THE BRIANS' ARRIVED!!!!

They all arrived safely on saturday, the 30th of April.  Here they are sunday morning ready for their Easter egg hunt.  HAPPY EASTER!!

Logan and Jordan hunting for candy on our balcony.

Still hunting for candy in our living room.

Lauren finds her "special Buhler egg"!  We had to explain to Carson when he received his special egg that it would buy 5 pirate swords, because he didn't know what euros were, and then he became excited!

That night at Noche de Hogar (FHE) Logan and Jordan showed off their yoyoing skills to our young adults.  They were a huge hit!  They are so good and everyone loved them!

                                                   Logan 





They taught many of the guys to yoyo.

          Jordan




Everyone tried but no one could yoyo as well as they could!

They even taught Elder Blanchard!  Yoyoing was quite the hit at Noche de Hogar!!

Everyone loved the Brians!!  Here Lauren is trying out her spanish and they are trying out their english!  It was a fun night!

Logan surprised us all with his spanish skills!!  He  had fun talking to everyone.

Joel and Carson loved Foosball!  They played with many of the guys.

Monday morning we all went deep sea fishing on the "White Marlin" boat from the city of Puerto Rico.  Here we are about to take off.

Tyler had the first catch of the day!!  Here he is with his tuna!  It was a beautiful day!

Reed catching his big tuna!!

Becky with her first catch of the day!!  She caught a total of 3 tunas and was quite the fisherwoman!

Carson is reeling in his big tuna with his Dad!  Joel and Carson really loved fishing!

Here I am pulling in my "big tuna"!  It was a lot harder to reel in this fish than I thought!

Joel's tuna was fighting hard!!  Joel and Reed caught the most fish of the day!  Due to sea-sickness the rest of the kids weren't able to fish very much.  We now know not to take people out fishing so soon after they arrive.  Jet lag can do bad things to the body!!

Here the Brians are with their "catches of the day"!  Everyone recovered from the jet lag and life was good!!  We took the fish to the restaurant behind them and they cooked them up for lunch for us!!  The tuna was fantastic!!

Here Reed and I are with our catches!  Pretty big fish, eh?

Who's fish is bigger?

Carson was pretty happy with his fish!  This is what our fish looked like when the restaurant cooked them up for us.  Nothing better than fresh tuna for lunch!! (and of course orange Fanta!)

Waiting for our fish to be cooked.  Life is good!

After fishing we walked from Puerto Rico to Amadores Beach.  It is a beautiful boardwalk along the cliffs overlooking the ocean.  At the end of the walk in Puerto Rico we climbed down to the ocean and took pictures along the rocky cliffs.

Not a bad place to be on a mission!!  Great P-day!

Where is Jordan's shoe?  We think that a shark snatched it?  Don't worry, Jordan was able to get a new cool pair of Adidas sandals later that day.

We stopped at Amadores Beach for a little while.  Jordan and Logan seem to be having fun!

Not a bad life lounging at Amadores Beach!

We couldn't show you our beach pictures without showing Joel's famous "socks with sandals" picture!  He swears that because of the socks, his feet are very soft!  Reed soon joined Joel's example.

Yes, that is Oregon Pipe Cactus!  Gran Canary has a lot of cactus too!  This was right by where we parked our car while we were fishing and on the beach!

Gran Canaria is called the "Island of the Dogs" so here the Brians' are on the dog statues in front of the main Cathedral.  This square was here when Christopher Columbus lived on this island.

Right next to the Cathedral is a street called "El Espiritu Santo" which means the Holy Ghost street.  I don't know how "holy" we were but we were sure having fun!

Here is Christopher Columbus's house.  It is right next to the Cathedral.  It is now a museum all about Christopher and the Canary Islands.  Christopher Columbus took off from Gran Canaria on his famous voyage to "find the Americas".

Christopher Columbus's door was pretty cool!

Beautiful Spanish balcony that is by the Cathedral and Columbus's house.  This is the old part of Las Palmas that is really beautiful!!

We took the Brians' to our fruteria by the JAS center.  We love the fruit here and go about every other day.

"And we are walking", the favorite phrase used by Reed, our unofficial tour guide!  He kept us walking and never let us lag behind.  Carson even had to get a lift from his Dad to keep up. This is a typical street in Las Palmas.

Of course the only time that Reed would let us take a break was when there was ice cream involved!  Here we are eating some great helado!

Coming home from our fun day!  This is the van that we went everywhere in.  This is in front of our house.  The house across the street was torn down and they are building a new one, so it is under construction.  This van held all 9 of us!

The boys were pretty tired after a fun day.  This is  the boys room.  This room actually has 6 beds but we only had to use 4 of them.  Good night boys!

More to come of the rest of the week, so check back soon!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELDER BUHLER!!
The JAS surprised him with by decorating our car and throwing a wonderful party!  He was so surprised!  He loved it!

Feliz Cumpleanos Elder Buhler!!  Today he is 55 years young!!

More decorations!  Thanks to all that made his birthday so awesome!!  He loves all of you!!

Gaby made an "Elder Buhler" doll for his birthday!  Don't you think that they look alike?  They are both "muy guapo"!

Last saturday morning we went on our bike ride along the boardwalk in Las Palmas.  It is so beautiful so I thought I would show you what we see everyday.

This is looking towards Las Palmas and their huge Port!  We ride along the boardwalk that takes you to Playa de La Laja and we are riding back towards Las Palmas.  The ocean is beautiful and the waves break against the sea walls and rocks.

Las Palmas has the 2nd busiest port in the world!  All the shipping traffic from Europe, the Middle East, parts of Africa and from the Americas all pass through here.  We have two of these oil drilling platforms in port right now.  They arrived last week from Africa to be repaired and updated. They are huge!!  We saw them towing this one in last week on our morning walk.

This is another type of oil drilling ship that has been in port for about a month now.  They are also repairing this one too.  They are all coming off of the coast of Africa where they do a lot of drilling for oil right now.

The Canary Islands are known for their sailing.  We see these little sailing boats all the time in the harbor.  They have a big sailing school and they are always having big sailing regattas with the big yachts too!  These little sail boats are unique only to the Canary Islands.  Check out the ferries and cruise ships in the back ground.  This view is only about one block from our JAS center.

Today is our P-day and we decided to finally drive completely around the island!  Las Palmas is on the northeast side of the island and is very populated.  The west side of the island has a very small population.  This island was made by a volcano so it has big steep mountains.  I know the picture doesn't show it but they are very green and beautiful!!

The road is a narrow and windy that goes along the ocean on top of these steep cliffs.  It was such a beautiful drive!!  It was not a relaxing drive because the road is not wide enough for big semi-trucks and big buses to come from the other direction and pass you.  There were a lot of blind curves so every time you came upon one you thought that we were going to have a head-on collision!  We didn't but my heart was really pumping fast through this whole drive!!

We took a "self picture" of us.  I thought it turned out pretty well!!  Katie can do this really well but we haven't had much luck, so we were pretty pleased with this picture!!

Here is a view looking from the road down to the ocean.  It was so beautiful to see the waves crashing against the rocks!!

Before the road headed up to through the mountains it dropped us down to Playa de Aldea. We walked the very rocky beach and here is a view of the ocean against the cliffs.

I know that this picture is hard to see but look hard and you can see one of the other Canary Islands, Tenerife.  It didn't show up in the picture but on top of the mountain was a patch of snow!!
Another great P-day!!

JAS Party in Telde!!


We had our District JAS monthly activity in Telde.  It was so much fun!!  Yes, I can dance just as well as Elder Buhler in Wii Dance!!

But of course Elder Buhler was a dancing machine!!

Life of the Party, Elder Buhler!!

Here we all are eating at the end of our District activity.

Making pancakes at Noche de Hogar at the JAS Center.  Isn't Elder Buhler cute "scrunching"?

Gaby's favorite meal, Chocolate Chip Pancakes!

Sorry that we haven't written on our bog lately but we have been very busy!!  The Elders have baptized 3 people in the last two weeks.  We have been working hard with all of the activities and classes at the JAS center.  We started a Book of Mormon reading program for all of the JAS.

This was a baptism that was held at the beach in Vencidario.  Two sisters were baptized.  It was dark when they were baptized, but we could all see them being baptized and it was so cool!  Here are all of the friends and family that came.  We were designated to take the pictures for them.

Here are the two Elders that serve in Vencidario with the two sisters that they baptized (the cute little boy is a nephew to one of the sisters).  It was a very happy time!!

Here Elder Buhler with two of our awesome young adults.  They were planning a district JAS activity.  This was right before Noche de Hogar (FHE) last sunday night.

Our last P-day we went to a little city on the south end of the island called Puerto Mogan.  It is the "Venice" of Gran Canaria!  It is a really cute city with this canal that runs through it.

Elder Buhler is standing on a jetty that protects the beach from any waves.   You can see a part of Puerto Mogan in the background.

This is taken from the same spot but looking the other way.  You can see that this island was made from a volcano and the mountains rise straight up from the ocean in many parts.  It is very beautiful!!  The road goes right along the edge of this mountain overlooking the ocean and it is breath-taking!!

Here is a typical street in Puerto Mogan.  It is a retirement/tourist community with beautiful yachts!!

I am standing next to the harbor that is full of beautiful yachts, but I guess you can only see me and a part of a boat.  Sorry, it was a beautiful sight!  I guess you will just have to come and visit us to see the yachts!

Elder Buhler is doing the"tourist wave" in the same harbor.  Puerto Mogan is a very quaint and beautiful city!

This is a beautiful beach that is between Puerto Morgan and Puerto Rico (both of these are cities on the south end of the island).  The water here was a beautiful turquoise!

We stopped on our way back to Las Palmas in Maspalomas, which is a very big tourist beach.  On the boardwalk were these two "street entertainers".  We thought it was pretty amazing.  Can you figure out how they did this?

This is our District at our district meeting this past wednesday.  We wanted to take a picture of us because transfers are this monday and we don't know who is going to be possibly transfered?  Don't worry, we won't ever be transfered!  Our whole mission is on Gran Canaria!