Our Guardian Angel

 This is Hermano Trejos, our guardian angel.  He is a taxi driver and is the counselor in the branch presidency.  The president lives out about 10 miles, so we rely on H. Trejos.  He has a Yaris also, so he helps us with the car.  Yesterday we left our outer security door unlocked when we went to Chitre.  He called us to ask us about it, went to our landlady for a key, and made sure it was locked.  He warns us of the neighborhoods that aren't safe after 5:00 (it's still light) and worries about our flashy car.  He wants us to put it in his locked garage if we are  ever leaving it.  I suspect he knows the danger better than we do.  We don't have a locked garage, so just keep praying that it will be protected so we can continue our work.

Yesterday also, he came by to share a papaya from his tree and a pineapple.  The papaya was so sweet and good that I ate more than half of it while I was talking to my mom on the phone.  I ate part of it for her, of course.

 This is Rod's youngest English student.

 My fruit stand friend suggested that I try  granadia.  I had no idea what to do with it, but Elder Pena made an icy drink by blending this mushy fruit, putting it through a colander, adding sugar and ice.

It was amazing!  It tastes much like slush punch all by itself.  I also used it as a dressing for fruit salad.  Yum!!

 The Elders have a great system of putting multiple cameras on a table and preparing them to take photos.  Then they sprint to be in the photo themselves so no one needs to be left out.  The whole process is a lot of fun.

Do you see the red shoes?  It's p-day, so Elder Cobba says they are legal.  They remind me of Aryl's red hightops that he wanted to wear to his mission farewell.

This is the other couple serving in our zone.  She was born a McAffee in Lost River Valley where I was  born and knows my Aunt Hilda and Uncle Ellis King.  It IS a small world.

There is no such thing as reverence in our primary, so I decided to try to get them busy and interested.  It worked, sort of, but I can surely hear my errors in Spanish.  We needed something other than my camera to replay it.

Rod:
Several of the missionaries are looking forward to being helped by the perpetual education fund.  They really come from tough backgrounds, many of them, not being members long and having to be bread winners for their families.

I got my annual lung stuff, but otherwise we are healthy.  We took the brother of a doctor with us to the Pharmacy and they gave us the medicine (amoxycillin) without a prescription -- with a discount.  They handed him the medical book so he could look up what was needed -- thus they are somewhat more advanced than the states in self diagnosis.  The mission way is to call the mission nurse (a missionary) and two weeks later she called to see if we got the medicine -- sending it through the zone leaders doesn't appear to be working.

We have appointments for Thanksgiving and it is so hot here that we are not going to fire up our oven and make the whole house hotter.  Only two of the missionaries are from the states (and the other couple in Santiago) and it is so much work that we are going to just keep teaching -- maybe make a squash (pumpkin) pie or a loaf of bread with the fan on!!  We haven't been Thanksgiving grinches before -- for family it is worth it.