Sister Lewis

Last night when my husband and I were out on a date, I received a phone call from Elder Godfrey. He said that he was sorry to bother me, but that neither he nor our other assistant had been able to get hold of my husband.

He told me that we had a “waiter” in Virginia and we had just received word that she was expected in the morning. I was on the train at the time with my husband and it was really hard to hear, so I told him that I would have Presidente call him back.

When we arrived at home, Presidente returned the call. I figured that this meant that our plans to go into the city on Saturday had fallen apart. However, my husband said that he thought we would still have time in the afternoon.

We arrived at the airport this morning and found an incredible number of cars and people. It wasn’t until we went inside and looked at the flight schedule that we realized that four international flights had arrived within 30 minutes of each other.

I was very worried about Sister Lewis. The immigrations hall at the Ezeiza Airport is very intimidating. All I could do was imagine this brand new sister missionary with limited English waiting among these thousands of arrivals, having no idea where to go or what to do. I asked him if he remembered where she was from. I wondered if she had traveled alone before and mostly just waited with a prayer in my heart that she would be alright.

After about an hour, my husband told me to wait where I was standing. I thought that he was going to check the order of the flight arrivals. I had been watching luggage tags for members of the flight that she was on.

A few minutes later, someone came up from behind me and grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around.

“Mom! I’m here!!!”

It was a most incredible shocking moment to which I responded with a ton of tears.

When I had pulled myself together, Presidente said, “Okay, let’s go.”

I was even more confused, “What about Sister Lewis?” I asked. And they both went into a fit of laughter.

“There is no Sister Lewis.”

return, report, restart

The zone leaders returned to the mission home today to evaluate their goals and the progress of their zones this month AND to set new goals for next month.

We are enjoying the break outside. It will rain again tonight and the temperatures are going down to 8 degrees C again the beginning of the week. Winter is taking her time saying goodbye.

  

However, many trees and flowers blooming all over the city, and it smells wonderful.

 

Generally, the missionaries are still wearing sweaters or vests for their daily work, but obviously, that is not the case for most of the zone leaders today.

 

Since it was a short meeting, ie four hours, we did not have lunch at the mission home like we normally do for the zone leaders council.

  

We did have ice cream sundaes again, but not real Argentine ice cream.

moreeeeno

Last the best of all the gang?

Even though we planned the zone interviews in conjunction with interviews that Presidente had previously scheduled with the stake and district presidents,  it turned out that Moreno is number one in the mission this month.

  

All of the chapels have some kind of soccer playing area. Since it was such a

gorgeous day, we decided to have lunch on the paved area next to the field.

It was a day of congratulations and celebration. Someday I’ll have to post a whole blog about Argentine ice cream. In the meantime, I’ll just say that the missionaries were very happy when Presidente and Elder Godfrey started making banana splits for dessert. They would have been happy to have had any kind of dessert as it is a rarity at mission events…ice cream…that’s the best.

   

Then it was back to the purpose of our meeting.

Today we completed about 3000 minutes of interviews. It truly was a pleasure this month to talk with each and every missionary, individually and collectively. Presidente took this picture of me giving my message for the tenth time. He gives a customized spirit-filled message to each zone, but my message is pretty much the same, and I still get nervous every single time. Thankfully, I don’t get nervous chatting with the missionaries individually, and I especially love how they are all helping me improve my Spanish.

The Marvelous Moreno Missionaries

chivvvvvilcoy

Although we drove a couple of hours out to the campo for our interviews with the Chivilcoy missionaries, many of the elders had even longer travel times. Several sets of missionaries endured lengthy bus rides, and the assistants had elders arriving at their pension at all hours of the night and very early morning. I think they ended up with ten by this morning. In spite of all of that, they are all here, happy to be together. Because they are all so spread out, this is a great reunion.

 

 

Elder Workman and Elder Fish live the farthest away in General Villegas.

 

 

  

 

Elder Marshall used his experience and talents to sort out our technical difficulties.

Our senior missionaries that work in the campo help out with the branches. The missionaries that live nearby love to visit them, especially on their P-days.

 

 

All of the chapels that I have been to have high fences surrounding them, including this one, even though things are very “tranquillo” in the campo.

voting day

It is voting day in Argentina. Actually, it is illegal not to vote. Therefore, about 29 million people went to the polls today. It has been the law in Argentina since 1912. If you don’t vote, you are fined and also there are some civil rights penalties, but I don’t actually know what they are. Everybody votes. The sale of alcohol is prohibited for 24 hours and many businesses are closed for the day. Personally, I loved the google icon that showed up today on google.com.ar.

Cristina won her re-election bid for president.
She is the first elected female president of Argentina. She was elected in 2007 following her husband’s term of office. This time there were six others running against her, but it was hard to tell who they were. I think she had a great ad campaign. This picture was taken driving on the freeway today and I only just realized that two of her ads are in the photo!

 

I don’t know anything about her politics, but I did read that she is an advocate for human rights, poverty awareness and health improvement. She loves beautiful clothes and always wears high heels. After her husband died, (a year ago this week) she decided to only wear black. It is said that she seldom wears the same outfit twice and has been seen in over 200 different black outfits.

 

Her actual residence is only a few miles from the mission home. We normally drive by it several times a week, but all we can really see is a high brick wall. The Casa Rosada is the effective seat of government and located downtown in the Plaza de Mayo where there is plenty of celebrating going on tonight.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_Fern%C3%A1ndez_de_Kirchner
http://www.idea.int/vt/compulsory_voting.cfm
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/