Monday, November 04, 2013

          Glade worked on his talk most of the day—along with setting up the DVD player in the lounge for our FHE tonight.  He bought “Legacy” from the Distribution Center (in Spanish, of course, but with English sub-titlesJ) so we could have a movie night.  It went great, but it always makes me cry.         

We served chicken salad sandwiches with grapes, apples, craisins, shredded cheese, and cashews on fresh bakery whole-grain roles; black cherry Jell-o with Glade’s favorite—fruit cocktail—set in individual cups and topped with “crème in a can;” and the rest of the chocolate, hazelnut “piroulines” left over from our last FHE.    We found Crystal Light at the grocery store, so that served as the drink and Glade picked up some chips on Saturday when he hiked down to De Prova and that completed the fare.  Our turn won’t come up again until early January.

The new film is now in our temple and tomorrow we will see it for the first time.  It will mean a change in our work schedule since it is several minutes longer than the original film.  The sessions had started every hour and a half but will now start every two hours with the first one at 8:00 a.m. and the last one at 6:00 p.m.  On Saturdays we will start earlier and the last session will start at 4:00 p.m.  

What it means is that each shift will be shortened by an hour and the start time on the early morning turn will be an hour later.  Yahoo!  It willmake our days about 7 ½ to 8 hours instead of 8 ½ to 9 hours.

During the break interesting work was done on the grounds.  The grassy areas around the chapel and the temple were weed-whipped so close to the ground that the areas were left brown and dead-looking.  We are hoping it was all for the good of the grass and that it will come back better than ever.

Several planters that had daisies, coleuses (plural according to the Internet) and a variety of other flowers were dug up and all the plants except for the trees were removed.  It made me so sad.  However, this morning on my walk I noticed right away that the areas had been planted full of poinsettias!   Maybe it is a seasonal gesture?  Anyway, they look really great.  I hope the former plants were taken to a nursery to receive TLC for a return to the grounds.   The coleuses were really not in good shape since they are a shade-loving plant and had been placed in full sun.  The other removed plants were beautiful, however.

That’s why the following pictures include poinsettias.  (Just a side note—there are actually poinsettia “trees” here!)

An odd angle, but it shows the poinsettias in front of the temple.

They are going to be so thick and beautiful in a few weeks!

I know, they are already beautiful, but I think they will get even better.

      These are men who have been working in the temple and this was their mode of                     transportation for the day.  This is typical of what we see, especially in the early
morning--trucks of all sorts and sizes filled with men and gear as they head off to
work at a variety of jobs.  (I mean by that--the locals going to work in the city,
not coming to the temple to work.) The roads aren't that good and are very windy.
It is a wonder they stay in the truck.  At least this one is nice and has a roll-bar.
Many are flatbeds with no sides and sometimes the workers ride on top of "stuff."  

The parking lot is wet but not because of the rain.  In the photo above this one
            you can see someone on the right with a broom of sorts working away.
        They scrub this parking lot more than I scrub my floors!  At the end of last
week they spent a couple of days working
with power-washers from a big tank on a truck and sccubbed
all the way through the lot!  It took hours.  

This is one of those workers who just got out of the back of the pick-up and
is the elder who knew Kevin from his mission--Elder Mensilla. (sp?)