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!!

Here are some random pictures of the past month to catch you up on what we have been doing.

On May 25th Imna was baptized by her boyfriend, Luis in Vecindario.  It was such a great night!  She is such a wonderful person and we are so happy that she was baptized!  They are both in our JAS group!

This was at our District Conference a couple of weeks ago.  The area President, President Texiera, came to see if we can become a stake.  We still don't know the verdict but it was a wonderful conference.  President and Sister Jackson also came down for it.  Here we are with Hermana Zitting and Hermana Floyd who both serve in Las Palmas with us!  We love them!

A couple of weeks ago we had a really fun P-day with the Las Palmas Elders and Hermanas and also the Telde Hermanas playing volleyball and eating gelato.  Here are the Las Palmas Elders and the Telde Hermanas enjoying the wonderful gelato here in the Canaries!

Last week was Elder Rockwood and Elder Pugh's birthdays.  After district meeting we all had lunch at this wonderful all you can eat Chinese restaurant.  It was amazing!!  Here is the best district in the whole entire mission!!  We love them all!

A couple of weeks ago we had pizza for FHE and taught them how to play "Capture the Flag".  All were a huge hit!  Here I am bringing the pizza's to the JAS center.   Ten minutes later all of these pizzas were gone!!

We were given the assignment to inspect all of the missionaries piso's in our district.  We found out that the Hermanas piso's didn't have good study chairs.  So we brought some comfortable chairs to the Las Palmas Hermanas.  The elevators are very small here so Hermana Zitting decided to make use of the chair on her way up to her piso.  Of course, she received a phone call on her way up!  The Hermanas love their "new, used chairs" to study in!  They have told me that they have a hard time keeping awake in them!

Here is John, one of our young adults, blowing out his candles on his birthday cake after institute.

Here we are at Imna's baptism in vencidario!  We brought all of our young adults from Las Palmas.  Luis's Aunt is also in the picture.  As you can see, we all had to squeeze in the picture!

We did a service project with the JAS in the mountains above Vecindario.  We clean up and weeded a park .  Elder Buhler working hard!

Elders Rockwood and Wilson, from Vecindario, were able to join us on our service project.  Here is Elder Rockwood with one of his mammoth weeds!!  The area we were in looked just like southern Colorado or even Arizona.  It was beautiful with with mountains and green desert!

Working hard!!

                                                         Had a picnic lunch!

                                                  Then the huge water fight began!!!

                                                   The source of the water fight!

                                         Yes, we both were soaked by the time the fight was over!!

                                                             
             

Fun time had by all!!

                                After our district meeting, we took all of the Elders and Sisters in our
                                district out to lunch for Elder Blanchard's birthday at an Italian restaurant.

                                         Elder Blanchard making his birthday wishes at the JAS center.

                           A secret someone made cookies of us!  Here we are as cookies!!
                           We loved them!!  Pretty good likeness of us?  They also made cookies that said,
                            "Gracias por todos" (thank you for all)  Thanks to who ever made them!

                               A parting shot of Elder Buhler and Gabby with birthday greetings for Elder
                               Blanchard on the white board behind.