We have been here for a month now. I am getting used to some things, like the message I get in Spanish when I check my voice mail. I know what that says and I know what buttons to push to listen to or delete a message. I’m really good at that now. When I first got my phone plan from Claro, I started getting messages from them and it was all in Spanish! At first I laughed!! How can I ever figure out what their messages say! Again, Google Translate is a big help and so is Carter.

My  youngest son, Jacob, said that a mission is full of awkward moments. Well, I had an awkward moment last night. We attended a baptism that started out with everyone in the chapel. A  few minutes before it started, the guy in charge asked me to lead the music. I can lead music in Spanish just like my mother does on her missioin in San Diego! I’m good at that! My 2 years spent  in the Spanish branch in Willcox prepared me for this very thing. He told me the page number, slowly, in Spanish. I wanted to hug him! I heard it clearly the first time. It was “Help Me Teach With Inspiration.” I’ve never sung that one at a baptism before, but I’m in Peru and maybe that’s what they sing here. He gave me a hymnbook and I was sitting up on the stand. Right before we were supposed to sing,  I realized that there was no one to play the piano, so when it was time to sing, I went over to the piano to play the opening note. I pushed on the F key and no sound. It was an electronic piano not turned on. Ok…. that didn’t work.  I went back up to start the song and, thank goodness, the missionary sitting on the front row whispered loudly, “We just count, Uno, Dos, Tres and start singing.” Ok… I can do that. In a split second, I realized no one had hymnbooks. But what could I do about it now. Who is going to know, “Help Me Teach With Inspiration” from memory? (There aren’t any hymnbooks in the chapel. They post the words to the hymns in the program for Sacrament meeting and some people use their phones to sing from.) Meanwhile, everyone is waiting to start the song…waiting on me! I said, “Uno, Dos, Tres” very confidently, I can count to three in Spanish really well, and I started singing. At first I was singing a solo with everyone watching. I saw some get out their phones to find the hymn. Eventually there were some singing. but most were humming or just watching me. Carter said he was humming. Thank goodness it was a short hymn. That was the awkward moment!

Then…. during the program in the chapel, there was a little boy sitting on the stand by his father. He was sitting 2 seats down from me with the seat between us empty. He was really cute and a couldn’t help looking at him.  He kept looking at me too. You know those woven Peruvian hats with the tassels hanging down on either side? He was wearing one of those, only it was a Captain America hat with ears on it. So cute! He was about 3 or  4 years old. I would smile at him and he would hide his face. Then he would look at me again, I would smile, and he would hide. After a while he held his fist up with a mean look on his face. I smiled and gave him the thumbs up sign. Then he growled at me. I smiled and gave him a thumbs up. He growled again and I gave him a scared look. He loved that and smiled real big! All this was happening up on the stand. I decided that we weren’t being very reverent so I tried not to look at him for the rest of the program. He tried to do things to get my attention but eventually he gave up. It was hard not to look at him.

I’ve been looking for the beautiful things around me here, taking pictures of what I find. My phone is full of pictures of flowers I see on my walk to work, and hanging from the tops of the apartments of the little sidewalk down Aruba, the road we live on. I want to post all of them. On the street above us there are Jasmine vines growing above the sidewalks. They smell heavenly! I pick a flower or two every time I walk by. The veggies that have just been washed, drying in the dish drainer are so colorful. Of course, the color is not as vibrant on these pictures as in real life, but here are some of my favorites:

We walk under these flowers every day on our way to work.

A beautiful flower on the temple grounds

Freshly washed veggies in our dish drainer

Jasmine blossoms on my kitchen counter.

I have to say though….. the most beautiful “things” around me are the people! Here are a few of them.

The Ojeda family, dropping their daughter off at the mission training center. Every 3rd Wednesday is when we get new missionaries at the MTC.

This is the piano player for our sacrament meeting, on the left, entering the MTC.  We miss him, but the MTC now has an amazing accompanist.

Carter got to baptize Rosie. Elder Hidalgo, next to Carter, is from Mesa, Arizona. Carter will be writing about Rosie.

Written by Faye