Week 12

Week 12:

Mon. Mar. 5^th: The first Monday of every month there is a special 7:00am session for the employees of the temple (the gardeners, the cooks, the engineers, the laundry and cleaning workers). I went up and helped so they would have enough for the veil. We then went with the Crayks, Cardons, and the Jackmans to a big supermarket. Pres. Crayk drove his SUV. We loaded up on items that aren’t available in the small market close to the temple. We spent $100.00 US. We didn’t have enough cash but mom had our new debt card that Pres. Crayk had brought back from Utah at the end of the break. Halleluiah it worked. Thanks Charlotte for getting our new cards to Pres. Crayk and thanks Pres. Crayk for bringing them to us. We finally have access to our bank account. Mom had to air mail a document to England, the book on infant observation that she helped write is going to be translated into Spanish in Mexico and she had to give her permission. That makes about 4 languages that it has been translated into now. Well, on the way home from the supermarket we stopped at the post office in the building where the bookstore is, the owner has cashed 2 checks for us while we waited for our new cards. Mom didn’t have an airmail envelope so we went inside and bought one from the woman who had cashed our checks. Mom started a conversation with her about the fact that one of the US presidential candidates is a Mormon and then gave her a book of Mormon. Great job mom! That’s number three. It turns out the woman is Jewish. Her father left Germany on the last ship out in 1939. There are only about 70 Jews here in Cochabamba she told us. Most are older. We explained that the book of Mormon is a story of a Jewish family that left Jerusalem 600 BC and traveled to the Americas and it is the story of the House of Israel here in the Americas. She said she would read it. We ended the day with a combined (Americans and Latins) family home evening with all the temple missionaries. Tues. Mar. 6^th: This morning we went with Marcelo, the young man in charge of getting all the temple missionaries their permanent visas, to the blood bank to have our blood drawn. Remember last week we had gone to immigration to finally apply for our permanent visas only to realize we did not have our medical certificate. On Thursday we can come back and pick up the results of the blood test. We then went and did our temple shift. We only had 6 men. We had to ask 3 of the men missionaries from the morning shift to come up and help us. Wed. Mar. 7th: We spent the morning in the temple getting a start on our assignment to do temple work outside of our daily temple shift. During our temple shift I was assigned to be the veil coordinator for the first time. Boy is that a lot of work. Thurs. Mar. 8^th: So we went back to the doctors to pick up the results and found out that all of the women were given the day off because it was woman’s day a kind of holiday. So we will come back tomorrow.

These are 2 children staying in the guest house. Can you see the boy has a tag on his coat pocket that says, "Futuro Misionero"

Fri. Mar. 9^th: Hurray we got our medical certificates. We are now ready to go back to immigration next Tuesday. We are now on our 8th visit to one place or another. Sat. Mar. 10^th: We went early to the 7:00am session, then to the open Sat. market, then to the supermarket close to the temple. The temple is closed this afternoon for a kind of regional conference. Every stake in Bolivia, I think 24 stakes and 10 districts are having stake or district conferences today and tomorrow. Pres. Jackman and I went to the priesthood leadership meeting together this afternoon. Our wives then came in the evening for the adult session. There were some great talks. I got about 95% of everything that was said. I missed some of the jokes. Sun. Mar. 11^th: On the way to conference our taxi driver was Maricio, the same driver who had taken us to the airport to get our bags. I was sitting in the front seat and mom and the Jackmans were in the back. I told him mom had a present for him. She couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. I finally turned around and mouthed the words “Book of Mormon”. Mom got it and began explaining that she thought he should be a Mormon and wanted to give him a book of Mormon. Number 4. The general session of conference was amazing. We started the meeting with the stake president conducting and handling all of the stake business then the meeting was shifted to a satellite transmission from Salt Lake City. Every stake center was watching the same transmission. It was being broadcast in 4 different languages. Spanish, Quichua, Amayra, and English. Two of the talks were from native speakers in the Seventy. They both made salutations in Quichua and Amayra, but gave their talks in Spanish. They gave great talks. Sister Wixom, the general primary president spoke and finally Elder Holland. He bore his testimony in Spanish and even though his Spanish wasn’t polished the power of his testimony was evident. I marvel at the technology being used by the church to bless the lives of the members all over the world.

Stake conference: Can you see mom she is the only one with white hair.

We are amazed at the growth of the church and to think that when we were missionaries 40 years ago there were only a handful of members and to see stake centers full is awesome. On the way home we started talking to the driver and asked him if he knew where the Mormon Temple was? He said yes and then mom asked him what he knew about the Mormons. He said nothing. So I said, “ well you have a car full of Mormons, you can ask us any question you would like.” He asked if the angel on top of the temple was solid gold. We explained that it was fiberglass and had a thin layer of gold over it. We then explained why we are called Mormons and about the book of Mormon. He said he wanted one so when we got the guest house mom and the Jackmans stayed with him and I went in got him a book of Mormon. Number 5. We visited the Kennedys and the Delgados in the evening. Sister Kennedy has some high blood pressure problems and Sister Delgado is having some back pain. Mom had made cupcakes this afternoon and we then took cupcakes to everyone here in the guest house. Great week we love this work. PS: The recession has been hard on many small companies these last few years. Krosswoods, the company that I sold part of my ownership in, has not been immune. They are going through a reorganization and are not able to continue paying us the monies that we had been receiving. We have listed our home in Mt. Pleasant and are going to sell it. Even though we will miss having a great gathering place, we will still have the wonderful memories we have made there.