Summertime in South America!

Hello all..... 

Hope you are all well .... sad to hear of our dear brothers and friends in Haiti we know Jehovah will keep them in his loving care.

Well just got back from service this morning and thought I would share a few things from the other "land down under" We are down under the equator! As you know it's Wintertime where most of you are reading this... and is it ever! Temperatures in the teens ... YUCK! As has been mentioned on this blog,  this writer HATES and I mean HATES the cold! In South America of course it's Summertime and that means we get all the Summer fruit and more because of the fine climate here. This afternoon on our way back from our morning of walking about 4 miles in the ministry up and down the hills of our territory in Tortoracocha (Cuenca) …. Carol And Carol decided to stop at the open market that is open each Friday, about a mile from where we live, to get some flowers ... so I decided to meet them there ... I was early and decided to mosey around and see what's for sale at the market  .... Well I can tell you, just about everything! But what really caught my eye were the fruits, that are in season here in South America, the majority of which come from our dear fiends in the California of South America ...... Chile,  if you look at map, you can compare the latitude of Chile with different areas of the Western Coast of the US and see that Santiago is at about the same latitude as Los Angeles not exactly but very close. That being said all those fruits that you have available in the US, that come from Chile and you pay a boatload for, are here for, you can imagine .... very cheap! .... Quality? Think Whole Foods ..... What's available you ask? Well Cherries that are even better then those ones that we all wait for at Costco in the Summertime 1.50 a pound (gringo price) Avocados 4 for 1.00 .... apricots 8 for a dollar .40 a pound and large ripe and ready to eat mangos 5 for a buck .....(salivating Karla Linares?)  Raspberries 1.00 a pound ... and Carol Souza bought a half dozen roses with greenery and babies breath for 1.00 ... yes it Summertime in S.A. and we are enjoying the fruits for those Chileans labor also, but at a fraction of the price of what is paid in the U.S. Going back to those cherries they are larger and are sweeter then anything we have ever experienced in the U.S. .... Now if we could only get the wines here from Chile for the prices that they are sold for in Chile .... We saw bottles of wine in Chile that are the same brand and harvest for 1/5 the price of what we pay here .... It's the import taxes here that kill the prices on the fine wines in Ecuador... 

                       Well we can't have everything!

                   Can you taste these fruits? We can!