Zone Conference, Roger Clawson, Keith & Teri Wilson

This is our Zone Conference May 2010 held in Chuy, we have changes next week and we will see who is still here at the next meeting. We are not expecting a lot of changes but you never know.
The District had a training meeting put on by the Temple Recorder from the Buenos Aries Temple. Since the Temple is closed for remodeling he has some extra time on his hands. His name is Roger Clawson. He is originally from Idaho but has been in Argentina for the past 30 years, he married a girl from Argentina and raised his family in Argentina. He was staying in La Paloma since Rocha does not have many hotels. He offered to give us ride back to La Paloma, we invited him to come to our house the next morning for breakfast. We had German pancakes and this is a picture of Roger as he was leaving La Paloma. We had a great time visiting with him and enjoyed his company.
Elder Keith and Hermana Teri Wilson of Alpine Utah. This is taken by the Montevideo Uruguay Temple where they served 18 months as Temple Missionaries. They returned home on May 22, 2010. They were great friends and a tremendous help to us when we arrived in the Mission. We will miss them very much. They are such loving and wonderful people. They will be missed by many! Thanks for all you did for us!

Meet the new Elders in La Paloma

This is our new Elders here in La Paloma. Elder Bravo is from Peru. He has been on his mission for approximately 13 months, speaks Spanish fluently,:) and understands and speaks a bite of English. He also plays the piano! Our branch is loving that! Elder Morrison is from Arkansas and has been on his mission approximately 9 months. He speaks English very well and is still working on Spanish. He has his work cut out for him here with us. He is our only translator here and does great with the church related Spanish but is tested with some of the real life Spanish. He is doing great so far, but like the rest of our missionaries translators, there are many tests to come. We appreciate so much having them here to help us in our Branch.

Baptism Temple Trip May 7, 2010

This is a picture of all but one of the people from our branch that went on our second official temple trip. From left to right we have Hna. Dominichi, Ruben, Lucia, (granddaughter of Hna Dominichi) and Elizabeth. Hna. Dominichi has been a member for about 30 years but has never been to the temple. Lucia was baptized in March, so this was her first temple trip. Elizabeth was baptized in February. This was Rubens 3rd time to the temple, but his first time to do baptisms. Ruben, Lilian, and I were able to do a session while were were in the temple also.

This was these 3 sisters first time to the temple to do baptisms. We were also able to do baptisms for three of Elizabeth's family members, 4 of Ruben's, and our Relief Society Pres. had 9 of her family members baptized that day. Dan and I have learned how to use the New Family Search program and were able to enter the information for their family members. We can even muddle through it in Spanish too! There is so much family history we can do in the branch, but our biggest challenge is helping the members find the information. They don't keep family records very well here. So that is one of our next "learn how to do it in Spanish" projects.

After the temple we went to the Hostel at the Temple and ate our sack lunches. We were lucky enough to meet this cute young sister, Victoria, (far left). She had done some baptisms that morning also and Dan found out she spoke English. So he asked her help translate for us with our group. Since we didn't have a translator with us. She was happy to help! Turns out she is going to school to be an English Translator, so it was great experience for her and she was great help for us.

Chapel Door Refinishing Project Completed

This is the before picture of the front of our church. Your have to click on the picture to enlarge it to really see how weathered the door, shutters and the gate was. So we turned it into a service project.

This is the after picture. Again you have to click on the picture and enlarge it to fully appreciate how beautiful the doors turned out. Plus Dan cut back the big bush to the right of the porch. Which made a big difference in how much better the church looks.

The wood grain is so beautiful. It really is amazing how pretty the front of the church looks now. This was a huge very time consuming project. There were no power tools used on this project. Just good old fashioned elbow grease and a looooot of time.

We had a Family home evening at the church and had a huge turn out! Around 30 people came. It was scary, the Hnas. were planing the game and we were just going to help. But the Hnas. called and said they were going to be late, so we had to come up with a game in 30 seconds as people we looking at us wondering what we were going to do! I failed to mention there was no one there to translate for us! We we decided to play Pictionary on the chalk board. Every one would be able to participate. Even the younger kids. But we had to try and explain how to play it to the group! Opah! It was a struggle and very stressful. But with our new skills in charades, we finally go the point across. The people had a great time with it. They are so loud here that the roof of the church was popping off. The Hnas. finally showed up 35 minutes late. But who was counting! After it was over Dan and I both had major stress and noise headaches. But they had fun!

This is our Hnas. Espejo & Orme. When it rains here it really rains. We caught them in thier rain attire! They are so patient with the weather.

Did I tell you the weather here is very extreme! This tree may give you the hint that when the wind blows it really blows! It is not fun to ride your bike when the wind is blowing! This winter is going to be scary!