Elder David y Hna. Pam Johnson

Saturday, August 8, 2009 (Daniel Johnson’s Birthday)

Today is our first real “Preparation Day” (P-day) since we left for Provo over 4 and a half weeks ago. Pam and I started off with an hour walk in the city park named “Mirador”. Our apartment is about 2 block from the western end and it is about 5 miles long and a quarter mile wide. It is not well kept up at all but it is beautiful none the less. It is a piece of jungle right in the heart of the city. We really enjoyed our time walking on the path through the park. We plan to do it at least weekly if we have the time on P-day.

We finally got to do some long overdue shopping. Elder and Sister Larsen who we replaced “willed” us a lot of household supplies. Now that they are unpacked and we know what we need to make our apartment livable he spent the morning at a very large supermarket called La Serena. It is comparable to a Super Wal-Mart only prices are in Dominican Pesos. We’ve also discovered that it’s not cheap either. Prices are generally a bit higher here than in the states for generic household products. If we want to buy name brand products, we can expect to pay about one and a half times more than in the states.

This afternoon the AP’s (Assistants to the President) and brought me my new phone. I’m tickled pink! It is similar to the old “Smart Phone” I used to use at the flower shop and it uses the same operating system so all of my contacts, calendar and files transferred. It also means I don’t have to learn a new system to use my phone/PDA. The really great thing about the phone is that it can receive the internet. Then when I plug in the “Hot Sync” cable to my laptop, the laptop is connected to the internet too. That means anyplace I have phone coverage I can send/receive e-mail, update my blogspot and check the family website. Wow, how cool is that. I haven’t tried the webcam yet. I’m afraid it may be a little too slow for that but it still is great.

When the Assistant to the President brought the phone over he tried to set it up for me. He worked on it for over an hour and finally called in the “Mission Tech Support Guru” Elder Baldwin. He’s the Elder that set up the mission president’s home office computers, the Mission Office (where we work) computers, and networked them all. Elder Baldwin’s companion is Elder Dalton. He’s not a computer whiz. While Elder Baldwin set up my laptop internet connection, Elder Dalton helped me fix a broken door knob.

To show our appreciation for their hard work, Sister Johnson and I took them both out to dinner. We said, you choose where you want to eat Elders. Well, of course we went to Pizza Hut. They each ordered a medium combo pizza. They were stuffed when we left and even took home enough for their lunch tomorrow.