8/27/2012

I think the tormento (tropical storm) is finally over here!  Very little rain has fallen today but the humidity must be close to 100%.  When I put my shirt on today it felt damp.  I don't think anything would ever fully dry in this humidity.  Thirteen thousand people here have been displaced because of the storm.  That is so sad because these are the poor people anyway then to have what little they have taken away is heartbreaking.  William came in yesterday afternoon.  He hadn't eaten all day and was hungry.  He said they had no food at home for him to bring to work.  We fed him pizza.  Trying to fatten some of these people up but it doesn't seem to be working! His ceiling had leaked all over their furniture.  They are some of the few that even have a couch.  AltaGracie's house filled with water a foot deep so she hasn't been at work here.  You just want to step in and make life better for them but you know it would only be a temporary fix.  So we just do what little we can do without enabling them.
   Today was a busy day studying, making soup, attending two Spanish classes and Family Home Evening.  Elder Hammon's class today was something I have practiced and understand a bit of so it wasn't so overwhelming.  Scott's class has about ten students now.  It is nice to have other students in class that haven't had years of Spanish and are more on my level!
   However at FHE tonight we were at Sister Sanchez's apartment.  I just love her. The lesson was on charity so we read scriptures from 1st Corinthians Chapter one.  I know that it helps me to be charitable when I stop to realize that we are all brothers and sisters.  That perhaps we knew each other in the Spirit World but regardless we are on this earth to help each other.  God loves each of us regardless of our station in life.  I'm trying hard not to be so fearful of people who have different ideas and different lives than we do.  I am basically "gutless"  as my mother used to say.  How I love her and know she must be delighted that we are working with the music program after all the money and time she spent on lessons for me.  I think of her  and Dad often - and Billie and Don and Julie.
   
    

8/26/2012 Is it ever going to end? (Isaac)

    Another day of rain.  It's a good thing this city is made of cinder blocks and cement or it would have all washed away by now.  The Yturraldes went to church with us today since their branch meetings were canceled.  Many of the senior couples that were coming to our ward have volunteered to help different branches (which is what we wished we could do) so they aren't at church with us.  We miss them!  The Ruckers were there today.  We have really enjoyed getting to know them.  Of course it was raining when we came out so Scott went to get the car and picked us up in front of the church.  Brother Yturralde had our umbrella and decided he would take me out to the car then go back and get his wife..  So he motions to me that Scott is there and we take off hustling under the umbrella.  I opened the front passenger door to get in and lo and behold there was Sister Rucker with a surprised look on her face sitting in the passenger seat.  I hurried and shut the door as Scott drove up in our car.  There are four silver Toyota Corollas in our group of friends - and the Ruckers have one of them.  We aren't used to two of them being at our church at the same time though.  We laughed about that all the way home because Brother Yturralde thought it was so funny.  I will have to call Sister Rucker and apologize for scaring her because she didn't see me coming.
    We waited to hear if we would still have lessons out in Oriental but never could get ahold of the high councilman in charge so we just went out there.  They have many, many billboards along the road.  All of the frames were there, empty with the plastic signs rolled up at the bottom of the frame.  Guess they were trying to save them from the hurricane.  Maria met us there but no one else came for awhile.  Maria is my favorite woman out here! We just love working with this group of kids and Maria.  When many of them showed up late we told them we thought they had probably drowned.
We need more teachers for this class because the students are at three or four different levels in learning but we'll do the best we can do.


 A few of the empty billboard sign holders

Maria in front of the Oriental building gate

It is supposed to rain for two more days here.  It will be nice to see the sky again!

8/25/2012 Hopefully the end of Hurricane Isaac

So we thought the hurricane was over yesterday with the howling winds.  All night the noise of the wind blowing through our windows made it difficult to sleep.  It had rained off and on but nothing really out of the ordinary.  But today was another story!  It started to rain and never stopped - water was running everywhere.  The highlight of the storm was watching a garbage bag that had been put out for the garbage truck and was picked up by the water running down the sides of the street.  We watched as it made a turn and went with the water flowing down the McDonalds drive through spilling pieces of garbage all the way through the drive through and out the other end into the street.  There is alot of garbage on the sidewalks and sides of the street here so when it rains it all washes down the little rivers at the sides of the roads and eventually must end up in the ocean. It is amazing to see people walking by dropping wrappers or bottles or anything they don't want, on the ground.
Back to the storm  - water was filling the window glides where the windows slide open and closed and running down the walls leaving big puddles by every window.  In our apartment we have five really big windows.  As the day wore on the paint under the windows was getting bubbly.  I tried to flatten them but then it would start the blizzardy rains again so finally we just mopped up the water and the owner will have to deal with paint.  The walls are cement and I think they just paint a new coat of paint on each time they rent .

A minute in this heavy rain and your sopping wet!

This is the Guagua loading bench - they were trying to keep dry but had to wade through 6" deep water to get to the guagua.

If you look closely you can see the domino players waiting out the storm.  Nothing stops a game of dominoes for those guys!  You could barely see the store across the street.

On both sides of the street there were 3' wide running rivers

  Just when you think the storm is over it starts to rain again. Our upstairs neighbors wanted to go to dinner across the street.  After being cooped up for two days with the storm we thought it would be a great idea.  We were there for an hour but as soon as we got home it started to rain again.  I wish some of this water was going to Utah!  As it is it eventually runs into the river that runs into the ocean.
  There is a guy out in the street yelling at someone but I daresn't look out to see who it is!  I do recognize some of the words  and he sounds mad so hopefully we don't hear a gunshot next.  Anything is possible here in our neighborhood!

8/24/2012 Hurricane Isaac

All we have heard for two days now is how  everyone here is preparing  for Hurricane Isaac  Our thoughts of course have been with our friends who live in such poor conditions that their homes could be totally destroyed.  We pray they all survive the night.
  Schools and offices here have been closed down today.  Very few people have been on the streets. It wasn't until this afternoon that the wind started to blow fiercely.  Hours later it started to  pour.  The rain would lessen then get worse but the wind remained fairly constant whistling through our windows and causing the rain to blow sideways into our windows.  As a result the tracks the windows slide in filled with water and spilled onto the floors in the family room, patio, and bedroom.  Scott was mopping off and on for hours. It is now 8:00 pm and just as it sounds like the wind is dying down it starts whipping through the trees and our windows again.  There hasn't been as much rain as they expected though.  Then again I don't know when it is supposed to move on.  The great thing is so far we have not lost our power for any length of time.  Only 30% of the people here pay for their power - the rest steal it from existing power lines.  That whole business needs to be fixed here.
   Wilton came up to warm up their food and Scott gave him the binoculars to look out at the ocean.  He was amazed - had never seen anything like that before.  Two hours later he and William came back up so he could show William the binoculars.  They are fun.  The missionaries were supposed to go to Williams to teach them  tonight.  I'm guessing that didn't happen with the weather like it is.
    Scott's Spanish class was canceled for today so it has been a long day.  It gets dark here about 7:30 so that makes for a long night.  I am just grateful we have lights and power for the computer.  From the sounds of the wind outside I wouldn't be surprised if they went off at any time.  Could be a long night!!

Behind the tall buildings is the ocean - they are only a couple of blocks from  us.  You can't see the ocean because the rain is so heavy there as it moves towards us.

The first picture is of the storm moving in from the ocean which is about a mile from our apartment.

The second one is when it got to us!

8/23/2012 Hurricane Isaac

    We've spent the day hearing about the nearing hurricane that could result in 20" of rain.  Wish we could send some home!  The most vulnerable things here are the poor people who live in tin shacks that can be blown or washed away and the electricity which goes on and off most of the time anyway.  Those who live in cement cinder block houses just have feet of water in their houses. I'm worried about our friends who work here. We are blessed to live in an area where government buildings are located so our power has been good most of the time.  It was out most of the day the other day and goes off at times but usually comes back on within four hours or so.  The  part of town our church is located in has constant power outages.  A few weeks ago during Sacrament meeting the power went off and the generator clicked back on, then it would go off, click back on until they finally moved the meetings to the lower level of the building so they could save what electricity they had from the generator to cool off the downstairs.  The people who live in that area say the power outages are constant.
   Today was our music lessons with the returned missionaries.  It is always fun to work with those kids. (Anyone under forty is a kid to us these days!)  The three of them are all at different levels so that makes it challenging.  Alwin had taught himself to play the first hymn in the simplified Hymn book.  He is the one who plays so well by ear so you always hope he is actually reading the music.  He is such a talented young man.  Jose is the one with a beautiful voice and is doing well.  He has had lessons before but didn't finish.  His goal is to learn to play so he can play and sing a love song to his girlfriend.  I don't think that is the goal of the church's program but it motivates him so ......
Katty is such a pretty girl who thinks she is so dumb because these boys are far ahead of her.  It is harder for her but she hasn't had the experience they have. I just love her - there is just so much humility in these kids.  So today I had Katty to teach - she speaks little English and my Spanish is marginal but we did ok.  We'll both learn alot!!
    Went to the temple.  I didn't use the headphones in English at all and don't think I will use them again. The Spanish is making more sense to me but I really have a headache after listening so intently and trying to pick out the words and phrases I know and make some sense out of them.  I am so grateful for what I have learned.
   Guess we'll go to bed and see if we are awakened by a storm....
   
   

8/22/2012

Coming to the end of the day is a wonderful thing sometimes!  And today is one of those times.
It's been like Grand Central Station in our apartment the entire day.  First William and Wilton came up. Then while I was skyping with Alysha, (it's so good to talk with her and see the kids) Timila from upstairs came to visit with pen in hand so I could teach her some Spanish.  Soon after she arrived Wilton showed up for his daily Spanish lesson and gospel study with Scott on his lunch hour. It was kind of fun to teach her some basic words that I actually knew!  I don't know how she has remained sane being here not knowing the language and never leaving her apartment or talking to anyone until her husband gets home from work.  Was so glad she came down. By the time she left I only had two hours to get food ready to take to Sister Lilly.  That was a rush because you never know if or how the oven is going to work or if you will have to make another batch of whatever you are making because this one  didn't work out. 
   Brother Lilly works for the church and they live in "the big and spacious building" across from the Casa.  When we got there with supper they wanted to show us through their apartment which is absolutely spacious and beautiful. The Church had bought a number of apartments in this building for the area presidency and the other people who come here to work for the Church. There were five bathrooms, four bedrooms and a maid's quarters, a den, a lovely living room, a big kitchen, walk in closets, etc. etc.  Sister Lilly said when they came here they were shown the apartment and asked if it would be ok for them to live in.  They were so overwhelmed they were speachless.  The Lilly's are such nice people.  She teaches our Sunday School class and does a great job ( in English).  We did ask if they would like to trade us apartments when our kids come....
   Driving in to the parking lot I mentioned to Scott that I had told Sister Lee that I would help her get started with the keyboard training book.  So he calls and asks them to come over for dinner.  I had dishes all over from cooking and baking all afternoon and was pooped so rushing in to clean up the apartment in 15 minutes didn't sound like much fun to me.  Scott figures if we are eating we just as well have someone eating with us!  So the Lee's came for dinner.. I did take some pictures today to put on here so I will have them.  Sister Lee doesn't speak English even though I think she understands quite a bit and it is not easy for me to understand her Spanish so we will see how these lessons go. Might just be great for both of us!
   They left and Elder Yturaldie came to see if I would scan a document of his and email it to him. I couldn't find where the scan went so he went upstairs to get his wife.  She came down and found it and visited for an hour.  Now it is after 9:00 and I haven't really had much of a chance to study all day today.  I will study before I go to bed and hope it permeates deep into my subconscious!

Scott waiting for me to finish blogging so he can listen to the news.

Timila Shrestha studying Spanish

                                                      Brother and Sister Lee

8/21/2012

Six months ago I was in the "let's just get this over with" mode - leaving my family and my home and friends and beginning a journey that we had no idea what would be.  Thank heavens it was six months ago and here we are now somewhat settled in with some idea of what we need to accomplish.  There has been nothing easy about any of part of leaving to serve a mission; but at this point I can say that it has been an amazing learning experience.  And one of the most vivid things we have learned is how valuable senior missionaries are to a mission.  As we have watched our friends here serve in so many different ways we realize that there could never be enough senior missionaries to help in all of the ways a mission needs help!  We have learned how very blessed our lives have been and are so grateful to be able to help here in any way we can.
   Wilton had met the missionaries on his way home last night and they had given him a pamphlet to read.  When he told them he couldn't read they told him to come have Elder Rees read it to him.  So Scott decided besides reading to him, he would try and teach him to read.  The neatest thing of all was when he wanted to be taught how to pray.  He is going to William's on Friday night when the missionaries go there to teach William's family a lesson.  These guys are so humble and teachable.Got some treats made for them to take home.  It probably will be their supper so I did make something nutritious.
  Today my husband said - and I wish I could have recorded it- that he would gladly take me shopping to as many stores as it took to find what I needed to make dinner tomorrow for Sister Lilly and he would not complain.  As soon as he said it he put his hand over his mouth like "what did I just say".  It was pretty funny actually because I know that have must have just accidentally slipped out! Then he said,"You know I was lying, right?"  But he did take me and not complain!
  The handicapped older sister that came every Tuesday to the temple to the 6:00 pm session hasn't been there for a month now.  Tonight they told us that she isn't doing well.  She brought such a sweet spirit with her that I have really missed her.  Pres. Bair was telling us last night that the National Palace gardeners met with them to see how they kept the temple grounds looking so beautiful.
   Got to skype with Kelsey today.  It is always so good to see her.She is amazing!  Then got to skype with Megan and Jace.  Mostly Jace scooting  instead  of crawling over to the computer - which was so cute. We are so blessed.