Welcome to Villas Felicidad! This is where we live. You can see me down the driveway parking the car behind locked gates.  Compared to the surrounding homes we live in a palace. We have a living room, kitchen, two bathrooms, and three bedrooms; one for food storage, one for an office and one to sleep in. We are very blessed to have a clean, safe home with a water heater on the shower, and that is a step in shower, not one that covers the whole bathroom floor. We have water filters for clean water, cupboards, tile floors, screens on the windows, air conditioning in the office and the bedroom for a good night's sleep. We have a propane stove with a small oven, a refrigerator and we bought a small microwave oven last week. There is no mail delivery to homes, so we have no junk mail, no soliciting at the door and we can share in the festivities of parties in the neighborhood when they turn up the amplifier on their karaoke machines (a big favorite around here). The streets get quiet by 8:00 PM and by 9-10 everyone is at home fast asleep. 

This is our front gate. Come on in!

This is our driveway, one of the guard dogs and entrance to our home.

Oops! You went a little too far. This is the back yard. We have goats, dogs, chickens and an occasional cat or two back here. It's nice to see a down slope fro the house. That means during the rainy season the water will run off and not flood the house.

 

Here we are at the front gate to our courtyard. At night all gates are closed and lights are turned on. You can see we have a two story place with bedrooms up and kitchen and living room down.

Today is P-Day so we are doing the wash. We have a sister from the branch do our wash by hand and then hangs the clothes out to dry. We have a line and a portable rack. We'll use the rack to dry clothes inside when it rains.

Step inside and you are in our living room/dining room. We've had some great meals at this table thanks to the skills of Sister Lindsay. The Naugahyde furniture is durable but tough to sit on comfortably when you have heat and humidity like we have here, but we are grateful for what the mission home had in storage. We always have the option of going out and buying our own furniture.

You can see we have a few fans, one in the living room and another blowing through the kitchen. Meal time is like a picnic in the park on a windy day. We have the heat, flies and winds.

This is the kitchen area with the sink, stove and food preparation table. We rinse, wash in detergent and rinse again in bleach water. We generally let the dishes air dry. The stairs go up to the bedroom, bathroom and office.

This is a bedroom that we use for the refrigerator, microwave, pots and pans and as a food pantry. We also have a water cooler that uses 5 gallon water bottles. They only cost 50 cents to refill a bottle with filtered water. Sister Lindsay has become a big fan of Lock 'n Lock containers. They seal air tight and keep the ants out of our food. We cleaned one day and less than an hour later we came in here to find micro ants had found their way into a zip lock bag of crackers. The bag of crackers and ants went into the trash and right out to our personal burning pit in the back yard. We spray the house with high potency insecticide every 4-6 weeks and see the results of it every morning. I have been the one to come down and sweep up while Sister Lindsay is showering and getting ready for the day.

We'll walk upstairs and at the top of the stairs is a long hall to the right.

  The door at the end of the hall  is our bedroom. We have the fan in the hall to help ventilate the bathroom. It works pretty well. We only open the bathroom window when we have the fan going to keep flies and other crawly things out.

 This is the master bedroom with air conditioning that we only use at night, but we use it all night to get a good night's sleep. We have a plastic chest of drawers and two small closets to the left of the bed in this picture. We can't open the closet doors all the way because they hit the bed, but we work around it.  

 Going back down the hall we pass the bathroom. There is no hot water in the house except for the shower. The mission president authorized and water heater. We express gratitude every morning. The water is colod in the morning, but by mid-morning it is warm the rest of the day. We can shower at night without the water heater.

The door at the end and at the top of the stairs is the office. We have an 8' table that works great as a desk for us. We have the computers and Vonage phone all set up here.

 This is where we pray, study, plan, pray some more and wait on the Lord's response.

Sometimes we just stare out the window at the palm trees or take in the sunset while we wait for our inspiration.

Like all good missionaries we have a map of our area and consult it before every trip. So far, so good!

  This is what it all comes down to... Preach My Gospel, the scriptures and the computer and phone to log our ideas, plans and communicate them with others. We are blessed to have these resources to assist us in the Lord's work.

Thanks for the visit. Hope you can stop by again soon. Have a great day and know that God loves you and all His children all over the world. Someday we will all live together again and we will be like Him. That's why Jesus came to earth and did what he did. I know its true.