Friends

These are some of my very best friends in the whole world! Joy and Stephanie are leaving this next week, and then we will follow soon there after. It is a sad sad time for all of us. Here we are at dinner before the Relief Society Broadcast. It was such a great time with the ladies....Our friendship seems to be so strong and close because we are out here in the boons. We are members of the church and all speak English and speak the same culture :) That is hard to come by in the Dominican Republic and so we latch to each other. I, for one, have learned so much from these ladies and will miss them terribly. I have told them all I will have to call them in the middle of the night for advice. It has truly been a blessing for me to know them and spend time with them: walking, running, weight lifting, brunching, lunching, chatting, crying, doing therapy together, de-stressing, coping, complaining, sharing, laughing, beaching, and loving each other. I am so lucky to have such good friends.

Columbus Lighthouse

For one of our date nights, we switched it to a Friday afternoon when Tobias gets out early. We took Rebekah and toured the lighthouse they say Columbus is buried in. The DNA debate is still on with Spain, but the lighthouse is pretty amazing. We really enjoyed our time with Beckah and liked seeing the museums inside from tons of different countries. Columbus' signature is cool-lots of symbols to basically say he is Christ's servant. The whole story is pretty sad...Columbus never was paid...and no one really knows where he is from or any of his family. They think he might have been Jewish and changed his name so they couldn't trace any information back to him. I am glad the Americas were discovered, but with them came basically the entire destruction of the Taino Indians of the Dominican Republic. We all know the same story in several different countries where this happened and the struggle continues between old and new "power." (Guatemala, etc.) Needless to say "Colombus Day" is not always a celebrated holiday in Latin countries.

A day in our house

My cousin Rebekah has been a lifesaver! Some days the girls just need some undivided attention. This day they loved getting dressed up like Hollywood stars and being driven around downstairs on the office chair! So fun!

Indian dancing

The University here actually had a cultural exchange! We went to it and just loved the Indian dancers and music. The girls had a blast and went up at the end to dance too-Madison was in heaven and couldn't keep her booty still! Mikaela would not pose for a picture--I think she was on stimulus overload. The one lady danced with seven pots on her head...it was about a 20 minute process of one by one putting them on her head. She even sat down and picked up a dollar with her teeth off the ground! It was amazing. The man did a similar courting dance with a huge pot of water on his head that was first on top of one, then two, then three glasses. He then walked on nails, the sides of swords and walked clutching glasses with his toes. It was so great. Way to go cultural exchanges!

El Salvador

Well, I got to go back to the mission, with my family!!! It was a wonderful trip and such a blessing. Here a bunch of photos that have the descriptions and more info if you click on them. Lots to do and not enough time. Thanks to the Porters for opening up their hearts and home to us, it would not have been possible without them! We love you!!!

Helicopter Ride

There was a special mission here with the American war ship Kearsarge. The embassy gave us the great opportunity to go and tour it. Being so big, and having certain rules, the boat had to stay afloat about 1 mile from shore or something. We drove to the Dominican air force base and rode these huge helicopters out to the boat and then had a fabulous tour. A storm came up and we were thinking maybe we would have to spend the night on the boat, but they decided to take us back to the navy base instead. We got to ride on these huge hauling boats that sit in the bottom back part of the war ship. The warship can sink its back half a little and then open up into the sea to load and unload things. That is where we went and were "unloaded into the sea." It was absolutely fascinating! I learned so much of our armed forces and the good they do. It was strictly a peace keeping, medical mission. They were able to be near Haiti when so much of the devastation had occurred and were able to take thousands of gallons of water and other supplies in these hauling boats. I happened to meet the Colonel on an airplane a few days later and he said it was such an awesome mission...that he was amazed at how humanitarian the young service people were. He mentioned it as being hopeful when we worry so much about the 20 something kids we have. I am definately proud to be American...even when not everything in our system is perfect. These service men and women sacrifice so much! Six months out, some in, and then out again. They were very kind and professional to us. One of the other really interesting things that we saw was their six operating rooms. The Kearsarge is a special medical boat that goes to different parts of the world to help other countries, but also our own troops. They had about 100 doctors working together from several countries doing dental and eye work for this specific mission. We asked the most common surgery and the chief surgeon said, "vasectomies and apendectomies." I had to make sure I understood right, so I asked if a vasectomy was what I thought it was. He said yes, they come to make sure they can have no more babies! I thought he was talking about the different countries that they serve, but he was talking about our own troops! On their was home they have the surgery or their wives, girlfriends don't want them back!!! I thought that was a little funny, but in actuality, incredibly sad. So complicated...Life is not easy, that is for sure. Hope you enjoy part of our experience!