July 9th through July 14, 2013

The temple seen from Fito's building.

July 9^th through July 14, 2013:  Tuesday morning over 100 patrons showed up from Tupisa.  With the change in the mission boundaries, this is now the furthest south in the Cochabamba mission.  We will continue to have groups come from much further away, but they will be from other missions.  Pres. Dyer said that more than 20 of them from the Tupisa District needed temple interviews.  He was a busy boy all day Tuesday. Wednesday, after our shift, we taught a temple preparation class to a couple, Freddy and Ana, from our old Tiquipaya Ward.  5 students from BYU arrived and had some problems with their housing.  I helped them get approval from BYU to let them stay in some of the empty missionary apartments.  Fito, the director of the foundation where they will be teaching lessons is very relieved.  They will move in on Thursday.  We got them settled in on Thursday and spent the rest of the day in the temple.  Friday we were off and I decided I wanted to cook Chinese again.  We invited the Cardon’s, the Crayk’s, the Johnson’s, and Pres. and Sister Crayk.  I cooked too much, so when the BYU students showed up during lunch, we invited them to join us.  Diana made a couple of wonderful desserts. See the pictures for the menu. 

Friday's Menu at the Chinese restaurant. Mom did this.

Spicy dried fried green beans.

Chicken in spicy peanut sauce.

Sweet and sour chicken and beef and eggplant.

Left to right, Diana and Lynn Crayk, Bob and Tamera Cardon.

Pres. and Sister, Lee and Connie Crayk

Mom in the kitchen, Bill and Linda Johnson.

We had to eat in shifts.  L to R.  Ben, William, John, Zack, and Erin the BYU students.

In the evening we spoke to a youth group from Santa Cruz.  Cute kids and they have a great Bishop.  We could really tell that he loved these kids. 

Mom and the youth group from Santa Cruz.

They arrive by the bus load.

 The Lobby after a couple of buses arrive.

3 bus loads of youth arrived and we had to hand out tickets for groups to control all the youth we had for the Baptistery. 

Pres. Crayk and some of the youth from Santa Cruz.

The group we were to speak to got delayed in the Baptistery so we go started at 8:15 pm instead of 7:30 pm.  Then at 9:30 pm we had a meeting with all the BYU students and some of the temple missionaries.  We assigned the BYU students to attend church with the different groups of missionaries for our Sunday speaking assignments.  We will be speaking in all of the wards in the Jaihuayco stake this next Sunday. 

Look who showed up at the temple.  Me, Rodrigo, Sister Cusiconqui and Brother Cusiconqui.  We served together in Ecuador 42 years ago.

Saturday morning the temple was a beehive of people, hundreds of youth in the Baptistery and every regular session we had to add chairs to the point we were over capacity.  We had many first time attendees and a number of marriages.  It made for a very busy morning.  When Pres. Crayk arrived to replace me, I was sitting on the couch in the foyer waiting for the last veil and he just started laughing.  He knew what I had just been through, because he had done it the day before.  We were an hour later than usual getting home because the large sessions delayed everything.  At 5:00 pm we went with the BYU students to Fito’s home for a Tea, herbal tea.  Vivian, Fito’s wife had spent the day making all kinds of cakes and breads.  She is from Santa Cruz and these foods were traditions dishes from Santa Cruz.  We had a good time, but left the BYU students there and came home to crash about 8:30pm.  We had been up since 5:30 am and were beat. 

We had the Tea on the top of the condo where Fito lives.

The view at night from the top to Fito's building.

The Tea Friday night.

Sunday we left at 7:30 am with the Eames, the Gironda’s and John and Erin, two of the BYU students for the Cosmos and Petrolero wards.  We had two very nice sacrament meetings.  The Gironda’s and mom and I spoke in the first meeting and the Eames and mom and I spoke in the second.  Sister Eames sang a solo in both meetings of “I know that my Redeemer lives” with John accompanying her on the piano and Erin on the violin.  It was lovely and really added to the Spirit of the meeting. 

John and Erin playing prelude music.

All 5 of the BYU students are returned missionaries and it was fun to have them with us.  We had the Cardon’s over for lunch of leftover Chinese and mom made a shrimp quiche.  They leave in a few weeks and we will sure miss them.