The Road to San Ramon and San Carlos

The roads are narrow and winding, but I really enjoy the mountain scenery.

It is interesting that they terrace the hillsides and use them for agriculture all the way to the top.

More terraced hillside.

We saw lots of pastures in these mountains.

Several outdoor stands selling all kinds of produce.

This seems to be the season for this particular squash as we saw lots of it for sale.

I have noticed lots of wash hanging out to dry in these towns we have visited. Some have clothes lines, some don't so just use the fence. This is one of the better fence/clotheslines I have seen!

Some of these pasture hillsides look kind of terraced to me.

I wondered why the hillsides would be terraced. Then I figured it out when we saw cows on a particularly steep hillside. The many dairy cows on these steep hillsides stomp their own terraces in the form of little paths. I am sure it is much easier to walk along your own horizontal path instead of walking straight up the mountain.

There are lots of dairy cows in the countryside. They sell locally made cheese in the roadside shops. Most of it is a soft white very mild tasting cheese. It is good but won't keep in the fridge for very long as it is fresh and not aged.

The little roadside refrigerio shops are called "sodas"and we see lots of them in the country and in the towns too.

A very colorfully painted soda. It was Sunday so that is probably why it isn't open.

More wooded hillside pasture land.

A growing fence.

Another colorfully painted soda. This one says it is open.

I took a picture of this factory because we have seen lots of big trucks loaded with sugar cane and to me this looks like a sugar factory. One of these days I'll get a picture of a loaded truck.

There are many areas where they grow things in plastic covered green houses.

Maybe you can tell why I thoght this soda sign was interesting!

San Ramon and San Carlos otherwise known as Ciudad Quesada

Laurie and I had the assignment to attend a District Conference this last weekend. The Saturday meetings were in San Ramon, This was not the church where our meetings were held. But it was a large imposing looking building in the city. Next time we come through this city, we'll have to go inside and take pictures of the interior.

We ate lunch at a restaurant just down the street from this church so I took several pictures. We usually have what is known as comida tipica or the usual Costa Rican food. This was particularly good this time, and not too expensive. You always get one of their fruit drinks with these meals, plus rice, beans, salad, fried platano, and meat. This time the salad even had dressing. Usually you get a wedge or two of sour orange or lemon to squeeze on your salad but no dressing.

This is another church where our meetings were not held! I realize I didn't take any pictures of our building in San Ramon. It was a small rented building, but was nice. There were R.S. and Priesthood meetings in the afternoon and the adult conference meeting in the evening. Since this is a District and not a Stake, the meetings were under the direction of the mission president, and we had an Area Authority 70, an Elder Rivas from El Salvador.

Sunday our meetings were in the town of San Carlos otherwise known as Ciudad Quesada. I don't know why this town has 2 names, it just does. And Ciudad Quesada sounds like Cheesed City to me. But it was a beautiful place, high up in the mountains, and this was a new, very nice chapel. The Mission President say he got to dedicate it about 6 months ago. His name is Presidente Galvez. He and his wife are from Guatemala.

These are the big buses that brought people from surrounding towns to the conference. We went first to a meeting for new members. They asked me last minute to play the piano. Luckily I had my little hymn book this time as they didn't seem to have any laying around. But it went well. They also had Laurie and me speak for a couple of minutes about the temple. The main speaker was the Elder from El Salvador. He was a very interesting man and connected with his audience very well. We also had to speak a few minutes in the General meeting. But there wasn't time for real talks. They had released the District Presidency and put in some new people and needed time for all of them and their wives to speak so we just took a few minutes. The new District President is an interesting man. He had come here from Hong Kong when he was a teenager. He fell in love with a girl who was a member of the church so he joined and they got married and seemed to live happily ever after.

This was the large imposing church down the street from our chapel.

We spent the night at this hotel a little ways further on from San Carlos. It had hot springs for which we had brought our swimming suits. But we got there too late at night and the next day was Sunday and we had to leave early so we didn't get to take advantage of the hot springs.

It was a beautiful setting though. We stayed in one of the little cabanas behind this bougainvilla.

More cabanas.

We had a really nice buffet dinner. I would have loved to pig out as the food was delicious. But it was late Saturday night and I have tried to give up overindulging, so I tried to eat small amounts. Here you see Laurie and Hermano and Hermana Babb. Don't ask me why they don't have a Spanish sounding name. Anyways he is a counsellor in the mission and she is the District R.S. president. Elder Rivas is on the left. He has lived in El Salvador all his life, except when he was mission president in Peru. He told us a little about how El Salvador is doing politically now, which isn't very good. But he did say they had 20 good years not too long ago. And now they have a new temple and he says it is really blessing the lives of the people. Laurie was interested because he had spent a lot of time in El Salvador as a young missionary.

Elder Rivas again on the left and Hermano and Hermana Torres. Hermano Torres is the Secretary to the Mission President and he also does a lot of the maintenance and repairs at the temple, so I have gotten to know him. Elder Rivas and Hermana Torres speak English very well, as does Hermano Babb. So they helped me out when I missed out on some of the jokes! The Mission President and his wife had stopped off to help a couple of their elders teach a lesson to somebody so they were late and weren't there when I took the pictures. We got them some food in styrofoam containers as the restaurant was about to close.

This is the road out of the Termales del Bosque. We felt like we were right on the top of the mountain, but as you can see, there is still a lot of mountain up higher. And it is probably a volcano to provide the hot water for the springs.

Remember I Said They Were Regilding Moroni?

Well I was wrong, they were actually replacing the statue with a completely new Moroni! This is the new Moroni in his shipping crate.

Another view of the new Moroni in his shipping crate. Note that there is no visible trumpet. It is in the long thin box below his head at the top of the crate.

They had to lift the head end partly out of the crate to attach the trumpet. Note Laurie supporting Moroni's arm. The man in the blue shirt is Fransisco, the person in charge of the part of the church physical facilities that includes the temple. Laurie does a lot of work with him.

Here they have attached the trumpet. They glued it into his mouth with silicone and there is a large bolt that attaches it to his hand. The man with the partial black glove, Franklyn Carillo, is the artisan who is repairing the gold leaf where the bolt attaches the hand to the trumpet. He does painting and gold leaf work in the temple.

These are some shreds of gold leaf left on the little paper after Bishop Carillo finished making his repairs to the gold leaf.

This is the brush, with flakes of gold still on the bristles, that he used to fix up the gold leaf.

This is Bishop Carillo again. This time he is up in a cage at the end of one of the big cranes. He is taking out the lightening rod that sticks a little ways out of Moroni's head and replacing it with a large screw eye to attach to the hook on the other crane to remove the statue. They say the statue has been hit several times by lightening so I guess it is a good thing to have a lightening rod all the way down through the statue.

All is ready to take down the existing statue of Moroni. It took a long time to get to this point. I had probably been here watching for about 2 hours.

They have him pulled out and he is on his way down. Note the pink plastic shields attached to the outside of the cage so as not to damage the statue should it bump into it. Note the long shaft that had been down inside of the spire holding the statue in place.

This is the shaft end of the old Moroni after he was on the ground. The long copper cable that extends through the shaft and down into the temple is the lightening rod.

I guess he was really quite weathered and tarnished. Over the time this statue has been atop the temple, Bishop Carillo has gone up in that cage several times and regilded parts of him. But this time they decided he needed to be replaced. I thought they would probably send the old statue back to SLC for regilding and then use it on another temple. But Francisco says they are going to store it here for a while then send it to El Salvador where the temple is bigger and they have more storage space. Then there they may regild it and use it again somewhere else.

The new statue is attached to the crane and is starting his journey upward.

Now he is getting close. Note the long copper cable that will be threaded down into the sleeve and end up grounded somewhere inside the temple.

Here Bishop Carillo and another worker, who by the way has on a harness attached to the cage to keep him from falling, have threaded through the copper cable and are trying to set the shaft into the sleeve. But for some reason, they are having a hard time getting it in. The shaft appeared to be identical to the old one they took out. But at this point, I had been there about 3 hours watching so I decided to go home.

Laurie and Francisco watching and trying to figure out what is going on, or not going on. The other man has a phone with which he is communicating with the men in the cage.

Here is the new Moroni atop the temple. But this is the next day. They discovered that the old shaft had in it a groove that they had not noticed and in the sleeve is a pyramid like projection over which the groove is supposed to fit. But since there wasn't any groove, the projection was keeping the shaft from going in.

So they had to take him back down and carve a groove into the shaft so that it would fit over the projection.

But they eventually got it all done and the new Moroni is in place and definitely looks shinier and newer than the old one. It took a lot of people and equipment a long time to get the job done!