Right now, Sunday June 28, we are on the city of Copiapo. Yesterday, Saturday, we left at 6 am, and drove to TALTAL and picked up two missionaries to take them on with us to CHANARAL. To our surprise one of the missionaries was Elder Childs who is your cousin Ted Smith's wife's nephew, the son of Wendy's sister. Mom sat next to him and visited with him for 1 hour which she very much enjoyed. We will call his mother and Wendy when we return later next week. We then arrived and had the zone conference in Chanaral. Elder Childs told us that in Taltal the community and also in the church they are very tidy conscious. We saw lots of DAMAGE from the floods that took place a couple of months ago. The shore line in Taltal had moved because tons of mud and debris had filled the coast line. The church at Chanaral was very tidy too. Cleanest church we have found.
Each ward or branch (sometimes) have their own building. attendance can vary from small (30 to 40) to many more over (100) in the Antofagasta Ward we attend. It is a constant problem to keep members attending church. Their are ons of inactives from past years going way back into the 1980s and 1990s. The big emphasis here NOW is to baptize and KEEP new converts in the church. They do this here by assigning each member a friend and having SIX lessons following the baptisms on various subjects. and giving new members a church job as soon as possible. They also search out the INACtIVES but there are so many that they cannot assign them visiting teachers and home teachers.
Today. SUNDAY. we were invited to lunch after Church today. Most members homes here are in little connecting houses one right after another with NO yards but they have an iron fence and gate in front with a lock, about 3-4 feet from the gate is the door.Inside is very small and from US standards very very tiny rooms. The meal of tocos and the cut food to do inside was very delicious.
A note about the MAIL here. When packages are received you PAY the post man a fee. You pay more if the packages comes to the office over going to the BOX at the post office. You may not ever get it if the postman comes and the office is closed for some reason and he decides not to return with it again. SO it sending us anything send letters and packages to the POST OFFICE box number. We so far have never got the letter David sent us in the church POUCH. Don't use that as to save 50 cents isn't worth it as that mail is sent to the area office and then sorted and who knows when it will ever get on down to where it is suppose to go.
We have a zone conference here tomorrow and then drive to Vallenar tomorrow for another Zone conference. On Wednesday, we return to Antofagasta, which is a nine hour drive back. It is always a lot of work to prepare for and host these conferences, but I can tell we are performing a service that is needed.
On the 13th of July we will be losing some of the elders working in the office. I have really enjoyed working with the offie missionaries. We will be losing Elder Harris, Elder McComb and Elder De La Pena and gaining Elder Erickson and Elder Hortua. Actually Elder Erickson and and Elder Hortua were already in the office for training.
On Monday, the 22nd of June, food was purchased for the Antofagasta Zone conference and on Tuesday we hosted 52 missionaries at the conference. It was really a big group. Fortunately, everything went well. The rest of the week was training on financial procedures in the office. As I mentioned, Elder McComb will be leaving the office, and he has been my trainer. I have had a month with him, but with two zone conferences of five cays each, two missionary groups coming and going that takes three days each, and eight days in weekends, there has not been as much training as I feel I need. Also quite a bit of the time together, he was on the telephone or taking care of needs of the position and not training me. I am certainly not blaming him, as he has been terrific, but I am just saying I do not feel as prepared as I would like to feel as I take on this new assignment.
Mom has been a real organizer of the office. She has worked hard to get things whipped into shape. I can tell the mission president's wife is really pleased with what she has done. She even took the mission presidents suit that was torn in the pocket and fixed that. Mom is, as always, doing her best to serve.
We are still working on our Spanish. We have signed up to take some courses from the MTC beginning later this week. The thought of going to church for 18 months and not know what is going on is not an attractive thought. I feel we are doing better, but the people in Chile talk Spanish a mile a minute, and it is difficult to tell where one word stops and another one begins. Also , they do not annunciate their words very well. If I really concentrate on what they are saying, I can often pick up the general theme of what they are saying. Hopefully our training from the MTC will give us the impetus we need to be able to understand and speak Spanish.
We hope all of you are doing well an pray for your well being each day. We were sorry to hear of the death of Madison's duck. We feel very bad for her. We hope Landon and Amy are now settled in to their new apartment and that is working out for them. It sounds like Dallin is doing well as a missionary, and we are very happy for him. Laura and children seem to be enjoying their trip and have had some life changing experiences together. That is certainly nice of Bryan and Lisa to host them so that they can see the sights around Washington D.C. Sorry to hear about Merrill's garden. He has always enjoyed growing vegetables, and it kind of got sprayed and now soaked with rain. Hopefully he can realize some produce from his labors. I suppose David and family will be traveling somewhat. First to Debbie's sisters wedding and then to Utah for their reunion. I guess Jon and Melanie and family we be traveling to Utah soon as well. We will miss being at the timeshare with all of you. Sounds like Stephanie did all she could to get a second condo, but didn't make it. I called and left a message with East Canyon and told them to call Stephanie to see what could be done, but I don't know whether they called her or not. We miss all of you and realize we are missing many opportunities to be with you, but glad that we can give these 18 months to the Lord's work.
Love
Mom and Dad
This is the home of Meissa, Jorge and Niclole where we had lunch today. Mom posed in front of the gate.
Inside the home, this is what we were served. Elder Hortua, Mom and Meissa with Nicole still working in the kitchen.
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