Barrancabermeja or Barranca for short.

We traveled to Barranca last weekend for missionary interviews and we attended church and found ourselves as the speakers. The town is very hot along the side of a river. One half block from our hotel I took these photos. This is the town with many iguanas.

The streets were full of people wearing these hats.

As I walked the streets of Baranca, I noticed there were many people wearing these straw hats.

Hats off to everyone.

The hats represent the different areas of Colombia and are sold in many stores. They are all so interesting.

How many hats can one man wear?

I saw this street vendor cross the street with his cart of hats and I chased him down. He was pulling a cart through the streets selling the many beautiful hats of Colombia. It will be hard to chose one when it comes time to buy.

The friendly street vendor.

This man was very friendly, and didn't even try to sell me a hat, but let me look at many of them.

How do I look?

The man put this one on my head. It would certainly be good to shade you from Baranca's hot sun.

Peanutbutter and honey.

This is one way to buy your honey for your peanut butter sandwich. This is honey sold right in the honeycomb. I failed to get the price because there was too many flies around it. Next time I will have my peanut butter ready.

Not in jail.

Sometimes the houses and businesses have cement walls around them. The person can open a little window to see who is there and to communicate with the visitors.

Tis the season.

Tis the season to put away our Christmas decorations. Luckily two missionaries stopped by just in time to help us take the tree down. We had to wait until after Jan. 6, Three Kings Day. It is not a big deal here in Colombia, but part of our hearts are still in Puerto Rico. We knew it would be a day of celebration there.

Our favorite Christmas tree decorations.

Our Christmas tree was beautiful, but our favorite decorations were those from all of our (at the time) 15 grandchildren. We now have 16.

Our first Sunday of 2010.

We started the new year visiting a little branch of the church in Sesquile. The older couples migrated from Ecuador about 5o years ago. They try to keep many of their old customs like wearing their native dress.

A beautiful day with good friends

Elder and Sister Shipp from Virginia traveled with us to attend the church with us. We had a beautiful ride to get to our little town and we enjoyed meeting our members from Ecuador.

Our new friends from Ecuador.

On the left we see two women in their native dress. They have a very different skirt, and these beautiful blouses with embroidery that the women have sewen. On the right top, are two men in their white pants, and notice their sandals. They have a long pony tail. The one man has hit hat on that they usually wear.

On the bottom left, are a couple pointing to their grand daughter that is serving a mission in Paraguay. On the bottom right, are more of the women. They too have long hair in a pony tail, and the women wear many strands of gold beads around their necks Some older women had around 25 strands of bead.

A view of Bogota.

On our way home from church today, we stopped and took this photo from a look out point in San Louis over looking Bogota.

2010 A Great New Year.

On Jan. 2, 2010, we started the new year off with our hike on our mountain. In the photo are eleven pine cones. Every time we climb the mountain we pick up one new pine cone to add to our basket. This is how we know how many times we have climbed the mountain. For our last Christmas here, we hope to make a Christmas wreath with all our pine cones.

Flowers of every kind.

If you love flowers, then Bogota is for you. We bought three bouquets of flowers and it only cost us 10,000 pesos. That is about $5. Happy New Year everyone.

They love the big sun flowers.

What a great selection. They have big and little sunflowers, they have roses and about every kind of flower imaginable.

A variety of colors.

It doesn't matter what color you want, we have it here in this huge market.

Our last new missionaries for 2009.

We are happy to have our two newsest missionares from Chile and Argentina. We look forward to working with them.

Said good bye in December.

We always hate to say good-bye to our special missionaries. The Chapmans' returned to Florida, the Jensons' returned to Utah, and Hermana Parra returned to Ecuador to continue her studies in medicine. We will miss them.

Bogota missionaries.

We had over one half of our missionaries together for a fun filled day of activities, food and a special evening Christmas devotional.

Santa's helpers for the night.

Santa has many helpers and we were lucky enough to be his helpers at our missionary party in Bogota.

Everyone loves Papa Noel.

The special visitor was a hit with everyone. The missionaries were happy to find out Santa Clause had not forgotten them.

The food was worth the wait.

This was a very tasty buffet. The food was delicious and very festive.

Christmas time in Bucaramanga.

We had a Christmas party in Bucaramanga with about half of our missionaries. They all sang in a missionary choir in a concert with two stakes. Our missionaries sang, the primary choir sang, the young men and young women choir sang and then they ended with an outstanding two stake choir. The next day we had a fun party with a dinner and Santa arrived and I got to be his helper. Fun for all.

Huge Christmas tree.

It seems different to see a Christmas tree decorated with Spring flowers and insects, but this is very common here in Colombia. At night it is really pretty.

Christmas decorations.

Customs differ in countries with the type of Christmas decorations they exhibit. Here we see goats instead of reindeer. At night the park is beautifully lit with the many lights.

The red ants of Bucaramanga.

The people of Bucaramanga love their red ants. Here in a park they have decorated these large ants with Christmas lights. At night the children sit on them and the parents take their pictures.