We have been so very busy lately and while we have been
hustling somehow it is the middle of June.
We have one year to go! There
have been some pretty interesting developments at the Area Office. We had a change of department managers that
took our manager, Dante Roig, out and brought in Daniel Moreno. We loved Brother Roig, who currently serves
as a counselor in a Stake Presidency and Janet baked chocolate chip cookie bars
for the office for his farewell, which they all loved. His office was just two away from ours and we
love him a bunch. Brother Moreno was
just released as an Area Seventy and will be a great new neighbor. We also had a visit from our boss in SLC,
Mark Lusvardi, who took us to dinner at a very expensive restaurant here and
surprised us with the news that they are taking our program, the Open Chapel,
to all of the Areas in the Church! They
will be using our banners and the instruction manuals that we have written,
once they have been translated. They
will start in Brazil and then go to Africa.
We were really excited to think that this great missionary tool will be
available to the Areas that choose to implement it.
A team of a dozen men from Salt Lake spent two weeks in the
Office to do an audit of each department.
They were not directly involved with us as missionaries, but everyone in
the office was sure walking on eggs. We
did meet a fellow who had been on President Obama’s secret service squad. His name is Ken Shelton and he knew Doug and
Mary in Green River, Wyoming. He is in
charge of church investigations when there is misuse of or disappearance of funds. It all climaxed with the visit of Elder Lynn
G. Robbins of the Presidency of the Seventy who came and gave us a special
devotional message where he challenged us to catch the VISION of what we are
here for, set GOALS to get us excited, and then create specific PLANS to make
it happen. He had been Area President
here before, spoke excellent Spanish, and delivered a powerful message.
We had two other special devotional messages from General
Authorities this month. Elder Gonzalez
called a special meeting and taught us about using the Book of Mormon in all of
our work and challenged all of the workers here in the office to learn English,
“the language of the Restoration.” Elder
Vinas also gave us a beautiful devotional about his life. He is 68 years old and has been a Seventy in
the 1st Quorum for 18 years, which he referred to as suffering for
18 years in joy. He was a counselor to
Elder Holland when they were together in Chile and is a wonderful, humble man
who reminded us that numbers and reports can help us measure performance, but
the souls of individuals are what really count to our Father in Heaven.
We sneaked off after a day at the office to see the
Argentine Ballet Folklorico Nacional.
This group of 36 dancers gave a WOW performance, gratis, of many
different dances from periods of the history of Argentina. We got great seats and it was truly
amazing. One of our favorites was when a
man and lady danced a Tango on top of table about the size of a card
table. The footwork was so precise, it had
to be, and the energy was so powerful, we could never figure how they didn’t
fall off of the table or tip it over.
The missionary work is going very well! We are booked solid for every Saturday and
Sunday for the rest of the calendar year through December 6 for presentations
of the Capilla Abierta. We just trained
two new couples to start up the program in the Santiago Chile South Mission and
the Buenos Aires Argentina South Mission.
They are great couples, one from the States and one from right here in
Argentina.
We have been trying to do our part with people we know. We shared the gospel with our friends at the
fruit shop, Robin and Victoria. They are
from Bolivia and are rather illiterate which makes reading the tracts and the
Book of Mormon a challenge, but he has been to church and prays and we will be
patient, like I said earlier, we have a year.
Janet shared a Book of Mormon with a friendly lady who washes sidewalks
across the street and works as a maid at the hotel.
We enjoy sharing the gospel each weekend with brand new
people. It is a great blessing to know
that there are so many beautiful people in every little ward or branch that we
visit. Last week, on Fathers’ Day we had
to speak in Sacrament Meeting, which we do about twice a month. When we had finished, the primary kids had
presents for all of the fathers and they gave me an Argentina baseball cap in
the colors of the flag of Argentina, and just in time for the World Cup, which
dominates everything right [now. The
people here are really into their soccer!
