40 Year Reunions

Saturday – February 8, 2014

The Bingham’s picked us up this morning and we traveled with them to the “other mission”.  This was perfect timing for both of us.  Our main purpose was to observe how the “Open House” for wards was set up and organized.  The other mission has the materials for six weeks, then our mission has them for 6 weeks.  It just so happened that these presentations were happening in Mike’s areas that he had served in many moons ago.  It was very very hot and humid today. Even I was sweating! After the 3 hour drive, we helped the Bingham’s with setting up a new apartment for a couple that was coming in on Monday. 

Still climbing ladders, no matter the model!

Look familiar? No one else seemed to know how.

We helped them hang curtains and install washers and dryers and cleaned up the apartment  We checked on some missionaries in their apartments and we drove a lot!  What gorgeous countryside.  Everything is very green and there are cows everywhere.  There are lots of crops growing too.  God made Uruguay for the cows, so the saying goes.  The open house was in a city named Paysandu.  We were on the tail end of the evening, but our group had probably 10 people that went through the presentation.  They have a family history center and the sister was very good.  They still do microfilm for research.  Not sure yet if that is because they don’t have records online for their ancestors yet or if they don’t know how to do online research.  We finished up and stayed in a hotel for the night.  We had our first milanesa meal.  It is a breaded fried steak.  Pretty good, but I took off most of the fried stuff.  I thought maybe we would get a good night sleep.  Mike did.  He loved the bed and zonked right out. Our window and head of the bed was right next to the street and the night life was going full bore because the evening was cooler and it wasn’t raining.  I think things settled down about 3:30 am. 

 

Sunday – February 9, 2014

Up at 6 am and enjoyed a nice hot, long shower.  The shower is our apartment needs a new shower head so it is not very good.  This one was nice.  We have a small water heater too so you can’t take a linger, longer shower.  

Elder Bingham

The hotel had a nice breakfast and we were out the door by 7:30 am.  It was a 2 hour drive to Fray Bentos.  Wow, what a great experience for Mike to return to a place where he was part of the beginning of the church growth.

Here is his journal entry:

After I walked into the ward building, an older brother came up to me and looked at my name tag and said, "We had another Elder Burnett that worked here in Fray Bentos."  I asked if that was about 40 years ago and he said yes.  When I told him that was me he got quite excited and insisted on taking a picture with me.  I slipped into a meeting and soon noticed that the person behind me looked a lot like Daniel Montaldo, who was sister Canti's grandson.  40 years ago she asked me to see if we couldn't try and get Daniel and her other Grandson Santiago Rios active. We did and Daniel later became the Bishop and first stake president in Fray Bentos.  I met him at general Conference in Salt Lake about 25 years ago when he came as stake president to conference and we visited him in Fray Bentos about 18 years ago when we picked up Justin from his mission in Argentina.  Daniel died about 5 years ago.  Well sure enough, it was Daniel's son, who is also named Daniel and he was there with his wife and kids.  Later in the meeting they sustained him as counselor to the new Bishop.  After the meeting Daniel Montaldo's oldest daughter came up and introduced herself to me also.  

Next we headed to sacrament meeting and the stake president must have heard that I was there because he asked me to give the opening prayer.  The stake president reorganized 2 of the 5 wards in the stake.  When I was here forty years ago it was just 1 ward.  The stake president made fond and kind remarks about the great person, former bishop and stake president, Daniel Montaldo.  After the meeting a number of old members of the ward that remembered me came up and we had a wonderful reunion including with sister Canti, who was quite old by now. But she remembered me and we shared hugs and kisses.  Santiago Rios, Daniel's cousin was also there and we shared fond remembrances.  He now travels to Montevideo once a week to work in the Temple. 

After church we went to Mirta Diaz's home.  She was our maid when I served here. Though I had visited her when I was last here 18 years ago, and she heard and recognized my voice after 25 years and came running, this time she did not recognize me at all.  She looked at my name tag and still refused to believe it was me.  It wasn't until Debbie walked up and she recognized Debbie, that she would believe it was really me.

Elder Burnett and Mirta Diaz

 I still had hair on my head and a mustache 18 years ago when she saw me last.  It was a sweet reunion.  She opened up her ancient hymn book and she had my picture pasted inside.  She immediately called Rosalba, who I had baptized to let her know I was here.  I wish we would have had time to go see her also.  But we had to get on the road.  

On our way out of town Elder Bingham stopped to avoid running over a paper airplane that some kids were throwing.  But the car behind us swung around us and crushed it.  So Elder Bingham pulled over and got some paper out of his trunk and spent 10 or 15 minutes showing the boys how to make various paper airplanes.  Before we left he had met the mother and had secured an appointment for the sister missionaries to teach the family. Before we got out of town, he had talked to the service station attendant, whose friend apparently went on a mission to Mexico and set an appointment for the elders to teach him.  What an example to us of how to share the gospel. 

After church and visiting it was another long but scenic drive back to Montevideo church.  We had dinner, planned our week and finished visiting with family that we didn’t catch on Friday.