Cooking and Cooking

This week I am grateful that I do not have to get ready for young adult conferences every week.  It has been a week of almost nothing but cooking, and I am exhausted, but ready for the conference. 

I guess I thought we would not be doing enough cooking this week, so we invited all our missionaries to come to the house for dinner.  Knowing that we only have a few more Pdays (preparation days) here on the island with these wonderful missionaries, motivated us to do just a little more cooking!

We served them up some delicious fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, Jewish Sweet Bread, and apple pie with ice cream. . . Definitely a "Taste of America."

So thankful to have this great helper by my side!

And, as always, the missionaries wrote emails home. . .

they played games. . .

and they tried out a team building activity that we will use at the young adult conference.

We love these missionaries!

Tuesday night, people were about 15 minutes late arriving for English class, so I told Elder Ruiz that I needed a Spanish lesson.   

It was a little bit funny because although Elder Ruiz of course, speaks perfect Spanish, he couldn't explain any of the rules or reasons why things are said the way they are.  Elder Priest and I had a few good laughs.

Elder Bartholomew and Elder Rawson gave a good lesson at home evening, focusing on the Easter season.  

I love the message in this short Easter video.

 The lesson was followed once again with a silly game.  I needed to record the unusual sounds everyone made for various animals.  Very funny!

Wednesday, we attended district meeting with the elders from Vecindario and Telde.  I was inspired as usual by the spiritual messages that were shared.  And then I shared grilled chicken pasta salad, Jewish Sweet Bread and carrot cake with them.

After class on Thursday night, Felix analyzed the handwriting of Hermana West and Hermana Rossberg.  It was rather interesting!

We love Hermana Rossberg.  She always has her "Vana White" pose ready.  She was showing me one of the cute shirts that she and Hermana West had made.  They leave them as drop off cards or thank you notes.  So cute!

Saturday night, we attended the baptism of Manuel Rocoso.  It was a wonderful meeting and I enjoyed hearing him share his testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ and his love for his Savior.

Elder Rawson, Hermana Rossberg, Hermna West, and Elder Bartholomew were enjoying some arroz con leche that Elder Bartholomew made for the baptism.

Sunday, we attended sacrament meeting and Sunday School in Las Palmas, and then drove to Vecindario to teach Institute.  This was a little bit of a sad day because it was Fabio's last Institute class before he leaves for his mission.  We will miss him so much!

This week, I cooked for four days straight, getting ready for the conference.  Here I am cooking 120 pieces of bacon.  It will be so much easier to just warm them up for breakfast.  We have planned, cooked, organized, made lists and done everything that we can think of to be ready for our conference.  We are both exhausted, but ready for the conference to start.