Cruise Port - San Juan Puerto Rico
Temple -
The Puerto Rico Temple was dedicated in January. Unfortunately
the day we were in Puerto Rico the temple was closed. Fortunately,Kim is
good friends with the Temple President. He opened the temple on his day off
to accommodate us. He lined up our own private session just for us. We were
all in Sunday dress and white shirts when we got off the cruise ship. We met
some other LDS people coming off the cruise ship and they asked us if we were
LDS and if we were going to the temple. They asked if they could join us at the
temple.
After the UBER arrived we left for the temple. President Casablanca opened
the Baptistery for the youth. This is the first baptistery I have seen with just faces
of oxen on the font rather than the font sitting on them. The adults did some
sealings. The temple is very unique in that it has two ‘multi-purpose’ rooms,
which can be used for endowments or sealings with some slight modifications.
The initiatory is a single room and has an interesting configuration. President
Casablanca told us about the training challenges he has had starting up a newtemple.
Elder Bednar suggested that they wait a month after the dedication to open
the temple for the workers to be trained. Instead President suggested that
they open it right away, since the Saints had been waiting a long time for the temple
to open. This added a few training challenges.Of the 230 temple workers about 200 are women.
Also, only a handful of workers had been trained prior to the temple opening.
San Juan National Historic Site
- We visited one of the old Forts in Puerto Rico. The kids had a blast climbing
around the cannons and looking over the walls.
We walked down to Old Town with lots of shops and things. The kids were
grateful when we found an ice cream shop, and everyone enjoyed ice cream
and gelato.
A stop for a little ice cream
Mofongo
Kim introduced us to a Puerto Rican delicacy, Mofongo and Trafongo.
Both are made out of Plantains and formed into a bowl with stuff inside.
The Mofongo we tried was traditional vegetables, peppers, and chicken.
The Trafongo is similar except they add sweet plantains and yucca with
the plain plantains. It is much sweeter. We ordered ours with Shrimp
and some vegetables in it. Both were very tasty.
On the way back to the ship Kim couldn’t resist buying an ‘island shirt’ with
pineapples on it, since one of his granddaughters loves pineapple.
