As usual, we have had another busy week here in Antofagasta. The days and weeks just seem to fly by. We work at the office and then work doing the dinners, and the clean up.
Monday JOSE
Story 18 -PACKAGES MAILED for NEW BABIES (Mon Jan 10, 2017) We returned to our apartment on our way to the post office and wrapped the two packages for the TWO new (wawas) means baby in Chile Spanish. We mailed the two packages on Monday the 11th of January so they should take at least 3 weeks to arrive. We are SO relieved to have Stephanie and David's baby here safe and all going well. We pray for Amy daily that all will go well with her delivery too in the very near future.
Story 19 - JOSE RETURNED to HELP US with SPANISH (Mon Jan10, 2017) Our Spanish helper Jose, who lives in our same apartment building) returned after the Christmas holiday break. He thought he was flying to the states on a stand by pass, as his mother is a pilot for a major airline here in Chile, but he got to the airport and discovered to his dismay that his passport had expired. So his mother and brother left for the USA and he returned to Santiago to spend time with his father. His parents are divorced and his father married again and had had another child who is about age 1. His mother has not married again but has a live in boyfriend. Jose is extremely polite and very good to us. He is age 26. We had a good visit catching up on the holidays but (manana) means tomorrow (Monday-Lunes in Spanish) we will present the Gospel display chart and see what he thinks about our presentation.
Story 20 OUR ANTOFAGASTA ZONE MEETING See Photo of the group We (us and the elders from the office) drove to the zone meeting that we belong to. This meeting was held in a church (Miramar Barrio). Barrio is Ward in Spanish. This particular church is built on a very prominent hill overlooking the whole city of Antofagasta. If Antofagasta ever gets a temple I think they will convert the church on this site to be the temple. Anyway, there were about 25 elders and sisters at this meeting. The new Zone Leaders did a terrific job of introducing all of us as many new elders were now serving since last week was transfer week. Then they had the sister missionaries take some time, and they had a bag of candy and every elder or sister who answered a question got a piece of candy. Then they talked about the Zone statistics. They are hoping to have 20 baptisms during the next two months. The WHOLE Mission only had 426 baptisms for 2016. This Zone has not had a baptism for two months. There are 7 Wards in this Zone,. and the average attendance for all 7 of these wards was 700 for the month of December.
Recent La Portada Zone meeting in Antofagasta. Hermana Talbot is second from right in the front. She looks like one of the young hermanas.
Story 21 HUGO WANTS to STAY CATHOLIC. We have sent photos of Hugo before. He is the single man George and Elder Lawson met at Tour Bus, and he wanted to learn about the church. He then came to church 3 times, and started the lessons. When the missionaries invited him to set a baptism date he said he would have to think about it. He is also the man who invited us to go to Juan Lopez for a day. He didn't answer his phone for the past 30 days and when George finally got hold of him, we invited him to dinner for Wed Jan 13 Jan 2017). During the dinner he told us he wants to stay Catholic and does not want any more lessons, but wants to be our friend. We felt badly but had to honor his decision.
Story 22 JOHANN WIFE and TWO DAUGS See two photos. Johann did not show up for church last Sunday so on Monday before we went to the office we drove to the street he lives on and left some candy for his daugs. and a note. He called George and we invited him to bring his wife and two daugs. to dinner. They came on a city bus and then walked several blocks pushing a stroller to our apartment. We had a nice evening and good discussion about the church. We hope they will keep wanting to learn more. However, it is really sad here in Chile as the men if they do not have a degree get paid very little. They do not own a home or a car. He is living with his grandmother and she with the two children with her parents. We know tithing would be a great sacrifice for them. We will have to keep leaving notes at the gate and having them over again in the near future.
Pia, the young daughter of Johann and Socio. She had fun at our home.
Johann, Socio, baby Isadora, and Pia. They were at our home for dinner. They plan on attending church with us on Sunday. We met him at the port.
Story 23 RODOLFO, MARTHA & SON, Martha's mother (MARIA), and Rodolfo's sister MARIA all came over for dinner on Friday 15 Jan, 2016. We had a lovely dinner of chicken and noodles fixed with sauce. They loved the meal. Then we brought out the church Family History booklet and had the women fill it out at the table with names, etc. while George worked with Rodolfo on the computer in Familyhistory.org. The mother (MARIA) was born in Brazil. Her parents came from Italy, so she did not know any of her grandparents who lived in Italy. She said her parents were very poor and she never had shoes as a child. There were 8 children. She did not know their birthdays, but wrote all of their names in the booklet. She was a very lovely lady. She attends a major Church in Brazil, not Catholic, but something else. We pray that even ONE of these people will want to READ the Book of Mormon and get a testimony. It is going to take a miracle for this to happen.
Gustav (called Guga) Martha, Maria Antionetta, Maria (Martha's mother from Brazil) and Hermana Talbot. Margaret fixed a lovely dinner for them. It was a fun evening as we read from the Book of Mormon, taught them the music "Star Bright" and played a game.
Story 24 THE MILK BOX CHRISTMAS TREE CAME DOWN in 15 SECONDS After the dinner, little Guga was walking around by the table and accidentally pushed over a chair that hit the Christmas Box Tree that I had sent photos of earlier. The adults all "gasped." But George and I just laughed and then he took a photo of little Guga standing by the tree. This is a must see photo! We all had a major laugh and they were still laughing when they all walked out of the door to go home. It really was funny, but the box tree had to come down anyway. I just had a hard time parting with it so left it up as it had a lot of decorations Amy, Julie, Laura and others had sent, plus all of Christmas card photos that had come in the mail. I did love making that tree out of milk boxes.
Bye Bye Christmas. Guga accidentally tipped over a chair on Hermana Talbot's Christmas Tree and the tree came tumbling down. We all laughed ourselves silly over this picture
Story 25 HOME TEACHING SIX FAMILIES Sat. Jan 16, 2016. Here in Chile they really do not have home teaching or visiting teaching like in the states and wards in Texas. People do not own cars, and would have to take a bus and to do it is next to impossible. So we decided to do our own VISITING. I got up and took the cake mix (spice) that Amy had sent me and made it into cookies. I used a banana, 2 eggs, some oatmeal, oil, and made balls of dough and cooked them. They turned out really well. Then I made 8 paper plates with cookies, and a church card taped to each plate. We had NO appointments, but said a prayer and started out in the truck we have on the weekends to visit our contacts. The first home was that of (1) CLAUDIO and Monica. They are now separated and we found Monica and the two children at home. We had a nice visit and caught them right before they were leaving. Then we drove to the next home (2) MARCELLA, and threw the cookie plate through the gated area and it landed by the doorstep as no one was at home, the next home was for the (3) LEYTONS. Only the mother was home. She invited us in and we asked if we could read the Book of Mormon with her. She said yes, and then invited us to dinner on Tuesday when all of the family would be there, and she wanted all of them to read in it too. The next stop was (4) RAUL but they would not answer the door, even though they were home, so we hung the cookies on a hook above the door so the dog would not get it. Then we went to (5) EDWARDS home and found them all home. They loved the cookie package and the mother Paula, said she would eat them all. We were so surprised to find them all home. Then we drove home and kept the other cookie packages to give away on Sunday at Church to a couple who were just baptized (6) THEY LOVED THEM, and called (7) ROBERT on the phone and said we gave his cookies to someone else as he didn't come to church.
Story 26 GEORGE WENT FISHING with RODOLPHO. They went Sat. afternoon (Jan 16, 2016) from 5 to 10:30 pm. George thought it was just he and Rodolfo, and had planned to really get serious about the church, but then the brother in law came too, so he could not talk as planned. The bro in law played the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the car from his computer and George asked if he was a member, but he only did it for George who was a Mormon. This is going to be a hard sell to get them out of the Evangelico Church. But we pray daily for a miracle. They also caught only two small fish, and George came home saying he is not as sure footed as he used to be climbing around etc. Glad they all returned safely.
Story 27 GEORGE'S TOMATO PLANTS. See photo. You have to know a "farmer at heart" will not give up his garden, even when on a mission. He planted them from seeds he bought at a store six weeks ago. Edwards family had a PLANT FARM in the far north. He is going to come and get the plants on Monday and take them to the farm as we do not have any BEES up 20 floors in the air. It will be interesting what happens to these plants after they leave us.
is an update on my tomato plant garden. I have six plants growing. The tallest one now has a blossom on it near the top. ?Donde esta son las Abejas?
Story 28 A NEW FRIEND HUGO B. BRIAN. We met him at church today (Jan 17, 2016). He is a Mormon from Louisana and is here working in Antofagasta for 2 months on a project. He is a chemical engineer and went on a mission in California (Spanish). We invited him to come to our apartment after church for dinner at 5 PM. During the dinner he told us he was named for a former member of the first presidency (Hugh B. Brown). We then asked him to help us with the Sacrament Prayers in Spanish. Come to find out he is an excellent teacher and explained word by word in the prayers. He knows English grammar very well and Spanish too. He will come back again for breakfast on a Saturday in two weeks. He was very, very nice to us and is the same age as Jonathan. He has a wife and six children in the USA..
Story 29 THIS WEEK on WEDNESDAY Jan 21 will be the FIRST ALL WORLD Missionary CONFERENCE from the First Presidency, the Apostles, and the Seventy. It will be broadcast all over the world starting at 10 AM Utah time, (2 PM our time). All missionaries are to go to their stake centers to watch the broadcast. We will tell you more about this next week. It is an historic event. Dallin will be watching it in California.
We love you all very much. We want you to know that we are both enjoying this mission very much but feel so badly that it is so hard to get people to want to learn more about the church. We know that ONLY if we get divine intervention from our Heavenly Father it simply may not happen. We have worked so very hard, had so many many dinners, have had many many elders in our apartment for dinner too, sat through lesson after lesson, but so far after being here 8 months we have not had even ONE of our contacts request baptism. Now we know why we should pray daily to find the honest in heart who will accept the gospel. We LOVE our contacts so very much. The families we have made friends with are so very special to us. We can see what the gospel would do for them and their families. We read the Book of Mormon daily, work hard at the office daily, and then spend any spare minute on Spanish, prepare and have dinners at our apartment, plus try to find new contacts weekly of which we added two more this past week. We rarely spend even a minute for ourselves. We do hope the Windows of Heaven will soon open and pour down blessings on our contacts.
Love and Prayers Always for Each of you. Mom and Dad
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