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.
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