Dear All -
We just spent a delightful evening visiting with the next temple president and his wife. They are currently temple workers three weeks each month, so we have been getting to know them. They are very good people, as you might expect. They have some delightful stories to share about previous temple missionaries, some of which are good object lessons for us.
Monday we went to a large produce market fairly close to here. I was impressed with some of the variety of things available. For instance, would you like a papaya?
Or maybe an ear of corn?
I was also impressed with the mountainous stacks of garlic, but I didn't get a good picture of those. There were also pineapples, bananas, lettuce, celery, and many more. There are a number of things that I don't recognize, but apparently are staples here. The prices were good and we bought a lot of stuff.
The work in the temple continues apace. In many ways the activity at the temple is still recovering from the pandemic, so we are seeing a little more activity with each week. We had a group from Chiriqui (7 hours away by bus) here, and we were helping in the baptistry. I was trying to figure out who could help with what assignment, so I asked a young man in the group if he was an elder. He kind of laughed, and admitted that he was the bishop. I thought Daniel was a young bishop! Turns out he is Bishop Lezcano, which is Sister Reading's maiden name, so they are making plans to figure out how they are related.
I know I comment about the rain every week, but the rainfall can be very impressive. There have been at least two days when it hasn't rained at all. We went out to eat lunch on Monday in an open-air restaurant that is on a causeway running out to some islands at the mouth of the canal. As we were sitting there I saw a distant hill disappear behind the rain, then the entire city-scape disappeared, then I watched as the masts of the boats anchored closer by disappeared. When the rain finally arrived it was very intense. The temperature dropped to about 71 and the wind was pretty strong, and I thought we were going to freeze some of the patrons in the restaurant.
After church today we went to visit Brother Estribi, who was the branch president when Sister Reading was baptized. He had a stroke several years ago, but looked much better than he did the last time we saw him. On the way back we passed a gang of critters that were raiding garbage cans close to the road. I don't remember what they are called, they look kind of like a cross between a raccoon and a monkey. I didn't get a good picture of the whole group, but there were at least 30 of them.
Wednesday through Saturday we feel like we are pretty much on the run keeping up with temple assignments; then Sunday hits and it feels like forever until we get to go back to the temple. We are doing really well, and learning to fit in with the work here. The work in the temple has a completely different pace than in Denver, but we are adapting and learning. We think of all of you often and miss you, but we are loving the work here.
Love,
Elder and Sister Reading
aka
John and Delkys
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