Primary Activity and another part of the Atacama Desert

We attended a Primary activity last Saturday and loved seeing the children having fun doing what kids love doing: playing!

 Everyone was busy getting balloons ready for their first activity.

Leonardo Reinoso, Elder Herrera/Chile, and Doug stopped long enough for me to take this picture.

This is the Bravo family. Romina is the Primary president and Abraham is the Elders Quorum president. Their two children are Ruben and Valentina. They're expecting their 3rd in a few months. They're a great addition to the branch!

                                                       Let the games begin!!

After they started with the balloon popping, they went around to several locations in the cultural hall and received points for how well they did. The final activity was throwing water balloons at Abraham Bravo.  He tried catching them with the colander but by the end he was absolutely soaked. Everyone, including adults, loved it! At the end, the children received prizes. I think the ones with the highest points got to choose first because all the prizes were the same.

                                                   The kids loved choosing their prizes!!

The next day we drove up to the branch in Pozo Almonte, which is about 30 miles outside of Alto Hospicio and is at an elevation of 3400'. We drove up behind this bus and took this picture from inside our car.  It says: The Lord loves you. Can you imagine finding anything like that on any public transportation in our country? It was a special reminder of what our mission is all about on our way to church.

We also passed this Indian etching on the mountainside. We find it very intriguing.

We love the little branch  and building in Pozo Almonte.

The next day we drove back up to an area called Pica that's part of the branch and about 30 miles beyond Pozo Almonte.  It's known for being an oasis in the desert.  They have groves of lemons, oranges, grapefruit, limes, etc. and we marveled at all the greenery in that little pueblito.

Trees!

We loved looking over the walls to see so many healthy trees.

As we left we snapped a picture of one of the groves along the roadside. We learned that to get any water up there they must dig down about 120 feet to find water and then create an irrigation system. We saw this all over the area and for our eyes, it truly was an oasis. The other oasis we found were meeting some members of that branch. We'll be returning in a couple of weeks to attend a Family Home Evening they hold monthly with all the families living up there. We'll bring along the elders from that branch so they can meet those who haven't attended church in a long time.