Arrive in El Salvador!

We are creating this blog for our friends and family who may be interested in our experience of serving a 2 year mission in San Salvador. We are missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Our primary service here is to assist in the construction of the San Salvador temple.

A little bit of backtracking to get caught up-

November 17, 2008
We arrived in San Salvador at around 7:00 in the morning, having left L.A. at about 2:00 AM. The plane was full. We had managed around 2-3 hours of sleep.
Going through customs was very easy. We were the only gringos on the plane! We stuck out like sore thumbs in Jim's suit and my skirt. (That's the idea!) We were the only ones in the line for "foriegners". President and Sister Lopez picked us up. President Logez is the mission president for the El Salvador San Salvador West/Belize Mission. We emailed him and asked him if we could stay with them until we found a place to live. We have a very comfortable room with wireless Internet, and the food is plentiful-too much and too yummy! We are being emersed in the world of missionaries and the organization of 180 young men and women in two countries! It is so fun!!
The first day here we napped and then experienced Price Smart. Central America's Costco! It was the same, but different!! We also shopped at a local market and they had everything we'd ever want or need. We noticed prices were about the same except for fruits and vegetables; they are cheaper.

November 18-20, 2008
These days were filled with meetings with architects and contractors from Utah and El Salvador and the project manager from the church. Most meetings were in Spanish but the last meeting was in English. It was very nice of them to speak in English!! Jim really enjoyed these meetings.
The architect/construction manager in San Salvador has been especially helpful to us. He gave us a temporary phone to use with prepaid minutes and some people in his office took us around to look at apartments. They have said if we need anything to just call them. The architects and constractors are a very respected firms here in San Salvador. It is an honor to work with them.
We also went to the temple site and walked around. It is hard to envision 3 construction projects going on at the same time on the same site! There will be the temple, a chapel and a 7 plex apartment/office building.

We found a perfect casita to rent yesterday. As soon as I walked in, I knew this was where I wanted to live! We had viewed apartments in highrises but they didn't feel as comfortable to us as a little "townhouse" . Us "country bumpkins" feel much better on ground level....