On the road again.

We left Bogota for a long ride to the city in the mountains. We went to San Gil to make changes in their Branch presidency. The ride was about eight hours with our stops, but the scenery was beautiful. We saw many fields of people milking their cows by hand.

Thank goodness for those donkeys.

The farmer would carry the milk in these milk cans from the pasture to the road.

The milk truck.

A man would pump the milk from the cans to the truck, and it was off to the milk processing plant. There are fields and fields of herds of cows in Colombia.

We love the ambiance for our breakfast.

We love staying at this hotel because the grounds are so beautiful. The ambiance sure makes breakfast taste good.

The city of San Gil.

We had a long drive from Bogota to San Gil. This is the view from our hotel balcony. We had traveled to San Gil to change the branch presidency. This city has the steepest streets in our whole mission.

Spanish Moss.

Our hotel in San Gil was old, but the grounds are just beautiful. There are large trees with Spanish Moss hanging from them.

A walk to remember.

Saturday morning we woke up and went for a morning walk before breakfast and starting our missionary activities. This is a walk through a beautiful park about two or three blocks from our hotel.

A beautiful walk in the park.

What a way to start the day off.

Many huge boulders.

You can see how large this boulder is. There were many of them along the trail and in the stream.

Returning from San Gil.

On our way home from San Gil, we passed many sheds with huge chimneys. We stopped to see what they were. It was so interesting. They were making panela. Everyone in Colombia loves panela.

Huge pile of sugar cane.

This man has the job of carrying the cane to the extractor. They told us if we returned on Monday, we could see the donkeys carrying the sugar cane from the fields.

The extractor.

This man carries the stocks of the sugar cane for the machine to extract the juice and discard the stocks.

The molasses.

One of the by-products of the sugar cane is molasses. It is used to put on top of the hay that is given to the cows to eat.

The juice from the sugar cane.

Once the juice has been extracted from the cane, it is heated to boiling and then the process begins.

Boiling hot syrup.

These men are melting the syrup and then the man in blue, shovels it up on to the table with the molds.

Filling the mold.

This man is pushing around the syrup to fill all the little molds. The whole process went pretty fast.

Ready to be boxed.

The syrup cools in about 15 minutes. The man is removing the molds. Notice the floor. It was very sticky.

Hot fire.

The liquid had been pressed out of the sugar cane, and the left over product was used to fuel the hot fire to make the panela. The man is pushing the left over product into a little opening under the floor of the factory to keep the fire going.

The final product.

We saw the process from the start clear to the finish. This is like a staple in the homes here in Colombia. It is like eating a solid chunk of frown sugar. They box these up and sell them along the road, in the stores, and just about everywhere.

Returning home.

This was our biggest group of missionaries to send home thus far. We had seventeen here from Chile, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. Some took more than 24 hours to return home. I am sure they were very tired but yet very excited. It gets sadder every time we say "Good Bye."

The rose.

Elder Melgarejo, from Argentina, was carrying this special rose home to give to his mother. I thought that was so thoughtful, that I had to take a picture.

The last supper.

With our missionaries that were going home, we attended the temple and had a delicious meal at the temple cafeteria. These were huge fish, and the soup and all the other trimmings were wonderful. All this for around $7.00 US.

All but the bones.

Elder Larsen, one of our assistants, was really hungry. He ate all but the bones.

New arrivals from Chile.

With this transfer, we had three groups of new missionaries arrive on three different days. This first group all came from Chile. We love new missionaries.

Our second group of new missionaries from Chile, arrived the day after the first group. We loved their enthusiasm

New Missionaries.

This was our last group of new missionaries to arrive. Six are from Ecuador and one from Peru. They were ready to get started.

A visit from President Nash.

We had a pleasant visit from our area President, Elder Nash. He joined us for lunch with our last group of new missionaries from Ecuador.