A report on Kay and Karen in the Peru Lima Central Mission excerpted from Karen's e-mail of Sunday, November 23
"I had baked a carrot cake and brought it into the office for Kay's birthday, which was on Saturday. The elders all sang happy birthday and then we had cake and ice cream. Four elders very quickly wiped out a half gallon of ice cream.
"Saturday the Elders invited us to go to the zoo to celebrate Kay's birthday. We really were not expecting much, but we looked forward to going. We were pleasantly surprised. The area the zoo is located on is quite large. It is one big beautiful garden. There were not a lot of animals, but the animals we saw we really enjoyed. They were mostly South American animals which we had not seen before. And, they were very active. That is something we usually do not get to see in our zoos at home. A panther (black leopard) was perched in the top of a tree. A lioness roared and roared at the crowd. Monkeys were all over the place. The South American bears were laying down, but were playfully pawing each other. Did I mention that because we are over 65 Kay and I got in free? That was a pleasant perk. . . .
"This has been an interesting week. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were declared Business holidays because of APEC (Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation). We have presidents of countries from all over the Pacific world, including President Bush, Laura and one daughter. Very little traffic out was really nice. The meetings have been held in our general neighborhood. Streets are lined with police officers. Some streets . . . have gates across them preventing any traffic at all. There are frequent sirens as motorcades of the presidents with their police escorts come and go. It is interesting, but each motorcade has an ambulance at the end of it. The majority of businesses, houses and apartment buildings are flying Peruvian flags on their roof tops. We spoke with a police officer today after church and asked him when the presidents would be going home. He told us today, but that many of them are staying and will be tourists here. That is very good, but I know it causes lots of problems for the policemen. . . .
"Thanksgiving Day we will travel 45 minutes to the MTC here to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the missionaries who are there and other couples. We will also join them for Christmas dinner."
Transform to . . .
Nicolle (Kay's daughter) posted the following last Tuesday: "Today I overheard Easton talking to Gretchen. They were playing in Easton's room and I had just told Easton he needed to get dressed. A few minutes later I hear him say, 'Gretchen, now I am going to transform into Naked Guy!' I thought it was hilarious and had to write it down."
Another marathon
Our daughter Anna ran her ninth marathon on Saturday, November 22, in the Valley of Fire State Park in southern Nevada. Without any specific training, other than the ongoing running, swimming, and biking that she does, she decided at the last minute to enter the marathon. It was a difficult course with a lot of hills over the course of the 26.2-mile race. She finished in 4 hours and 40 minutes. And she's still alive to tell the tale.
The marathons she has finished include nine races in six states:
- June 22, 2002: Anchorage, Alaska
- Oct 11, 2003: Lake Tahoe, California
- Apr 24, 2004: Salt Lake City, Utah
- Oct 2, 2004: St George, Utah
- Apr 23, 2005: Salt Lake City, Utah
- Oct 1, 2005: St George, Utah
- May 19, 2007: Boise, Idaho
- May 17, 2008: Fargo, North Dakota
- Nov 22, 2008: Overton, Nevada
Claudia and I and our daughter Rebecca and her husband Cade just finished a 13-week course, Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, that we attended every Monday night starting late in the summer and ending last Monday night. The focus, in a fun and motivational way, was to get us doing what we should have known and been doing all along: such things as saving for a rainy day, getting out of debt, paying our tithes and offerings.
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