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.  

VILLA ALAMANA

On our last day in Santiago, which was a Sunday, we traveled northwest out of Santiago to Villa Alamana where our assistant for that area gave a really wonderful training.  The leaders were very responsive and we met some great people that we chatted with afterwards over some delicious refreshments.  The picture of the chocolate is some artesanal chocolate made by the wife of one of the leaders.  They were amazing sticks of chocolate..... can't really describe them!

Our assistant, Omar, is the one on the left of Michael.  He is a music teacher and has two daughters.  He is an amazing instructor.  The brother on the far right is the one who provided the chocolate treat.

LOS DOMINICOS

Michael ordered this corn casserole that was flavored with nutmeg.  We shared it and it was truly delicious!  Also, served in a wonderful clay dish!

These "frutilla" fruit drinks are popular and DELICIOUS!

There was a huge cage of beautiful chickens !

We visited "Los Dominicos" on Saturday ..... we browsed the amazing craft shops and then ate a wonderful lunch outside with Dale and Jeannine!  It was a wonderful day and the weather was perfect! The crafts at Los Dominicos are the best of Chile!

Dale and Jeannine Perry

A BEAUTIFUL BUILDING - "PROVINCIA"

On Saturday, June 13, our friends and fellow missionaries, Dale and Jeannine Perry took us sight seeing in Santiago.  There is a wonderful building about four blocks from the church complex, called, "Provincia."  It was built in the 1930's and is very beautiful and filled with wonderful architectural detail and many beautiful decorative features.  We really enjoyed our walk through this amazing building.  Here are a few photos of our tour.

ALEJANDRO FIGUEROA AND RETURNING TO SANTIAGO

View of the temple at night from our apartment

The back of the Santiago Temple and view from our 4th floor apartment.

We drove into South Santiago around 1:30 pm  (13:30 here)  !  We had arranged to have lunch with our assistant from that area , Alejandro Figueroa ,and his wonderful family in their home.  They cooked meat outside, which was delicious and Pauletta prepared an old family recipe of gnocchi in tomatoe sauce, and served everything with a yummy tomatoe and white onion salad.  We had home canned peaches for dessert.  The Figeroa family is adorable.  Their two teenage daughters were delightful as was their 3 year old Paulette!  We spent a lovely evening of piano playing, by their daughter, Nicole (17) ,  and great conversation and sharing of ideas about the audit program.  They very much wanted us to spend the night in their home so we accepted their gracious invitation and enjoyed being with their family.  Paulette and Alejandro gave up their bedroom for us and we were very grateful for their generosity and kindness.

After spending much of the morning the next day, visiting further with Alejandro the three of us drove into Santiago where he would meet his wife.  After arriving at the church office , we checked into the missionary/temple housing where we have a lovely apartment for four days.  This complex houses the (CCM) Missionary Training Center for Chile, the church office building, the Santiago Temple,, and the housing for missionaries and couple missionaries and temple patrons.  It is a beautiful but simple complex and we are enjoying our stay here very much.  We have been working with Dale Perry, our missionary assistant here in Chile.  Sunday evening we will drive north to Vina del Mar to attend another training with Hermano Omar Aranda.  Vina del Mar is just north of Santiago  about an hour and we are looking forward to driving there.

Here are a few pictures of Wednesday!

Alejandro and Paulette!

Alejandro and Michael in front of the church office builiding in Santiago

We will do some sight seeing tomorrow with the Dale and Jeanne Perry who are serving here in Santiago.  They know of several interesting places for us to easily see in one day!