For June 22 Tuesday to July 1 Friday
George had over 20 photos to send and sent them to Amy on Wed PM (June 29), and then will start today with the NEW mission president photos, etc. We know AMY is very busy with her family needs, the home closing, and moving preparations. We hope the photos and stories we send are not only informative, but build your faith. It takes us at least two hours each week to prepare and send what we do. We try to show things like the "octopus" meal we ate as very few of you will ever have the opportunity to eat octopus. We realize it is not a faith building topic!
We got a nice email from Bryan this past week and surely enjoyed it. Plus we also had emails from our family missionaries Sister Hannah Klein and Elder Dallin Talbot. We love reading their emails so very much, and miss the emails we used to receive from Hunter and Spencer. We wish they would keep sending weekly emails to us!. We also received emails from Laura and Merrill. Now that we do not have phone communication we obviously wish that each of our children would take a few minutes to even send one short paragraph weekly.
We need to work out a schedule for SKYPE. We did Laura and Stephanie last week and feel we can only do two children per week as generally it is one hour each. WHO wants to skype this weekend. Probably Sunday evening for us but Sunday afternoon for our children is the best time. But we need to set something up sort of like a schedule. Sorry it cannot be spontaneous but that would not work too well.
We miss you all so very much, but just keep doing our best to fill this mission the way that would be pleasing to our Heavenly Father. David Stuart asked if we give missionary lessons? Yes, we do but we would have to say we are giving lessons more in the "Gentle Persuasion" way of teaching.
George did watch some of the Chile and Angentina Soccer game on the Internet on Sunday PM before we retired, but we stay up to see the ending but woke up HEARING all of the "horn honking" and "yelling and bell ringing" and whatever else that went on for over an hour. Soccer is SO big here in Chile. No missionary work can ever be done during a Chilean soccer game, rest assured, nill none at all! Chile won the World Cup that was played in New York City and Argentina's kicker "Messa" missed getting a point.
STORY 178 We Really Do, Do Missionary Work Sometimes when we are sending all of the photos and writing the short story accounts we sometimes wonder what you think we are doing week in and week out, do we only go to "Fish Markets," and showing what we eat? We really do keep a very busy pace, particularly this past week getting ready for the new president and yet come home and have investigator friends over for supper makes a very full day. However, we try to write things for you and the grandchildren that will be of interest, and hope somewhere something builds faith too. This getting ready for a new mission president reminds me of the work we have seen family members (such as Jonathan and Melanie) when they were selling their home in Longview......we didn't do it, but the mission home was painted all rooms inside and also the outside, and they said it is done every three years. The office cleaning was intense to say the least, without going into more details.
STORY 179 The mission TRUCK and the VAN (2 photos) George took a photo of the purple colored Ford Ranger that was stick shift. The Area office said this mission did not merit having two vehicles, so someone flew in from Santiago and drove it back to Santiago. George had kept a booklet of good car records, oil changes, etc. and the man was impressed. Something that seniors do for an office. There were NO vehicle records when we arrived, with young elders being over the vehicles. The van is a Carnical Caravan (KIA) and seats 7. We thought you might like seeing these vehicles. One investigator commented on the (nice truck) and said our church must be rich!
This is the camioneta used by the mission. Unfortunately the mission is limited to two cars, so this one was picked up ad drive to Santiago.
STORY 180 CLEANING at the Mission Home June 24 Friday (1 photo) We all brought Pday clothes to work on Friday and changed to go to the Mission Home for lunch and then to help move rocks around in the yard. This is a photo of the office elders and the mission APs out in front of the mission home. The mission home is in the South in a very nice neighborhood, much nicer area than in the middle areas of Antofagasta. We will have to take a photo of the mission home the next time we are there, but there is a BIG wall all around it. This president's wife told us the last president was robbed two times, so had the big wall put up. The maintenance department for the church, people who share out building hired or did work on this home. It was painted inside and out, plus had a new roof, and then painted the roof red. The house outside paint is a soft yellow color. It is a nice home, but NO view of the ocean, even though it is close to the ocean. Many homes around this home have blocked the view.
President Dalton invited the office missionaries to the mission home for lunch, planning and moving rocks. Left to right, Elders Huffstutler, Anderson, Roberts, Santos, Prada, & Walker.
STORY 181 RAINED in Antofagasta (2 photos) June 25 Saturday We woke up to a surprise by looking out our windows the streets were all WET. We knew it had rained. This is probably the third time in a year that we have had rain. It came as a surprise. George took two photos. In one of the photos the reflection of the building is duplicated. The people here do not like having rain as the roofs are not made too well for most people..
It has only rained twice since we arrived in Antofagasta. This morning when we awoke we found it had rained ruling the night. The city has no drainage system. An employee of our building begins the cleanup.
STORY 182 Chile's PETER & Paul Holiday & Dancers at Fish Market ( 5 photos) June 27 Mon This holiday is to celebrate Peter being a fisherman. We decided to walk down to the fish market and purchase some fish and since it was a holiday weekend we saw these dancers. Each (Catholic church) has these statues on long boards that they carry around and dance to, for the holidays. One of the photos is of Peter holding a fish. There were many dancers at the fish market and we watched some of them. (This was our Pday) You might enjoy looking at them.
STORY 183 CLASSIC Photo of the Boats a puzzel photo George took this photo of the boats all lined up that bring the fish in, each morning. It is really a classic photos. George said it reminded him of one that would be on a puzzle box. Hope you enjoy it.
Fishing boats in the port and Antofagasta in the background. I thought this picture would make a good New Years puzzle.
STORY 184 FISH Market Photos This is the first time even after being here 13 months, that we went to the Fish Market, even thought it is within walking distance of our apartment. This is the same day Saturday and here are several photos. The fish we purchased was called REINETA. You can look this up on the internet to see what it looks like. He did not get a photo of the fish, but I saw them cutting the fish meat off from the fish itself. We purchased three large peices. This was the FIRST time we have purchased fish since we have been in Antofagasta. We did it because Rodolfo was coming to dinner, and we wanted to serve fish. We were glad, and it tasted good. The meat was pink, but when cooked it turned white. Hard to say exacted how it tasted, but it did not taste like Rainbow trout, more like a very mild tast, not like halibut, but was very good. Most Chilean's deep fry it with some kind of batter, but I just dipped it in a prepared flour mixture of different things, and cooked it in butter.
Inside the fish Market. The filet fish in front at Reineta. That is what we purchased and cooked. It was very good.
STORY 185 Rodolfo coming for a FISH DINNER (Sat PM 1 pm) George took a photo of the table set with the food for our first fish dinner. We invited Rodolfo, as his wife Marta was in Brazil for two weeks with their son Goga. We had a lovely meal but were disappointned with the religious conversation we had in that Rodolfo seems to be backing off from wanting to know more about the church and seems to want to stay with the Evangelical religion. The saddest part is that he will not seriouisly READ the Book of Mormon. We truly love Rodolfo, and they love us. We feel so badly that the GIFT we have to offer is being left unopened. He told us the Catholic church required nothing of members, except to attend, and of course make donations from time to time. He said his mother became an Evangelical convert and her personality changed for the better after her conversion. We surely hope we get help with this family from above. "Gentle Persuasion" is all we can offer at this time.
Margaret cooked the fish and we had Ricardo and Laurita over to enjoy it with us. They are not members of the church
STORY 186 OCTOPUS Dinner at Ideide & Wilson's home (Sat) 6 pm (see plate photo) Saturday was a big big day for us - fish marking, Rodolfo for lunch and then we went to Ideide's for supper. She came and picked us up. Then to our surprise she served us "octopus." See photo. She told us you have to boil it for over an hour, and then freeze it, and then bring it out and cook it in butter. This was a very small octopus the size of our hand with long tenicales (spelled wrong). At first I didn't know if I could eat it, but I did and it did taste very good. But it just seemed so strange eating it. It is hard to say what it tasted like. it had its own taste. It was not like chicken. It was not like meat. It was just like something you had not tasted before. I know that does not help to describe it. We played YATZEE with the children, and they love having us come, so we invited them back to our home for Monday pm and that is when we had a full blown Home Evening with them. They loved it. We also had scripture time too. This was all so new to them.
We had dinner at Wilson and Ideides the other evening. She served Octopus. This was my plate. I ate it all, and it tasted pretty good.
STORY 187 HOME Evening with Ideide & Wilson and children (4 photos) Mon June 27 They came and we served tacos. This always takes me a long time to prepare all of the things they put inside, but I did it. Then we brought out the HOME EVENING sign and told them we wanted to have this with them. They agreed and liked the idea.
PRAYER First we had the daughter do the prayer, and we could tell they do not pray vocally much in their home.
SONG Then we said do you know a song you want to sing?. They said they did not know any songs. We thought for a moment and said lets sing Row Row Row Your Boat. Obviously we had to translate those words into Spanish and back to English. They liked it.
LESSON Then we got a Liahona and had the boy read a child's story in Spanish. We did not know what he was reading, but they told us i was a story about a boy and his dad and the boy was missing his brother who was serving a mission. His father told him the brother would grow on his mission. So the younger brother planted a seed and it grew and grew and he got a big squash (but in the picture it looked like a pumpkin). They told us that in Chile they call a pumpkin a squash. They had never heard the word pumpkin.
GAME Then we played a game with little colored blocks we had purchased just for this purpose. Then we had the children build a tower and while they were doing this we brought out copies of the new testament in Spanish and wanted to all read.
SCRIPTURES We each took turns reading and the parents actually really enjoyed this. We told them that all of our children's families read the scriptures with their children every day. They liked this concept.
TREATS We then served "Gummy Bear Treats" from the USA that one of the missionaries gave to us that his parents had sent in a box. They loved them!
A PROBLEM The boy knocked down the sisters tower and she was sad. This is typical of a family home evening night with something going sour!
ENDING Now this is not what you would was not a missionary lesson, but we certainly felt the Spirit guiding us as to what to do and I told George later, and I felt like Nephi in that we did not know beforehand what we were going to do, but it all turned out so well. We probably will try to do more Home Evenings with them.
Wilson and Ideide family playing games with us at home evening.
STORY 188 Chilean PINENUTS from Ideide (see photo) They also brought us a dish of these nuts. They were huge! George really likes them. They are pinenuts, but Chilean pinenuts. They said you can only get them the end of June and early July. Then they roast them. You have to PEEL them and inside is a long thing like a pinenut, same texture, but tasts a bit different. George took a photo to show you.
Ideide brought us some pine nuts. These are very big. I shelled one in the center. The are very tasty.
STORY 189 VANESSA from Calama came for dinner with us (Tue) June 28 NO photo This was the daughter of the translator man, who translated for George in Calama. She is a returned missionary from Paraguay, and attending a University in Antofagasta so we invited her to come for supper. She is also engaged to be married in December. A very lovely girl.
She told us all about the Book of Mormon in the Spanish language, as she speaks fluent English. She said she LOVED her experience on her mission of reading the "Book of Mormon" in English because in Spanish the ideas do not come across as correctly as in English. She feels that the Spanish translation of the Book of Mormon is not too good, even after the New Translation came out a few years ago. She said it did not go far enough. She told George how much she and her mother, and father and sister really enjoyed George's presentation in Calama a week ago.
She told us how sad it is that the Chilean converts MANY of them do not stay in the church after their baptisms. The ward members do try to help but many do not stay. She said many of the church members are just SUNDAY MORMONS, this means they only go to church on Sunday and do not accept a church calling. Several weeks ago I had George take a photo of the two NEW missionary pamphlets that have just come out, and one was on Serving and Growing in the Church.
Both of us feel so BLESSED to have been born into families that we were born into, plus being born into the Church. We both have SO much compassion on these people who have had NO concept of serving in a church, taking church callings, and contributing. Vanessa will come back again. She also wants George to do his presentations for the young adults who attend the Institute here in Antofagasta. We had a lovely evening and paid for her bus ride to go home. She lives to the North of us with her brother in an apartment her parents purchased for their children to live in.
STORY 190 TABLE SET for New Presidents dinner and then he didn't come. (June 28 Tue) The current mission president got "mixed up and thought the president was coming at 10 AM and instead it was 10 PM." Therefore the dinner we were suppose to have today (at 1 pm) did not take place. George took a photo of the tables (3 together) set for 13 people, before we had to take it all down as the dinner will be on Friday and then we will set it all up again. Today (Thursday) is the Leadership Meeting where we have 45 missionaries come in from all over the mission. It will BE theirs and our first meeting of the new president. We are very excited for this change. We will tell you more about this in our next series of Photos and Stories. Our current president l and his wife eft on the BUS tonight at 7:30 pm.
We had the table all set for lunch with the new mission president and the office staff. President Dalton told us he was coming at 10:30 in the morning, Instead it was 10:30 p.m at night. We had to unset the table and will have to re-do everything again on Friday.
Tonight, we read in the Bible together, in Acts about one of the church's greatest missionaries PAUL and some of his problems he went through while trying to do his missionary work. The trials and problems he suffered through were so hard, some accepted the message, other's didn't, some were trying to kill him, etc. etc.....we wondered how you get that kind of faith to just keep carrying on no matter what the circumstances are you are put into, as his trials were so FAR and ABOVE anything we have experienced. It made us want to continue working to develop this kind of attitude toward missionary service. We are always impressed with Paul and his writings and how he never gave up, but just carried on. After having the Peter and Paul Holiday it was a nice way to celebrate it, to read about Paul!
We pray that we will all develop this kind of attitude in whatever challenges we have to deal with.
Love Mom and Dad
Love Mom and Dad
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