Neighborhood party

Neighborhood Block party!

Petersons - you'll recognize her

And him:

This is our daughter Jenny, husband Dwight and their littlest - Max. They are the ones living in our house

Grandson Ethan - in red, his sisters Aspen and Haley in white and in red. With some of the neighbor friends.

 Everyone brings their own meat to grill and something to share. [Our house is the one in the background with the garage door open.] :)

Here's the spread! And of course, more neighbors.

Coming next - MILAGROS!

VACATION!

Our first meal in the states - bacon, meat and cheese!! :)

Whenever I post pictures of our out-of-country field trips, I include street scenes. Well, we're out-of-Jerusalem - so here you go:

lunch :)

Welcome to Utah

I didn't realize how much I missed the mountains until I saw them again!

Bridal Veil Falls

You know how I often give you blurry pictures out of a bus window? Blurry picture out of a car window!

We spent the day here: 

These little white flakes are ash falling from the sky. Sanpete county has a lot of wild fires!! :(

This car belongs to Dave & Jan Peterson - they were so kind to let us borrow it while we are in Utah! Thanks again!!!!

Best way to enjoy the mountains - and it was SO QUIET!!

 Wild Turkey

 As you can see - We are having a great time! More pics to come.



Kitties

This mommy kitten was born here at the Center and now she has babies of her own. I'm really not a cat lover but these are very cute!!!

This past week has been happy, hot, busy. Last Sunday we went with the Schafers to Abu Gosh. We had a great lunch at a Lebanese restaurant and wandered through a lovely park with a Crusader building in it. We tried to go to 2 monasteries - forgetting that it was SUNDAY and they would not be open. :)

Thursday, I went to lunch with some of the ladies here at the center. That was fun - and delicious!
Friday morning, some of us went to an 8-year-old baptism in Jericho at the Jordan River baptismal site.
The family is from Ramallah - on the West Bank and they attend church in Bethlehem. This is the first 8-year old baptism in the Bethlehem group - his Dad has been a member for about a year and performed the baptism. All of the Dad's family was there - they are Orthodox Christian and seemed very happy about this whole thing! Amazing, right???
Friday evening Kent and I went out to dinner with Dan and Debbie Peterson and the Edwards family. The Petersons are taking the  Edwards on a tour of the Holy Land. It was a lot of fun and awesome food!
Yesterday was our Sabbath. We had a special District Conference to reorganize the District Presidency. The new President lives in Tel Aviv and works for the FBI; his first counselor works for the UN and WAS the Group Leader in Bethlehem - he lives in Jerusalem; his second counselor lives in Nazareth, has been a member since last August and is a Palestinian. Another amazing!!

Sorry I have been lax in keeping up here. But we're alive and well!!!!

Turkey Days 1-2 additions

Yes, I know that I already shared our first two days of Turkey in Winter semester. However, for Spring/Summer we visited some NEW places on Day 2 so I'm starting there. Instead of going to the Blue Mosque we went to the Suleymania which is the largest mosque in the world. It is the one on your left.

This is the courtyard

Inside

The rest of the day was the same as Winter but we could actually sit outside on the boat ride up and down the Bosphorous.

Turkey Day 1

Yea, well now that we have a new group of students that are at this moment, driving to the Center, I'm going to tell you about our first two days in Turkey LAST semester. :)

Actually, the first day was flying to Turkey. Pretty uneventful. BOTH of Kent's shoulders are now hurting him, and I'm a gimp, so we had 2 wonderful students who helped us with our luggage throughout the entire flying ordeal. They saved us!!! I of course, had to wear my sleeve, which is a nuisance - but, you know!

We arrived in Turkey in time to check into our hotels [they had to put us into 2 hotels this time] and then we walked to dinner. I didn't take pictures of the actual meal [oh, except dessert], but here are the options you see as you walk in!

The meat selections:

The salad bar:

The dessert table:

 This was our dessert. All three of these were VERY sweet - all soaked in syrup. But good! :)

The second day was pretty much all walking. Kent and I left a little ahead of the students so we could take pictures along the way:

LOVE this city!

In Utah we see beautiful mountains in the background - here - beautiful mosques!!! :)

Our first stop today was the Topkapi Palace. This is where the Sultans lived for many generations. It is now a museum. We got to walk through the room where he held his audiences with the important men of the government. We saw artifacts, treasures, clothing etc. on display - including the largest diamond in the world! It was all really awesome. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed so you'll just have to imagine. I did take a couple of pictures of the view from the complex. This is looking out over the Bosphorus to the Asian side of Turkey.

Nice open air restaurant overlooking the Bosphorous. Well, not this time of year - it was FREEZING!

Walking up the street to our next site, we saw this - this is the entrance to what used to be a soup kitchen for the poor. I thought it was beautiful.

These homes are built right up against the wall of the city

We also visited the Blue Mosque

 And the Basilica Cistern

We took the bus to lunch. Here are some street scenes from the bus:

Some of our group at lunch:



After lunch we had a bit of time to wander through the Grand Bazaar. You could spend hours in there wandering around, it is so big!

We bought some Turkish Delight [see bag in hand]

We ended our day with a boat ride up & down the Bosphorus. Fortunately, there was an inside cabin - yay warm!! Marvelous day!