Las Mercedes to Puerto Lopez!

Hola! Apologies for such a delay since our last post. We are presently in Puerto Lopez, a coastal town near Isla de la Plata, 'poor mans galapogos'. Last week after Puerto Viejo we arrived at Las Mercedes for convention on Wednesday. We had lunch with Lester and Narcisa and Brett Hammer. We stayed one night on the grounds in a house called 'la casita' with the sister workers! We enjoyed dinner with Doris and Javier and their kids, who live next door to the grounds. Javier is a son of the couple on the grounds, Lilia and Jose. We also enjoyed bfast with them and two sisters, Ruthie and Marsha. The next day was a prep day, which meant laundry and squeezing oranges for us! Las Mercedes is a beautiful places with humid warm weather and innumerable fruit trees from star fruit to mangoes! There are cows and horses in the nearby fields. 13 families in the small town area are professing so the town is well aware of the convention. Thursday thru Sunday nights we stayed with Lester and Narcisa and their two girls Natalie and Perrlita! Lester and Narcisa were the first professing couple to marry in Ecuador! We had a great time with them visiting and playing games with the girls in the evenings. Convention started Friday with two meetings, and went thru Sunday afternoon. Very special convention and people with remarkable stories about how the gospel came to their family. Monday morning we woke up at 530 and Lester taught us how to milk a cow! We ran to convention grounds (1/8 of a mile away) and were chases by one of the many crazy dogs in the area (I considered going on a run during our time here but was warned about being chased by the dogs, and here it served to be true! This one was biting Heathers skirt and trying to play!) After laundry and breakfast, we met a bus with about 10 other friends and workers to a bus terminal. This bus was open air benches in a truck bed. And the bench broke when we went over a big bump!!! The kid next to me said in Spanish "ummm the bench just broke!" and we had to get up and shove it back into place. Ha ha :) At the main bus terminal we parted ways from those going to Guayaquil and head to Puerto Lopez. We enjoyed lunch at a fish restaurant here with 4 workers and Casey and Shanise, two girls who are accompanying is on our coast travels this week! Casey is from N Dakota and Shanise from Vancouver. The workers went on their way and we relaxed and ran in the beach! Today we went to Isla de la Plata for a guided hiking tour and snorkeling! We wished we could have taken pictures of the cool fish we saw! Tomirrow after visiting friends in Las Tunas and Ohlone we will head to Canoa, a beach town we have heard good things about! Friday we will go by bus to Guyaquil and then El Crystal!
Sorry for the lack of more detail... I wrote this once and it deleted half on me! All is well and we are enjoying ourselves, particularly with today being Shanise's birthday!
now for pics...