Our Adventure with Cashew Nuts

OK, I am finally able to make another post to all you wonderful family and friends out there! We are doing well. Life has been pretty hard lately but when it's hard, it's good. Right? Well, that's what the Prophet teaches us. We are thankful for all the hard and even more so for the blessings and sweet miracles that we are given.
We are still here in Nicoya in the Swiss Family Robinson house. We are praying and hoping for the ability to get into our own homes but are grateful to have this one for now. We love being with our good friends and we still are good friends, that in itself is a miracle!
We are excited to go get our vans back in a couple of weeks!! They have been parked in Nicaragua for the past 3 months and now, supposedly, we can drive them back into the country. In all actuality we don't know what will happen to them for sure because the border agents here are so corrupt it could be just another story this time of why we can't!! We will have to wait and see.
(Just a side note, if you want to see more pictures of us here in Costa Rica you can go to my Facebook page. --Melanie Smith Royal--)

So, some fun things we have been doing. It's mango season right now and we just picked buckets of mangos! We LOVE, LOVE, LOVE mangos!! They are seriously my favorite fruit. I could just eat them all day, and around here you can because they grow everywhere! There are many different kinds of mangos, little ones, big ones, green, yellow, purple, red, orange ones. Mango trees are usually very big and produce tons of mangos. They grow in clusters and hang from a long stem. To get them down you just hit the branches of the tree and they fall to the ground. They are pretty firm so they don't bruise. It's pretty cool.
So, it's also Cashew season right now. I was able to take some pictures of our adventure with the cashews. This here is our Cashew tree. We have a few of them but this one is the biggest. On the tree you can see the red fruit of the cashew. So when these little guys started growing a couple of months ago we had no idea what they were. We really love these trees because they are very pretty. Their leaves are really big and they vary in color from green to yellow to red. So when to fruit on the tree started to ripen and turn red it was a very beautiful sight to see. So we decided to pick some and try it. Well, Rachael loved it but they rest of us, not so much! We were very curious about what kind it was and the very interesting "seed" that was attached to the top. So we had some friends over and we asked them if they knew what it was and after looking up the Spanish word in the dictionary we discovered that it was a cashew. We got really excited about that because, well, we LOVE cashews! We asked our friendshow you get the cashew out of the shell and they told us we have to roast them or cook them over a fire. Wow! How fun! We spent a few weeks gathering cashews as they fell from the tree. And then we had a cashew open fire roast!! It was a blast and the kids loved every part of it, from the gathering to the roasting and finally the cracking and eating!! Yum!

So besides that, we have been doing typical household chores and raising this large bunch of children. We spend our days, working, playing, and studying. I spend quite a bit of my time on my Primary calling and it is wonderful to serve in the Primary. I just love being with the children. We have started, for this first time ever in this branch, the Faith in God program and we had our first meeting two weeks ago. It went well and I think the children are excited to be getting together for more than just Church. They have not had Primary programs and activities here since, I don't know if they ever have. We have been successful in reactivating a few members with Primary children, so our primary is growing. It is hard work rebuilding a branch but we are excited to do it and are praying for success. May the Lord be merciful to these people. It is hard sometimes to see all the sin and wickedness that is rampant here in Costa Rica and, I am sure, all over the world. I can't believe how merciful and long-suffering God is to his children. May we all let our light shine a little brighter and reach out to the captive. We have the truth that will set them free, let us share it!
Well, we are car-less right now because the one we were borrowing is broken down. We are hoping to be able to get it fixed soon. But we are also looking forward to the possibility of having our vans back also.
I think we have all pretty well adjusted to the culture here, not that we don't still miss the States and the culture there, but it does seem more "normal." (except for the trash, I don't know if I'll ever adjust to the amount of trash that is 'literally' everywhere! It is sometimes overwhelming to see all the trash that is stuck to the sides of the riverbanks and filling the ditches. It's funny how Costa Rica is praised by the Left for being so eco friendly, yet their refuse runs in the streets and their trash flows down the rivers.) But, as for other things: the high prices of food and merchandise, the Tico slowness and general ineptitude, the poor quality of goods...these things are becoming just the way it is. Basically, I think that if you had a lot of money and could buy your own piece of paradise and live there pretty much exclusively and just go and visit the places you wanted to with the ability to fly home whenever you needed to stock up on all the stuff that they don't have here or that is ridiculously overpriced you could really love "Costa Rica" even though you wouldn't really be "in" Costa Rica. If you are just living among the Ticos then it is definitely a choice to be here and the rewards come from doing what you know is right and from the value of souls, which, of course, is the most important thing you can value. The people here are wonderful and the joy that comes from being with them and serving them and sharing the gospel with them is truly great. I am so thankful to have the great opportunity to be with these people and to serve in the church here, there is so much work to be done.
So, right now, we are squeaking by financially. The slow season has come and it's slow! We are praying for more work and busier dentists. But are counting our blessings that we are still in business and have enough to live on.
We love all of you and miss you all very much!!! Spanish is coming along, poco a poco! It's taking more time then I hoped it would be I do learn a little more every day and surprise myself sometimes with how much I can understand. I am down loading the first session of conference right now! I am excited to go home and watch it!! We weren't able to watch it yet because they, of course, broadcast it in Spanish down here. So we get to do a session a day this week!!!
Love you all!! God bless you and keep you in His care!

HOLA FRIENDS!!! Hope all is well with you. We are doing well. We are praying for miracles still, so we love having your prayers in our behalf as well. Thank you! We have many adventures every day and I wish I could record them all for you. Many funny and entertaining moments just pass us by.
So, you all have heard, I think, about our "Batmobile", we were giving a car to use by our friends Robert and Cindy. It is a 1980, or something, Mercedes and it has seen better days, but still runs and is in okay condition for an old car. We are sooooo thankful to have something to drive. It truly is a great blessing. We are a very grateful to have something to drive. Using the bus system was quite an adventure!! We are thankful for the experience because, like all hard things, we have learned much and have seen the hand of God in our lives. The Dad's, while riding the bus, meet a couple, Satisha and Ama and they are interested in the gospel. We have gotten together with them a few times and we really like them. I know the Lord led them to us or us to them because their hearts are ready. We have been able to teach them a couple of lessons with our Sisters here and that has been really great. We've had other good learning experiences as well from our bus adventures and we are thankful. James and Jacob LOVE the bus!! They get all excited whenever we take a bus anywhere or even just see them drive by. It's pretty cute how much they love the bus. I can remember being little and loving the bus as well. If we could all just be as little children and find the joy in all things we would be much happier and healthier!
So we have a car and we are able to come to the lab much easier to use the internet and get in touch with all of you wonderful friends and family.
We have also had a little miracle with our produce problem. We have 16 mouths to feed and one of them has two more to feed in her belly, so that adds up to a lot of food!! Without our vehicles it was very interesting trying to get all the produce from the produce market to our home. We were reliant on taxi's, friends and the bus to do it! It was quite an adventure for many weeks but about a month ago, through a friend we had made, we were able to find out about these guys who go to San Jose every week and buy a truck load of produce, they then drive it back to this area and sell it. They drive right by our house on their way back and we were able to contact them and they agreed to come to our house every week and sell us all the produce we need right there at our front door for price even better than the store!!!! Can you believe that! What a miracle! We are so thankful for our many miracles, the Lord is merciful. So, now we get to have very fresh and yummy fruits and veggies every week and it costs us about 60 dollars for all of us. We have been eating better since this miracle and I feel so thankful. This morning I had scrambled eggs with pineapple. The pineapple was HUGE!! I mean the biggest I have ever seen. We bought it last night from our produce truck and it tasted so delicious!!
OK, that's all I can write for now, my husband is tapping on my shoulder to leave now.
Love you all! Go to my facebook to see more pics!!!!

Alrighty, here we go, here we go!!! I am finally posting again! I know I am not the best blogger but without internet at your house it is a little bit tricky to do. I am thankful for all of your comments and for all of you who care about us and think of us down here in the tropics!! We love you all and miss you very much. We are so thankful for modern technology that has allowed us to be able to stay in touch with all of you and even do live video chats with many of you. Thanks!
We are all doing well, we've had a little bit of a cold go around amongst the children but nothing too frightening. We are happy and healthy and eager to really get on our feet again and be able to find individual houses for our two families. We love each other a lot and, of coarse, we still want to live close, but we are all anxious to have our own space again. However, I think the children will miss having live in playmates and endless days of summer break, but I think I am ready. We have been able to get into a pretty good schedule lately, which is nice, but it's tuff. The lab is doing better and better every month and we are thankful!! We have a wonderful bit of news for all of you great friends and family that sent us gifts by mail, we were finally able to go and get all our packages on Tuesday!!!!! The children we ecstatic! Us adults, well, we were just pretty much in shock! None of us could believe that amount of generosity!! My words here won't do justice to the way all of us feel but I want all of you good people to know that you have blessed our lives tremendously and the gifts you sent are being lovingly used, played with, read, etc.!!! Thank you, Thank you! We have had a very joyous week thanks to all of you and we truly can't believe the great abundance of the Lord. It is amazing to realize again how much we take for granted there in the States and how much we don't have here in this other world.
We have had another blessing as well this week. We were generously given an old Mercedes Benz do drive around for a while. It is diesel and gets good gas mileage but the brakes are bad and it has a few other problems, but it is a wonderful blessing and we all very very, very thankful to have it!!!!!!
We love you all and hope that you are all doing great!

A How Do Ya Do!

Howdy All! I don't have much time today to make a post, but since I am here I thought I would at least say hi and let you all know we are doing well and things are moving with God's help! We all have callings now in our Branch and are excited to really get to work with the endowment of God's Power! We were able to eat out last night by using a taxi to get to and from the resturante and we had the great opportunity to meet a very nice man, the owner of the resturant, who was interested in the gospel and, we felt like, was a golden contact. We were thankful that the Lord lead us there because he really did! We weren't planning on going there at all and actually never even knew it exsisted. It was the taxi driver that brought us there and we were thankful because the food was really really great!! And affordable. We ate, all four of us, for under 60 dollars and we had specialty drinks, wonderful entres, and deserts! We are very pleased and we grateful to be able to talk to Sydney, the owner of the store about the gospel! What blessings flow from a merciful, loving Father in Heaven!
We are excited to see what the future holds and are praying to find a way to pay the taxes on our vehicles or any other miracle to get them back. It is quite tricky having so many children and not having transportation! But it is a good time to trust in the Lord and in his ways.
Hope all of you are doing well, we miss you and love you!

A New Year, Many New Experiences!

Buenas Dias, Hermanas y Hermanos, Amigas y Amigos!! Nosotros estamos muy bien! Como estan? We love you all and miss you so much! I am sorry that you have to wait so long between contacts with us but that is the trial the Lord wishes for us to experience right now, so we get to practice being grateful for many things! I am glad I have the opportunity today to post this for all of you! I am at the lab with Dannan and it is his birthday today!!!! Happy Birthday to Him! We all love him soooooo much and can't believe he's almost 40! Wow, time goes by so quickly, this life is but a blink of an eye and the Lord must compact our learning experiences into dense pockets of growth for us to be able to become the Celestial Souls he desires of us! I am thankful I get to go through these growth opportunities with my amazing and handsome husband! I Praise the Lord for him and for his amazing abilities! Hurray! for righteous men! the world needs more of them!
Well, we are feeling the great Mercies of the Lord and His loving remodeling of our meager cottages into Godly mansions every day! We are happy to say that we are all still here! We are doing well, we have food to eat and most importantly feel so thankful that we get to feast with Christ as he fills our souls with great joy and love!! I love my Savior and know that I am doing what he wants me to do. I feel ever humbled by my own nothingness and his greatness, but I feel the desire to rejoice in His gifts and in the opportunities he gives me to become the daughter of God that I know I can be and will be! I am so thankful that I get to come unto Him and partake of his great goodness and mercy, to be able to commune with the Father and read the words of truth everyday. I know that right now many of you are also experiencing great chastening and 'shaping' from the Lord and my prayers and love go out to you! I am grateful for all of your words of encouragement and love and I want you to know that I feel the same towards you and know that the Lord does too! All things work out for the improvement of our souls and for our good! I have learned so much from the past few months and I truly have felt closer to my God then probably any time in my entire life! I love to feel his Spirit and His love flood my heart and testify of truth!
There is so much to fill you all in on that I know I won't have time to record everything. So, I will tell you what I can and if you want more details you can call Dannan on his vonage phone 435-327-4522 and he would love to share more with you!
So the last post I wrote was right after Christmas and we had just gone over the border to renew our visas. Well, since then we have been to the border 5 or 6 times to try and renew our licenses on our vehicles and we were told pretty much different things every time. At the same time we were talking to friends and associates here who told us different information as well. So we continued to trust in the Lord and know that whatever happened would be for the best and his will. We finally ended up (after crossing the border in our vehicles, which we were told was very expensive and ended up being free! into Nicaragua and coming back into Costa Rica where we were told we would be able to renew our licenses for 3 months) having to leave our vehicles there at customs until, according to those particular agents, they would remain until we pay the taxes on them. So we are now car-less and it is quite the adventure, quite the humbling experience, and amazing to see the help that has poured out upon us from so many of God's helpers! It's hard to really explain how many amazing angels have been sent our way since we were sent here but I marvel at the mercy of the Lord. We have decided to list the vehicles for sale to see if it is possible to sell one and pay for the taxes on the other two. We are also talking with some different contacts to see if they can help us out or not. We will let you all know what becomes of our cars when it's all over. So Dannan was singing praises of Legalized Plunder, I am sure you can all imagine how much he enjoyed that whole experience. He actually was just telling me about how difficult and demoralizing it was to stand there and watch as the border agents mocked and made fun of us. They were very full of hatred towards us, it was quite humbling. However, I have to say that I have never seen him handle something that difficult so calmly and he has continued to be cheerful and thankful, trusting in the Lord's timing and miracles. I know that all will work out and we will be able to have our own transportation again. I pray that it is sooner than later!
So Rachael has good news!! She is expecting again and she feels certain it is girl twins! Can you imagine that! So we are excited for her and she would love your prayers in her behalf.
She is due then in September! (by the way if any of this seems way to ironic, just remember what Niel A Maxwell said, "what we can take now foretells what He can give later! This reality should be kept firmly in mind as we understandably pray for relief from short-term stress or long-term trauma. We would, if we could, put periods, if not exclamation points, where God is content to put commas in the process.")
The children are doing amazingly well. They seem to be getting along even better now that they have been living together with the Meyers for 3 months then they were during month 2, which, I think, has been the hardest. But, really, they are doing awesome! I am so proud of them for being very selfless and hard working! There have been a number of times that Rachael and I have headed out to the store and have been gone for a couple of hours and then coming home again tuckerd out we've descoto a completely clean and happy home.All of them spend so much time outside it's a little tricky getting in enough study time but they are learning great things running, playing, building, exploring, creating, swimming, imagining, and caring for nature!! It is really cute to see them pair up or even join up in groups and "go"! James and Leah are probably the funniest to watch as they get into mischief. James will wake up calling her name and off they go for a day of adventure! They will head out to their 'fort', calling out to the monkeys and catching bugs! The next time you see them they'll have taken their clothes off, pooped out side on the ground, cleaned themselves off in the hose (and cleaned a lot of other stuff too), and finished up with a skinny dip in the pool! We'll bring them in to feed them and redress them and they'll head off again to play in the dirt, see who can run the fastest, play fight or house or what ever else they think up and just generally have a gay old time! They do get into little tiffs here and there but they tend to get the best of each other and after some consolidation they are off to their shananigains again! Rachael and I just love to watch them and laugh, we wish we could capture some of their moments on film but one day soon hopefully!!
The oldest 4 are almost done with a fort they are building (well, mostly it has been built by Michael, but the others are "helping"). They are making it out of bamboo! It is like a log cabin style house and is about 5 foot square. It is pretty neat. Next to their house they have a pond with a swing they built that swings out over the pond and back to the shore. They have nature root benchs and "the best" climbing trees on the property, so, you see they are good at picking their real estate!
So, Joey turned 12 in December and he finally got the Aronic Priesthood Jan. 2. He had a Priesthood Lesson from Grandpa Smith and an interview with our Branch President who couldn't speak English. (That Presidency has since been redone, more on that in a second) He was very excited as he was asked to pass the sacrament the next week and the week after as well! (there are 3 worthy Deacons in our Branch and only 2 are need to pass the sacrament) He was able to go to the Temple with the youth of our Branch a week ago. I prayed for him to have a very spiritual experience and when he got home he had many stories to tell but not too many that were strong spiritual experiences, so I was talking to him about it later and he said, "Mom, don't worry, it was my first time going to the temple in a foreign country where just about everyone only speaks Spanish! I think for the first time things just might be a little confusing. That's okay." I felt humbled and hugged him tight. I love that sweet boy! I started to picture how the day for him must have been pretty difficult. He was courageous to go when he would have to spend the entire day (4 am to 5 pm) with Spanish speakers only. I am proud of him and I know that he is stronger for the experience. If you want to get all the details you can call and talk to him sometime!
So, about the changes in our Branch. I have shared previously how we came to live in Nicoya and that it was a complete and total miracle that we are in the house we are in. We have had an amazing window opened into the purposes of the Lord this past couple weeks. At the beginning of January our District leaders and Mission leaders were at our Branch meeting and we felt excited to make contact with those good people who helped us find the Pierce's and have to amazing opportunity to rent their home. They said they were only vacationing but when we got home Dannan pulled me aside and said the District Pres. wanted to meet with him the next Sunday. I felt happy for him and he felt scared!! We all thought he would probably get some king of District Missionary calling, I mean, what else could it be? So I spent the week praying for him to be able to be an instrument in the Lord's hand. The next Sunday I found out, right before sacrament meeting, that he was asked to serve the Lord as the 2 counselor in the Branch Presidency. We then sustained our new Branch Presidency in Sacrament meeting. Manuel is the new Pres. (he is one of my friends on facebook if you want to be friends with him!) He is such an amazing man, we all love him and his wife Jensy so much. So, needless to say Danna feels very humbled by such a call, especially since he doesn't, yet, speak Spanish. I feel like he has great work to do, with the rest of the Presidency. We feel certain we were sent to help our Branch heal from the effects of Leadership that has turned away from the Lord. There is much moral sin here, as there is everywhere, but it is definitely more obvious and wide spread because of the immorality of the cultural norm here. Our Branch has be functioning without the guidance of the Spirit for about 2 years now and has suffered greatly. We are excited to get to work, as Dannan already has been, and help these wonderful people feel the fire of the gospel and be able to strengthen home and family and spread the word! I was sustained and set apart last week as the Music President. I have steeped in a few times to lead the music before(which is no easy task when you have to lead with out any accompianment and with out very many in the congregation that can hold a tune and singing a hymn in Spanish that you've never sung in Spanish before AND being only given the notice when you walk in the door to the chapel AND you are only given the numbers for the hymns! I couldn't have done it without the Lord helping me. I would be able to look at the hymn and the tune and which hymn it was would just come to me and I would be able to do a decent job leading) but now I get to really prepare to lead and I get to start a Branch choir if I want to and arrange musical numbers, which we never have! I am excited, it is a very fun calling! Jacob was called last week as the new Young Men's President and we are certain this next week will bring even more changes to our Branch. We all feel like this is at least part of the reason the Lord has sent us here right at this time. Please pray for our Branch and for the old Branch President and his family. We know you all have been praying so much for us and we thank you! It has been very humbling to experience first hand the destructive power of the devil and his angels and the amazing control that they have over the hearts of men. The battle with evil is REAL and is absolutly combinded against the Saints of God to destroy the family and the sacred procreative powers given to Husband and Wife. Let us all strengthen our resolve to repent of all our sins and give up our pride, remain in contact with the Spirit through prayer and scripture study, that we be able to resist the temptations of the Devil and be warriors of Light!! The world needs our testimony to ring out! There are so many lost and sorrowful souls who just need some light and love to come to the presence of the Lord. Let us be those bearers of God's love!!! Let us share our precious gifts with others that we may all come to meet our maker again and rejoice in the value of rescued souls! My hearts swells as I am able again and again to share my testimony with others! I Praise Him for these opportunities!
So, that is a pretty good update on our lives. There are many details I don't have time to share but I hope you will enjoy reading about some of the things that are going on around here.
OK, so a little more....
work is still functioning by miracles from the Lord, for without him we would not make it!
We have enough to live on thanks again to special angels and hard, hard work from Dannan and Jacob.
We get to experience the wonderful joy of riding for hours on hot, crowed buses to be able to get to work and back and to deliver cases.
We get to also experience the great generosity and love of friends as we are given much needed help and service!
Thank You to all of you!
We love you all!
May God Bless you and your wonderful families and keep you in his arms!
The Royals!