TRAININGS IN ASUNCION, PARAGUAY

Last weekend we flew to Asuncion, Paraguay for quite a few meetings and trainings.  We really love
Paraguay and love being there among the people and we find it to be a very refreshing and rewarding experience each time we go this unique and amazing country!

The Asuncion Temple.

Our purposes for this trip were for Michael to briefly speak at two area council meetings where he could address all of the stake and district presidents in Paraguay regarding the audit program, train a new Assistant Area Auditor, Hermano Cabanas,  attend a training given by our other auditor in Paraguay, Hermano Beraud and attend  another special training for stake secretaries given by our friend, Dante.   There are two missions or councils in Paraguay.  The Asuncion Mission, and the  Asuncion North Mission.  The North Mission has a brand new mission president, President McMullen.  We enjoyed meeting him .  He is still in a daze and not really knowing what he is doing since he only arrived in Asuncion a month ago, so we tried to give him some encouragement!

Our new auditor, Hermano Cabanas is great and very enthusiastic and we loved our time with him.  He is a very interesting person as he speaks fluent Guarani, which is the language of one of the indigenous peoples in northern Paraguay.  Hermano Cabanas often translates for conferences.  Guarani is a very difficult language for sure.  We bought a Book of Mormon in Guarani as we are fascinated with the language, and they sell it in the small church book store at the church office building in Asuncion.  The title on the front of the book is, "Mormon Kuatianee".  (unfortunately, I can't do the accents on my computer!)   We also were very fortunate to meet a group from another northern indigenous tribe, the Nivacle people.  Their faces were beautiful ...... can't really describe the experience....... it was very unique.  They were in Ascunicion attending some church meetings.

Our church meetings were all very rewarding and we met some really wonderdul people.  Elder Zeballos was in the same sacrament meeting we were in on Sunday and we were able to hear him give a talk which we thoroughly enjoyed and learned from.

Paraguay has recently elected a new president which seems to have brought new hope and energy to the country.  He will have his hands full that is for sure.  Over the past fifty years there have been wars, dictators and widespread corruption in Paraguay.  He has promised to work on the poverty and strengthen the infrastructure of the country.  We will be very interested to see what happens.  There are still signs of a dictatorship  from the past throughout all of the places we have traveled in Paraguay, police stopping cars randomly ,( when we drive here, we are stopped multiple times) armed guards with machine guns and huge rifles standing guard in all of the banks, and deteriorating roads and buildings and an inadequate airport.  New road construction has begun in Asuncion already and it is encouraging to see the work taking place, providing jobs and improvements.  The roads themselves in Asuncion are very, very crowded..... and difficult to drive in..... few traffic lights, and bumper to bumper traffic almost constantly.  Nevertheless, there are many beautiful sites in Asuncion and it is a city that is very, very old and it has a kind of raw  antique charm about it.

We will still have some work to do in Paraguay and will probably visit at least one more time before we leave.

Same meeting.....this time I took the photo.... Hermano Cabanas on the far right.  He is our new AAA.

Hermano Beraud on the far right.  Presidente Dominguez (to the left of Michael)   and his counselor and auditor on the left of him.  Presidente Dominguez drove us back and forth from our hotel to all of our meetings and we enjoyed some great conversations with him.  He has a terrific sense of humor!

Michael and Hermano Cabanas

Getting ready for the secretary training.

A side garden on the temple grounds

The temple grounds were very beautiful.

Another lovely side garden

New road construction ..... viewed from our hotel window. The very red dirt is gorgeous!

INSTITUTO DE RELIGION - BUENOS AIRES

Large classroom - new section in the back of the building

Front door

Inside of front door

One of the main rooms downstairs

The large classroom upstairs has this gorgeous little balcony!

Courtyard - in the back of the building.  This is a VERY charming space.  All in tiles and orginal to the home.

This morning we walked over to the newly restored Institute of Religion next to our church building.  Restoration has been going on almost since we arrived here.  Today and tomorrow they have an open house and so we decided  to walk down and take a look and walk through the building.   It is gorgeous and stunning!   It was previously a home and the church has fully restored it plus put on a small addition  in the back, that is clean and simple.  The woodwork is articulate.  Here are a few photos of this most beautiful structure.  

The building is "English Boroque" and was built in 1926

These two adorable young ladies gave us a tour!  Marlena on the left and Evelyn on the right!

The tiled courtyard

COLONIA, URUGUAY

Building in Colonia

Two auditors in Colonia

Saturday morning we headed to Colonia early as we had a meeting set up with the district president and a couple of auditors.  We had a beautiful drive and a very productive and wonderful meeting!   Colonia is northwest of Montevideo and is a very old, old, city sitting right on the water.  It is a very popular spot for tourists and weekend visits.  We enjoyed the drive and were happy that we were able to see the countryside of Uruguay and also meet some other people from this very amazing small country.  (Our friend, Dante, describes the country of Uruguay like "One great big spa!" Everyone seems to be relaxed and happy!)  Probably a bit of an exaggeration but certainly that is a definite feeling here.

A couple of miles outside of the actual city of Colonia, the main road is lined with these amazing palm trees.  There were beautiful!

The church in Colonia.

We drove back to Montevideo late in the afternoon on Saturday.  We had an early morning meeting on Sunday in the Montevideo West Stake.  Hermano Paredes was there as it under his jurisdiction for the audits.  We met with six auditors and the audit committee chair who is the first counselor in the stake presidency.  A particularly friendly and warm group of people.  After the meeting the Committee chair, went around the room and gave each audior an abrzo and expressed his love and appreciation for each person there.  It was quite moving for me to watch this.  While I don't speak the language flently , I can understand quite a bit.  At the same time, there are many great moments for me to "observe and watch", my wonderful husband as he speaks in Spanish, and look into the joyful and expressive faces of those dedicated individuals who attend the trainings, to watch their love and devotion to one another and the Gospel is a gift for me which I share with Michael at the end of the day.

We embraced each moment of Sunday.  After our training we attended Sacrament meeting and met some great people.  We went back to our hotel, enjoyed a lovely meal and took a walk among the beautiful surrounding neighborhoods.  We returned home to Buenos Aires on Monday late afternoon.  I quickly unpacked after arriving in our apartment and headed out to shop for some groceries!  We have been really busy in the office since our return and we are now preparing to head out to Asuncion, Paraguay early Friday morning, where we will have a full schedule of trainings and meetings and we will be training a new auditor there, Hermano Cabanas.

More next week from Paraguay!

MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY

The Montevideo Temple

Almost every structure had a red tile roof!  They are beautiful!

As I mentioned a few days ago, last week we traveled to Montvideo, and Colonia, Uruguay.  We had quite a few meetings in Montevideo and one in Colonia, so we were really busy!  Some evenings we had two meetings.  We met up with our two assistant auditors there:  Hermano Cabrera, and Hermano Paredes.  They are both extremely wonderful and dedicated men.  We really enjoyed seeing them again and it was a great experience to watch them interact with all of the leaders in the trainings, who respect and love them!

We arrived in Montevideo around noon and were met at the ferry terminal by a remis.  One of the wonderful things about Montevideo is that the city is right on the River de la Plata, an enormous river that divides Argentina and Uruguay.  The Ferry crosses at the wides part of the river before it empties into the Atlantic Ocean.  The city itself is right on the water and there is a wonderful walk way the entire length of the city.  It is gorgeous!  Our drive to our hotel therefore was along the river and such a beautiful drive.  Many people were walking, running, exercising, along the walk way.  The area where we stayed was called Carassco.  The Temple and the church offices, mission home, patron and missionary housing are located in this area as well as beautiful old buildings and several embassies including the Iranian Embassy and what looked like the Chinese Embassy.  (They were enormous estates, very carefully guarded by electronic devices and cameras)  The streets that run along the river are called "ramblas".  The street we stayed on was called, "Rambla Republica de la Mexico".

We took several walks and these are some of the features of the area that we saw.

View from our hotel room

For our first meeting on Wednesday night we traveled about 45 minutes outside of Montevideo, to Las Piedras where there was a new Stake Presidency.  We drove with Dante and his MSR (member statistics and records) representative in Uruguay, Pablo.  (Pablo is our new very wonderful friend!)  We all participated in the meeting, including me as I gave the prayer in Spanish!  Hermano Cabrera met us there and after that meeting we drove with him to another location where we met with a stake audit committee, and also had a great meeting there.  We arrived home around 11:00 p.m.

Thursday, we had meeting at the church offices in the temple complex.  Dante explained the new changes in the church banking system that will be affecting the audit program.  Hermano Paredes met us there and we had about an hour meeting.  After that meeting we droved with Hermano Paredes to 

another stake (I left my notes at the office and can't quite remember the name of the stake!) where we also had another great meeting with the stake and audit leaders.  After our meeting, the leaders served us refreshments and minature desserts.  It was really fun to visit with the leaders and watch them interact with each other and give abrazos and chat !  We arrived home around 11:00 pm.

Friday we worked from the hotel room all day as we have a tremendous amount of emails each day from auditors, stakes and we were waiting for a couple of replies from  some area seventies.  We also had to spend part of the day planning our trip to Colonia the next day which was about two hours away.  Our friend, Pablo, helped us arrange for use of a church car for Saturday and we took a walk over late in the day to pick it up.  We got a little lost walking to the church as the streets are crazy!  Nothing is straight!  We stopped at a house to ask for directions to the temple .  There was a man outside painting. He said he didn't know which direction we should go in but said that there was a little boy inside the house who might know.  So a few seconds later, a little boy around 9 years old, with dark curly hair, came running out of the house and shouted to us "Do you speak English?"  He was adorable!  We said, "yes, we do," and he proceeded to say that he knew right where the temple was and gave us perfect directions.  He even offered to walk with us.  But we said we could find it and continued our walk.  It was a special moment to talk with this little boy who was so enthusiastic to visit with us and he loved practicing his English!

Rio de la Plata and the beautiful walk way!

An old tiled mural in the grounds of an old deserted property next to the hote.  There are frequent paintings and murals around in these South American countries depicting the Portuguese invaders and also the Spanish Conquistadors

BUQUEBUS AND TRAVEL TO URUGUAY

Last Wednesday we traveled to Montevideo Uruguay across the Rio de la Plate which is the most enormous river we have ever seen!  It is like the ocean! It empties into the Atlantic ocean further up the southern coast of Uruguay. This river divides Uruguay and Argentina, and there is a great deal of boat traffic on this river.  It is a three hour ferry ride on the BUQUEBUS to Montevideo, Uruguay from Buenos Aires.  The harbor that the ferry docks in is shared with huge tankers, crains, and navy ships.  It was fascinating watching the ferry manuever into the harbor in Montevideo to dock.

This blog post is for you, Joshua and Caleb, as we thought you would like to see the big crains that lift containers off of the ships and see the huge tanker that was soooo close to the ferry!

Grandpa took these pictures for you, boys!

ELDER WOOD AND ELDER FABILA

Elder Wood and Elder Fabila are full time missionaries in our Belgrano Ward here in Buenos Aires.  They are part of the Buenos Aires North Mission.   A few days before leaving for Uruguay, we invited them to share a Sunday dinner with us and we enjoyed our visit with them so very much.  Elder Wood is the tall missionary and he is from Boston, and Elder Fabila is from the northern part of Uruguay.  They are both the only members in their families and joined the church as young teenagers.  They are exceptional and we loved our hour and a half with them as they brought a great spirit into our home.  I made a lot of food and they pretty much ate all they could manage!  I sent home cornbread with them and they were thrilled.  We took these photos, and the next day , I emailed Elder Wood's mother and sent her the photos, and I emailed them to Elder Fabila so he could forward them on to his family.  Elder Wood's mother emailed me back and thanked me for sending a photo ..... she was very gracious.  Elder Wood is quite a hiker, and hopes to visit us in the northwest to hike after his mission.  He will be attending BYU in the fall.  We have really enjoyed the young missionaries in our ward and love to become acquainted with them and share meals together.