Sweet Friends and Spring Flowers

Spring is bursting out.  Orange blossoms are beginning to bloom and spread their delicious scent.  

Tiny iris flower in the fields.

Almond trees are blooming.

The name of the town Kato Drys means lower oaks.  It is a small very charming village down the hill a bit from Lefkara that we visited some time ago and wrote about.  Like Lefkara, Kato Drys is famous for embroidery and also for its bees and honey.  Nice people and charming to the max.  The honey is perhaps as good as any I have eaten.

 

A Cyprus one pound note featuring the small Kato Drys community.  Now replaced with the Euro.

Above the little museum of Kato Drys is a lovely secluded B&B ready for summer guests.

Paphos sits on the west end of the Island.  It is a lovely area along a coast of beautiful beaches and includes numerous orchards and vineyards.  

Banana orchard.  The local bananas are small but really lovely.

Paphos is a very small branch where we have only two missionaries.  Because it is a little further away from the other parts of Cyprus our mission leaders asked us to visit the branch on a somewhat regular basis.  We visited Paphos a couple of weeks ago for a baptism of Francis, a fine young man from Liberia.  We informed President Angeletta that we had booked a hotel to come the following weekend and visit the branch.  He was delighted, asked us to speak in church and insisted that we stay with he and his wife at their B&B rather than at a hotel.  We cancelled our reservation and became the guests of Gina and John Angeletta for the weekend.  Wonderful time.  Wonderful people.  We shared a meal together with them on Sunday with the young missionaries (Elder Paez and Elder Campbell).

 Sister Kiddle with a lovely friend from the Ukraine.  She visited for the first time and Sister Kiddle helped her load the Gospel Library on her phone so she could access gospel material in Ukrainian.  There were other visitors from Holland and Poland.

Paphos, like so much of Cyprus, has rich archeological sites.  The mosaics are part of a large site of ancient Roman ruins with plentiful remaining mosaics preserved from a variety of ancient buildings.

The well loved Kypro (Cyprus) Zone minus a couple of young missionaries.  Our delightful missionary contingent.  From France, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, UK and America (Greek heritage).  Missing a Norwegian and another Swede.

Elder Grayson is from Sweden.  We love him partly because he looks like big version of our grandson Ivan and has a wonderful similar personality to boot.

 After apartment inspections we felt that the young missionary apartment here in Larnaca needed a refresh.  New mattresses were among the upgrade. Elders Hiltunen and Grayson had to try out options partly because they had arrived about midnight the night before, travelling from Bulgaria.

Limassol (sometimes referred to as Moscow on the Med) from a building we looked at in search of a new missionary apartment.  A lot of Russians and Ukrainians and related money in Limassol.

We need an apartment in Limassol.  We have been shopping but they are hard to find and much more expensive than apartments in other parts of Cyprus.  Here is one of the latest buildings we have considered.  It is in a pretty good part of town and the apartment we looked at was a completely renovated unit in a rather sad building but very small and quite expensive for a one bedroom.  The search continues.

Finally, a flour that makes decent sourdough bread.   We have quite a collection of flours from Cyprus, the UK, Greece and finally this flour from Crete that makes lovely bread.

Lastly, a sneak peak at our next blog.  Our Zone Conference just happened and we went as a zone to the site of an ancient city named Salamis and then to the Ghost City.  Both are located in the Turkish Occupied Area of Northern Cyprus.  Those areas were once a beautiful thriving tourist area until the conflict of the mid 70s when it was fenced off and made a no-mans-land so the fighting over the area would end.

We are ever grateful for the many associations with you that have enriched our lives immensely.  We feel richly blessed by our experiences and time here.  It's an abundant life and we are grateful.  Until next time avtio gia tora (Greek for goodbye for now) per Google!!