Ken & Linda Whitney: japi verde tuyo

"Japi verde tuyo, Japi verde tuyo, Cumpliaños felices que los cumplas Linda Vernardini." We celebrated another birthday here and in Trujillo too. With the miracle of the Internet I was overwhelmed with birthday wishes, but of all the wishes, this was the most interesting. It took me several tries to understand the Spanglish. Pronounced in Spanish phonetics this comes out as, "Happy Birthday to you." Tuesday at the end of my piano lessons, Ken happened by. I thought he must have had a meeting. As we left he said we needed to go back and close windows in all the classrooms. I started to enter one room with him, but he said not this room, the one across the hall. So I opened that door to find the room filled with people sitting in the dark and a table with cake, cookies and a bucket of chicha morada. Everyone ate all the cookies and then sent the cake home with us. On the way home I gave half to my friend Patti for her family. Then we called the four missionaries that live close to us and invited them to come do service by helping us prevent that wonderful tres leches (three types of milk) cake from going bad.
The next day after our Zone Leader Meeting in Trujillo, we all went out for pollo a la brasa, Peruvian grilled chicken. It was delicious as usual, then after, they brought out not one but two tres leches cakes to wish me a happy birthday. I felt pretty pampered, but that's not all.
The week before was our 42nd anniversary. Ken said we had work to do visiting missionaries in Casma, so off we went. To my delight he booked us two nights in a resort hotel close to the beach in Huarmey. We strolled the beaches, explored a bonefield next to an ancient cemetery, feasted on shrimp and ceviche, and oh yeah, we visited missionaries too. What an awesome anniversary...thanks Sweetheart!