Moving on to the New Year

January is almost over.  I rather thought there wouldn't be much to write about in January so I indulged in more Dec photos.  Wrong!  Catch up time!
 We had a rousing celebration for our new year's eve.

We indulged in spinach dip thanks to thoughtful kids who brought the soup mix

Rousing!!!

 A few days later, we celebrated Elder K's birthday.  Actually, the whole city celebrated.  King's day is the day gifts are exchanged even more than Christmas for lots of Spaniards.  So we enjoyed dinner and cake.  Birthday cake and rosco de reyes.  That is the round cake.  There is a bean hidden inside but also a favor.  If you get the bean, you buy the king cake next year.  If you get the favor, you are king for the year.

We had all the missionaries in Fuengirola come too.

The round one at the bottom is the king cake.  It was very tasty but not as sweet as our cakes...of course.

 This birthday celebration was on Jan 5, the night before King's day.  As we were finishing our supper, we heard a band playing in the street outside our window.  There was a parade! 

There was a pause just outside our building, so we got down there in time to see the whole parade.  Sooo Fun!

Some of the 'kings' were younger than others.  The train in the background usually gives a little tour of the town.

Here come the floats.  They were beautiful, mostly Disney themed, and all filled with kids throwing candy. 

We all had to go down stairs and photograph it.

Each of the 3 kings had a float.  Here is one of them.

There were pounds of candy thrown by each person on the floats, some of the throwers should have pro ball careers.

I am afraid we stood out a bit.

Another king.

I think this one was Balthazar.  He was by far the most popular and all the kids called to him.

The view from our balcony

We had 3 zone conferences early in Jan too.  We went to 2 of them and wanted to attend the 3rd but had too much to do in the office.  After the regular Zone Conference, the missionaries had talent shows and those were fun to watch.  We eat well at them too. 


This was the salad at a Zone conference.  The yellow is potato pure.  It was delicious.

These are some of our sister missionaries.  Who does the middle one remind you of?

We welcomed another group of  new missionaries (only 8).  There were 4 who finished their missions this month too.  In the coming months, it will be the number of returning missionaries that will tax us, both logistically and in the loss of leadership.  It is always amazing how the Lord arranges things though.  He does provide. 

This is a photo of the painting Rod did for President and Sister Deere's birthday.

We are doing well.  I have gotten over my cold.  Yea!!!  We are still busy and finding great joy in this wonderful work.  Thank you for your prayers.  Your support means the world to us.  Love you all