Fried Green Bananas

Sunday was an awesome day.  We spent a good portion of the day with the M family.  We went up to where the temple is being built.  It was a beautiful clear day.

Then we went to the M family's place where they taught us how to make tajadas, which are fried green bananas.  Here are some pictures of K and I learning how to make them:

You have to use a knife to start peeling them.  Then after they're peeled you slice them to fry.

We ate them how they do in Tela- minus the chicken organs- we ate it with ground beef instead.  They eat them with cabbage, meat, and a homemade sauce.  It was so good!  

It was way fun learning how to make tajadas and spending time with the M family.

Oh, I forgot to mention, K and I sang in a quartet in Sacrament meeting again on Sunday.  I wasn't as nervous this time, but I have accepted the fact that singing is not my talent(ok, so I already had accepted that, but that fact is just confirmed further).  

We also sort of forgot to pick the hymns for Sacrament meeting until we got there on Sunday.  So, while we were practicing singing I was also picking out hymns.  For the Sacrament hymn I picked the first Sacrament hymn I saw in the book.  I asked K if the song was alright for her to play.  I just showed her the page though, and she looked at the other song on the page which is a common easy hymn that I should have picked.  As we were singing the song I realized it was not a simple song.  I realized I didn't know it very well, and neither did K know it well on the piano.  I felt lost at some parts, and K played well considering she was sight reading a hymn that's difficult to play, but there were some rough spots.  Luckily the congregation knew this hymn pretty well- if they hadn't it would've made for an even more interesting story, and a new hymn would have been sung that day.  That's what happens with last minute choosing of hymns without actually looking at them.

We also found out this week that this upcoming Sunday will be our last Sunday in our ward.  That's because the next two Sundays we will be traveling(yay!).  We're going to teach 4 workshops in our last two weeks in Honduras, and each in a different city.  It will be awesome.

Our Excellent Excursion to El Salvador

Last night we got home from the best vacation ever. Seriously- this vacation was so awesome. We left early Thursday morning to go to El Salvador by bus. K has a friend from El Salvador whose family lives there. We wanted to visit them and have dinner with them, and they ended up going above and beyond to make sure we had a fantastic time in El Salvador. We arrived in San Salvador in the afternoon, and the T family took us to see the San Andres Mayan ruins.

Then, they took us to see a volcano. We had to hike up a little bit to see the crater. We took the easy path.

The pictures really don't do the view justice, but here is a picture zoomed in to see the crater. If you look closely you can see someone has written "Punk" in white letters.

Or, you can't really see it, but you'll have to take my word for it that it does say "punk."

We then went to the San Salvador temple open house. It's a really pretty temple. To see the temple is the reason we had planned this trip, and it was cool to go see it and go through it on the open house tour.

You can't really see us super well, but this is

K and I with Hna T in front of the temple.

We ended the night going to the T family's house and eating pupusas. Salvadorian pupusas are the best. We also drank Kolashanpan which is a Salvadorian soda.

Also, here is a picture of most of the T family.

On Friday we went to the beach, which the T family also helped us with a lot. It was a lovely day to spend at the beach. My shoulders didn't like the sun so much, but it was worth it.

Us at the beach.

The ocean! The waves were kind of big to go swimming in, no one else was in the ocean, so we had it all to ourselves.

We also swam in the pool, which we also had all to ourselves for a little while. Here we're sitting at the pool bar- don't worry, we didn't drink anything alcoholic, we actually didn't drink anything here. We saw the guy spray bugs with bug spray directly over the food and drinks he was preparing, so that would've been a bad idea.

Just chillin in a hammock on the beach... best day ever.

After the beach we went back to San Salvador where we met up with my friend who is there this summer with a service organization. We had a good time talking over a dinner of pupusas.

Unfortunately, every vacation has to end sometime- Hno and Hna T took us to the bus station on Saturday. Hna T made pupusas for us to take with us. It was nice to come home at the end of vacation and heat up some pupusas to eat for dinner. We've had a meal of pupusas everyday for the past four days now, and are happy that we still have some left to eat.

Temples

Can I just say I love it here? This is for many reasons, one of which is our manager is awesome. Hno. V is so good to us- maybe it's because he has daughters our age, or because he was taught by sister missionaries when he joined the church(and since everyone seems to think we are sister missionaries we very well could remind him of them), or maybe we are just really cool people he likes.

Today we finished teaching a workshop at noon. I told Hno V we were leaving for the day, and he asked what we were going to be doing this afternoon. When I told him we were going grocery shopping he asked where, and then he offered to drive us so we wouldn't have to walk. We accepted his offer to drive us, and he took us on a detour to eat crepes- K and I both got crepes catrachas, and we split an order of really good crepes with white chocolate and strawberries. Hno V loves to take us out for lunch, and he's introduced us to a lot of Honduran food. After lunch today he took us to the grocery store and waited patiently as we ransacked the place for no bake cookie ingredients, tortillas, limones, and jello. He is so nice; I am glad we have the chance to work with him here.

On another note, yesterday in Relief Society we had a lesson about temples. It was a good lesson; I really miss being able to go to the temple. Currently the nearest temple here is the Guatemala City temple, which is quite the trip to go to. I have been so spoiled to live so near temples. Especially where I live at college, it is so easy to go to the temple frequently. On Sunday I was thinking about how it's seemed like forever since I've been to the temple and how I wish I could go, and then I started thinking about the members here who aren't spoiled like me. It is really cool though- right now the Guatemala City temple is the closest temple. They are building a temple in San Salvador, El Salvador that will be dedicated in August that will be closer, and the Tegucigalpa temple will be dedicated next summer. There is also another temple in Guatemala that will be dedicated this December. There are so many temples being built here in Central America right now.

Guatemala City Temple

At the end of the lesson about temples the lady teaching handed out slips of paper for people to write down goals to go to the temple this year. I was thinking about how when I get back to school I should go more frequently. When she got to handing papers to me and K, she told us our goal could be que casarse (get married). I'm not sure if she meant that we should have that goal in the same time frame as everyone else- within the year, but I can tell you that will not happen. I do already have the life goal of getting married, but I did also make a goal to go to the temple more often when I again am living near one. Here are some temples I've been to:

Louisville Kentucky Temple

Provo Temple

so apparently I don't have a picture of this temple without a bunch of people

in it, so just ignore the circus of missionaries surrounding the temple.

Newport Beach Temple

This is the temple I went to on my mission.

Good Day

We had a really good day on Sunday. We went to church for the second time and we talked to a lot more people than the week before. Then in the afternoon the Relief Society went to see the Tegucigalpa Temple that is being built here. We met at the church at 2. They really stressed to be there on time, so K and I got there on time. After waiting about half an hour for people to arrive we were ready to go. We all piled into a 15 passenger van- there were probably about 18-20 of us. When we got to the top of a hill/mountain we all piled out of the non-air-conditioned van to a great view of the partially constructed temple. There were primary kids there singing Me encanta ver el temple (I Love to See the Temple). We stayed there for a bit and enjoyed the atmosphere and talked with some of the sisters in the ward. It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.