Recently Stan, Landon and Dana Howard (another Nazarene missionary) hiked up to the crater of the Pinchincha Volcano. In this picture you can see that they are literally standing on the top of the world! They were able to drive much of the way, though the road gets narrower and steeper as it climbs higher. After parking at a refuge, they hiked to the crater’s edge, a 15,777 foot (4,781 meter) summit. They were able to look down into the volcano and see smoke coming from it. Because the atmosphere is almost non-existent, Stan had a terrific headache when they went back down the mountain. And Landon was pretty cold. All in all, though, it was an incredible journey to the top of the world! Landon kept some lava rocks as souvenirs.
We celebrated Landon's birthday several times this year. First, the night before his birthday, a Work & Witness team from Flint, MI gave him a little surprise party with a cake, cards and a few extra treats.
The day of his birthday (August 15) our family and Ginger (a volunteer missionary and friend from the Missouri district) went to McDonald's to have a special lunch.
Last week we had a birthday party with Landon's friends. (Go to the "Landon's Postings" link to see more pictures.) Since Landon likes Garfield, I tried to bake him a Garfield cake. It was a challenge since they don't sell ready-made icing and other decorations here. But Landon liked it (he said it was more cartoon-like this way) so that's what matters!
Happy Birthday to our big 10 year old! I've always said that Mary's my pride and Landon's my joy. He's living up to that saying.
This looks like a beehive, but it is literally a solid ball of bees that nested in one of our trees! Mary's science teacher used to raise bees. His guess is that this queen bee lost her beehive to another queen bee so this "tribe" is hanging out in our tree until they can find a new place to build their hive!
While Stan was busy teaching, three of our neighbors got together and decided to get rid of the bees. (This was Friday and we were having people over for Landon's birthday party on Saturday.) They lit combustible material in a metal wheelbarrow with gasoline. We watched as the bees were stunned by the smoke and then dropped one by one into the fire in the wheelbarrow. The next morning there seem to be 2 or 3 thousand bee bodies in the wheelbarrow!
We were sorry the bees had to die, but we were glad they were gone. Stan was also sad that he missed the action!
