What a great time we have. Sherrie is amazing and continues to bless the people here. She has started to spend time learning French so she can speak with the members that are here from Haiti. I have included one photo of a beautiful family who met each other here at the temple a number of years ago and have 3 adorable children.Other photos are of our outing with the other senior couples and of our 100% dinner. Last week we had a dinner for all of the student in the institute program not only in our building but throughout the stakes and had about 95 people there. Sherrie came up with the idea to help motivate the kids to attend institute and it has been very successful. She underestimated how motivated the kids here are for food rewards. She thought initially we could get all of them in our apartment. Not so!
The other photos are of our trip to a cocoa processing plant and a pottery factory. Cocoa is a big business here with the beans from the DR reaching mostly buyers in Europe. The good German chocolate comes from the DR. The Dr is the biggest producer of organic cocoa in the world. They call it organic of course because of not pesticides or artificial fertilizers. I asked about the diseases and pests and they said that the biggest problem they have is with the rats that infest the fields and climb the trees and eat into a pod and bite a bean and spit it out. I asked how they control the rats and they said snakes. So there you have it. Nothing to worry about! Makes your chocolate taste even better knowing what people have to do to pick it. We are drinking freshly made hot cocoa. It was very good but very different from what we traditionally have. One photo is of some wooden bins where they ferment the cocoa beans after they are harvested. The grower has up to 6 hours to get his beans to the processor or he will loose them. The fermentation process is what gives the cocoa beans their distinctive chocolate flavor. The longer the process, the more rich the chocolate flavor. They are then dried and bagged. Each bag sells for about $200 US dollars. One photo is of our guide with a cocoa pod open. The beans are inside surrounded by a white fruit. It is quite tasty but the farmers grind the whole thing up after separating the seeds and use it as fertilizer.
We also visited a small fabrication facility of authentic Tiano Indian pottery. The Tianos are the indigenous people that were on the island when Columbus arrived. It was very interesting and very warm. I respect so much the difficulty the workers have sitting in the heat for 10 hours a day trimming and making the individual pieces of pottery. The pieces are sold throughout the country. We took advantage of the chance and bought some souvenirs.
The kids were back to school this past week so things were rocking. Our class starts this Wednesday but so far we only have 4 signed up. Probably due to the fact that is only for engaged or married students.
Another week in paradise!
