The streets of San Gil

San Gil is a very old town in Colombia. The revolution to free Colombia from Spain started in this very old town. The streets are narrow and made up of large blocks of rocks. Notice President Hacking and Elder and Sister Jenson walking on the very narrow sidewalk.

Flowers of San Gil

These are just a few of the many beautiful flowers we found in San Gil. These flowers were found in a beautiful park called Parque Gallineral. The park is along a river, but on the other side of the park the town is located on a VERY steep mountain side. The streets were so steep that the taxis wouldn't even try going up some of them.

A taxi driver in the rain.

In some parts of Bogota one can take this type of taxi. This is not your common method of taking a taxi, but it is useful at times. Today it was raining

What's for dinner?

We had a hard time deciding which of these lovely heads we wanted to eat for dinner. Actually we went for a vegetarian salad instead.

Our area president.

We had the privilege of having our area president, Elder Nash, visit our mission. He is living in Lima, Peru. He came and visied us and visited with all of our 154 missionaries. He gave us some wonderful counsel and we enjoyed having him stay with us in our home.

Special gift for President Nash.

The stake presidency in Bucaramanga presented President Nash this gift of a large wooden ant. In the left hand corner is a cup with the cooked ants I thought it was an interesting gift. The story follows.

The big ant.

This is a photo of the type of ant that the people eat in the area of Bucaramanga. The ants live in the ground and come out just once a year in April or May. The people gather them and take off the wings and cook them. Many people eat them and said they were good. I was not brave enough to eat it, but President Hacking tried one, and he is still shuddering at the experience. He said he has always thought he could eat anything, but this ant was one he could not handle. The outside was crispy, but then he tasted a creamy susbstance that was in his own words, "was putrid." I am sure glad I wasn't brave enough to try it.

Never again.

Our first hospital emergency.

Elder Williams, from Las Vegas, was our first emergency operation in the hospital. He had apendicitis. We were very happy with the hospital there in Bucaramanga and the care he received. Elder Williams was working in San Gil and went down to Bucaramanga for an interview with us. We were planning on going to San Gil and visit the area and do the interviews there. Somehow Elder Williams did not get the message. The ride from San Gil to Bucaramanga is a long windy three hour bus ride. When I asked his zone leader whyhe had gone to Bucaramanga, he said he didn't know, but he felt the Lord had a hand in it. The hospital in San Gil would have been a scary experience. He arrive in Bucaramanga on Sunday night and had the appendix attack Monday morning.

Came out smiling.

Elder Williams came out smiling, and we were all glad he had a successful day in the hospital. We were gratefull for a good companion and good zone leaders that stayed with him.

Our kitchen in the mission home.

This is a good photo of our kitchen. We have a lot of cupboard space and as you can see the photos of the grand children are on the refrigerator. The kitchen is long and luckily I have two sets of knives so I have one set at each end of the kitchen.

Hermana Juarez

Sister Juarez is our newest missionary. She is a beautiful young girl that came to us from Argentina. We are excited about having her in our mission with us.

Roses for $1.00

Our maid bought these beautiful roses in packets of 24 roses for 2,ooo pesos. That is about $1.00. She bought three packets, so we had 72 roses for about $3.00. We had roses in many rooms. This month they are higher in price because it is the month of Love like our Valentine's Day. We will just got with another kind of flower this week.

Flowers are exported to US

We have a book on Colombia that says 60% of the flowers imported to the US come from Colombia. They come in all colors and many, many different kinds. We try to keep fresh flowers in our condo at all times. When we arrived in the mission the retiring mission president's wife gave me a bouquet of fresh flowers. I thought, How nice, and when I got to the condo I found that I had nine other bouquets of fresh flowers in our condo.

Just one half block from our condo.

Every week we are to take one day to be our Preparation Day. This means we can take some time for ourselves to relax and enjoy some activity that is not missionary work. Today, we climbed a beautiful trail that begins in a park that is just one half block from our condo. We love Colombia. It is such a beautiful green country.

Many water falls along the way.

The trail follows a little stream with many little water falls. The park is incredibly beautiful. We feel so blessed to have this trail just one half block from our condo. The trail can go to the top of the mountain. but it is a very steep climb. Everyone tells us it is very safe and there are many hikers along the way.

The beginning of the trail.

As we started up the trail, the path was made from section cuts of tree trunks.

A huge Eucalyptus tree.

This enormous tree trunk is from a Eucalyptus tree. I wish we knew how old it is. There were several like this one, but also some huge tree trunks that are evergreens.

Algae grows on many rocks.

These big rocks have a type of yellow algae growing on them. Everything is a little damp on this trail which makes the rocks perfect for all kinds of growth.

A forest of Eucalyptus trees.

In the background are many Eucalyptus trees. This beautiful purple flower is like one we have in the states. We found them often along our trail.

Flowering bushes.

We love these red flowers on this bush. I don't know the name, but they are so pretty. Since we really don't have a winter here, we will have many beautiful flowering trees and bushes all year long.

A close up of the flower.

When we get up close to this beautiful flower, we can see that the bell is really many little flowers. It looks like it is growing up side down. Up the stem are more buds getting ready to bloom. There are a lot of large bushes with flowers like these.

A beautiful place to rest.

After climbing straight up for one hour, we came to this beautiful little valley. Everything is so green here. We rested for a few minutes and then continued our climb. We didn't make it to the top this time. We will have to get up earlier to try for the top. We had to turn around because the gate at the bottom closes at 10:00 A.M. We started at 7:00, but next time it will be at 6:00.

This was an exciting event for us. We welcomed our first new group of missionaries. The Elders arrived late in the evening, but they were very excited to finally get to Colombia. One Elder said, he had waited nineteen years for that day. This group will always be very special to us, as they were our first group of missionaries. These missionaries came from the states, Peru, and Bolivia.

Ajiaco is our favorite Colombian food. Here in Bogota, they eat it for special occasions like Christmas, New Years, and any other occasion that they want to celebrate. This is what we fed our new missionaries for their first meal. It is a yummy potato based soup with three different kinds of potatoes, chicken, and a special spice that we have heard is only found here called guascas. The toppings make it very tasty with chunks of avacado, a little cream, and a large spoon of capers. They put part of an ear of corn. The Colomblians' eat mayorca (corn that tastes like field corn). We used sweet corn. I guess we are not true Colombians yet.

This white liquid is apple juice. We were shocked when we opened the box and poured out a white liquid. It is really apple juice, but it has soy in it. It made a good tasting apple syrup, but it just didn't seem quiet right.

This was our first group of missionaries that we said "Good-bye" to. They were very good missionaries. We will miss them. We have them returning to Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador.

This was a fun preparation day we had with three other senior missionary couples here in Bogota. We were on a shopping excursion. It is quite common to see horses pulling carts. This horse is pulling a load of empty crates. We have seen them pulling a load of furniture, boxes of fruits and vegetables, a gardner and his tools etc. They have their own road rules. They sometimes go the wrong way on a one way street.

Nidia is our new Colombian maid. She is a great help with cleaning and cooking. She is holding a small bag of baking soda, and a bag of flour. This is the largest bag of flour we can buy in our grocery store. We can buy many things in bags like: milk, yogurt, fruit jucie, jam, ketchup, mustard, water etc.

One day Nidia found a little piece of blue cheese in the refrigerator, she asked me what it was, and I told her it was blue cheese and it has a very different taste. I asked her if she wanted to taste it? She said she did. This was her expression when she tried it. She was nearly gasping for air. I laughed and laughed. We tease her about having more.