Telde Activity and P-days with the Missionaries!

The Telde Branch had a BBQ activity at a park above Las Palmas.  It was a great day!  We taught all of the kids how to play Kick Ball.  They loved it even though they had a hard time with the concept of "running the bases" correctly.

Taking a break from playing kick ball.  Check out Hermanas Hansen and Sheperd on the right in this picture.  They are really doing a great job in Telde!  They are teaching and re-activating so many people!!  Go Hermanas!!

A couple of P-days ago we played volleyball in Telde with the Las Palmas Elders, Vecindario Elders and the Telde Hermanas.  Great time had by all!!  We love spending our P-days with the missionaries!!

Elder Diez, from Virginia, joined us after Elder Rockwood was transfered to Lanzarote (another island).  Elder Diez is working in Vecindario with Elder Delgado.  Bienvenidos!!

On another P-day, we went up to Roque Nublo (the highest point on our island) with Hermanas Zitting and Floyd.  It looks just like Colorado and Utah because it has pine trees.  It felt like we were in the United States!  We hiked the trail to the actual rock which is about 2 miles.

One of the views from Roque Nublo.

We met Hermanas Hansen and Sheperd on the trail at Roque Nublo.  They are all such awesome Hermanas!!  We love them so much!

Everyone needs a photo at the Roque Nublo sign!
No one believes that we have pine trees on our island!!

This is our "urban pose" photo at Roque Nublo.  Our missionary daughter taught us how to "urban pose".    The blue in the background is the ocean.  We love our island!!

JAS Sailing Activity!

We took our young adults out sailing along the south coast of the island.  It was our welcome the new young adults that just turned 18 years of age.
It was a fun day!

Heading out to sea!  We were on a big catamaran boat.

They went on the banana tube behind a jet ski.  They all were dumped into the water at the end of this ride!  They loved it!

Enjoying the cool water!

This picture was taken from on the boat looking down to the water.  The water is very clear and beautiful here!  We were "chumming" the fish!

We ate lunch on the boat.  It was a great day!

Great day at sea!!

A parting "GQ" shot of Elder Buhler on the boat!

We are so sorry that we haven't blogged in a long time!  We have been so busy!! Yes, we know that it looks like we are on vacation all the time, but we promise that we are not!  We seem to never sit down and are booked every night and most days with missionary things.  We have started a new FHE in Vecindario and Institute class also.  We have 3 english classes and piano lessons!  Add in another FHE, Institute class in Las Palmas, a cooking class and we teach with the missionaries just about every day . . . . . . . you have our schedule!  We also had zone conference this past week at our house.  We had 30 missionaries at our house for 2 days!  We fed, played, and housed them all!  It was a great time!!

Here is a sampling of what we have been doing this past month:

My nephew Ben and his wife Becca and their children, Hannah, Sarah and Justin came to visit us for a few days.  It was so much fun!  Here Ben is skippering when we were out sailing with Domingo, who has a gold medal in sailing from the Barcelona Olympics!  (Not a bad teacher, eh?)  The swells were pretty big that day!

We visited the old Cathedral and Columbus's house.  Here are Ben and Becca in front of Columbus's house at the fountain that was there when Christopher was living here.

Here is Justing, Hannah, Elder Buhler and Sarah on top of the Cathedral.  Don't worry, we took the elevator to the top!  Las Palmas is a beautiful place!

We went deep sea fishing one day and here are our catches of the day!  Yes, 3 tuna!!  They were great eating!  My favorite comment of the day was when Sarah said, "I feel so bad killing something, but it was so much fun!!"  Pretty much sums up the day!

We leave you with a parting shot of Hannah skippering with Domingo!  We had so much fun with Ben, Becca and family!  We feel like we need a few more days with them!  So this is their invitation to come back because we miss you!!  Also we have some Canarian potatoes and Alioli sauce to give you!

I know that I already posted pictures of our Gran Canaria P-day at our house, but this picture is just too good to not share!!  Here is Hermana Floyd and Hermana Zitting planning their win in "PIG"!

For one of our JAS activities we learned how to index.  The JAS were awesome at it!!  I can't say that I was the best at indexing in español, but Amy set me up to index in english when she came and I do so much better!!

Indexing away!!

Elder Buhler helping with the indexing!

Javier and Aida made we a special treat for my birthday!!  After english class, we celebrated!!  I love them!

On my birthday after district meeting, we all went out to lunch at VIPS restaurant.  It was so much fun!!  We celebrated my and Hermana Zittings birthdays.  (my birthday was the 12th and Hermana Zittings birthday was the 13th).  They had some "American" food at this restaurant with great milk-shakes!!

This was our birthday cake that Elder Buhler made for us!  He did it all by himself!! Yes, even the decorating!  Pretty good?

Hermana Zitting and I blowing out our birthday candles!  Great day!

This is actually on Hermana Zitting's birthday after english class.  Our class sang Happy Birthday to us and we had cake and ice cream.  We are with two investigators Vincenti and Jaime.

Hermanas Floyd and Zitting - pretty happy!!

The young adults made me a cake for my birthday!  They know that I love M & M's!  I also love the candle!  Thanks so much for the best birthday ever, I felt like I celebrated it for a whole week!!

The best P-day ever!!!  Today we had all of the missionaries from our island, Gran Canaria, at our house.  Here they all are on our balcony over looking Santa Brigida.  Yes, the weather was perfect!!

The Hermanas received permission to spend the night at our house last night.  We started our morning by walking up to La Atalaya (the next pueblo up the mountain) and beyond!  Here they all are on the road with a scenic view behind them.  Our island and Hermanas are so beautiful!!

Above La Atalaya at an overlook looking at Santa Brigida in the back ground.  We had so much fun walking up the mountain!

We had a friendly competition between the companionships.  We started off by playing "PIG" in basketball.  Here the Las Palmas Elders are going against the Vecindario Elders.  There were some pretty spectacular shots!!  This is at our house in the basketball court in the backyard.  The house we live in is an old mission home from when the Canary Islands was a mission.

Here are the Hermanas from Las Palmas and Telde competing in "PIG".  Elder Buhler is watching the amazing shots!

Here we are playing against the Las Palmas Elders in "PIG".  We gave them a good run but had to accept defeat in the end!

We then played ping pong.  Here Elder Buhler is in his Japanese "Fun Leader Bandana" that he received from our daughter who is currently serving in Japan.  He may look intimidating but we again had to accept defeat!

Our next game was the "Paper Sack" game.  The object was to stand on one foot and pick up the paper sack with your mouth without letting any other part of your body touch the ground.  Here is Elder Day showing his skills in this game.

Here is Hermana Zitting attempting to get the paper sack!  Notice the paper sack is a lot shorter.  After each round, the paper sack was cut to make it harder.  Hermana Floyd is watching in the background.

Elder Blanchard showing his technique in the Paper Sack game!

Hermana Hansen in motion on her attempt to obtain the paper sack!

Elder Day is successful in picking up the Paper sack and made it into the finals!

Elder Pugh had some good attempts!

This is Hermana Floyd having success picking up the paper sack!

Hermana Sheperd was so good and flexible in this game.  She made it into the finals!  She was amazing!

Elder Delgado had the best skills in this game and beat us all!  He was pretty amazing!

We had a BBQ, ate a lot of food, played volleyball, laughed and emailed our families.  The greatest 

P-day ever!!  He we all are (even us in a portrait drawn by a Russian couple that stayed with us a couple of weeks ago.  We are taking the pictures)  We have the best missionaries in the whole world!!