Farewell Until Our Next Mission

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

How does one summarize two years of serving our Heavenly Father with your eternal companion with no worldly distractions?
You can't.
I have witnessed that the work of the Lord is a grand miracle.These young missionaries are the miracle workers and Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are with them.
When I watch these great leaders, I know that our future is bright.They are my examples and my friends.I love them all!
I know that senior couples are desperately needed and plead that the "baby boomers" make the effort to serve a mission, now.

Because a picture is worth a thousand words, a video should be worth more!

Video: Our Mission In Uruguay

Video: Our Farewell Testimonies and Our Grand Homecoming

Good-bye Uruguay!

Hello my Family!

Our Mission Christmas Devotional

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

The best devotional of the year! The music and testimonies were wonderful.  What a bitter-sweet day for Mike and I.  We shared our last testimonies with our wonderful missionaries.  Elder Martinez presented a wonderful short video of our 2 years to the whole mission.  At first, it was during the devotional, but too his dismay the video quit 1/2 way through.  I could tell he was so disappointed. After the Christmas program, we had a wonderful meal prepared by Hermana Cook and served by the Stake relief society sisters.  I noticed Elder Martinez was not present.  He had gone into the office to redo the video.  He was successful and it was presented in the cultural hall after our meal.  We both were in tears as we watched this presentation so lovingly made for us.  Everyone cheered after it was over.  We had the great opportunity to shake hands and take pictures with most of the missionaries.

Below are several videos of this day.
Video by Elder Martinez: Burnett's Many Hats and Purses
Video: Christmas Devotional
Video: Christmas Devotional Testimonies

Hermana Young

Hermana Dowdle

Elder Fonseca

Our Boys Are Back in Town!

December 7 - 13, 2015
Wow!  We are on final countdown.  Monday I baked 2 cookies each for all our missionaries to put in their Christmas sack.

On Wednesday, Justin, Travis, and Dallin flew in to visit Uruguay and Argentina.  They also wanted to make sure the mission was going to let us go home. :)
What a grand week we had together!

Video: A Week With My Boys

Horses and Goats Replace Camels and Oxen

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Our final Capilla Abierta was held in Maldonado Centro.  This event was a bit different because they set up a live "manger scence" and invited people to come.  We did not have the various organizations do any presentations because there were not enough people to do both. It was well attended and many of the comments written on the reference cards were very positive.

YouTube: Escena del pesebre

L to R: Hermana Tejada and Hermana Townley

Had to Say GoodBye to a Nurturing Friend

It was a sad day to say good-bye to this friend today.

I fed and nurtured her for two years
and she in return has fed many.

My sourdough yeast :(

Friday November 27, 2015

Concilio was canceled due to another bus strike. The temple group has been on vacation for 2 weeks while the temple was closed. It was a great opportunity to go see the "red cathedral" that we have always wanted to see.  Unfortunately, the inside was not open. We also went to the Uruguay Legislation Palace.  What great architecture.  They don't make things like the used to!

Red Cathedral

Elder Hokanson served here in Deseret, so we brought him to visit the chapel.

This is a document signed by everyone who attended
the dedication of this first chapel in Uruguay.

David O McKay's signature is the first signature at the very top.

Video: Day Trip into Montevideo

Semana de cambio  Change Week

Tuesday - Thursday December 1-3, 2015

Our last change week. We are the Valientes, but we are not going home with the others. We will go home after the Christmas devotional.  My feelings are so jumbled.
We had very small groups coming and going.  Mary, our head cook was not available this week to help, but it worked out fine because we only had 6 new elders come in.  Only 4 elders were leaving, so President Cook made it easy on us and instead of cooking our own valiente dinner, he took us out to a restaurant.  No cooking!  No dishes! Muy facil!  Also, becaause we are bringing all the missionaries in by bus for the the Christmas devotional, they decided not to hire the private buses for change week.  The missionaries just took a bus to Tres Cruces (the main bus terminal) and took another bus out to their new area.  That made for a pretty quiet change week and less photos.  And of course as we have been saying, this was our last change week.

YouTube: Valientes December 2015

Elder Xavier is our new financer. (middle)

L to R: Elders Oliveira, Martinez, Cruz, Xavier, Lawson, Briceño, Cuessy

L to R: Elders Espinoza, Marcelo, Martinez, Quezada

Yummy shrimp and salmon.