The Rainy Season is Coming

I wonder how Joseph Smith kept on keeping on in the early days of the church.  There must have been many days of discouragement.  I would be dishonest if I said that there were not days here like that, but I am grateful to be serving.  I want to follow the prophet and to make my life count for something each day.  Today at church four of our students played, one hymn each in the Sacrament service.  They are progressing, and the church will be blessed for their service.  Two of their siblings also played when I brought the keyboard to primary. 

While returning from Las Tablas on Friday, it was dark and raining.  We ran over a piece of metal that made a loud bang and flew off in the darkness.  We continued on and in front of a well-lit mini supermarket, Rod heard noise and stopped to check.  We had a flat tire.  Unfortunately we couldn't loosen the lug nuts with our cheapy little tool that came with the car.  I tried hammering while Rod stood on it and we got one, but couldn't get the others.  The owner of the mini sent a child to get her uncle.  He came and really stomped the tool and got them loose and changed the tire.  We continued on safely to our next two appointments, and then on home about 10 p.m.  The next morning we took our tire in.  It had a hole about 2 inches long in it.  I don't know how we traveled to a safe place on it.   We felt like we had a bit of "Hand of the Lord" that night.  I don't know how we could have done it out on the road.  We now have a pipe to help the length of our tool.  We tried to buy the tool like a cross with more length, but of the 4 different types of sockets none fits our car.

This man is a friend from our morning walk.  He was mending his nets.  He fishes for large shrimp, and manta rays break into the nets. He offered to sell us large shrimp for $4  a pound, but when we ordered them they weren't there and we haven't seen him since.  We'll see.

I can now hear people speaking sometimes and the other day I heard a woman say "every day in the same clothes they come".  This is my walking outfit.

Edilsa was our first student to play in Las Tablas.  She works ironing clothes in a store next to the church there.  We come, bring lunch, and give her a lesson.  She loves to work with Rod on English, too, and has a good mind.

This is the bag of mangoes we received from the Trejos family last week.  They are all gone now.  We eat them for breakfast diced with raw oatmeal and milk.  They are delicious.

This frog had the misfortune to be in the street at the wrong time.  He is flat as a pancake, but nothing seems to be eating him.  He's just there drying out as best he can in this rainy season.  It is interesting to see how many frogs of different sizes just go jumping across the road. 

The gospel is still true, and it's still fun to be here together.  We hope everyone gets the opportunity to be so blessed.