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.

We have been in our mission over one month already. Where has the time gone? This photo shows our office staff that have been a great help to us. As you can see, they are mostly Latins. We have only eighteen missionaries from the USA right now. Starting on the left our senior assistant is from Santiago, Chile, the next two missionaries are from Argentina, the next one is from Santiago, Chile. Our other assistant is our one and only American from Evanston, Wyoming. On the far right, we have one from Peru. These six young men have been outstanding missionaries, and they make our lives a whole lot simpler.

This is our street where we live. Our apartment building is behind the large tree on the left. Bogota is a beautiful city of brick buildings, and all the bricks seems to be the same color. We are up on a hill side and you can see the many trees. Our apartment is four blocks from the mission office. We walk there and back almost every day.

Once we leave Bogota, it is like we are in another world. The high rise buildings are non existent, and the homes are far apart. Our drive to the town of Duitama takes four hours, but it is a beautiful ride with beautiful scenery.

This photo shows some of the beautiful scenery. Everywhere we look we see rolling green hills. We could have used up all of our memory on our camera taking photos of the scenery.

Colombia has many new fruits that we have grown to love. At the top of the plate the yellow fruit is called Pitahaya. This fruit is really tasty. You cut it in half and use a spoon to eat it. Going to the left is the tomato de arbul (means a tree tomato). This is good but not our favorite. At the bottom the green fruit is a maracuya. It was tasty and good to eat with a spoon. On the right is a granadia. This is our favorite. We were first introduced to this fruit in Peru, by our son Jay. This was his discription. It looks like an orange, but has a hard shell like a hard boiled egg. You hit it on something and peel some of the shell away. In Jay's words, "the fruit looks like snot, and you just suck it out." If you want to be sophisicated, you would cut it in half and use a spoon to eat it.

Getting to know Colombia

Lulo is one of our new found fruit. It looks like an orange, but inside it is full of little black seeds. It is quite acidy, so it is not good to just eat fresh, but it makes a delicious juice drink. We can't get enough of it. When we got here in Bogota we had three juicers, so making juice was an easy task. It has been nice having a grocery store just two blocks away. I can run to the store and get a carton of milk or a few Lulos.

This is a short update of how we started on this wonderful, once in a lifetime experience of being called to be Mission President and companion to the Colombia, Bogota North Mission. On September 23, 2008, we received a phone call from Elder Dallin H. Oaks. He invited us to have a get aquainted interview with him. In November we received a phone call from President Dieter F. Uchtdorf asking for us to have an interview with him. He extended to us our call. We had to wait until February to know where we would serve. We were very excited to serve in a Spanish speaking mission.

These are our four oldest grandchildren. They sure look like great missionaries. They are pointing where they think they will be called to serve some day.

We were set apart by Elder D. Todd Christofferson from the twelve apostles, and Elder James B. Martino from the Severnties. We were very pleased to have our children and four of our older grandsons with us. It was a special day for us. We were given our name tags and we were ready to go.

We arrived in Bogota on June 29, 2009. President and Sister Carmargo met us at the airport with a bouquet of fresh flowers. I guess this was called the changing of the guards.

We arrived to a beautiful condo here in Bogota. We were amazed at how big and nice the apartment is. We are on the top floor of an eight story building. We are located just four blocks from the mission office. We enjoy our walk to and from the office, and enjoy the pleasant temperature that averages a temperature in Bogota at 64 degrees year round. It is a beautiful city, and our first impression was how green it is.