Valentine Cookie Day

January 30th Afternoon:

We walked to a little “Mercado” and bought some real food.  On our walk, a hippie looking guy and his girlfriend saw our name tags and started talking away with Mike. He was a bit drunk, and I guess people here do not mind getting right in your face to talk.  The guy was nice enough but he rambled on and on. His girlfriend listened politely to his ramblings.  I could tell that Mike was responding to the man more for the girlfriend’s sake, hoping anything he said might prick her as well. After a ½ hour conversation, we all shook hands and said our goodbyes.  The basis of the conversation Mike said was that this guy had a terrible family life growing up. He was born Catholic, joined an Evangelist church, but now he knows he can’t change.  We just hope that anything we shared tonight might prick at him the next time he sees missionaries on the street and maybe he’ll remember our nice conversation. 

I was able to cook a nice dinner tonight. It was fresh broccoli and steak.  The steak was a little tough but still good.  Bought cheese that looked like Cheddar but after opening it, I discovered it was more like processed cheese.  But worse than that, it didn’t even melt on the broccoli.  Not buying that again.

After dinner, we took a walk on the beach.  There was a beautiful sunset with perfect beach weather. Our goal when we go walking is to just say friendly “hola’s” to people.  They see our name tags of course and we just want people to know that we are friendly.  We are going to pray for opportunities to help people while walking the beach. We might be able to plant a seed there for missionaries later.  Certainly the Elders and Sisters can’t go down on the beach and plant "seeds" but we can.  

Friday January 31st Sister Pugmire, Sister Harris, Sister Giles, Sister Madsen and I all worked in the kitchen this morning in baking 200+ sugar cookies for the Elders and Sisters to be given in February for Valentine's Day.  It was nice to get to know the other sisters.  Sisters Giles and Martin are called to serve in the temple. Sister Madsen is a school teacher here while her husband is the head of the American embassy. Mike worked all day with Elder Pugmire in setting up a new apartment for Elders.  They have to do everything from wire in new electrical sockets, to plumbing.  When people leave their apartments they literally take everything except the "kitchen sink".