canned foods down here; those of us who don’t cook well with all natural ingredients have expectations by tradition that just don't hold up here.

Scenes from the MTC

2008-06-05T14:10:00.000-07:00

The pictures that follow are just a few of the sites at the MTC. We have taken some pictures of the grounds and some of the pictures hanging on the walls in the main building. There are probably 300 or more photos of Elders and Sisters serving around the world. We have also included a picture of the map showing the 17 Missionary training centers and pictures of a few of the international MTC's. I hope you like them. Leave a note that you have been here or sign the guest book at www.darvic.net/joomla

Church on Sunday at the MTC

2008-06-02T18:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was incredable. We were assigned to the 57th branch. There are 57 branches (ie church congregations) at the MTC but there are not that many that are Comprised of Elders and Sisters learning to speak english (ESL). Branch 57 is one of those. We had Elders and Sisters in the branch from Tonga, Samoa, Japan, Mainland China, and Pakistan. Some of the other couples were with Elders and Sisters from Mexico and South Ameria and had church in Spanish. There were still others who were having church in Spanish with other Spanish speaking Elders. Since yesterday was fast sunday (for those non members of the LDS Church-- a day set a side to fast - go without food for two meals and donate the money you save by not eating those two meals for the blessing of the poor and needy) During the meeting of our branch we had several of the Tongans, and two Samoans, and one sister from China stand and speak in English. The Tongans had been here for 7 weeks and were speaking quite well. The little Sister from China Got up and spoke. She has only been in the US for 1 week and spoke with broken but understandable English. It was wonderful to be there and feel their spirit. They were all dedicated and had strong testimonies that Joseph Smith did in fact see the Father and the Son in a vision and that Moroni (a resurrectuded being did infact deliver The Book of Mormon to Joseph who translated it by the power of God.) After Church we went to a fireside where the Senior Couples sit down front and were overwhelmed by the 2000 Elders and Sisters sitting behind us as they sang.

We wandered the halls of the MTC looking a pictures of Elders and Sisters, teaching, performing services, building, baptising and doing all that you do when you are in the service of the Lord.

Today we went to the church Office building in SALT Lake. We had the first of 4 days of medical and mental health area adviser orientation. In addition I will still be meeting with my tutor this week on Wed-Frid and then we fly out on Monday Jun 10, 2008. At our meetings today they informed me that my counterpart that was supposed to go to the South America West Area, (which is Bolivia and Peru) can't make it so I will have 10 more missions to look after for a while. We have a Doctor in Lima so that will help.

We were assigned a car from the BYU car pool. It was a Toyota Prius Hybred. It was fun to drive. There were gages that showed what kind of gas milage you were getting. We are hoping that in two years BYU will be ready to sell these and buy new ones. Maybe we can buy a used one when we get back.

Well enough for today. I will try to post more pictures tomorrow. To my grand kids.----I want you to know that I know that God lives and is our loving Heavenly Father. Jesus Christ is his son and came to earth to overcome death and provide for our return to our Father in Heaven if we would make the changes necessary in our lives to show that we love Him and that we will take upon us His name and keep His commandements.. If we will do that he will make weak things strong in our lives and will through His power make us better than we are. He loves us and Leads this Church through His prophet on the earth. That man is Thomas S Monson.

I will be back soon with more pictures.

Vicki (Mom and Grandma)

Some couples that went through us

2008-05-31T18:38:00.000-07:00

Below are some pictures of a few of the couples that we have been with all week. There were 15 couples plus one single older sister this week. This was a very small group. Usually they have twice that many and next week they are slated for a larger group. We loved the time we spent with these couples about half of our group will go foriegn and the other half are in the US. Also about half have served on at least one other full time couple mission. There was lots of experience in the group.

Our teachers were wonderful and the material was great and very useful. We taught alot to volunteers and they have learned to role play really well.

On the last day they brought in some former senior missionaries for the whole group and a couple of nursed who had been on medical missions. One of the companionships was two senior sisters, the oldest of whom was 85. She turned 80 5 months into her 18 month mission. Her companion was in her late 60's. The were assigned to a little town (about 6 square blocks) in the outback of Austrailia. There experiences were and suggestions were inspiring and wonderful. This 80 + year old sister had more ability in her little finger than I have seen in most people half her age. She was so dynamic.

We had so many good experiences here. We have one more week of training. All next week we will be getting training from the Church Medical and Social Services offices. See you all later. Keep checking in. We now fly out on Monday Jun 9th, 2008.

Someplace in South East Asia and/or Mylasia

Didn't get this couple by the map. They headed out early. They had their medical training a week early and are now on the way to Hong Kong.

Colombia, Venazuela, and Equador - Spanish Speaking

The West Indies and Guyana--Just a wave away from us

Orlando Florida

Mosambique - Portuguese Speaking

Malasia -

This was our district. We were the medical district One couple to the Marshal Islands, One couple to Hong Kong Asia Area - English Speaking plus one couple going to Tiwain- Manderin Speaking and us to South America North

Pictures from the MTC

2008-05-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

The Milling Crowd while new young Elders and Sisters come in. Groups like this are all over the lobby.

Outside the MTC

Christy and Anthony saying goodby

Our Room in the MTC

Email that went out

2008-05-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

This is just a note to all of you that we promised to keep informed. We entered the MTC yesterday (Mission Training Center for the non members of our church- please excuse us if our lingo sounds like alphabet soup. We have a ton of acranyms. I think we in this church could speak for days and never complete a sentence that didn't have an acranym in it.) Entering and beginning training was an overwhelming experience. Seniors come in on Monday, Young Elders and Sisters from the US and Canada come in on Wed. and Foriegn Elders and Sisters that are coming here for English training come in on Thursday. There are other language training missions around the world so not all missionaries come here. There are between 1800-2000 Young Elders and Sisters and about 100 Seniors here now. We are in training or have homework most of the day. I have a few minutes tonight because we just finished a Devotional. It was done by Sister Ann Dibb, she is a counselor in the Young Woman's Presidency and the Daughter of President Monson. Her remarks were about the characteristics of her father. It was a great experience. The Seniors all sit down front and it was overwhelming when 2000 missionaries behind us sang Called to Serve. The couples we are in the MTC with are mostly Humanitarian and Welfare missionaries with a few going in other directions and 3 medical and 5 proselyting. We have couples with us who are going to the Republic of Georgia (humanitarian), Tiwain (Proselyting) Hong Kong (Medical), Singapore(humanitarian), the Marshal Islands(medical), Surenam(Proselyting), Canada(Proselyting), Germany (Humanitarian), Madagascar( can't remember to do what) and Us to Colombia(medical and auditing). The rest are going to places in the US, About half of the couples have already served at least one mission. Some have served more. There is another group of seniors here as well who are finishing up training for Church Education System Missions. And there are some mission presidents and wives learning languages. I met one the other day struggling with tagalog (I think) anyway what they speak in the Phillipines. It is amazing the language program that goes on here. Starting Friday I will be teaching gospel discussions in Spanish. That is a scary thought since I am not quite even sure how to ask to go the bathroom. I just finished an exercised where I had to give Darwin commands and directions and get him from one place to another in Spanish. I only walked him into a poll a couple of times. Oh well. You will find that this post is repeated on our blog which is at www.darvic.net/joomla in the Blog Zone under Darwin and Vicki Blog. This will be the only time. From now on I will probably just send out some notes that say I have posted some things. I will try to post weekly (or daily if things are exciting.)

Oh By the Way. We have learned that we will be traveling a lot in Colombia and Ecuedor and we will have a 2 day training with the auditor trainers from the Carribian, Mexico, Central America and Western South America in Mexico City in July so I will try to keep the pictures and posts coming. The pictures that will go up with this post are just a few scenes from the MTC on Wed of Last Week when we shout a few pictures of the 10:00 batch of missionaries coming in. I also hope to have a picture of our MTC Tutor up. So check it out. Again it is in the BLOG ZONE - Darwin and Vicki Blog at www.darvic.net/joomla

Love you all and miss you.

Vicki

MTC It is hectic.

2008-05-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

t is time for bed but I wanted to write a little bit about today. Today is May 26, 2008. We entered the MTC today. It was interesting. They didn't have any of our material because someone had indicated that we were not coming. It is a long story as to how that happened and I will tell it later for now lets just say that Darwin was looking forward to getting his name tag and that was one of the things that was not available. They got things straightened out so we were able to get a room but will not have a name tag or id card until wednesday. In the mean time we have keys to our room but no key to the building we live in so we have to go in when others can open the door for us. Other than a minor problem about whether we were supposed to be here or not every thing went fine. It is kind of overwhelming to be here. There are only 15 couples and one single older sister in our group of senior missionaries for this week. We are headed all over the world. I need to go to bed now so will write more tomorrow.

It is Tuesday and we are headed to a devotional. Will try to write later. For those of you who don't know much about the MTC (Missionary Training Center) you can look at this link.

http://www.mtc.byu.edu/about.htm

Visits

2008-05-19T22:12:00.000-07:00

We have had a wonderful time this past week as we have finished our preprations for leaving the country for two years. We have visited family and friends and said goodby for a season to people we love and appreciate. We caught Michelle Lewis off guard when we stopped in and said goodby to her on our way up to Great Falls. We stayed with my brother, Skip and his wife, Deb and used their house as a base off operations as we took some time to do some visiting with friends from Wards in Great Falls as well as other good friends that we miss now that we are in Idaho. Marcia Armstrong stopped by and we spent time with Lola Tracy, Shelia, Cherron and Pop Cunningham and Jim and Cindy Asthalter as well as many others. Thank you all for being good friends. This will be one of the last pre mission blog entries. I hope you will check in as we try to share some of what is happening to us in our new assignment in Colombia and Ecuador.

Cindy and Jim, We love you and will miss you. Thank you for a wonderful dinner and a wonderful friendship. Start studing Spanish.

Skip and Deb we love you, too. More than I think you understand. You are a great little brother, even if you have called me the "Crab Grass in the Lawn of Life" Don't worry we will stay out of the jungle.

We stopped by Temple Square to join with all those who were wishing Josh Kundis and his a new Bride a great beginning.

And what would a trip to Provo be if I didn't get to the BYU campus. These are shots of Library, not the best place for looking at the prize winning landscaping but great for remembering all the hours you spent studing if you too were a student or faculty member here. I was both. I was at BYU for two years as an undergraduate and then came back and spent some time as a counselor in the counseling center. This campus feels like home every time I come back.

Set Apart as Missionaries tonight

2008-05-08T22:56:00.000-07:00

Darwin and I were set apart tonight by President Bues. We will be leaving Idaho on Friday. We hope to be back to Salt Lake City on the 16th to go to Josh Kundis's Wedding reception.

My Aunt Alma 90

2008-05-07T22:22:00.000-07:00

After Ben's graduation we flew to Sacramento, California. We stayed with Kaye and Dan Wilson my cousins whom I have not seen for over 15 years. Alma is the wife of my mother's brother Gene. Gene and Alma and Hike (my mothers other brother) and Lorene his Wife and My mom and dad used to get together at my parents home each summer so I knew my Aunts and Uncles really well, however, I did not know my cousins Kaye and Keith (her brother) and their spouses as adults. Kaye hosted a 90th birthday party for Alma (Hike is 92) and these two are the only ones left alive of the 3 couples. Kaye and Dan were great hosts and we had a wonderful time. I spent some time each day in the hamock.

Alma is a little person who looks fragil on the outside but who has had plenty of adventure. Including living in Siagon, Vietnam while Gene built runways and roads during the Vietnam War and traveling down the Amazon in a boat full of chickens. Not at all the "little old lady" type she was an inspiration to me and fit right in with my mother and grandmother, great grand mother and great aunt Jenetta. All of whom were women of courage and strength and get up and go, not a shrinking violet in the bunch.

This is Kelsey, Kaye's youngest daughter doing Irish step dancing. She spent a year in Ireland and just got back from spending some time with her older sister who is studing in New Zealand.

Kaye and Dan trying to auction off the left overs from the party to the highest bidder. We we were all stuffed on mints and check mix. (Addicted is more like it)

This is the hamock that called to me each day and where I enjoyed the California Spring.

Darwin and I at Kaye and Dans.

2008-05-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

I have not posted for a while so I am going to do some catching up. Darwin and I were in Phoenix with Ben, Kirsten and Kate. Ben graduated on May 2, 2008 with an MBA in International Finance from The Thunderbird School of Global Management. According to the Graduation Program the Thunderbird Mission is: "We educate global leaders who create sustainable prosperity worldwide." If graduation was any indication they really do have a diverse program. There were flag bearers from 36 different nations. In order to have a flag in the ceremony you had to have at lease 2 people graduating from that country. Because the faculty and student body is from all over the world so was the audience. There were people who had just gotten off the plane from Beijing, Bancock, Israel, Jordon, Lebanon, and France sitting close to us. There was a little family from India right in front of us with 2 kids. Many of the families were dressed in traditional dress. Steven Forbes the CEO of Forbes Magazine was the graduation speaker. We are proud of Ben. He is currently on a internship junket to south America. He spent a week in Argentina and is now in Chili for two weeks. Kirsten will join him for 4 days in Santiago. They will be moving to the San Fransisco Bay area as soon as they get back. Ben has taken a job as an international financial analyst with a consulting firm that assess the worth of foreign properties and major business acquisitions. (I really don't know exactly what he will be doing but it has something to do with valuing companies to give other companies some idea of what a business is worth before they buy it) Here are some pictures from graduation day and the graduate reception that took place on May 1.

Studying Spanish at Ben's and other excitement

2008-04-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

We have a lot of pictures this time. There has been alot happening. We are still with Ben and Kirsten and Kate.

Kate is fun to be with and she really is as cute as she looks. She has her moments though and when she is tired she wants nothing to do with anyone except mommy.

She is a climber extrodinar. I really can't believe it. She has been climbing on the funiture and up into a shelf area for some time and she is very good at using their really tall chairs for a jungle gym. While we have been here she has learned how to move from the chair to the high chair and then out of the high chair and down to the floor. The first time she got out of the high chair and down we didn't see it happen but the second time Ben and I watched as she negociated her way down the leg of the high chair after she had transfered there from the chair.

This is right before church but it is my usual position. I am working with a tutor from the MTC. We have a 1 hour session 3 days a week and I have between 6 and 8 hours of homework between sessions. The church has very good language resources for senior missionaries. Yo hablo español un poco. Mi español está mejorando. (I speak spanish a little. My spanish is improving)

These are pictures of the stadium that the Pheonix Cardinals use. It was the site of the Superbowl this year. (Since I am a complete football neophyte that was news to me). It is quite the building. It is the only stadium in the world that has it's grass on a rolling tray that is taken outside to get light and be watered. Most of the time the grass is outside. It is rolled in under the redzone sign above and fills the whole floor. It is incredable how it works. We toured with a tour guide for about one and 1/2 hours. There was a miniuture radio controlled air plane compitition going on down on the floor and the NFL draft (on TV) party was going on on the second level. They use the building for a lot of different things.

Kirstin and Ben and Kate flew to San Francisco on Monday to sign the lease on their new appartment and then flew home the same day. It was Kate's first plane trip. She did great but she was wiped out the next day. This is the wild woman look that she sported as she caught up on her sleep on Tuesday.

It wasn't all that easy to sleep on Tuesday because the Satalite dish people were putting in new wiring for the apartment complex that Ben and Kirsten live in. This is a huge complex. Ben and Kirsten live in Building 18 one of about 20 12 plexes but wouldn't you know it, the work was going on right outside their 3rd floor appartment. They were pounding and drilling and it was really noisy. All of a sudden it got even noisier and Kirsten and I saw a one inch drill bit come through the wall at a 45 degree angle and go into the ceiling. The guys thought they knew where they were drilling but missed the target and hit Ben's wall. Not only did they put a hole in the wall, they also knicked the wiring in the wall and blew a circut breaker to all the lights and fans in the appartment. The rest of the day was spent in repair work. We had electricians in and dry wall guys in. The Satalite guys kind of disappeard for a while but they are back today with more pounding outside. So far no more holes though. Enough excitment for one day. Ben graduates on Friday. He is trying to study for a couple of finals he still has to take. Alot of these same pictures are up on Kirstin's blog. They have made their blog private because they got some postings by people they do not know so if you want to see their blog you need to email them and let them know you have a google account and want to be on their permitted list or email us if you know Ben and or Kirsten and we will give them your email and let them get in touch with you. Bye for now. Bogota is sounding more and more peaceful all the time.

The rest part

2008-04-25T21:17:00.000-07:00

We are now at Ben and KiKi's enjoying the heat - 97 - and the three of them. Kate is a sweatheart. Right now she is headed to bed with the hick-ups. I will add pictures to this post later. The plane ride here was a dry run in how to handle the suitcases. We have all our things packed for a trip that will last for two years but we packed so that we only brought the two smallest bags with us on this junket. Still it was a zoo at the airport. I can't wait to land in Bogota with all of our luggage and try to get where ever we will be staying. I am not sure I even want to think about the fact that we will be in a foriegn country where my grasp of the language is pathetic (but improving). I will be counting on Darwin and the fact that the Church doesnt routinely loose missionaries at the airport.

More fense, more moving, but now rest

2008-04-25T20:55:00.000-07:00

This was a much easier way to do the fence. Br. Bingham was a life saver, thank you, thank you.

It went on so much faster with the right equipment and an expert hand or two. The last half only took an hour while the first half took 8 hours.

It looks sooo much better, now that it is done. When we watered the lawn the water just beaded up.

As if we weren't stiff enough from packing

2008-04-19T18:11:00.000-07:00

Darwin and I decided that our fence need to be cleaned and oiled before we left for two years. We had this bright idea some time ago but never found time to do it so we decided that Friday and Saturday of this week would be it. Oh boy!! We are not yet done with packing (almost but not there yet) but we decided that we could do this "little chore" with no problem. It was a much bigger project than we thought. We cleaned the whole fence on Friday (about 65 feet across the back and 65 feet up each of the sides and across the front to hook to the house - about 195 feet total by 6 ft high.) We used a brush on, wash off fence cleaner. Today we painted about 2/3's of it with Linseed oil and mineral spirits. We still have the back side of the fence that faces into the common area to do plus the side where I was painting the rails. The first picture shows what one corner looked like before we started and the last two pictures show what it looks like at the end of today. You can see how much better it looks in the last photo. It is quite a contrast. We will need to finish Monday. We are definately running out of days as we leave for Ben's house on Thursday.

The Writings of Lee Clark

2008-04-16T21:34:00.000-07:00

Darwin and I have been busy getting everything moved out. I have some pictures of the great helpers we have had. They really have been great. I didn't know how we were going to get the couch down from the the Bonus Room. It took 4 men and a lot of engineering to get it in. We thought about taking it out through the window but Elders Ferguson, Carreon got it out with no problems. They have done most of the heavy lifting with Elder Garsia and Johnson helping out when we need more man power. I will put their pictures up shortly. They also carried down the Treadmill which was even heavy for them.

What I really wanted to write here was a blub to let you know that I have created a new area on the WebPage www.darvic.net/joomla for Mom's writtings. As I was sorting through the geneology, I found all of her papers and the stories and letters that she has written over the years. Some of them were published in that little book "Stepping Stones" but there are alot of things that I have never seen, like the story that is up there now. I will continue to type stuff in as I have time. Also Noel and Rachel have started a blog and I linked to it. It is just starting so not many posts. I am hoping that Jared and Nichole will get inspired and that I can get Rich and Sherry to do one for Josh. It is a great way to keep up with you guys. The picture of Derek in the Diaper box just cracked me up.

Mom

Still Hectic but exciting

2008-04-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

I just sat down on a folding chair at a card table in our Kitchen. We have moved the dining room table and all the chairs to the new storage unit. I haven't been in the house for I don't know how long, we have been over at the storage unit getting things into it in order that works or else hauling things out. In addition to figuring out that we had to move out of the house and get a storage shed, just after I wrote the last post we got a letter from the Mission travel office that said all our visa application stuff had to be in by March 31 or we we would be postponed for 6 weeks. Since it was April 10th, I called right away and our travel person told us that she needed the VISA material ASAP because we really were on a tight VISA schedule. In order to get a VISA to Colombia we had to go to the bank and get a noterized letter saying that we had a bank account and then we had to take that to the Secretary of States Office and get something called an apostille that verified that the notery was real. We were suppose to get one letter in English and one in Spanish but the bank said they didn't even know what we were talking about and they couldn't give us a letter in Spanish. They did give us a letter in English saying that we had a bank account. When we got to the Secretary of States office the door was guarded by a very large, very messy goose. We finally got past him/her and the Sec of State knew exactly what we needed so all sort of went smoothly from there. We still had to get two more passport photes and send it all in. So yesterday was pretty much shot. I wasn't home at all. We did go to Jared's after out running and get the stuff from his garage that we had stored there. That load went to the storage shed in a load this morning. Last night we hauled things over to our neighbors because they are having a garage sale today and told us we could take some stuff if we wanted to. We didn't get to bed until 2:00 am this morning by the time I put in my spanish study time. Dad is working on his assignments. The auditing department sent him a whole training course he has to finish before we get there. They are just concentrating on my spanish right now. Darwin now spends most of his time speaking the language and we are doing all of our prayers in Spanish. That is really interesting since my vocabulary and sentence structure is still limited. But it definately helps because it makes me search for the words I need. Must go will write later, I am fixing us a late lunch and then we have to take the grandmother clock over and the oak secretary and some other furnature. Check out the guest book on the www.darvic.net/joomla site and let us know you are around or leave a comment here. Bye Vicki.

A little hectic

2008-04-09T23:20:00.000-07:00

Our life got a little hectic day before yesterday. We thought the house was taken care of. We were working with a management company to rent it to students of the linemans college here in Kuna. (A school for training electrical linemen for the electric companies in the northwest and western canada.) We got an email from our management company two days ago saying that they were getting out of the roommate business and couldn't handle our house. They explained why they were getting out and that they would recommend that we not rent this property as a roommate rental. We understood the problems that they were explaining and agreed that given what they had found out about how rentals of this type had to be handled that we would be better off renting to a family or single renter. (We wish they had found out sooner about the problems and let us know sooner) Anyway now instead of being able to close off part of the garage and leave our stuff here we have to completely vacate the house. We don't blame them we just wish we would have known sooner. Anyway we have rented a storage unit and a U-haul for the day and two sets of missionaries came over today and we moved most of the funiture and heavy stuff. We still have clothing and some household items and small stuff like computers, tv, our bed etc. We are leaving to go down for Ben's graduation on April 24 so our goal is to be completely out of here by then and have this place vacant so it can be rented to a family. People are having a hardtime getting loans right now so the rental market is good. We had been with a management company before who didn't do roommates but who had handled our house before we moved to Kuna. We are now back with them. The say that currently the have a 2% vacancy rate for the houses that they are managing and assure us that the house will be easy to rent once we are out of it. Anyway it makes life just a little hectic right now.

The MTC has assigned me a private tutor and start language training over the phone on Thursday. I already have 8 CD's of language instruction from them. We will work on spoken spanish and I will get about 3 hours a week of one on one conversation practice with her plus the lessons on the CD's and lots of homework. I should be interesting. Vicki

2008-04-06T11:50:00.000-07:00

We recieved our mission call on Thursday April 3, 2008. We have been called to serve in the South American North Area in Bogotá Colombia. Darwin will serve as the Area Auditor Trainer and will be working primarily with ward and stake leaders responsible for the records of the Church. I have been called to serve as the Mental Health Advisor to the Area President and will help him and the mission presidents in the area assess the mental health needs of the missionaries serving in the area. As far as we have been able to learn there are 384 wards and or Branches in our area and 11 missions. I will be posting the letters we recieved from President Monson and our responses below or above. Where ever they appear.

Good Friend

2008-03-31T11:41:00.000-07:00

It's Darwin writing this time.
We have missed a lot of our friends in Great Falls, so yesterday we were glad to see Lola Tracy for a little while. She has been traveling in Idaho, Oregon and Utah. She was in Boise for a day and we had a wonderful visit late last night. She updated us on a lot of the folks in Great Falls. It's good to know that most of the people we care about are doing well.

Craig Michelsen, another of our dear friends is now the bishop in the Great Falls Fifth Ward. I'm sure he hit the ground running. The Fifth Ward is in good hands.

Vicki's aunt Alma is having a birthday party on May 3rd. She'll be 90. We'll go to the party if there's any way we can. It's the day after Ben's graduation, so the scheduling will be tight. Ben, Kirsten and Kate are in Phoenix. Alma is in Orovill, CA (near Sacramento). We should be able to make both events if we're not already in the mission.

We're continuing to have fun with the Spanish Group here in Kuna. Every Sunday I learn something new. I realize that right now it's a lot of work for me to speak Spanish. Some of the gringos in the group don't seem to have to work at all to speak the language. I'm hoping that after a few weeks in the mission it'll be more natural for me, too. Vicki and I really love the Hispanic members of the group. Vicki has an amazing ability to communicate with them, even though she doesn't really understand the language. She seems to be able to communicate on a spiritual and emotional level. The members love her.

We expect to get our call this week, but we don't know for sure. We are speculating that Vicki's interview last week was the last step before the paperwork went to the missionary committee where the final decision is made. We'll be checking the mail on Thursday. That's usually the day when the calls arrive...

2008-03-29T20:18:00.000-07:00

Hi I am back. This is Vicki. I have added a youtube channel at www.youtube.com/darwinandvicki and I worked on the web site at www.darvic.net/joomla. All kinds of exciting things are happening. We don't have a clue where our papers are right now. We were getting really excited about Bogota. Check the video out about the bike ways in Bogota on the above youtube site in the favorites area. There are between 400 and 500 kilometers of integrated protected bike ways in Bogota (the most of any city in the World). The former Mayor is in the vanguard as far as city planning and public space goes. He has completely turned the city around. He is now helping with city redesign in New York. 400,000 people a day use bikes for transprotation in Bogota. Just as I was getting used to idea of going there (it is 8800 feet above sea level and has a consistent temperature around 68 F) The Church called again and my records had been tagged because I am a Mental Health Professional. They read through the credentials that people have and pull out all the Doctors, Nurses, and Mental Health Professionals. The Church Social Services Department called and asked if I would accept an assignment to serve a Mental Health Specialist for the area presidency in an area, not an assignment just a query. My job would be to help Mission presidents spot missionaries that were having mental health issues, work with them individually, and help the mission president decide if their needs could be handled in the field so they could finish their mission or decide if they needed to go home to get more intense treatment. Many of the problems are transitory due to the stress of being in a new culture, often speaking a language that they have not yet mastered and feeling inadequite to the task. I told them I would serve anywhere they wanted me but that I prefered to be in a Spanish Speaking country. This was the same kind of a call that we got from the auditing department. They can request us but ultimately it is up to the brethern on the missionary committee although they usually listen to the recommendations of specific departments of the Church. The guy I talked to was going to look at what they wanted Darwin for and see how both could be accomodated. But we don't know yet and we won't until our actual call papers arrive.

Interview

2008-03-06T18:59:00.000-08:00

Written by Darwin
Thursday, 06 March 2008
We finally had our interview with the stake president almost two weeks ago. Then the stake clerk called to let us know that some of the paperwork from the doctor didn't arrive, so the application couldn't be sent. We got that turned in on Tuesday (March 4) of this week, so I think everything is in the church offices by now. Now we have to sit and wait. We could hear in two weeks, or it might be 5 weeks, just depending of how things hit the various cycles. We've finished all the shots required for all missionaries, so we're good to go. We may have to get more shots for certain areas.
Still waiting...

Submitted

2008-02-17T18:57:00.000-08:00

Written by Darwin
Monday, 18 February 2008
Feb 17th, 2008We finally clicked on the "Submit Application" button for our mission. This whole process is a lot more complicated than we thought. It seems like everytime we saw a doctor there was something more to do. I.E. we had our physicals, then had to have a stress test. We told the doctor that all the paperwork was causing lots of stress, but he said something about a treadmill. We took that test and passed without any trouble, but then Vicki needed a bone density scan. It just seems to go on and on.Anyway, we're scheduled for our interview with the bishop on Wednesday evening.

2008-02-15T19:01:00.000-08:00

Written by Vicki
Friday, 15 February 2008
So, mission preparation has concentrated mostly on getting medical stuff in place. And what a pain that was. Read on. I think I will create a web page for people planning on going on a mission when they are seniors just to keep track of all the medical stuff. Actually I suppose I am suppose to have all that stuff on the top of my head but I didn't and I had to go digging to get the dates for all surgeries (I have only had 3) what they were for etc. All broken bones (I have only had one) but it wasn't readily on the tip of my tongue as to exactly when. I should have been like Pres. Hinkley and not ever had been in a hospital until he was past 90. Unfortuanately that was not the case.
We had to have a tread mill test which we passed with flying colors. Dad had to have a cancer follow-up which he passed. I had to do all the womanly stuff and I as usual flunked my mamogram. Every time I go have to change who is looking at the images I have to go in for more. Yuck!!! but I did pass the second test. No problems. We are still waiting for all tests to get to our primary care doc but are scheduled to see the Bishop this Wednesday for our final interview.

Website www.darvic.net/joomla

2008-02-15T18:45:00.000-08:00

We are making improvements on our website everyday. We hope you will come and visit often. We will be updating the gallary shortly so you can see picutures of the various Kids and Grandkids.

The process begins

2008-02-15T18:43:00.000-08:00

The Auditing Department of the Church has contacted us and want us to submit our papers by Feb 15th, 2008. They have an opening in Bogota, Columbia and want us there.
Last Updated ( Friday, 15 February 2008 )

Back to Columbia?

2008-01-19T18:55:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday (Jan 8th), Dan Dahlgren from the Church Auditing department called. I had talked to him earlier about being a "Local Unit Auditor Trainer." He told me the church needs a couple in that position in the South America North Area, based in Bogotá, Colombia, and asked if I would be interested.