Assorted Stuff

I'm waiting to watch the Payson Temple Cultural Celebration (which has been delayed because of weather) so now I'm looking at some photos I've taken lately.  I'll share a few:

Making our Easter Basket

This is my Happy Wall in our office.  The red and white menu is from Freddy's--a frozen custard place in Kansas where we like to go when we are in Derby.  I found the menu in my years-old crossword puzzle book I have at work for those times when I'm not doing anything.  (I put the menu in my book years ago on one of our car trips to Kansas.)  I plan to finish all the crossword puzzles before we leave!

Brad is delivering a hard drive at the Caribe Area Administrative Office.  Every other Friday we ship a hard drive with two weeks of pictures to Family Search in Salt Lake.

Here are the men in charge of mail at the Area Administrative Office. To the right of Benjamin's hand is the cubby for our out-going letters that go in the POUCH to Salt Lake.

 

Here we have a lovely view out the car window on our way home from work. The motorcycle zipped between us and the car next to us in very little space. That happens all the time.  At least he is wearing a helmet!  Most of the moto riders don't.  Crazy.

You might notice the Expreso Nuevo Rubi sign on the front of the building.  It is a food place of some sort and every time we pass it Brad asks me if I want to eat there.  No.

Can you find the gringo?  Where's Brad?  He's waiting at the Junta for the Key Man, as we call him, to unlock two doors that lead to our office.  We have a key to our little room, but the two offices we have to go through to get there have different locks.  Strange thing.  Every morning we arrive along with many other employees and we all have to wait for the Key Man to arrive.  It seems only 2 men have keys to unlock the offices.  They ride a bus to work and rarely get there before we do.  Crazy.

And last, but not least, here am I on a warm, breezy day drinking a cold piña colada sin ron at the First Annual Caribbean Area Records Preservation Missionary Conference. 

More about that another day.

Posting Failures

A friend recently pointed out that our blogposts seem to have quit.  So...today I'll post some random photos to prove that we are still alive and doing well.  Really.  Doing well and being happy.

What we see on our drive to work:

Last week my friend Nancy took me to Freddy's shop at the Yellow Steps.  Nancy knows the owners and they always give her (and her friends) great prices on all things Dominican. It may seem odd that my missionary companion isn't in the photo.  Brad was taking pictures at work while Nancy and I shopped and went to lunch.  Nancy moves to New York next month so it was kind of our last hurrah.
 

This is the gift basket we received in December at the Area Office Christmas Devotional.  Quite a treat!  We passed along most of the candy to the Sister Missionaries in our ward.  We didn't need it!

Somebody's idea of the way to have a Magical Christmas--eat Jaja canned sausages. See the park bench in the lower left corner... just for scale.

And the last photo for today-- this week we had a visit from our FamilySearch manager, Manny, who lives in Quebec. The white building on the left has the MTC, temple missionary housing, guest housing for temple patrons, and the offices for the Area Presidency.  The Temple is behind us (minus Angel Moroni--the photographer goofed.) The building behind the temple (across a street) is a big, expensive apartment tower that is next door to our apt building.  It was under construction when we arrived and it still won't be finished when we leave in a little less than 4 months, in case anybody is counting.

New Year Greetings!

January 2015

Greetings, Friends and Family!

We are not home. We are still on an island in the Caribbean. Still missionaries taking pictures of old, dirty books every day. We are thriving and surviving this adventure and have lots of work to do before we go home in September.

There. Now, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Christmas has come and gone and I couldn’t send out Christmas cards. I enjoy putting the cards in the envelopes, sticking on the stamps, sealing the envelopes then dropping them all in the big blue mailbox at the post office. I can’t do that here! So, this year I’m doing the new thing—new for me—and simply sending a blogpost greeting. That will have to do.

We’ve been in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic as Records Preservation Missionaries for 15 months with 8 more to go. We take digital pictures of birth records for the entire country in a government office about 3 ½ miles from our apartment. The photos are shipped to Salt Lake (on a hard drive) where the Family Search people will eventually have them available for online indexing. Right now you can actually see some of the books we photographed at familysearch.org! Click here. Some might say that sounds tedious. You’re right. I think it’s a missionary blessing that we haven’t gone bonkers. It is interesting, it is hard, it is tedious, but it needs to be done and we are doing it! We’ve taken over 600,000 photos with a goal of over a million photos before we’re finished. I’m pretty sure we’ll make it if nothing icky happens. Here, you never know!

This country is interesting. Mostly I say this place is crazy. The prices are high, the traffic is horrendous, and the traffic is horrendous. Did I say that twice? Good. I mean it. However, the weather is rather pleasant; the year round flowers are pretty; the palm trees are great; the mangoes, pineapples and avacados are delicious; the view of the Caribbean out our windows is lovely; and the people are very friendly. If anything in this country is charming, I’d say it’s the people. Maybe not when they’re driving, but most other times, yes.

I’ve had a hard time adjusting to this place, but I’ve learned a few things that I will share:

• Cockroaches won’t kill me.
• Seeing a cockroach won’t kill me.
• Mosquitoes might kill me with chikungunya.
• Drinking the tap water might kill me.
• I won’t die when the electricity goes out.
• I haven’t died when the air-conditioning quits.
• I’m not happy when the water goes out.
• The Lord blesses missionaries, even wimpy ones who complain

Sigh… I’ve had a hard time adjusting to this place, but I am getting better. Our family has received many blessings that I consider missionary blessings.

Tom and April, living in Japan, adopted a Japanese baby girl! Kimiko was sealed to them in the Tokyo temple in November. Big brothers Peter and Clark were able to attend, too, so it was a wonderful event for all of them!

Emily and Sean (above) moved from England to Derby, Kansas and are now in the same city and ward as Kathryn and Rob (right.) Their families get together often, the cousins fight it out, and mostly they are having a good time living close to each other!



                                                         

Monica and Ryan enjoy living in our house in Elk Ridge and 2 year old Michael has lots of room to explore and play. (And climb on my Japanese step tansu. Humph.) They are taking good care of the house and yard while Ryan continues his college journey.

We’ve also been blessed this year because Tom was able to come visit us—YAY! We did lots of normal things with him and it made me feel more comfortable here.

My sister and her husband came for a week in May and we had a glorious time at a north shore beach, seeing where Columbus lived when he first landed on this island, and—the best—we did the sealing for our parents and we were sealed to them. The Santo Domingo Temple will always be special to us!

This past week we began working on a new project. One of the oldest cathedrals in the western world has some old documents they want us to photograph. Woohoo! Cool beans! They even provide a parking space! No, really, this is a great opportunity to go to the Colonial Zone in Santo Domingo and take pictures of some of their old records. Some of the original parts of the buildings date from the 1500s. Diego Columbus (Christopher's son) went to that church! The church people recently found Diego's baptism record. Maybe we'll photograph that for all the world to see.

So, life happily goes on here. It is sometimes difficult, but there are many blessings when serving the Lord. In any capacity. Taking pictures of old dirty books is our mission right now and yes, we're enjoying it.