DEAR FAMILY Sent September 30, 2016 Friday from Antofagasta, Chile
We missed sending out photos and stories for last week so this presentation is covering September 18 to September 30 (2016) in which a lot of things have taken place including:
Our apartment water heater went out and flooded apartment wood floor, repair people coming several times, holiday dinners at several homes, visiting many investigators homes inviting them about General Conference, teaching piano lessons, a classic dog photo, brownies for former missionaries who worked in the office, George giving a talk at the Mission Leadership Meeting on how he finds investigators, teaching Idedie's family about "Scripture Time", Evening Family Prayer, and Singing the song "We are a Happy Family", marking scriptures in the New Testament Bibles, then to top it all off Kristin Talbot (our granddaughter) received her mission call on Sept. 29 to Hawaii.
We pray daily for all of you and know you each have your own challenges you are dealing with. Also we so enjoy the emails we have received and phone calls from our children over the past 14 days, and also love the emails from our missionary grandchildren, and a few other family missionaries.
We had our next to last BIG day for the monthly Missionary Leadership Day, plus have been so very busy as our days are getting fewer and fewer with less than 50 remaining to do missionary work.
STORIES 315 to 329
Story 315 CHILEAN HOLIDAY DINNER at Richard and Laurietas.
Richard is the father of the former Area 70 who now lives in Nevada. They are such kind people but are NOT interested in learning more about the church. However, they like us and invite us to their family holiday dinners. While at the dinner they were showing some photos and one was of a BUILDING the family owns going back 3 generations to when Richardo's grandfather left Spain and came to Chile. He was a "tailor" created a very good business, and made a lot of money.
He had the building built in down town Antofagasta and it is now a "heritage site" and cannot be torn down. However, due to NO parking, only the bottom floor is used. We hope to get to go and take a tour. We had a long family history discussion with them at the dinner. Then George asked Carolina (the daug) while I was helping with the dishes, etc. WHY she left the church. It is sad but she said she read alot of things and just decided she did not believe the teachings any more. She does believe in the Book of Mormon., so it is strange how to believe it and not the rest. We haven't given up, but BRINGING a church person back into the church is generally harder than getting a new person to believe, but for us it is a toss up, it is hard in both situations.
See the Building the family descendants (12 cousins) owns (2 photos)
Picture of Richardo and Laureta; Carolina & Francisco & daug. Sol. (1 photo)
Story 316 NEW CONTACT FRANZ (inactive member) and wife MARIE ELIZABETH
Franz (member) and his wife Marie Elizabeth. George found Franz at a bank where he was in line waiting to be helped. Actually he was talking to the person behind him, and Franz was the next one in line and over heard the conversation and told George he was a member of the church, but inactive. They talked more and George was invited to his home. He actually works in New York City but flys to Chile for a month leave from time to time. His wife (who is older than him has an older 18 year old daughter). After several meetings with the missionaries the wife and daughter want to be baptized. They have attended church several times too. If the baptisms take place as planned on October 13, it will be our 2nd and 3rd actual baptisms since we have been here.
See Picture of Franz and Marie Elizabeth, and her daughter Melissa age 18.
Story 317 HOME EVENING with PURISMIA & JIME and SON.
We have been to this home before but were invited again. The son just returned from a mission in Brazila, Brazil the capitol of Brazil. We would like him to correspond with our grandson Spencer in the future by email. Their daughter went through several close relationships headed to marriage and finally left home and married someone in Puerto Montt. We could feel their sadness at her leaving the Antofagasta area. She is a "fantastic" cook and we had wonderful ";empanadas" that she had made herself and deep fried them. Our son David wants to learn how to do these and we will be returning to their home next monday and will get more information on this.
See photo of Purismima & Jime and son returned from Brazil Mission Brazila
Story 318 TEACHING PIANO LESSONS to DANIEL and PASCAL
This has been an interesting adventure to say the least. They had a very small "keyboard" that worked and I offered to teach the two children until we leave. Our daug. Julie has been emailing me pages from a beginning piano book or I would have not been able to do this. Daniel has now learned (FIVE) of the songs Julie has sent me. It has given us an opportunity to go to their home almost every day for the past week (1 new song a day). Then we do other things took that we go into more detail on in STORY 327, so it has been a way to work teaching many other things as well as the piano. We have NOT found hardly any homes that have pianos (maybe one home) and music lessons are almost "NIL".
See photos: "Teaching Ideide about the piano, Teaching son Daniel on the piano
and some Piano Materials I have made or Julie emailed to me.
Story 319 STATUES of a BOY and GIRL on a SMALL TABLE
These two copper statue were so lovely and so beautiful that I asked George to take a photo of them. They weight so very much there is no way I could every have something similar, but they are simply outstanding work. It has been such a thrill to see copper work like this is the very place that copper is made. We have seen several TRAIN loads with car after car loaded with copper sheets in piles. Never had a chance to take a photo of these trains but they run through the middle of the city of Antofagasta, and cars all have to wait when they pass through.
See photo of the Copper Statues from Ideides home (1 photo)
Story 320 THE MOST POPULAR DRINK DESSERT in CHILE (SEE GLASS).
We have been served this several times but have never made it ourselves. It is made from dried peaches that are "cling peaches". Then you purchased these dried peaches in bags at a store. Then you soak them and probably heat them on the stove and let them sit, and maybe add some sugar to the juice.Then you purchase another bag of wheat that looks "puffed up and has been bleached as it is cream color". Then you put one or two peaches, the puffed up wheat and the juice in a glass. LOOK at the photo and this will make more sense. You eat it with a spoon. You have to chip away at the peach and then if desired suck the pit of the peach, then eat the puffed up wheat. I would be very SURPRISED if Jonathan and David did not eat this kind of (drink with peaches and puffed wheat) when they were on their missions here, or perhaps it is a NEW food invention?
See photo of Chilean Desert Peaches and Puffed Wheat in Glasses
Story 321 SHOPPING AGAIN at the VEGA FRUITS and VEGETABLES
We have been so busy we have not gone to the Vega for a long time, and did go this past week. The cauliflour was SO BIG that we took a photo of it along with the other food we purchased before putting it away. We will REALLY miss the fresh fruits and vegetables that Chile has to offer. You can get a whole large bag of Kiawi for about 2 dollars or less (in our money). I know the Vega prices are cheaper than anything we can get in the states. It is SO good and we have never eaten better in our lives as far as what we have eaten here. I would say the WHEAT end of our diet has been less, but oat meal and fruits and vegetables and very little meat has been our main diet. We hope we pass our medical exams when we arrive home. However, we will have to find a NEW place to shop for these kinds of foods, however MANY of the things we see here, we have NEVER ever seen before.
See photo food we purchased for one weeks food at La Vega - frutis and vegetables
Story 322 THE WOWES of HAVING a WATER HEATER GO OUT PLUS 2 CONTACTS
One big problem we had was we left the apartment on Tuesday Sept. 20 at 9:30 and returned at 1:30 to a flooded wood floor full of water. This was a huge problem requring every towel we had in the apartment to mop it all up. Then living through several days problem of having NO water, and then some more days with water but NO hot water and having to heat water on the stove. ONE good thing was I had a water storage where I had saved large drink containers and filled them with water for a time of emergency. I would say CHILEANS need to do this. I was amazed at how much water you need, to even wash dishes, bathe, or even flush a toilet. The water has been turned off on occasion, but this was the REAL test of no water for several days, and using my supply. Finally the apartment owner came and along with a helper they installed a new heater. But George as usual got TWO new referals for the missionaries by talking to them. Only time will tell IF they were really interested or just being polite. We felt bad about the wood floor areas that were damaged.
See photo of the Owner (Dueno) and helper who installed water heater
.
Story 323 THIS IS A CLASSIC SLEEPING DOG PHOTO
We could not pass up taking a photo of this dog, when we were walking in down town Antofagasta to go to the post office one day. Other people were taking a photo of this dog too. Our grand daughter Ally loves dogs. I do hope she looks at this photo. It is a real hoot!
See photo of a dog sleeping in a very strange position.
Story 324 MISSION LEADERSHIP COUNCIL MONTHLY MEETING BROWNIES
This takes place once a month and it is a TON of work for us. We have the shopping, the food prep, and set up, and the actual day, and the serving and the clean up. If we were not 74 and 76 it may be easier, but we do feel very tired at the end of this big big day. To top this day off we were at Idedie's home and Elder Morales called us and needed a ride to the bus station. It is now 9:30 and his bus leaves at 10 for Iquique. We wondered why he did not take the city bus with his companion until we arrived at the office to pick him up and their were two elders, two large pieces of luggage filled with mail for their zone, and three microwave ovens to take back to some of the apartments. We loaded it all in our car barely and barely got them to the bus station to catch the bus. George and I both wondered how they FIT it all in, but they said because they are "ministers" the bus companies let them bring MORE than usual. We love the OFFICE elders and when they leave we always single them out and do extra treats for them as most generally after leaving the office, they are made ZONE LEADERS. Elder Morales and Elder Walker are two of our favorites. Two sister missionaries came and asked "Why are some of the Elders going around eating chocolate brownies?"
See the Picture of Elder Morales and Elder Walker with brownies we gave them.
Story 325 BROWN SPAGETTI
Now this is new to us. We were served this at Ideide's home and had never seen it before. She told us where to buy it, so we bought some. George took a photo of the brown (whole wheat spagetti) that she had cooked and then served a fried egg on top for her children.
See Picture of Integril (Brown) Spagetti in the store package.
See Picture of Integril (Brown) Spagetti Cooked
Story 326 CHART TO KEEP TRACK OF OUR CONTACTS
This is an ongoing process of adding names (RED CIRCLES) and ones we are working with, and crossing out names (ORANGE Xs) that do not work out, and GREEN LINES members who are inactive who we are trying to activate, and dotted red lines WITH MISSIONARIES, and also the (Ms) are with missionaries. We really do work very hard at being missionaries and serving the Lord as best we can. It is very disappointing in relationship to how hard we work in comparison to how many actually join the church, but we just lkeep at it. Ghen the mission president asked George to give a talk to the Zone Conference missionaries on "HOW he finds and talks to Contacts." We both spent half a day getting ready for this presentation, but it went well and George does such a good job at this he should be a full time missionary the rest of his life, BUT not in Provo, Utah, as it probably won't work there. We have number 1 to 70 on this chart, and probably 50 more not on this chart.
See the Picture CHART of our Investigators names for us and the Missionaries
Story 327 SCRIPTURES, STORY BOOK, SONGS -
This is going to be hard to explain, but we are ending missionary work in 7 weeks and even though this family is not probably going to be baptized, we wanted to teach them about : SCRIPTURE time, SINGING our church songs, and evening FAMILY prayer. Her husband "Wilson" is not religious and does not particularly even like blessing the food before eating. Therefore he was on the (7 day gone shift) and we went to the home every day. It brought tears to our eyes as we have held scriptures, family evening prayer "kneeling" , and singing a song now three nights in a row. It is so strange to people who have never done these things. They are looking for pillows to kneel on (wood floors), but the two children loved the song. (English) I love mother she loves me, we love daddy yes sir ee, he loves us and so you see we are a happy family. Then we sing it again using the children's names. Their eyes light up and they loved it. We are amazed at HOW many things we do as members of the church that most people in the world have never thought of doing. We just keep trying to teach and hope it will continue when we go home.
See photo of the primary song book.
Story 328 NEW TESTAMENT BIBLES and MARKING THEM
New Testament Bibles and Marking Them. I do not have time to go into this in great detail, but I can tell you it had created a BIG amount of interest in the people we are working with. Therefore I will go more into it next week, but here are the copies of the bibles we bought from the store in Santiago (via mail) and give to people. It is the NEW TESTAMENT ONLY, but in the back the church has put almost 80 scripture entries of the changes made to the old and new testaments. It is a NEW thing they have done, and since it was in the back of the bibles we are giving out we have now had to explain WHY Joseph Smith did this. It has been very very interesting. I had a good conversation with Norman my brother on this subject this past week. The contacts help mark three kinds of Scriptures: 1) Plan of Salvation scriptures, 2) The Church Jesus established when he was on the arth scriptures, and 3) Scriptures that have changes and you can find them in the back of the (2013) editions of the small New Testament scriptures.
Story 329 OUR GRANDDAUGHTER KRISTIN'S CALL to HAWAII MISSION.
This was such a highlight we had to send three photos and tell about Jonathan and Melanie Talbot's daughter Kristin who opened her mission call on Thursday evening September 29 at 8:30 pm at her grandparents home (the Davis family) in Provo, Utah where she is attending BYU. We shared the evening opening via our daughter Amy's phone. She will enter the MTC on January 25, 2017.
See Photos of Granddaughter Kristin' and the day of her Mission Call to Hawaii
END (Sent Sept 30, 2016) Stories 315 to 329)
Sorry this is longer than usual but this is for two weeks. We love all of you and do appreciate your prayers for us and what we are trying to do before we return home. It seems so strange that our time is about up. We have LOVED serving this mission, meeting so many WONDERFUL young missionaries, finding PEOPLE, and trying to share the GOSPEL. We hope you all enjoy Conference and can view all of the sessions with your families. We love all of you so very much and appreciate your good lives.
We now have OCTOBER birthdays coming up for our daughters JULIE Oct 1, and AMY Oct 8., grand daughter ZOEY the 12th, daughter in law DEBBIE the 16th, and granddaughter MACKENZIE the 26th.
Love Madre y Padre, (George and Margaret Talbot)
Story 318 - Margaret teaching Ideide on the piano. She had no knowledge about music. Margaret is helping her so she can help her children.
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