MiCasa

    Dad and I are doing great.  We keep busy, but have some time to do what we want.  We are really enjoying the openness and space of our new apartment.  Life is good.  We get out and go walking Friday and Saturday mornings, less that what we use to do, but glad we can do that.  There are two dentists in the clinic just now and we keep hoping to get one or two more.  We have heard there is a dentist from Atlanta that has put his mission papers in and hopes to come here.  We are keeping our fingers crossed.  They are looking into remodeling a building the church has that is a lot closer to where we live, into a new dental clinic.  If that works out we might be able to move into it and work there a few months before our mission ends. That would be kind of fun.  Even though it would be new here it still won't be anything like our office back home.  I am not complaining though, the clinic we are in now is better than I had imagined it would be before I came.  After seeing some of the little clinics in the South Pacific, I was imagining a place a lot older and more worn out than what we have.

    We made it over to one of the orphanages on Friday last week.  It is called 'Mi Casa' Tio Juan.  Very interesting.  When Tio Juan was starting out taking in orphans the city offered to give him an old hospital to house them in.  This was back in the 80's I think.  We went over the other day to talk to Enrique who is one of the head guys.  We have 18 hygienists coming here from Texas Women's University on May 16-18 and we want to make sure we have lots of kids there for them to help.  He was very kind and gave us a tour of the main parts of the orphanage while we were there.  We saw a bedroom with 60 beds in it, the computer lab, library, main offices, auditorium, swimming pool, soccer field and a common area where there are lots of birds, the largest being some peacocks.  

They told us an interesting story about the pool.  Years ago they had an above ground pool they got as a donation from the USA.  It was great but after a few years it was worn out and they couldn't use it anymore. The boys really missed it and asked if they could have a pool.  Tio Juan told them they could if they would dig it out.  The next day the boys were out their digging, so Tio Juan got busy finding a way to have the tile and other things they needed donated.  Before long they did indeed have a pool as you can see.

I loved the peacocks and couldn't resist taking some pictures.

     I tried to find some pictures of the boys from this orphanage and realized that I generally take pictures of the little kids, not this group.  I will see if I can get some of them in the next couple of weeks.

     We went to the Central Market yesterday and went through an eating area.  I had to take a picture of one little shop and the way people sit up close to the little counter to eat.  

There are many of these shops in this area.  Also as we were waiting at a streetlight in the car I saw this little boy asleep in the little cart that his mother sells food out of on the street corner. These little kids are so cute!

     Friday night it was our ward's Temple night. They have asked us several times if we could join them, so this time we made arrangements and went.  It was the 7:00 session and there was only us and one other couple attending.  I wondered where everyone else was.  As we came out of the temple we met a bunch of the ward members, they had done baptisms.  They invited us to get something to eat with them, so we agreed and followed them.  We ended up at Taco Bell!  Taco Bell is a lot different here than back in the States.  It is a pretty nice two story fast food place and the food is also different but OK.  So we ate tacos with them at 10 o'clock at night and got home around 10:30, a little past our curfew.  The young missionaries tell me that the poor people don't eat at Taco Bell or Carl's Jr. or McDonald's here.  You have to have some money to eat there.  There seems to be a lot of poor people and a lot of rich people here in Guatemala.  Not many in between.

    Dad and I will be out of town this weekend, we leave Friday and will be heading home on Sunday.  Hope everyone has a very nice Mother's Day on Sunday! We love you all and are sure glad you are all mother's because you all have the cutest kids ever!!  And we love being Grandparents.

Also, Can you see what is hiding among the plants?   It is at the orphanage.

Hugs and kisses!    MOM & Grammy