San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca and La Rioja

From left to right, DA, Hermano Morales, Michael, President Valdez, (stake president) Hermano Perez, and Hermano Arpires.

We are on a twenty day journey to visit some of our assistant auditors, stake audit committees and hopefully some branch and ward secretaries.  We will be traveling through the northwest part of Argentina and also central Chile.

We are using a car from the car pool at the area office for part of the trip.  We left early Thursday morning, February 7 and drove to Cordoba.  It was an all day drive but we enjoyed it very much.  On Friday we drove to San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca and met up with Nestor Morales and his lovely wife, Patricia .  We had a training there with the stake president, and two auditors.

Nestor Morales (assistant auditor) and his very lovely wife, Patricia

The trainings are for the La Rioja stake.  Part of the stake presidency and two auditors live in Catamarca and the other members of the stake presidency and the other two auditors live in La Rioja which is 2 1/2 hours south.  We really enjoyed meeting President Valdez and the two auditors.  President Valdez had a heart attack about a year ago... but is fine and doing well now!

Our drive from Cordoba to Catamarca was amazing.  Our friend, Axel at the area office, ( his office is next to ours) loves to travel and he always tells us the best and most scenic routes to take.  We drove through the mountains and some rustic and picturesque villages.  We loved the drive and will never forget it.

We ate lunch in a park in the mountains and saw the most beautiful art work on some poles that were on a platform.

LA RIOJA

Saturday morning we followed Hermano Morales and his wife to La Rioja for another training which took place on Saturday afternoon around 2:30.  It was a great drive.  We discovered over the two and a half days of driving that raising goats and eating goat meat is very common.  We saw many herds of goats and were quite fascinated.  La Rioja province is also known for its olives and we saw acres and acres of olive orchards.

Our meeting in La Rioja went very well and we also enjoyed meeting the Audit Committee Chair, who is the first counselor in the stake presidency and two more auditors.

President Moreno, Hermano Morales, DA, Michael, Hermano Sanchez, Hrmano Castillo.

La Rioja is a beautiful town with very old and beautiful colonial churches and a very lovely plaza in the center of town.  We will be here for another day and then we will head back to Cordoba to train a new assistant auditor (Hermano Morales has just been called as a bishop) and to talk with the counselor in the mission presidencies regarding the dependent branches in the mission.