Christmas on the Isthmus

This picture is for Stormy who loves dogs.  He lives with Sister Nellie in her tiny new house without a bathroom yet. She is the choir director and we're teaching her to direct music.

 We invited a member to lunch one day.  She invited us in turn to pass by her house and she shared her shrimp with us.  I put them on a tray so you could see them, but you couldn't appreciate the long whiskers, so I added the next photo. 

 I was a bit put off by the eyes.  I think I like them better in the states when their heads are already removed.


We were invited to a Posada at the Branch President's home.  It is a party for children to sing for Christmas.  They taught me this song, one of their traditional carols. I also played the keyboard for us to sing songs from the hymnal.  It was my kind of party.  Rod commented that all them men but one stayed outside. 

 We went to the Christmas party of the Penonome branch.  They played American rock music for their entertainment.  This man did the Latin music with his accordion.

This is one of our piano students and her baby.  I like to watch the mom almost more than the baby.  I remember this when Payton was first giggling, that I liked to watch Edyn almost more than him.

 We went to the beach to buy fish for Elder Cobba.  He is a fisherman from Peru and I wanted him to have fresh fish for Christmas.  We saw all of these white herons on the salt ponds as we drove out.  The ones in the distance aren't herons and they eat them.  We'll try one one of these days.

 They selected from this box of fish.  It was his catch for the day.  We bought enough for 12 people for about $10 and he cleaned and scaled them in the bargain.

 Eric, one of our students, agreed to pose with the long fish. We didn't find out the name of it.  Does anyone know?

 This tool did a great job of taking off the scales.

This man was patient with us wanting him to work in the morning the day before Christmas AND take photos.  It really was interesting to see the process.  I'm telling him that I'm just a Gringo who doesn't know how to do this.  People are friendly and nice here.

 I had to arrange his whiskers, but he was quite interesting.  We didn't buy him to eat. The funny lighting shows all the holes in the roof.  It looks like the rainy season might be tough on this work environment.

 It was a lovely day.  Here is the Borbon family, children and grandfather.  We really love them.  We made "figgy pudding" for them after Ledis sang us the "We wish you a Merry Christmas" song.  I was serving it and poured the lemon sauce all over their porch.  Luckily it is sealed cement and cleaned up easily.  They politely enjoyed the pudding.  Elder Goodfellow politely declined to try it, and we all know Elder Cobba doesn't like sweets.

 The children picked up parts of polished shells for me.

 My knives are so dull Elder Cobba had to use a hammer to cut the fish bones.  He scored the fish so they would fry even better.  He was really excited.

Here is the fish, just waiting to be enjoyed.  Elder Cobba sucked off every bone and especially enjoyed the eye.  That was going a bit far for me, but he did go further than even I do in not wasting, so I saved my fish head and ate the tongue on our conference call with our grandchildren.  It tasted like fish.

 I can't buy ground cloves here, and the cloves are soft because of the humidity so they don't break up easily. I borrowed my landlady's mortar, but it was wooden and didn't work.  My doorstop does a fine job.  I had cloves for the figgy pudding.

 Our Christmas day was spent in Santiago with the zone.  We had funeral potatoes, just like Elder Holland talked about last conference, stovetop stuffing, candied yams, ham and rolls. We prepared pineapple chunks (fresh, of course) and watermelon.  We finished up with ice cream and toppings after our afternoon rest home visit.  We copied Myles' songbooks and took the guitar.  We had a great time singing with the U.S. elders who knew some of the songs.  One elder could play any of them just like Myles.  What a treat!

 Someone suggested a trip to the rest home.  This chicken was there in the dining hall. Someone commented that he was future dinner.  Rod said if he pooped on his floor his trip to the dinner pot would be accelerated.

 This man said someone had offered him a bible and not delivered.  Elder Guevara had a copy of the Book of Mormon in his backpack, so we gave him that.

This man was pleased to pose with Rod.  We just sang a bit and wished them Merry Christmas.  The bus ride was interesting.  We had to walk to the station, wait, then ride out.  When we returned we waited a long time.  When a bus finally stopped, it was full but we got on anyway!  All 18 of us on a 25-30 passenger bus.  One of the elders talked to the bus driver then announced that we were Mormons who believe in Christ and we'd like to sing a Christmas song.  We sang Silent Night, then Feliz Navidad, then We Wish You A Merry Christmas.  It was fun!