SAN ANTONIO DE ARECO - part two

This is a general store in San Antonio that is beautifully situated on a corner.  Bill really wanted us to see this amazing old building and the inside and meet the adorable little Argentine owner.  It was a very unique experience!  The owner  is in his 80's probably..... his father owned the store.... the current owner was born in the store!  It is truly an old family business!  The owner was delightful.  The store was clean as a whistle and as neat and tidy as it looks!  Enjoy the photos!

The streets of San Antonio are lined with orange trees !  They were beautiful and laden with fruit ready to be picked!

This old refrigerator on the right was the first electric fridge in Argentina.  It is still in use.  He stores pop in here and keeps it cold!

SAN ANTONIO DE ARECO - part one

The chocolate shop!  This is the best chocolate we have ever had!

Bill and Joy Wingo

Asado at a Parilla- we had chicken, Joy had trout and Bill had pork.  It was delicious!

Organic cheese shop

Grapefruit tree in a "secret garden" Joy and I found

Hola!

On Friday afternoon, our good friend, Bill Wingo called us on the phone in the office and asked if we would like to drive to San Antonio De Areco on Saturday morning and spend the day in this wonderful small community about an hour outside of Buenos Aires, with he and his very lovely wife, Joy.  We readily agreed and we did indeed spend Saturday in this amazing small town of tiny shops, a gaucho museum,  a silver and leather museum, small shops filled with handwoven goods, and handmade jewelry, leather goods , parks, friendly people and simply prepared food in a Parilla.   It was truly an amazing day and one that was very special in every way.  Bill is the legal advisor for the area, (an employee of the church) and he and Joy have been here three years and are leaving for home in two weeks to retire.  We are leaving on our long trip this week and this was our last opportunity to visit with them and enjoy a day of leisure and friendship.  (Bill and Joy are very special friends of Mike and Judy's as well)  .  Bill and Joy had previously spent  time in San Antonio so they were well acquainted with the special shops and restaurants and the absolutely fantastic chocolate shop that are there. There is an amazing general store from the turn of the last century still in use.  I will do a separate post of that. (actually it will probably appear before this one!) Bill and Joy were the perfect companions for such a visit and our day was truly memorable.  We laughed and visited ..... and felt surges of excitement over each new item we discovered!

The Wingos have lived all over the world.  Bill has traveled for the church a great deal and also for a law firm.  He has traveled to over 75 countries.  His travel stories are extrodinary and it was great fun to listen to him share some of his adventures with us as we rode in the car to and from Buenos Aires.

San Antonio is a reletively quiet little town situated on a river , and the town itself has several beautiful parks.  We hope to return again a couple of times before we leave, and perhaps invite another couple along to share the experience with.... as the Wingos shared with us.

This was the prettiest cat in front of a beautiful cottage.

Joy, in fron of the same cottage.  We both fell in love with the door!

A LEADER'S VISIT TO BUENOS AIRES

Hola!

We recently had one of the twelve apostles visit here in Buenos Aires...... Elder Quentin L. Cook and his very lovely wife, Mary.  (she was truly adorable) They are a very wonderful couple and we were able to hear them speak on several occasions.  The purpose of their visit was to give encouragement to all, and to meet other religious leaders and community leaders in the northern part of Argentina.  He and his wife met with Catholic leaders throughout the area and also the Jewish leader Rabino Skorka, who is, I believe the central Jewish leader in Argentina and  they also met with Archbishop Nanez of Cordoba.  It is a great feeling to witness the cooperation of all of these religous groups together to form friendships and a greater understanding of one another within the religious community.

Elder Cook and is wife are about in their early seventies and appeared to have a lot of energy!  Their schedule was hectic for sure but they took time to shake hands and greet people on a personal level.
We had a special missionary meeting last Wednesday that was really wonderful.  There were many young missionaries at the meeting...... they were missionaries who are assigned in and around Buenos Aires.  Here is a picture of them in the chapel..... each taking a turn to shake hands with Elder Cook and his wife and the area presidency. The church recently changed the age requirement for which missionaries can serve.  Young men can now serve at 18 instead of 19 and young women can serve at age 19 instead of 21.  It is estimated that the number of missionaries will increase by 50% and it is estimated also  that 40% of the missionaries will be women.  So in a year this gathering below will look quite different!

There were actually sister missionaries but they were sitting in the front rows so you can't see them in this picture!

This is acutally our church building where we attend church.  The missionary meeting was here.

We have almost finished training Joan and Garry Boyle now to take over the executive secretary position in the area presidency office!  They are a wonderful and energetic couple from Arizona , about our age.  We have enjoyed spending time with them and "teaching them the ropes!"  It has been quite a journey over the past three to four months taking on this extra assignment and then passing it on and teaching another couple to do all of the many tasks that are involved in this position.  Now we are returning to our audit work with lots of new ideas and we are feeling quite energized from the many wonderful experiences we have recently had to give us new insights and ideas  for the next nine months!

We will begin our travel once again in about two weeks or less.  We will be headed down south to Northern Patagonia, Comodoro Rivadavia, and Coleta Olivia where we will help our dear friend, Ricael Sosa with some trainings.  We will be returning to Asuncion, Paraguay  to help our auditors there.  There is a new mission in Posadas, Argentina (on the Paraguay border) where we will be training a new auditor.  We will also be headed to Uruguay and Chile in July and August to  help in those countries.  There is also a new mission in Santiago South (Chile) which will take an existing  auditor so we will be training a new auditor for Rancagua which is just south of Santiago.  So we have a lot of work ahead.  We will have our annual Assistant Area Auditor conference here in Buenos Aires again during the first part of December.  We will also be traveling to Salt Lake City in mid October to attend our annual training for the Area Auditors, which will be for two days.  So we have a lot of work to do and we are excited and looking forward with great anticipation to the second half of our mission!

Our family is doing well.  Michaell's mother turns 104 next month and is still going strong!  My mother will turn  95 in August!  Both mothers are doing well and keeping busy while we are away.  Rebekah will hold a family party for my mother in August and most of our children will be there to assist her with that.

We continue to be very grateful for this amazing experince we are enjoying.  It is a journey of great learning, laughter, joy and challenges!  We appreciate the continued support of our family.

We hope all of you are enjoying the beginings of summer!  We are having winter, 65-70 degrees!  Some of the leaves have fallen off of the trees , but we pass a fruit laden orange tree everyday on our way to the office!  We hear it does get colder... but I will believe it when I feel the cold!

This is from a couple of months ago at the Estancia, but I just received the picture.  These are our missionary friends!

A SPECIAL LUNCHEON

We have been really busy over the past three weeks training our replacements for the executive secretray job in the office of the presidency.  Joan and Garry Boyle from Arizona arrived about three weeks ago and have been working hard ever since!  They are really lovely people and we have become good friends.  We have now picked up our full time load of audit work and we are making lots of plans to work hard on that program again!  Although, I have to say, I am still working with Joan a little and Michael is actually doing some work to help Garry out for a while longer.


This weekend we visited two of our Assistant Auditors here in the Buenos Aires area.  Yesterday we visited Horacio Nieto and his lovely wife, Amelia.  We brought a new cell phone to  Horacio  and discussed some of the audit problems in his area of West Buenos Aires.  Their apartment was old, small and very, very beautiful.  Amelia is quite an amazing cook and prepared a most delicious lunch for us consisting of a fresh fruit salad and  a variety of small sandwiches and homemade empanadas. The crowning glory to the lunch was a homemade peach cream cake!  it was about 10 inches  high and it was absolutely delicious.  We enjoyed our afternoon with them and felt very enriched from the experience.

Today we drove out to Buenos Aires South and took a cell phone to Enrique Garcia, our auditor in that area, and had a wonderful visit with him.  He is a very warm and friendly person and does a really good job on keeping all of the audits in good order.

A couple of weeks ago the wives of the Area Presidency organized a luncheon for all of the wives of the couple missionaries in the office.  It was a truly wonderful afternoon filled with meeting these three amazing women and visiting with each one of them.  They have planned to have a luncheon with us on the first Tuesday of every month.  So this will be a very fun activity to look forward to on a regular basis.  There was a great deal of love and happiness in the room during the luncheon with everyone feeling that this is a very good idea and yet another experience that we will treasure.

We will be heading out again on our travels in a few weeks.  Michael and I are in the process of planning where we need to go and who of the auditors could use an extra hand!

Luncheon

Joan Boyle and I!

The group of missionaries!

CENTRO DE CAPACITACION MISIONAL

Note the beautiful kiwi juice !  It was delicious!  The kiwis here are really large thus perfect for juice.

The buffet table.  

The first day of the conference we were in the hotel and had a lovely lunch and dinner.  A lunch we sat with a lovely young friend of ours, Marianna who did much of the translating for the conference.  She is one of the secretaries at the office and we enjoyed getting to know her better through our association in planning the conference. At dinner we met a mission president and his wife who are from Central Point, Oregon and they knew some people we know in our daughters ward in Grants Pass! On Tuesday morning there was a long question and answer period with the area presidency on missionary issues.  (of which there are many)  At 11:30 or so we had to make sure everyone was checked out of the hotel and boarded a small bus and two vans with their luggage .  Two vans for those returning to Chile and another bus for those going to other destinations within Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.  That was a trick!!  Michael stood there with his travel papers with everyone's flights listed and we had to check everyone off and make sure they were headed in the right direction!

After loading the buses, we headed about five minutes away to the Buenos Aires Temple grounds where we had a fabulous lunch at the CCM.  (MTC).  They have a "real" chef that cooks there and honestly the food was totally fabulous!  We had been over to check things out a week ahead of time and had visited with President and Sister Openshaw who are in charge of the CCM.  They are a wonderful and very dedicated couple.  They role up their sleeves and help with everything.  This CCM houses and feeds about 70 missionaries who are headed to Paraguay and Uruguay.  Now with the increase in numbers of missionaries, the Openshaws  are a little worried about the space.

The meal was wonderful with homemade kiwi juice (I had three glasses!) , freshly made foccacia bread with sundried tomatoes, four different kinds of meats, rolls, bread, empanadas, dips, ..... it was totally amazing... and for dessert delicious chocolate cake and freshly made fruit tarts!  These missionaries are lucky!

Most of the mission presidents and their wives attended the temple.... we had too many tasks to finish up so we were not able to join them.... when they started coming out of the temple, once again we had to check off names and make sure everyone was accounted for.

It was a great experience and one we will never forget!

The CCM

The Buenos Aires Temple

SEMINARIO DE PRESIDENTES DE MISIONES

Our desks where we did alot of the planning!

About two months ago, President Gonzalez asked Michael and I to be in charge of all of the logistics
for the seventy's council meeting and the Mission President's Seminar both of which were held last weekend and Monday and Tuesday of last week.  We had to work with travel and make sure that they made reservations for flights and hotels for about 75 people.  Along with one of the secretaries, we had to choose menus for four days and make sure that the snacks and all food was in place and in the right rooms.  I can't name all of the many tasks that we had to do!  Anyway, it was a lot of work but we learned alot and totally enjoyed it.  Here are some pictures from the mission presidents seminar and some of the preparations that we were engaged in.

President Gonzalez likes to go paperless, but we did have a folder for notetaking and one handout!

This was a very large conference room and we had to make sure it was all set up correctly for that amount of people!  We had a table for translators and tech people as well.  We had to set out place cards and make sure everything was in order on Sunday night.  Mike in the background!

ASADO

This is my dear friend, Ellen Garvin receiving an Argentine kiss on the cheek that we all love!  The dear little lady giving the kiss is the sweet grandma that lives in the cottage at the back of the property.

We all took food and it was really delicious.  This is the salad I took.... roasted beets, red onions and fresh cherry tomatoes with the fresh oregano as a garnish.  I grow the oregano on our balcony.

A few weeks ago we attended a small Asado with our fellow missionaries from the office.  A member
of the office staff invited all of us to the home of his family for an asado (BBQ) and picnic and a wonderful game of croquet!  We went in groups in a few cars as David's home was over an hour outside of Buenos Aires.   It was a delightful day and Michael and I ended up winning the croquet game which was so very fun!  We came from behind to win and we all had such a great time!  Here are a few pictures from the very lovely day!

The little cottage in the back!