Convention

                           REGIONAL CONVENTION

                                      Sept. 11-13, 2015

                            San Salvador, El Salvador

Sept. 10th, another day of traveling! This time for the LONG anticipated convention! We left Pana around 6:00am. We, Ashlie, Austin, Aiden, Mike and I were in Ashlie and Austin's van. Andy, Natalie, Neto and Jesse were in Andy's truck. This time we would have others to help us if anything came up on this trip! We had a nice drive, no problems, took our time with a few more stops along the way! Once we got into San Salvador, after about 7 hours, we split off from the other group. They were all staying at a hotel and we were staying with some of the friends that opened up their homes to us. We stayed at the home of Gerson and Stephanie Acevedo. He was away on a business trip to the states so we didn't get to meet him. :0( Stephanie is pregnant with their first baby, due in 3 weeks. It's a girl! She met up with us and showed us how to get to her house. Once we were there, she said that she was leaving the house to us. She was going to stay with her mom, while her husband was gone. Aiden was taken to another Brother's home for him to stay there. Stephanie said to rest up and they would be back at 6 to take us to get something to eat. Well it was more like 7:30 before they got there, but thankfully the pupusa place was just around the corner from the house! It took awhile to get our food, they are a very popular place, but that was ok because we were able to visit with about 12 other brothers and sisters that joined us! All 17 of us ate for about $2.30pp including drinks and got full! Can't beat a deal like that! Here is a picture of us at the pupusaria!

The sister sitting next to Ashlie is 92 years old serving in Nicaragua.

The place we were to have our convention is called CIFCO. It is an area where they have several buildings to host different types of events. It was about 10 mins from where we were staying. Here are some pics from our 3 days.



Outside of the building we used for the convention.

 

Inside

And yes it was air conditioned! YAY!!!

Mike was chairman Friday morning!

Just chit chatting! Brother in the center is Aiden, our M.S., next to Mike is Jesse and then next to Jesse is Andy, from our cong.

Natalie, Ashlie and myself

Austin visiting with Jesse.

Natalie doing an awesome job modeling our new release! :0)

Andy and Nat working hard to get that new release into the hands of the brothers and sisters! I want that job one of these days!

Mark and Alison Cooney working hard at the Publications desk. They were in our cong. They are now in Roatan Honduras.

 

 

Mike and I with Jared & Alvy Martin. They are the ones we stayed with when we were having the van worked on in El Salvador.

Mike and Daryl (No, I don't think he is about to punch him! Although it looks like it huh?)

 

 

 

Natalie, myself, Ashlie and Terri

 

Ashlie saw the young sister(Ayanna) on the left and pointed out to her that their dresses matched only different colors. And since Ashlie is a wee bit taller she had to add a little material to the bottom of hers.  Cute huh?

Ashlie, myself and Terri

By now you know who we are! :0)...

and these two!

 

This little girl had fun playing with Ashlie after the convention on Sunday!

 

 

 

What a wonderful 3 day spiritual feast! We learned that after this convention Nicaragua will no longer meet with us for convention, they will now be going to Costa Rica. So after the program on Sunday, several of us from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador sang Best Life Ever and 2 Kingdom songs to the friends from Nicaragua as a farewell gift. Sorry I don't have pictures!

 

 

After the Convention on Sunday we were invited to a get together. The brothers in El Salvador hosted many of the friends from Nicaragua, so they wanted to have a going away party for them. It was a lot of fun. Several of the young ones sang a Kingdom song and then...




This hilarious thing happened! And they also had dancing and good food!

We had a really good time and the brothers were so kind and loving! We left about 9:00pm to get back to where we were staying, heading out the next day for Pana.

Monday Sept. 14th we met up with the other car group to travel back together. We left by 10:00am. Again no problems at the border and so far so good with the van! Until...

We get to Guatemala City and another adventure begins!
We got into the outer skirts of Guatemala City around 2:00pm. We all stopped at Pricesmart (like Sams Club). Our group was in and out in 10 mins. We had to be quick so we made sure to get to the Post Office before 4:30pm. Since we weren't sure exactly where it was, we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time. So we departed and told the others we'll see them in Pana. Why did we need to go to the post office? Austin's mom had sent a package for him the first part of August but never got it in Pana. We found out it was stuck in Guatemala City, so we took the opportunity to get it while we were coming back through.  After all said and done, it took 2 hours to get their package! Ridiculous! Once they got their package, we were off to Pana. In the area of the post office they were having their Independence Day (eve) parades, so every street we wanted to turn on to get out of there was blocked. Pain in the back side! Finally we got out of that area! Now it is getting quite congested in the city because there were also many groups of runners with their torches and whistles running through the main streets. Another pre Independence Day celebration! UGH! We finally get to Chimaltenango, a town on our way to Pana, which is about 3 miles long, around 7-7:30pm. Traffic is HORRIBLE! We try to reach the other group by radio to see where they were. Guess where? Yep Chimaltenango! We all were hungry, so we met at Burger King! After eating, we got in the traffic line again. It was crawling, sometimes even coming to a complete stop! Austin, Mark and Neto decided to take a walk and see what was going on. They came back after a little bit to tell us it was a parade and it won't be over until 10:00pm. We had left Burger King around 8. Neto asked us if we just wanted to turn around and get a hotel for the night or keep going. We all just wanted to get to Pana, which we finally did at 12:30am! Fourteen stinking hours to get back! Three of that just to get through that town! The lesson in all of this? NEVER EVER TRAVEL THROUGH GUATEMALA THE DAY BEFORE INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!

THE END

Pioneer School Adventure

On Aug. 16th we (Ashlie, Austin, Mike and I) set out for Pioneer School in San Salvador, El Salvador! We left at 5:30am and arrived at 12:30pm. We thought we might have to spend a little extra time at the border due to driving a personal vehicle across but no problems, got right through. Yay! We would be staying at an empty house owned by Bro. Kelvin Ash. Since we didn't have a phone that works in El Salvador to let him know when we would be there, we just drove straight to the house. Ashlie and I walked up to where we thought Bro. Ash's home was but no answer. While we were there two brothers showed up at a house next to the one that we were going to be staying. It was Kelvin's brother's house so we met his family and stayed there until they contacted Kelvin for us. He was at meeting. He came and let us in and went back to his meeting. Here is what the house looks like inside. We had it all to ourselves for the week and then some (explanation to follow)!

Our bedroom during the stay!

Our bathroom and closet.

Ashlie & Austin's bedroom for the stay.

A&A's closet area

A&A's bathroom

Where Ashlie and I played a lot of cards! It's a bedroom but they had this table in there.

This is the closet and bathroom in the card table room.

 

A tiny visitor we had!

 

 

 On Monday it took us 50 mins to get there due to traffic, on Saturday it took us 15 mins to get there. This is the Kingdom Hall where we attended school. This wasn't the original hall that we were going to have school. The original one had air conditioning, this one did not! :0(  The branch had a special project going on, so it was moved to this K. Hall. Boy was it hot in there! We ended up with using several fans which helped but A/C would have been a lot nicer! But we all survived!

Gifts that we received from different ones. Inside the cover of the little notebooks is the new song "Life of a Pioneer." We sang it together during lunch break and of course there were tears! In the envelope was a poem written by a sister from one of the congregations that fed us lunch.



Poem

 

 

Rueben Garcia (C.O. & Instructor)

Getting ready to start another session. Can you see all the fans?

 

This is how a true Harrison takes advantage of lunch break! :0) Her great-grandpa would be proud!

This was where they served lunch.

View from the back side of the Hall. This is where we spent our breaks and lunch. Shady and with a breeze!

 

 

Ashlie and I during one of our workshops.



Mike and Austin's workshop assignment.

 

Mike and Jimmy doing their workshop assignment. Austin was suppose to be Mike's assistant, but he came down with Chikungunya. What in the world is that, you may be asking? A virus that you get from a certain day time biting mosquito. Symptoms include, high fever, headache, joint pain, sometimes a rash and lack of appetite. It can last 7-10 days. Since Austin missed half of school, he qualifies to go again next year! What a loving arrangement!




Our pioneer school picture.


Saturday evening all students were invited to the Ash Family's home for dinner. Most of the pictures are on the rooftop.

 

 

 

So this is Ashlie and Austin's car that got us to pioneer school. We had no problems getting to El Salvador however on the last two days after school she didn't want to start, but we got a jump start both days and no problem, so we thought! The plan was to leave Sunday Aug. 23 to go back to Pana. Mike checked all the fluid levels and found a BIG problem, muddy looking oil which equals blown headgasket. NOT GOOD, so we weren't going anywhere! Brother Ash contacted a brother for us that is a mechanic and he came over on Monday and verified. Mike and Austin helped by taking the engine apart to help speed up the process! Got it all fixed and was going to head out Wed. late afternoon! We got down the road about 30-35 mins and the car quits like you just turned off the key, and we were broke down again alongside the highway between towns but close to a town called El Congo. Mike has Ashlie open the hood and there is a small electrical fire. Ashlie hears "fire" and she starts running in the opposite direction! Mike gets some water and puts it out. A wiring connector was laying on the exhaust manifold which caused it to melt and catch fire. So Mike gets the melted connector off and rewires it, but the car won't start. So Ashlie gets the jumper cables and waves them to see if someone would stop and help us jump start the van. A group of four El Salvadorian guys pull over. I think it helped having Ashlie with us! ;0) One of them was a mechanic and he said jump starting wouldn't help, the engine wasn't getting fuel, we had a short somewhere. All of this in Spanish, which wasn't real good for us but we somehow managed to figure out that that was what they were saying. Since we didn't have a phone we couldn't call anyone, so we asked to use one of theirs, but the couple of people we called, they didn't answer. UGH! So we tried another brother who speaks English and Spanish and he answered. Yay! The mechanic guy told the brother what was going on with the car and that he could take us to the next town to the police station. Brother Cruz told us what he said and said to go to the police station and wait there and a brother would come and get us and take care of us. By now it is dark and the guys were telling us we need to get going, that it was too dangerous for us to be there on the side of the road. So all eight of us get into a Suzuki Samuri and drove about 5 miles to the police "station", which was really a police trailer. Officer Cruz was really nice and helpful. He let us use his phone to keep in contact with the brothers that were going to help us out. We  had to wait awhile but knowing that our brothers were coming for us was such a relief! Once Hector and Jose arrived we went and got the van and towed it to their house. We stayed overnight with them and their mom Carmen and sister Karen. The only one of them that spoke English was Hector. The next morning another brother Jared Martin came and got us and towed the van to a brother's shop in another town.

 

 

 

They got right on it! While they worked on the van, Jared and another brother Miguel, took us to the mall. First thing on the list - get a SIM card so that we had a phone that works in El Salvador! Next stop - lunch. After we were done there, we went to check to see if they figured out what was wrong with the van and if it was fixed. On our way back, Jared's jeep breaks down. Hole in the radiator hose. Thankfully we were close to another brother's house when it happened. So we all walked to his house to get a knife, screwdriver and some water. We then walked back to the jeep to fix it. Quick and painless job and then we were off again!

 

 

When we got back the van was fixed! Yay! Since it was late in the afternoon we decided to wait to head out the next morning, so we spent the night at Jared and Albi's house. Jared is from Virgina and Albi is from El Salvador. They took us off roading to some springs. We hung out there for a little bit and then went back to their house and cleaned up to go have traditional El Salvador food, yuca. It is made from the yucca root, boiled and mashed, with a type of slaw and pieces of pork. Pretty good! Here is a picture I found to show you what it looks like.

 

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For a dessert the yucca root is fried in a batter and served with a kind of sweet sauce.

 

 

This is a drink we tried called Chilate. It is a warm drink made from roasted corn that is ground up and cooked with ginger and whole peppercorn and served in a guacal made from a calabash gourd (see next pic). Honestly, didn't really care for it, very bland.

 

 

 



calabash gourd
We actually saw a tree full of these. Pretty neat!


After dinner we headed back to Jared and Albi's house. Watched a movie together and then off to bed for our next day's trip back to Pana. The next morning Albi made us breakfast consisting of scrambled eggs, bread, plantains and refried beans with rice. Yummy! Then we were off, so we thought! Van didn't want to stay running when putting it in gear. Ugh, what now? Fuel injection system was dirty and battery low! A little more work on it and we were off. Jared and Albi said "You are about 45 mins from the border from here if you have any problems (not only with the van but possibly with the border being closed due to protests) just either come back here or we'll come and get you!" What a loving brotherhood, huh? Well the border was open and no more problems with the van and we got back to Pana that afternoon! Whoo hooo!


Well our traveling wasn't over yet! We got back Friday afternoon and on Wednesday we were to leave to reset our visas in Mexico. You remember the Chikungunya virus I mentioned earlier that Austin got? Well on Tuesday Mike came down with that! It was bad for him, high fever and severe joint pain. All the day before we were to leave for Mexico! :0(  We headed out Wednesday morning for Tapachula. Pretty good trip with the exception of another problem with the van. This time only a minor thing and an easy fix! Thank goodness! We stayed until Saturday morning and was heading back to Pana. The climb back was long and very steep through the mountains, van overheated a few times but we just pulled over and let it cool down! Next problem - as we were getting to Xela, a town about an hour and a half away from Pana, it started raining, so on was turned the wipers! Then at a point they decided to quit working! As we were trying to get to a gas station with an overhang, Austin reached out the window and would move the wipers by hand so Ashlie could see to drive! All we could do was laugh! We got to the station and Mike wired the wipers directly to the battery and we were off with the exception now of some transmission issues. All we could do is just hope we could get it back to Pana, which we did that Saturday night! Success! Now the next thing was to figure out what was going on with the transmission because the following Thursday we were heading back to El Salvador for the Regional Convention, yes MORE traveling! Austin called his dad and told him what Mike suggested to do, which was drain the fluid and replace the transmission filter and see how it would do with that, Ken concurred! So Austin and Ashlie got that taken care of and it did the trick! Next stop El Salvador! (next blog)

Oh and by the way, Mike is feeling better! Still just a touch of joint pain but all in all he's over it! About 10 days or so of symptoms!