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!

ESTANCIA SANTA SUSANA II

A BEAUTIFUL FLOWERING TREE BY THE MUSEUM.

PERIOD KITCHEN IN THE MUSEUM.

BILL AND ROBIN ASHTON-AREA HUMANITARIAN COUPLE FROM CALIFORNIA

BARB AND STEVE ZOBELL- AREA PSYCHOLOGIST FROM CALGARY ALBERTA

MICHAEL AND THE GAUCHO.

MICHAEL ON THE HORSE!  

ESTANCIA SANTA SUSANA

Today we had a great day!  7 missionary couples went to a ranch and enjoyed an asado and a Gaucho program !

Today we drove about an hour outside of Buenos Aires and had a great day at "Estancia Santa Susana".  We enjoyed many wonderful and fun activities.....an

"Asado" (similar to a BBQ), a tango program, a lovely small museum and a Gaucho program with lots of horses...... oh and yes, Michael and several of the missionaries enjoyed a horseback ride.  I enjoyed a fun ride in a wagon!  It was a most relaxing day and one that we really needed as we have been working long hours.  We have many pictures so I will put some up tonight and some up tomorrow!  We so enjoyed our missionary friends and had a lovely, lovely day!  Here are a few photos......

One of our favorite family movies is "Man From Snowy River" and "Return to Snowy River".  Our favorite part is when Jim Craig precisely whips off small suspended rings with his whip .  The Gauchos used another tool but it was just as awesome!

Today, we saw the Gauchos gallup on their horses at a fast speed and put  a small metal object through a tiny ring suspended from a pole.  These are some of the pictures.  It was so fun to watch.

MOVING FORWARD

One of the lovely little balconies we pass everyday!

One of the many, many fruit stands all over Buenos Aires.  

We cross these railroad tracks everyday on our way to work.

Hola everyone!

We have been back in Buenos Aires for about three weeks now and have been very busy with our new temporary assignment and our audit work.  We have spent many hours into the evening and a couple of Saturdays trying to learn new tasks and adjust to alot of office work.  We have kept in close touch with our assistant auditors however, and they are very busy trying to get all of the stakes within the four countries to complete their audits by the end of March.  It is indeed a challenge for them!  Every month we receive a stewardship report from each one of the 29 assistant auditors and we study the reports and answer each one of them in an email commenting on their work and their challenges and offering our help where needed.  For the month of February, we received some great reports, but also word about frustrations and how some stakes are slow to begin the audits during this audit period.  Our assitant auditors are continuing to assemble audit committees throughout the area and train them.  We have received these wonderful pictures from a couple of our Assistant Auditors over the past couple of weeks.

A couple of Audit Committees in Paraguay

Hermano Beraud with one of his auditors in Paraguay

Hermano Beraud with another auditor in Paraguay, around Asuncion.

Hermano Tossen with an audit committee in Ushuaia.  (the southern most part of Argentina in the Patagonia Region)

We really enjoy getting these photos.  We are trying to print them off and we post them in our office!

One of the exciting projects we have going in our audit program is a brand new, (never been done before) blog:  SAS AUDITOR.  (South America South Auditor) .  Hermano Perry who helps us in Chile is in charge of putting it together and keeping it updated.  We put our ideas together with Hermano Perry and came up with a really good format.  We hope to introduce the blog this week to our Assitant auditors!  We are very excited.  The church has a format within the church network for church organizations to post blogs, so it is really great.  We have come to realize more and more how the technology in the church is there to facilitate many, many programs world wide.

Along with all of this we are enjoying sharing meals with the local sister missionaries, and they often stop by our apartment for some water and a short chat.

Hermana Valequez from Paraguay and Hermana Renaria from L.A., USA

We walk about a mile to the office everyday and here are some of the sites we enjoy on a daily basis.

There are many, many beautiful tall doors in Buenos Aires and all throughout the areas where we have traveled .  Here is just one of them!

This vine has been blooming for months, and we enjoy it every single day!

We hope all of you are well and we assume that you are all looking forward to spring as we approach our fall here!

We love these pots on the window sill.