DANCING UP A STORM

This is our JAS facebook page if you are interested.  Pictures and activities get posted there that I don't post here.

This week week for Family Home Evening one of the girls brought her brothers x-box with a dance video.  They had a lot of fun and even the old people danced.  It is very good exercise.  The missionaries kept their " ministerial bearing" and didn't dance, but washed the dishes.

ART ON THE BARANCO

This path borders the 800 unit complex (with only about 100 units occupied.  It was meant to be a resort not apartments.)  Most mornings we walk this path for an hour.  I goes past a beautiful golf course, which we rarely see anyone on, and down towards the ocean and a housing complex and shops with mostly people from England.  Notice the bougainvillea vines that cover the fences on the left.  There is a mile or two of them around the complex. We love it!  I always have flowers for a table centerpiece and they dry beautifully.

We were impressed from the beginning with the interesting "art" work, consisting of stacked rocks, tree limbs and junk.  The red stuff is a natural ice plant that grows around in patches...so beautiful.

Then one day we happened on the artist on the path with his dogs.  Everyone in the Canaries has a dog but us.  He is an older gentleman from England, who has lived here for 7 years and has created the structures over that time with stuff collected from the path.

The trees in the back border the golf course.  The artist has been fun to talk to.  He knows a lot about the history of the island and has given us a lot of interesting facts.

This might be the most interesting one with a garden hose and an old glove, among other things.  This is the worst place I have ever seen for littering.  We are planning to do a street clean up in our various areas with our JAS kids...or maybe we could do a few art pieces first. Notice the interesting shaped hills.

DISTRICT #3

The influx of missionaries is starting to affect our district.  When we arrived there were six full time missionaries and two couples.  The other seniors, the Aultmans went home about a month ago and we have 10 full time Elders and soon to get 2 sisters.  We are excited about the sisters.  They will be serving in our area living in Los Cristianos.  We are looking for a piso for them to move into when the next transfers come in 6 weeks.  We had district meeting with the new Elders that arrived this week.  We always enjoy getting to know the new ones but miss the ones leaving.  It is best not to get attached to anyone here.

I feed them after our district meeting every week.  I am not sure how many cups of water I can continue to put in the soup.  We used to have seconds sometimes. Today the crock pot that I inherited from the Aultmans blew the breaker in the kitchen.  I hope they fix it because the church's stove hasn't worked for weeks and they might get tired of cold food.

Back row from the left:  Elder Fausett, Elder McKeighan, Elder Cloward, and Elder Malan
Front row:  Elder Willoughby, Elder Bassett, Elder Cook, Elder Luie, Elder Eskelson and Elder Pugh

CANARY DAYS RELIEF SOCIETY ACTIVITY

On Saturday our Relief Society hosted an activity to commemorate Canary days, an annual celebration of the culture and history of the islands.  Mike and I both went and our young elders.  We are even in the video.  A son of one of the Relief Society counselors put this fun video together.  The song tells in Spanish all of the things that the islands are famous for.  Several sisters told stories and histories from each island.  Then they served a lunch of boiled Canary potatoes with mojo, which I love and plan to make, baked chicken, bread and salad.  Then they brought out a pan of small dried marinated fish. 

This is the dried fish which are marinated in something with the vegetables to soften them and it was served cold.  It was too fishy for me.

This is the Mojo, which is often served with the famous Canary grown potatoes and fish or chicken and is wonderful as a bread dip.  They also have a green version.   It is made with olive oil, garlic, cilantro, cumin and a fresh red pepper blended.  Mike is not a cilantro fan but he ate this and enjoyed it. 

These are Canary potatoes.  They are very tasty and they have a small version.

BALLARD DEVOTIONAL AND FAREWELL JATNIEL

We have such a small group of JAS kids that we are not sure from week to week who is going to be around for our Family Home Evening.  Some of them are at the University and are having end of the year testing.   There was a Europe wide devotional this Saturday and we were able to get a link to watch it at home rather than driving an hour away like they wanted us to do.  One of our JAS kids Jatniel, who was recently baptized is moving to Venezuela next week and we wanted to have a farewell for him so we combined it with the devotional.  It turned out to be a fun spiritual evening.  Jatniels mother came and a family friend.  The missionaries came late with a JAS member we don't see much, so it turned out to be a great evening.  Jatniel is such a special young man we are going to miss him a lot.  I am happy for facebook where we will be able to follow his life and keep in touch.

PAINTING ROCKS

We have a beach close by that is full of smooth stones, which is unusual here because volcanic rock is mostly craggy.  We brought a bag home to paint with the JAS kids.  They liked the idea, but 2 of them ended up taking University Exams and we couldn't scrape up any of our non-members, so we only had 2 attend.  We had a lot of fun painting them.  They even wanted to take home the paints and paint more.  I might even do some more myself.  Pinterest has pages of cool ideas for painting rocks.

Luis and Valerie Painting away!

I painted the woman's head and Mike painted the island of Tenerife with a rainbow and sun and the monster.  It was funny that both wanted to write English words.  Luis speaks English and Valerie hopes to go to BYU and is studying English.

This picture was taken by Marlene, her husband Guillermo is on the front left.  They were baptized last week.  Next to them is a family from Italy, the Biscaros and then the Mendozas, who hosted us for Sunday dinner.  They are from Peru and she makes some very delicious Peruvian food.  She taught me and Elder Cloward, who likes to cook, how to make a pepper sauce for a potato salad.  You get 3 of these special hot orange peppers and scrape out the seeds and membrane to control the heat.  You chop them up with half an onion some garlic and fry them in olive oil for about 5 minutes with some cumin powder.  Then you put them in a blender with about 3 cups of milk and salt and the surprise thickening agent: slices of bread.  First she put in 4 but then added 3 more because we had more people.  It was very thick and creamy.   She poured it over cold boiled potatoes and sliced hard boiled eggs on lettuce leaves.  It has a little bite and is very tasty, even Mike ate it and he is a hard sell.  I am dreaming of some other things to do with it.