Miscellany and Photos

Keith and I finally got together and figured out how to put pictures on the blog!  So now there are pictures on most the the blog entries.

Miscellaneous "stuff" about the mission:


Dogs in Chile:  There are tons of dogs in Chile.  La Union is over run with them.  And they run after the cars trying to play chicken with us.  However at home, the fence keeps out most of them.  All except for a little mutt who was wandering away from home and found he fit under our fence.  We tried to shoo him away but he gave us the "you don't really want to chase me away, do you?" look.  I had to be very firm with him and sent him home.

Chilean drivers have figured out the narrow streets and parking.  They park on the curb!  

So Keith is trying to fit in.  You will notice that the curb is under the car!

This is La Turbina.  It is a turbine (you guessed that, of course) that creates electricity for La Union.  Beautiful!

Caupolican Capilla (Caupolican Branch Church) is where we go to church when we go to our "home" ward.  Just like the Keating Ward, it is on Caupolican Street.  

Hermanas Rameriz and Clark teach me Spanish every Friday at 10:30.  They are very helpful.

Christmas photo of the missionaries that we work with -- a fun party!

Senior Missionary couples are called misionaros matrimonio (married missionaries), frequently called matrimonios.  Here we all are on a p-day to Valdivia.  Eighteen months ago there waws only once couple.  The mission president asked for more and was told that they only replaced senior couples, that a mission didn't get "extras."  When the president told the missionary department that he had only one senior couple that worked in the mission office, they decided that he could have more due to the influx in missionaries!  So now we have five (the office couple went home two weeks after this photo was taken).  Nice people!  Very helpful to newbies!

Church Work Going Well

Church work is going well.  We do a little bit of everything.  We are in the process of introducing ourselves to the branches by attending Sunday meetings at each branch for two Sundays in a row.  We went to the San Pablo branch the first week and Dad helped with the sacrament as the only priesthood member there was the second counselor in the branch presidency.  Both the branch president and his first counselor were out of town.  The second week were went there, there were 5 extra priesthood leaders from the district to help.  Someone told the district president!  

We also go with some of the missionaries who need a ride out to the campo (the countryside) to visit less actives and investigators.  We are working on our family history program planning.  We are also working on a project from the mission president that compares Chilean voting records with the Church's MLS membership program to help clean up the branches' records.  We are acting as proctors for a Learning English program for latino missionaries through the MTC in conjunction with BYU.  We had our first two elders taking the final oral test.  And we help the mission office couple with updating records about missionary transfers (every 6 weeks some missionaries are transferred to other locations, causing a domino effect which requires a lot of updating of missionary locations.)

Our days are varied but fun.  We are not bored as there is always something to do in addition to studying Spanish!

Karen and Jay's Wedding!

We really missed not being at Karen and Jay's wedding!  One of the sacrifices of being on a mission is missing milestones like this!  It was the only day I cried since being on the mission.  But we appreciated all of Karen's sisters and brother being there representing the family.  The party at the Cheesecake Factory after the wedding looked like great fun.  But skype-ing on a phone is just too hard on my eyes!

Congratulations, Karen and Jay.  When we get back, we need to go to the Cheesecake Factory!

Christmas and New Years in Chile

Christmas with the our zone missionaries (we are the ones on the right!):

Christmas caroling in Orsono with the missionaries there.  There was a little girl who wanted to "help" direct the missionaries' singing of carols in the plaza so Hermana Call let her.

And after the caroling -- Santa comes to Chile!

Christmas and New Years were interesting here.  Christmas Eve we went to two different dinners -- one at 1 pm and one at 9 o'clock at night!  Obviously the Chileans like to eat late.  Both were delicious and supposedly Chilean. 

The "lunch" meal was with the Holquins and was a lot like shepherd's pie but with beef chunks instead of hamburger. The spices are different though I cannot tell you how.  

Dinner was with the Paredes and was turkey (a roll of both light and dark meat) with two kinds of potatoes (both white and purple which taste pretty much the same), salad with tomatoes, avocado and butter beans (green and larger than  lima beans though shaped the same), peas and hard boiled eggs (together), cornbread muffins (comfort food made by the sister missionary who with her companion live in an apartment next to the Paredes), and chocolate ice cream with strawberries and cookies for dessert.  There were 9 of us at the table only three of which were Paredes.  The rest were friends and us (newcomers).  It reminded me of Christmas at Mother's.   

Christmas day was calm -- no little children running around.  So sad!  Obviously not a Christmas that we are used to, but they were interesting and we had a good time both meals.  Lots of good conversation (some of which I could understand) and good food (which I did enjoy!).

I wrote thank you notes to the sisters for each of the dinners. Thank you Google Translate!  My Spanish is not up to thank you notes and I decided to write them myself as Keith was busy so Google to the rescue.  I wrote them in English and put them into Google Translate and showed them to Keith.  He said they were translated correctly but wanted to change one section.  Fine with me!  We had to go out and buy thank you cards.  It wouldn't do to write thank you notes on graph paper which is what the notebooks use here  .No lined paper!  We ended up with blank cards which was fine.  It only took me three tries to complete two thank you notes.  Writing in Spanish is not automatic (for me) like writing in English is.  

New Years was different in the neighborhood.  The neighbors had two parties going on -- and we were not invited to either!  We went to bed well before midnight and were awakened at midnight with fireworks, etc. going off which we expected.  New Year Eve is the same all over the world.   We went back to sleep and were awakened at 1:30 am with loud music from the house across the street.  Because of the tin roof and not much insulation, that house was rocking!  Dad called it the boombox house!  But we managed to go back to sleep only to be awakened by another house down the street at 4:30 with the same problem.  I think we were meant to get only a little sleep so the nap we took on New Years day was welcomed.  We couldn't stay awake!

New House

We spent the week of December 15-19 getting into the new house.  New Chilean homes come without kitchen cabinets or appliances.  A surprise to us.  And our house has no central heating!  One of the other senior missionary couples came from afar (an hour and a half from us) to help us (Keith really) install the cabinets, etc.  Now I have a gem of a kitchen.  Everything works except for the stove which needs to be lit -- it's gas.  Except for the cabana we lived in for the first 3 weeks we lived here, I haven't used a gas stove since 1972 when we moved form the Salt Lake house to the Denver house.  But the Salt Lake house's stove had an electric starter so I didn't use matches.  Chilean stoves use matches to light.  So for the first day Keith lit the stove so I could cook!  It wasn't until we got a flame gun (like you use for the bar-b-que) that I felt like I could light the stove.  I had singed my hand too often at the cabana!  And yesterday (2 weeks after we moved in) we used the oven and Keith had to light it!  Our daughter Susan is sending me an oven thermometer so I can use the oven without burning the cookies like I did yesterday!  I will get better with the oven.  Even if the oven is so small that I cannot use the cookie sheet that I was given by a senior missionary who was going home unless I put it in on a slant!

A funny story about lighting the stove with matches:  I told Keith that I needed to buy some longer matches, and then I wouldn't scorch my hand.  So we looked for longer matches at the store and bought a longer box that looked like the matches would be twice as long as the ones I was using.  However, when we got home and opened the box, it had two nice, neat rows of matches the same small size as the ones I already had!  So I learned that the size of the box does not mean that the contents are different in size.  Hence the flame gun!

My "giant" matches

This is our house heater -- the ugly black thing in the corner!  But it is better than no heat at all and it really does heat the whole house, which tells you how small the house is! 

Our house with Barbara at the door