March 2010-in like a lion!

Posted By Nancy Andrews on March 7, 2010

      We have had some powerful wind storms this past week or so that rattled all of our windows till it sounded like they might pop!  I was beginning to try to figure out where the safest place would be if the whole building collasped like they did in Haiti- but with 7 more stories above us I don’t think there with be much left to worry about!   This building has been here for 30 years and survived a few hurricanes, so I guess I had better have more faith and quit worrying.  The winds didn’t get as bad as they had predicted, anyway, but our power went off for a day or so.  Some of the trees along the streets were uprooted and ruined, but otherwise every thing is  fine.

       We had an interesting baptism last week at the Puerto de la Cruz branch on the other side of the island.  The fellow, Mendez is about 68 years old, and has one lame leg, and walks with a cane.  We went over for the baptism to support the missionaries there in their efforts.  When we arrived the  gate into the church driveway was blocked by a police car!

Apparently and ex-girl friend had showed up and wanted to save him from the Mormons!  He was all dressed in his white clothes waiting for the baptism to start, and watching a nice church video when she bodily dragged him out of the church, while he protested-tearing his shirt and getting his white pants all dirty!  One of the members called the Police!  We all waited while they tried to settle her down, and solve the problem.  Eventually he came back up to the church, changed into different white clothes that we had brought, luckily, and the baptism went forward without any problems.  It was a beautiful service, and the spirit was sweet!   He has to be strong to go forward after all of that- and they don’t have a regular font with nice heated water- just a portable font outside with ice cold water!   Also it was a cool rainy day!  It was a baptism to remember!

        We have been very busy with a multitude of things to do, but nothing absolutely spectacular.  We do put in a lot of hours, and have had some really neat experiences.  It is late so I will just download a few recent pictures and write more about things later.

Freddy, a new life!

Posted By Nancy Andrews on February 17, 2010

        Our wonderful young friend Freddy lives for futebol, or Soccer!  He plays every day with friends, and on Saturdays he plays with the missionaries, and as many other members or neighbors and friends can come and join us.  He also takes piano lessons from me, and he has been studying the gospel with the Sister missionaries here.  We have enjoyed, so much, watching him grow as he learns the gospel plan, and has prepared himself to be baptized.  He has had the desire to be baptized for a  few months now, but needed to really understand the commitment that it represents, and to fully understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.  But he is such a strong valient person,  commiting to no play soccer on Sunday and honor the sabbath more fully, was a big reach but is wants to serve the Lord and do what is right.  He will be a wonderful missionary someday.   He has such a strong testimony of Jesus Christ, and wants to follow his teachings.  Just simple pure faith and trust.

            He is from Ecuador, and has some family here but they are not particularly supportive of his new life.  They did come to his baptism though, so that was wonderful for him, as he really wanted their support.  It was a beautiful baptism, and all went well.  It started about 1 1/2 hour late, as he waited for his family to get ready to come!  But no one here worries too much about time!  I just played a whole lot of prelude music while everyone visited , till I thought my hands would fall off!  But all turned out well.   A bunch of friends came over to our apartment afterwards for a few refreshments, and visiting, as we usually have Noche de Hogar on that night (Family Home Evening).   

      Monday we hosted a Barbeque in his honor, as his friend Jose Maria had his heart set on doing that for Freddy, and he was the one who introduced him to the gospel and brought him to church, english classes, piano lessons etc.   Everyone helped with the food for the get together, and it went great.  This is such a great bunch of people.  We love them so much!

 
 

 

 

 

The Craziness of Carnival has begun!

Posted By Nancy Andrews on February 12, 2010

       We had a dance at the church tonight, and had a lot of fun.  We didn’t have near as many attend as we had hoped, but perhaps they stayed home to avoid the 1st day of Carnival. The people who did attend had a great time.   Lots of great latin music, to do the Merenge or the Cha Cha, Salsa etc.  These people really know how to dance.  We had 7 or 8 non-members which was great.  The funny thing was, most of the young women had to work, -there were a lot of young men, different huh?  But they didn’t worry about it, they danced with everybody, Magnolia 84 years old, Me, our handicapped friend, everyone danced together.  They don’t worry about age!.    We had to leave the car at the church, because it was impossible to get back home via car as the streets were clogged with the parade for hours, and very loud music.  It seems that most of the men are dressed as women- I’m not sure why!!  They told us it would go on all night.  There is still a lot of noise and partiers shouting etc, but the main noise of the parade finally moved on down the street about 12:30 a.m..  The street cleaners using palm fronds to sweep with followed right behind all of the parade, and then about six trucks that vacumn and wash the street followed behind that.  It was a terrible mess, but it looks good now!  They say that this goes on every day for a week or so! 

New Grandbaby!!

Posted By Nancy Andrews on February 11, 2010

    Life goes on even when we are far away!  This week, February 8th Cheri and Matt Huntsman had a new baby boy!  This is their second child and our 24th grandchild!   We are so happy for them.  She has been having a rough time the past few weeks with her pregnancy, but her wonderful church family has been there to help her, and have really gone the extra mile.  Our two daughters Lisa and Tifani have left their own families in the capable hands of their husbands and friends to help and have traveled through the miserable winter snows all the way to Colestrip Montana, about 15 hours in this weather to help their sister  and her family.  We are so blessed to have this kind of family support for each other.  We really appreciate all of their sacrifices to take our place when we are needed at home.  Thank heavens for skype and internet, we can visit often and stay connected.  Here we introduce Bryson Ray Huntsman  born Feb 8th  weighing in at 8 lbs 1 oz.  He doesn’t look like he’s sure he’s happy to be here yet!  Just like all newborns, this new world outside of their warm womb is a bit shocking!          

When It Rains, It pours!

Posted By Nancy Andrews on February 10, 2010

      It’s hard to believe that is has been so long since I posted on the blog!  But life has been interesting to say the least!  Feb 1st on Preparation day, we got our laundry done etc.  it was rather cloudy and blustery, so we decided we wouldn’t go site seeing that day.  In fact we had just planned to get out and visit some inactive members in the evening, when we got a call telling us that all of the missionaries needed to stay in their apartments, as there were storm warnings  for the island.  We have had  to laugh a little, in the past,  because it seems like every since we got here, if there is a little mist in the air, everyone has their umbrellas up and acts like it is a real deluge!  But we stayed in as directed and were spending the afternoon ironing and checking the news on the internet, when it really did start  to RAIN.  Actually, we had had a hard rain storm a couple of hours earlier in the day that, that had caused water to blow into our balcony area and get all of my laundry wet and put water all over the floor there.  It even blew some water in through our spare bedroom window- it was closed but I found a puddle of water on the floor.  So we had cleaned that up earlier and got everything dried up again by hanging the laundry around inside of our piso.  So by then we had decided that maybe the reason everyone grabs an umbrella when it starts to rain a tiny bit, is because they know it MIGHT  turn into a deluge!!

     Anyway we were kind of watching out the window as it started raining really hard again!!  I told Ron,” It looks like a small creek with little waves in it running down the edge of the street in front of our apartment building.”  Pretty soon , within five minutes that creek has grown to one lane, then two lanes wide, then three, and four!!  The entire four lanes and part of the sidewalks were a raging river about 10 inches deep with muddy water running down towards the main part of the city and eventually I guess ,towards  the ocean.  Huge garbage containers floated by.  Large boulders 10 to twelve inches in diameter rumbled down the streets, pushed along by the force of the water.  It was quite a site to behold!  Every direction we looked the other streets seemed to be experiencing the same things, but Belgica is much wider than the others.  It was amazing though, people kept driving in it, trying to get home I guess, although there was much less traffic than normal.  The buses kept running too.  I was sure some of the cars would stall out in the water but I only saw one that did!  We watched as the little ic cream shop across the street from us, that has an entrance about 5 feet below street level was getting flooded.  They did really well though. They kept pushing out the water with mops and brooms towards some drains and baracaded the entrance with garbage containers that had floated down there and were able to stay ahead of it pretty well.  In probably a hour or so the whole thing was over and the water was gone, leaving lots of rocks and dirt everywhere, but they were back in business and life seemed to go on like this was normal here!  The only way it really effected us much was that our power was out for about 18 hours, but since we live up on the fifth floor we were in no danger ourselves.   We thought our car would probably be ruined as our garage is 3 stories down, but when we checked it out the drain system that they have, had prevented all but just a little water from going into the garages.  However it must have put down a great amount of water in avery short time because the flower beds ,here in the patio area, near the tennis court, that would only recieve water coming strait down, not any run off , looked like swimming pools, filled to the brim!  So we estimated that  we probably recieved more than 12 inches of rain in that one day!   The heavy rains in the hills above us caused it all to turn into a flash flood.  The next morning we saw that other areas were hit a lot harder than we were.  There were boulders and piles of mud and dirt everywhere!  The tranvia had been stopped totally by the piles of mud and rocks that filled some  of the bridges, that cross over the barancas up to 6 inches deep.   When we saw the papers we realized that this really was very unsual, and some areas above us had store windows broken out, cars rolled, and basement apartments and garages filled with water.  I had tried to take pictures from our window but the rain was so hard you couldn’t see very well.  I took a couple of videos, but they our too long to down load on this site.  Anyway I will try to  take a couple of pictures of the ones that were in the paper to put here with my own poor ones, just for the record.

People are amazing.  Within 24 hours you could hardly tell anything had happened in all of the areas we see in our daily activities.  The park lost most of the gravel off of the paths, and there is lots of street cleaning going on etc.  We meet on Thursday evenings with three ladies from here in Santa Cruz who want to improve their English.  Anyway they told us that this is not at all normal, but that in 2002 there was a hurricane here that was lots worse than this, so I guess we can get less than ideal weather here!  It is lovely most of the time.   Anyway we have had a lot of fun with these three ladies, doing what they call intercambios.  We help them with their English and they help us with our spanish.  One is a phamacist, one is the wife of an executive , and one is a secretary- none are members of our church, but they are wonderful people and it is a good experience for us.

We had Zone conference this past weekend, as well as an area conference via satellite for all of Spain and Portugal.  It was wonderful for the local people to be able to listen to apostles speak speciically to them, in their own language.  We also found out that as of July we will be serving in the Madrid, Spain mission rather than the Malaga Mission!  But no we are not moving, they are just changing the boundaries, and are assigning the Canaries to the Madrid Mission, mostly because there are direct flights here from Madrid.  When missionaries are tranferred here from the mainland they always have to fly up to Madrid fiirst before they can fly here, the mission President, too, so it only makes sense and will save the church a lot of money.   So any missionaries that are here in July will change to the Madrid mission.   They are not so excited about that here, as it is a lot colder in Madrid,  but the Madrid missionaries are ecstatic that they will have opportunities to serve in the canaries!

           We had a wonderful opportunity to help the full time missionaries the other day.   A man and his three sons came in to the church where we were having our area conference on Sunday, just as the meeting was ending.  He wants to find a better life for his family and is seaching for truth.  I visited with them a while, and afterwards he said he really wanted his wife to meet us, as he felt it would help her to want to learn more about the church.  She grew up a catholic but had pretty well decided that religion does not help in this world.  Anyway we ageed to go with the Elders and had a wonderful time meeting this family.  We arranged to meet at the church, as the man said that his wife was very nervous about her house with all of the mess of five children (3 year old twins).  It turned out that it was rather damp and cool at the church in Puerto de la Cruz where they live, so they invited us all over to their house.  They are from Germany, but have lived here for 12 years.  They all speak German- the children go to an English school, and all but the twins speak Spanish fluently too!  Three languages, can you imagine!   Unlike the normal apartment living here, these people had a beautiful home overlooking the city.   He is a professor or something,  they really didn’t say, but he has chosen to not work for the past year or so, and just spend more time helping with the family.  They had the clutter of a normal family of small children but apparently decided that we were down home folk that would understand.  That was a major breakthrough.  They must have money because they also have a home in Germany where they spend the summers, near their family.  Anyway we really bonded well, and the wife and I were able to share together.  She had lost a child ,stillborn, and had had a hard time accepting that that child had no soul,as her priest had told her.  I shared with her our beliefs about eternal families, and that that child will be hers forever in the gospel plan.   She agreed that babies have no need for baptism, and are innocent and pure in God’s eyes.   I think in time that this family will accept the restored gospel and will be a wonderful strength to this area.  It will be hard, as there are not many youth their age in that little branch.  The father is going to bring the boys up to Santa Cruz on Saturdays to play soccer with the missionaries and the youth here, as he feels that will help them want to be more involved in this new life that he is seeking for his family.

A Busy Week in Tenerife

Posted By Ron on January 31, 2010

     It has been a busy week here in Tenerife.  When I look back, I’m not sure what we did, but we were sure busy!  Let’s see, Monday was P-day, it was gloomy and rainy so we cleaned house did laundry and ironed, and ironed!  You really have to appreciate what a blessing dryers are!  I love hanging clothes up to air dry, but all of these wrinkle resistant white shirts of Ron’s are very wrinkly without ironing, as are many of my clothes.  I haven’t met anybody here that has a dryer, but I ‘m sure some people must.   The pictures you see of spain with the laundry hanging across over the tops of the streets and alleys are fairly accurate- however in the big cities it is more like on every balcony and on lines outside the windows.  They have some pretty nifty drying wracks that hold a lot of clothes.

    Tuesday was district misionary meeting, followed by a quick lunch and piano lessons and english class etc. at the capilla.  Wednesday we worked on reports and things we have to get done to apply to be approved as a youth outreach center here.  In the afternoon  more piano lessons, and baking cookies to take to the Missionaries when we do there piso check’s.  The older missionaries are assigned to check the elder’s (young missionaries) apartments for cleanliness and safety concerns, and to be sure that they have a safe environment to live in.  We take cookies so that they won’t dread our coming so much.  It was kind of fun getting to know them better in their own environment rather than at conferences etc.  They actually were remarkable clean.  They are still young men, after all, but their apartments were suprisingly clean.  We had been putting off that job, so it was good to get it done for a while. 

         The other day the Dist. President’s wife asked me if Elder Andrews and I would like to give a pensamiento at the conference this weekend of the teachers from all of the Islands that teach seminary to the teenagers, and the Institute teachers who teach the religion classes to the young adults.   I thought , ‘”Well, how hard could that be? A quick scripture and inspirational thought, right?”  Then she proceeded to tell us to use about 15 minutes between us, seven for him and seven for me!!  And of course all of these teachers only speak Spanish!  So we have also been worrying and preparing for that a lot!   But it went pretty well.  It was a really inspirational conference.  Jose Miguel from somwhere in the Penninsula, who is in charge of the Church Educational System in all of Spain led the discussions, and was really wonderful to listen to.  His Spanish was very clear and  understandable.  Our talks went pretty well. I used my notes a little so that I could say things the  correct way if I got stuck.   The people are really patient and help you with a word if you get stuck and can’t think of how to say something.   It can be rather comical at times.  The other day I was visiting with a nice young man after I ran in the park-  he turned out to be a nurse working here,from Spain.  As we visited and I ended up telling him about the ice and snow in the winter at home that tore all the gutters off our house last year, we had quite the laugh he said that I told him we had ice cream on our roof , rather than ice!   The two words sound very similar in Spanish.   I should just keep my mouth shut, but I love to visit with people so I try to get t know as many as I can.  Oh also three ladies here, asked me if I would be interested in doing intercambios with them.  That means they would like to be able to speak English with someone and they will help you with your Spanish.  They are taking English classes and would like to practice using it more.  So we started that this week too.  I had them over here to our apartment, and we had a lot of fun geting to know each others.  They were flabergasted to think anyone now days has seven children.  Most everyone here has one or two and that is all.  They speak less English than I do Spanish, so we had a mixture of Spanglish going to undersand each other.  They did’nt know anything about our church or what we do here, so it was fun to share a little about our work with the youth here.  We are going to meet every Thursday evening for a hour or so.  Well I’d better get to bed, it is midnight here, 4:00 in the after noon at home.  It’s hard to believe it is January,no February tomorrow!  Festival begins this monthe.   I’m not sure what all that means but everyone tells me it is big.  No one works Tues. and there are parades etc.  Then about February 15th the big Mardigraw things start.  They say that it is bigger then the one in New Orleans!!  They also say that it gets a bit wild and the young missionaries have to pretty much stay in there apartments, for a while.  We’ll see , I guess!

Baptism day for Wascar

Posted By Nancy Andrews on January 18, 2010

   January 16th 2010,

Saturday was Wascar’s baptism.  It has been wonderful to see how learning about our Heavenly Father’s plan and accepting a new way of life has brought so much happiness and light into his life.  He still is dealing with some tremendous challenges, but he is so happy in spite of them all.  It was a wonderful day, inspite of some problems, that we had to work through.                                                          

        Our mission president has been very appreciative of us being here, as a stabilizing force to help in these situations as he is over 1,200 miles away in Malaga Spain.  Ron has prayed hard and been blessed to say the right things, at the right moment.       

        Sunday was a great, but difficult day.  Sacrament meeting was wonderful.  The Branch Preident spoke,and really gave a good talk.   The district President, President Diaz also spoke.  He is a wonderful man, and is doing a very fine job.  He spend much of the day trying to help us work out some of the difficulties we are having here.  One of the big problems that we have is that they have a hard time recognizng that all worthy men who have been ordained hold the priesthood, and need opportunities to use it.  When our new members request who they would like to confirm them and give them the gift of the Holy Ghost, it is totally ignored, even though that person is worthy and has prayerfully prepared themselves to give that blessing.  The branch presidency feel that they should always do all of the ordinances.    So that was a bit difficult for us all.  But the  important things happened none the less.

 Noche de Hogar, Sunday night (home evening) was sweet but tearful as everybody said their goodbyes to our dear sister missionary, Sister Swenson, she is being transferred to the peninsula, to Malaga this week.  Her two new baptixms were especially sad to see her go.  She’s been here since August which is quite a long time , in one place for a missionary.  She only has 6 weeks left until she goes home to California.  She has a sweetheart waiting there for her.  We will miss her a lot.  She has become like one of our daughters!

Back on Tenerife- visitors

Posted By Nancy Andrews on January 18, 2010

 

 
  The day we arrived back on Tenerife, we had company waiting for us.  Sister Smith and her friend Sister Steed had arrived from Madrid.  We met Sister Smith when we were at the MTC (CCM) in Madrid.  Sister Smith is a temple missionary there in Madrid.  She was born in Argentina and came to the U.S. when she was a young woman.  She speaks Spanish very well plus English, Portugese, and some French, I think.  Anyway we had invited her to come visit, during the time that the temple is closed for repairs, and cleaning during January for a week or so.  They had explored Santa Cruz y themselves the first day, before we got home.  They stayed here with us and we had a nice visit.  We took off one day from our normal schedul to take them on a little tour of the Island.  We went to see Teide, the volcano, and drove around the North side of the Island.  We went up some winding steep road, much like some of the twisting ones above Kamiah at home, except much much more narrow.  Let me tell you, that is a that can be a harrowing experience. We met tour buses on a couple of the steep tight corners, and had to get over into the ditch to keep from losing one side of the car!!  But oh my,what gorgeous views!  This was the area where the Princes Bride was filmed- remember the cliffs of insanity?  We saw them! A camera just does not do justice to it all.  The colors are so much richer and the mountains and cliffs look so much more grand and steep in real life!                           

      Our camera finally quit working, so we splurged and bought a new digital camera.  Then somehow the first day when I was getting into the car, it slid out of my bag and got a scratch on the edge of one corner- and by afternoon about 1/3 rd of the screen had turned white!  It still takes pictures as you can see but we can’t view them well , or see what settings it is on .  I doubt that the guarantee will cover being dropped on the tile floor of the garage!

Visit to Gran Canaria

Posted By Nancy Andrews on January 18, 2010

       We have been very busy lately, and have not posted anything new.  Sorry!  We made a trip over to a nearby Island, part of the Canaries, called Gran Canaria, to visit with the Parkers, another senior couple who are serving there, and are in charge of the CES program here(Church Educational System).   All of the missionaries went over this time for Zone Conference, but we went a few days ahead of time to do some extra training with the Parkers, and to do a little sight seeing and fellowshipping together, as the Mission President suggested.  We had a wonderful time there.  We went by boat, which takes a bout 3 hours to get there.  It wasn’t a cruise ship, but it was very big and nice inside- tons, of room!  It is hard to imagine how they can afford to make the trip with so few passengers, but I guess it is subsidized by the government.   There were only about 20 passengers at the maximum, but they also load on semitrucks with products to go to the other islands – in the bottom part of the ferry boat.    I didn’t get seasick like I do on small boats, but you definitley could feel the swells, and it was hard to walk around and times due to the motion.  Going over we just watched the ship’s movie, but coming back we got out on the deck and explored more, and took more pictures etc.

     The Parkers, Linda and Lee, live in the old mission home that was used before they combined the islands with the Spain Malaga Mission.  This is the same home that my brother Merlin and his wife Raquel lived in for a year while they served here.  Everywhere we went people asked about them  and expressed their love and fond memories of their time on Gran Canaria.  The Parkers treated us royally and we had fun going with them and meeting the young people that they are working with, and exchanging ideas and gleaning new ones to try.  We share many of the same challenges.  We fell in love with the wonderful young single adults there.  They are so valient, and genuine.  You just can’t help but love them.  I wish I knew some eligible young men 25-35 years that need a wonderful wife.  We sure have some lovely ladies here that deserve the best, and haven’t found anyone to marry.   There aren’t many eligible young men in the church here,who are active and strong in the gosped.  Or they are way too young for them!    Of course they also need to speak Spanish!  But if I can learn anyone can.  I still don’t say everything right that is for sure!  But I will find that I have been having coversations for hours and have been understanding most of what they say, and they manage to understand me.  So I guess there is progress happening.   We took one day with the Parkers as our guides and went up to the high country in Gran Canaria,  and hiked up to the Roque Nublo (Rock Knob).  It was fantastic.  You feel like all the islands are just big cities like New York City or something, but when you go up into the hills, it is rugged, and amazingly beautiful.   When we got up to the top we could see Teide, the volcano on our island which is the highest point in all of Spain, at nearly 12,000 ft., and we could see Tenerife in the distance.   We also visited the beach at Las Palmas for lunch one day.  And yes, bathing suit tops seem to be optional here!!  No one seems to pay much attention. 

News Year Day, Exploring this beautiful Island.

Posted By Nancy Andrews on January 3, 2010

      We took our Preparation day on New Years day this week as it is not a good day to contact people.  The sister missionaries  went with us to explore the “head of the duck”.  If you look at the Island of Tenerife, it looks like a giant duck.  We live at the throat of the duck.  So we went out to see what is out on the tip of the Island.  We discovered a gorgeous beach very near our city, and yes people were swimming!  I felt the water and it felt really nice, about like the river in Kamiah in mid August!  The day was a little blustery, and so we were hesitant to head out, but it soon cleared up and was a fabulous day.  This end of the island has some very rugid mountains with winding steep roads, but they are all paved nicely.  They took some real engeneering to create, I am sure, in some places!  At one point we went through a tunnel to the other side of the mountain.  The south side is more arid, and the north side is green and lush.  Camera pictures just couldn’t do justice to the sights!  It was fantastic! 

               We took a few leftovers to picnic with, but we found a wonderful little restaurant down beside the sea and  decided to splurge and eat out.  We ate our first real Paella, which is a classic spanish rice dish.  There were little baby octupus in it, shrimp (whole with shells, legs, heads, eyes, and all,), and I don’t know what all else but there were a lot of shells, etc in it.  It was good- but I don’t think I will order it often.  All of the seafood makes the rice a bit fishy!  But it was a lot of fun.  The sisters opted for chicken and rice!   I wonder why?