Another year and another birthday.

Many of our missionaries sent me a personal note for my birthday. Sister Boulter from our office, took the notes and make a huge birthday card for me. It was a pleasant surprise and a nice keepsake.

Our returning missionaries.

Time is going by so fast, and we realize it every time we say good bye to more missionaries. We had five North American missionaries return home and two Latin missionaries. One from Bolivia, and one from Peru. We wish them well.

Cooking on the grill.

We have never used this grill before, but tonight we enjoyed the end results. This grill is in the garden behind our building. It looked pretty old and falling apart, but it worked just find for this meal. Elder Soria from Bolivia, wanted to cook this parilla for his fellow missionaries that were going home. It was very, very tasty.

What a fiest.

We were all very grateful to Elder Soria for his talent of cooking. This was a fiest for a king.

The last supper.

The final result was very tasty. All the missionaries ended their mission with a delicious meal thanks to Elder Soria.

The waiting game.

We are always waiting for something. We sometimes are waiting for missionaries, sometimes for airplanes, but we are getting good at it. I think we have it perfected.

A beautiful Colombian flower.

Just could not pass up a Kodak moment with this beautiful flower. Colombia has so many beautiful flowers that we have never seen before.

A good friend here.

Quijote is a special friend in our household. I guess he is hearing all about our church here.

The beautiful Colombian flag.

We saw this display of many flags and had to take a picture. We will always have good memories of this flag of Colombia . We see it in many locations.

What is tagua?

We have some palm trees here in Colombia that grow these big pods about the size of a soccer ball that are called tagua. We have heard that they are often found around Yopal. We hope to find someone that can show us where these trees are.

Looking inside the pod to find the tagua seeds.

This is what the pod of the tagua looks like when you get inside. Many things are made from the tagua. It is very hard, but they are called seeds. It is a big business to make jewelry out of it as well as Christmas nativities. I have a little nativity made from tagua on the blog.