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