New Year's Eve

Sunday, December 28, 2014

We are back in the saddle with our capacitacions. Only a slight hitch this morning.  We couldn't get our garage door to open. It is an automatic door and our fob would not open it.  Everyone sleeps in on Sunday mornings so there was no chance of someone else going in or out.  Fortunately, the office elders were just coming into Montevideo with the van that they have.  We took them to church and kept the van until we returned home.  It was a big ward and a great spirit.  Their Capilla Abierta will be in two weeks.
Kids are out of school now and people are now taking their vacations.  The beach was packed today!

This was a nice thank you note I found on our neighbor's
door from downstairs.  I walk the stairs for exercise
and noticed they still had their 12 Days on their door,
but then I noticed this note as well.
 "Thank you for sharing faith, Christmas elves"
So, I know of 2 families in this apartment complex
that enjoyed our 12 Days.  

This week is change week. "la semana de los cambios".  Tuesday the oros come in and we feed them breakfast and lunch. Their trainers come in for lunch too.  But, the oros missed their flight in Argentina which was supposed to arrive at 10 am.  They didn't arrive until 1pm.  So we fed the trainers the breakfast instead and cooked 120 hamburgers for lunch that was postponed until 2 pm.
Wed morning breakfast was a "packed lunch" type breakfast so they could get an earlier start to their day.  When the finance missionaries told me what they were having, I decided to make 6 dozen banana muffins the night before.  The elders thanked me on Wed because the sandwiches turned out to be pretty small.

Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Today all those who are changing areas come into Montevideo. This starts at 8 am.  The oros and trainers come too so they can get on their bus that takes them to their area. The valientes also start saying their good byes.

At 2 pm, Hermana Anderson and I went to the mission home to help prepare food for the valiente dinner.  The whole thing, cooking and cleaning up usually takes us til 9 pm.  In between all of this, Mike took some elders and sisters into Sanitorio Americano Emergency for various checkups.

We had to take the medical elders and sisters back to their apartments because the buses quit running after 7pm because of New Year's Eve.  We arrived home at 10:15pm and waited a few minutes for 4 valiente elders to come and slumber with us for the night.  The temple hostel, where our valientes usually stay was also closed for New Year's Eve.  Our missionaries had permission to stay up after midnight to watch the fireworks.  Until then, Elder Burnett led a gospel discussion.

I facetimed with my Mom and shared our Happy New Year fireworks show with her. She was able to start her New Year five hours earlier!  Hermana Orme and Hermana Sanhueza joined us and the elders. Hermana Sanhueza is Hermana Orme's new companion because Hermana Diaz is headed home tomorrow. I did not think the fireworks were as plentiful as on Christmas Eve.  We did have a great show though put on my people on our corner. It was also way smokier this go around, so eventually we had no clear view of the city.  We fell into bed at 12:45 am so that we could get up at 6:30 am and head to the airport to start saying our tearful good-byes once again.

Feliz Año Nuevo!

Christmas Day Silence

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Feliz Navidad!  We woke up this morning to.......

SILENCE!  This was the quietest Christmas morning of my entire life!
No children giggles, no wake-up calls.  There were no cars on the Rambla either.
I turned over and told Mike,  this is too sad. I am going back to sleep.  But then of course I  turned by thoughts to the good things I have and to the birth of my Savior, my Loving Brother and once again reflect on how little I comprehend the significance of His sacrifice.  My gratitude is much though and I hope that my actions are consistent with that gratitude. "I am trying to be like Jesus", as the Primary Song declares.

To brighten the day, I went to mormontabernaclechoir.org and played their Christmas music.
We opened our little group of presents, had breakfast and relaxed a bit.

Rudolph alias Hermana Orme

The Lobo's are temple workers

This was from our upstairs neighbors.

A few more presents under our tree.

Our Christmas gifts. The big box was a propane gas
BBQ grill that fits on our deck and won't smoke out
our neighbors like the other one we bought thinking
we could just use charcoal.  Good idea until we found
out that the bag of charcoal was nothing more than
burnt wood. Charcoal as we know it does not exist
in Uruguay.

Uruguay calendar for 2015.

Hermana Cook liked my pins that I gave to all
my grandsons. They gave these as gifts to
the missionaries this year. 

My Christmas Card Door.
We loved the notes from
our Granite View Ward.

President Ventura and his wife
are the  Temple president and matron.

Around noon we started facetiming with our families at home.  

We so enjoyed watching Christmas morning with them.  

The blessings of living in the United States are not known

until you leave the country.  Our people as a whole are

truly blessed with abundance. I hope that spiritual abundance

equals or more than the obvious physical abundance.

Eveyone back home had a good Christmas day.

The Cook's had Christmas lunch for the
local missionaries.

Hermana Cook got a bike for Christmas.
Her doctor recommended this for her
as exercise. She has feet problems
so walking or running is too painful.

The perfect picture to end our Christmas day.

Our First and Last Christmas Eve in Uruguay

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

We had an absolutely marvelous Christmas Eve! 

Mike was most grateful that our 12 days of Christmas deliveries has come to an end!

The morning was spent doing some baking and putting our present under the tree!

That took all of 1 minute, 

but our present is under the tree!

At 3 pm, the Anderson's, Hermana Orme, Hermana Diaz, the Harris' and the Casa's (they are a local missionary couple that serve in the temple) and of course Mike and I, we went to a retired home for the aged and sang Christmas carols and painted the ladies fingernails. I brought my keyboard and played.   It was a most humbling and rewarding experience. The video is very short. Watch it.

YouTube: Christmas Cheer

After that we finished up our 12 Days and everyone was actually home except for one. We sang Feliz Navidad and I can proudly announce that I know more words to that song now!  

We left at 6 pm and headed to Beatriz Gea's home for the most delicious Asada I have had since being here in Uruguay. We played some music on the piano, Mike talked about Migdal Eder and then we watched the Christmas Story.  After that program we ate all kinds of delicious food.  They are such a wonderful family.  Very much like our own family and I loved every minute of it!

Grandpa & Grandma trying to take a pic
with their grandkids.  Very familiar.

The baby is screaming. She is finished!

I wore my hat all day and as we were delivering
the last of our 12 days, I noticed that I
received alot more attention than usual :)

Baby crying. Mom and Grandma are busy.
Grandma Debbie to the rescue! 

When we left at 10:30pm, they gave us
some presents.  I left them with a jar
of my cookies per their request.

We arrived back to our apartment at 11:15 pm. The Anderson's and Hermana Orme and Diaz joined us in our apartment foyer and with my keyboard we sang Christmas carols for our apartment.  No one came and joined us as we had hoped, but we did our part in sharing the message of Christmas for 12 days with our neighors and friends.  

We sang for about 20 minutes then went upstairs to our apartment to watch the Christmas Eve fireworks.  I have a video but it does it no justice.  You take our 24th of July fireworks and times that by a thousand and the whole city was ablaze.  Pretty spectacular.  

This photo was taken by Hermano Harris.

YouTube Link:  Fireworks Ablazin'

After 1/2 hour the fireworks started to settle down, although alot were still going on for another hour. We facetimed with our family and spent Christmas Eve with them watching and participating with them.  I hope they remember what the Tree of Life symbolizes and why we gave them a necklace or tie pin that has the Tree of Life symbol. They were made in Uruguay and the symbol is found all over Uruguay, but most people do not know what it symbolizes.  That is why we are are in Uruguay. We are helping people come unto Christ.  

I loved watching all the chaos of this special evening and I loved that they showed the video of the Christmas Story.  I went to bed about 3 am and loved this whole day!