Wedding Reception and Orphanage

                          Some flowers in front of the temple steps.

This looks down from the front of the temple.  The white building is the Hospedaje.  The left half of the building is where the temple missionaries live.  Our apartment is on the third floor, on the back side of the building facing the road. It is behind the trees. The right half is where people come from a long distance to stay and go to the temple.  They bring all their families.  Their youth does baptisms.  The adults come to attend the temple and do all the ordinances. They sometimes arrive in large buses. They have ridden on these buses for many hours.  They are usually excited and very happy to be here. 

We went to a sealing at the temple on December 23.  The groom is Joshua Owen from Missouri.  The bride is Luisa Quispe Cajan from Santiago, Chile.  They met on line about four years ago.  Joshua served a mission in Puerto Rico.  They plan on living in Chile. His parents could not afford to come to Bolivia, so his brother-in-law, Bishop Davila,  asked us to be his stand in parents for the evening.  We were glad to be invited.

This is the beautiful place they had the wedding reception.  We danced, had a large buffet dinner about 10 o'clock that night.  We left  early and they said the dancing and fiesta would go on until about 4 a.m.  It was fun and a very interesting evening.

A bouquet of beautiful red roses given to me by the Rivera's family.  They have about 4 large greenhouses where they grow roses and lilies in Bella Vista.  This is what they do for a living. 

On December 26th we visited an orphanage in Cochabamba.  These children have disabilities and handicaps, which will make it difficult for them to ever be adopted.  All the North American Temple Missionaries donated money to help buy them a pair of new pajamas, strollers, toys and books.  The church had also given these special children four wheelchairs. 

Some children are not able to walk or talk.  They did respond to our touch and talking to them.

Their favorite toys were some small rubber balls. They brought smiles to most of their faces.

  Sister and Elder Ahlstrom enjoyed reading to the children.  Thank you to those who helped these children have some special books.

The good people that help these children daily are angels.

This little boys was blind.  He was interested in Lloyd's missionary name tag.

They liked the suffed animals and each child received a knitted stocking hat.

The wheelchairs needed new tires.  Lloyd helped President Jackman put the new tires on. They have a special helper watching.

This is a group of women that work along the streets here.  They are chopping weeds and cleaning up the garbage.  It looks like hard work. 

The chapel in Bella Vista.  All the chapels have locked gates and fences around them.

While walking along the road in Bella Vista we saw this lady weaving a blanket.  She is sitting on the dirt roadside.  She has her small dog to keep her company.  Everyone here has a dog or two.

The blanket she was weaving.  The stick on the left held the strands of yarn up so she can weave the other yarn through.  A lot of time and patience to do.

The temple and nativity on a rainy December evening.