Panama Trip

Before we talk about our trip to Panama I wanted to introduce a few of the new friends to the congregation.

This is James and Rhianna, from Minnesota. They were here for little over a month and stayed in the apartment near ours. James' sister is serving with her husband in the Santa Ana, El Salvador congregation.

We have a lot of young people visiting here is a group picture:

from left to right: Taylor (Tennessee), Hazel ( Leon), Tyler(Richmond, VA), Vanessa(Sweden), Tara and Jesslyn(cousins from Richmond, VA) and Francinette (Hazel's sister)

They will be all staying between 1-3 months here in Leon.

This is Carla, she has been studying for a few months and is now regularly attending a majority of the meetings. When he is in town, she brings her nephew, Christopher(9), who is heading back to Houston, TX in the next few weeks.

We always love Christopher's comments when he visits.

Also a few weeks ago we had a part on the service meeting about friends who stay zealous in the ministry despite health problems. I wanted to share the experience of the sister in our congregation, Anne from Canada. Here is a picture of her and her husband, Rob.
Anne has a disease that causes bone to grow in strange parts of her body, so she is in constant pain. For the past few years as a result of her disease her neck and spine have been fused together, which causes some difficulty when crossing the street, etc.
She and her husband have raised a family and now are fulfilling their dream of serving where the need is great. They are regular pioneering together and they intend to spend 6-7 months out of the year here in Nicaragua and the rest of the time in Canada.
Our entire congregation is encouraged by her wonderful example.

Now to our Panama trip:

We took the TicaBus from Managua to San Jose, Costa Rica. It is a very comfortable bus with tvs and very cold air conditioning.
The following morning we took a local bus from San Jose to the Costa Rica/Panama wedding. Here is the bus stop we had to wait at and here are some pictures of Costa Rica en route. 

Here are some pictures at the border. It was pretty easy crossing over. The bus went over a separate bridge and we walked over this one:

From here we took a taxi to Almirante, Panama which is on the coast, so that we could take a water taxi to the bocas del toro islands. Here are some pictures:

Actually we ran into some friends from Canada that have been serving in a spanish congregation in Las Bonitas, Nicaragua for the past few years. Doug and Valerie. Also Valerie´s sister, Libby was just baptized at our past English Circuit Assembly in December with a sister from our hall. What a small world!

Here are some pictures of the town on Isla Colon:

We also were able to go to a beach that is referred to as Starfish beach, the water was gorgeous and we saw some of the hugest starfish ever.
here are some pictures:

We really enjoyed our trip to Panama, but we are also happy to be back in time to have a full share in the Memorial campaign.

Also here is one last picture of me and Dez, that my dad keeps requesting!