Hello, All --

Again it's been an "ordinary" week at the temple - nothing new or exciting to report - so I thought I'd show you some of what makes our temple grounds so beautiful.  First, though, a picture of an unusual repair job being done.

These are some of our wonderful temple employees holding an enormously-heavy lamp-pole which they had to "lay down" to change a bulb.  One of the engineers (the guy in the dark blue jacket) is in charge of connecting everything properly at the base.  I don't know how much that thing weighs, but it must be super-heavy because it took 4 of them to hold it.  Incidentally, of these 5 men, 3 are bishops.  Our personal (and wonderful) Bishop Tarqui (Jaihuayco Ward) is the one in the white shirt facing us.  The engineer (furthest away) is Bishop Hinojosa of the Cobija Ward.  Bishop Apaza is the one in the tan hat, but I don't know his ward.

 Here they have managed to stand it up again

and you can see from their size in relation to the pole,

how big it really is.  Farron says there is both a light and a camera at the top.

Okay, next are some pictures of our winter flowers.  At least twice a year and maybe more often, the gardeners are instructed to take all the flowers out of several different beds and replace them with new ones. We had zinnias and snapdragons and I can't remember what else, but since last week we have pansies. Here's a shot of one of the beds.  This is to the right of the front steps as you approach the temple doors.

And this is to the left.

Now here are some closeups of all the beautiful pansies.  They are HUGE and many more different colors than I ever dreamed were possible.

  

I've never seen an orange pansy before, have you?

 

Last night almost at dusk we took a walk up to the temple, just to look at all the different flowers and get some fresh air.  There are several kinds of lilies alongside the driveway that are year-round.  Here they are . . .

This one is a true orange, but in the dusk 

it didn't come out as bright as it looks during the day.

 

As we walked down, I realized I had never shown you the other half of the hospedaje.  This was taken from the western fence and I hope gives you an idea of how big the hospedaje is.  The double doors at the lower right are the doors to the Distribution Center, which sells temple clothing and all kinds of church books and materials at VERY low prices.  This (that you can see) is only half of the building - the half which has patron housing on two floors as well as (on the ground floor) a large kitchen and dining room, a huge laundry room, a small nursery, restrooms, a fairly-good-sized assembly room (with a piano, a podium, and a flat-screen
T-V where the Latin missionaries can watch General Conference), and the manager's office.  The other half of the hospedaje (which you can't see because it's stretching equally far to the east) has the missionary apartments as well as a laundry room on each floor.

This is looking straight east from the northwest corner of the building.

The tree you can see in the center is at the foot of the steps coming down from the temple.

The front door of the hospedaje is to the right of the tree.

And lastly we took a picture of the temple from the hospedaje steps,

with the late afternoon sun shining on the Angel Moroni.

I can hope you can see how very bright he is when the sun hits at this angle.

Okay, that's all for today.  We're hoping to go up and see the Christus later today - it is the largest one in South America, maybe the largest in the world - so I'll have some good pictures for next week.  Until then,
vayan con Dios.