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.  

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