Pretty Porton

We did a little day trip to a small town called porton about an hour and a half from where we live. There  we heard there was some fun service hiking :) we met up with the small Spanish group of 10. They don't even have a full Kingdom Hall yet, just a section of a sisters house. So 9 of us piled into a brothers 5 passenger car to a small path that took us up to little villages and at the end an awesome waterfall. 

Just a little story before pics. The One elder serving in this small group is from Spain. He is currently helping another group and another congregation on top of the porton group. He conducts 18 studies in porton. Quite a few are attending meetings and couple have even gotten baptized. So his story leads to another crazy story... So the congregation he is helping out is in Paso Canoa, the border town between Costa Rica and panama. At the moment there is only one brother there who is 19 years old, works 6 days a week, pioneers, is married and takes care of the congregation by himself most of the time!! There are some hardworking brothers here. 

Anyways going back to porton...

We started on this little bridge

We attempted to get fruit off the trees in between houses, you would call that a coffee break back home maybe? :)

And we succeeded! This is a type of guava. It's sweet but is hairy haha so kinda gross...

We walked for about 2 hours visiting people in the territory along the way. 

The people were always welcoming and would pull up a chair for us on their porch to talk about the bible :) 

Colin at the store with some cute little girls getting there candy and snickering at him haha. 

After 2 hours of walking in the hot sun we finally made it to the river and we were ready to jump in!

We got in our swim suits and hiked up the river to the falls

After a refreshing swim we decided to make our way back to the car before it started to rain. 

Tyler climbing trees for more fruit.

Luke found a yummy coconut 

Then we decided to stop in on some friends before we headed home. Two young brothers from New Mexico have been helping the porton group and have been living like locals.

The trek to their house is crazy on its own..

It's starts out on a little dirt path that you walk along for about 10 minutes in the forest.

Then you walk through some banana fields... I tried not to think about all the tarantulas! 

Over the ant trail... All those green pieces of grass have ants under them :)

To their little house 

Their house inside was too dark to take pictures but there are a lot of opening to outside so they said they get lots of bugs, tarantulas, scorpions, and boas!! 

We discovered more fruit along the way, this is cacoa what chocolate is made from!

This is a type of lychee, inside is one of best fruits I have ever tasted :)

We all squeezed into the car again and headed on back to puerto :)

Puerto armuelles

After a week in chame we made it to puerto armuelles! We took an 8 hour bus stopping in David the closest city to us, to catch a smaller bus to puerto. 

We made it to the main grocery store and had to walk down a bumpy dirt road to the Kingdom Hall with our 150 pounds of luggage. That taught us a lesson about overpacking! 

Puerto is a cute little beach town. As soon as we arrived we knew we were going to be happy here.

Since it used to be the main town for Chiquita bananas it has some cool history. There's many old wood houses, and hotels that were for the rich Americans that used to live here. Sadly when Chiquita left the town went down hill and no one took care of the place like Chiquita did. 

We are currently living in one of the old houses 

Lots of maintenance is needed

Here's our room, with pretty wall decorations 

 And a much needed bug net! 

One if my favourite parts about this area is there's lots of cool wildlife, we have parrots that come sit outside our windows, toucans wake us up in the morning. Giant lizards and frogs the size of rabbits surround the house too! You can't be bored around here! 

The beach is one of the best parts of puerto. And you get that nice ocean breeze to cool down. 

There's a nice surfing spot in front of one of our studies home. 

This is puertos famous port where all the Chiquita boats used to come and pick up the bananas. You can't go on it now because its falling apart and is really dangerous. However.... They say if you show up with a fishing rod they will let you through haha. 

You can get all kinds of seafood here. We had barracuda fish and chips with the ward family :) 

You can get any fish you can imagine here. The barracuda we got was 5$

Rita has got a giant lobster for 4$ before. The trick is to go to the fish market early! You can even go help pull in the nets and get a free fish! 

The pineapple is to die for, you can't tell which piece is the core because its so sweet all the way through. 

Papaya isn't my favourite but its fresh off the trees here!

Beer at the bar on the beach is 75 cents a bottle :) a brother took 5 of us out for beers and an appy and it cost him 6$ 

We usually take a taxi for 75 cents each to get around or the bus 

Sometimes though the taxis can look pretty rough... See the hole below? That's the road... Haha

We have pizza and poker nights here with our little group.... Luke has the apron on, he's 15 and makes awesome pizzas from scratch. He even goes as far as making the yeast from scratch. 

Just a few more from our group.

This a little party some sisters had with a few from the surrounding groups and congregations. It feels like one big family here :)

Service here is awesome. It can get really hot during the day but we take much needed coke breaks and have our umbrellas that provide a little bit of shade. 

There's lots of studies here which is so great. We don't even call them rvs here! 

Below is one of Colin's rvs he got I'm the territory. Our first study with him was so cool, he was all ready to go, pre studied, even pre studied all the scriptures! He said he is available to study for 1 hour every Wednesday! He even asked if he could come to the Kingdom Hall. 

His name is Aldino :) 

Here is a cute older brother in service... Check out his hat! :)

Here's a picture of our group and a few visitors, sorry its blurry! Will try and get a better one in the next 8 months were here :) 

The group is really fun, meetings are like a family study :) 

We go to the Spanish on Thursdays to get the parts we can't do as a group like the school and service meeting. The Spanish is really fun too. Eeverytime I try to comment its always me and all the kids with our hands up fighting for the easy comments. Some of the kids even walk up to the front of the Kingdom Hall with their hand up. I'm going to try that next time :) 

This is a close up of brother Fernando, he is so funny and he wears these big headphones up on the stage, it's really hard for me and Colin not to laugh, he's such a cute brother. 

Cute little kids :) 

The heat and the bugs are still a challenge for us here. When we first got here there was ants everywhere including in our bed :( and cockroaches in the kitchen. But with some good ole poison we feel much safer around here, no more ants and only once in a while we will see a creepy roach

But then I get to sit with one of the studies here on her beachfront property and I remember why I'm here :)

Sandy the study that owns the place in the picture above is from California and is an amazing study of Rita's, and I get to study the watchtower with her every Tuesday :) she has been studying for 2 years now and comes to every meeting here. It's really special to see her progress. Even if our little English group brings just her into the truth it would be worth it :) I will get a picture of her next time :)

So far puerto has treated us well! We will post again soon!