International nativities

Last night I drove out to Kirtland. I went to the visitors' center for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints historical sites. Every December, they host a nativity display called "Wise Men Still Seek Him." I went out there last night with a couple of friends and I took lots of pictures. There are two display areas -- one for international nativities, and one for, well, not international nativities. First, I'll share the foreign ones with you. There were so many that I'm not sure I even saw all of them, but I took pictures of one that really interested me, for varying reasons.

This one is owned by a friend of mine, who is from El Salvador.



This one is also owned by my friend from El Salvador.

There's way too much detail going on in this set to see it all, but it has special meaning to me. You'll want to click on the photo to see it in better detail, but this is a retabalo from Peru. This style of image box was brought from Spain to Peru. My dad lived in Spain for a time, and has one (non-nativity-related) hanging on the wall in his office. I grew up looking at it, and noticing all the different elements to it, so seeing this made me think of my dad.





This collection was really neat. It is owned by a woman who said that she found most of these stamps online. Each of these little charms holds a postage stamp. They are all international stamps. There was another display of domestic ones. Looking over some of these was interesting, though -- Solomon Islands and Tonga are just a few I remember.



The sign is hidden, but this set is from India.

There were many sets made from olive wood, hand carved even, but I liked this one best. It was probably only about 6 inches tall, if that.

I didn't get a specific country on this, but it was made in Africa. It is recycled Coke cans. There was another from the Philippines that was similar, but made from recycled newspaper. The lines went vertical on that one instead of horizontal.



Aesthetically speaking, this is my favorite picture of the evening. I liked that the stamp was from the Vatican, and thought that was unique, so I captured it by itself. It wasn't necessarily my favorite stamp, but I thought it noteworthy.