Christmas

We had a very quiet Christmas.  We joined the other senior missionaries for a potluck supper Christmas Eve and a potluck brunch Christmas morning.  Lots of good food.  After dinner Christmas Eve we sat around and sang for about two hours.  We had 4 very good guitar players there with 3 guitars, so a couple of them had to take turns.  It was a lot of fun.  We didn't exactly miss family because it was so very different from our usual Christmas that it almost didn't seem like it was happening.  Blaine and I spoke at a ward the Sunday before Christmas, and they didn't have a Christmas program.  I didn't do much cooking, although I made 13 dozen Christmas cookies, and one pan of triple layer fudge.  Blaine wanted be to make that many cookies, so he helped frost them.  We gave them to the people at work and the other missionaries.  I spent most of Christmas reading the December Ensign and over the last couple of weeks we watched about 6 of the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas concerts that I have on DVD.  We had plenty of time to contemplate the greatest gift of all that our Father in Heaven gave to us, the gift of His precious Son, so that we might repent of our sins and live with Him again.

This was the extent of our decorating and present buying.  The nativity is from Pomaire, the pottery town.

Los Andes

Last Sunday we drove to Los Andes, NE of Santiago, with another couple to deliver a package to the sister of a woman in their ward in Utah.  The sister in Chile is Hermana Frias.  She lives in a century old row house.  It was fun to see the inside of a Chilean home.  The original hardwood floors and 10 foot ceilings.  She had a beautiful little garden out back with fruit trees and a swimming pool!  It was the home she grew up in.  She fixed us a wonderful dinner, but would not sit and eat with us.  She insisted on serving us.  Anyway, when it was time to leave we couldn't open the door because the lock was broken.  There was no other way to get out of the house to the street.  All the front windows were barred, and there was no one living in either house next door so we couldn't climb the backyard fence and go through their home.  Blaine and Elder Macdonald decided the only thing to do was take the door off the hinges.  Because the opening was a little off square, it took them almost an hour to get the door out.  They took the broken piece out of the lock and put everything back together.  It was a good thing we were there, because there was no way for someone to get the door open from the outside.  They would have had to break down the door.  Hermana Frias told Sandy Macdonald and I that if we would come and visit again she would teach us how to make empanadas.  I hope we get a chance to take her up on that.

Here is a picture of Hermana Frias.

Mistletoe

The trees around Providencia are loaded with mistletoe, and no one here seems to know what it is.  Blaine has been studying the mistletoe for weeks trying to figure out how he was going to get it out of the trees.  He finally found a bunch that was relatively low, right across the street.  There was a ladder in the church parking lot, so he asked security if he could use it.  He explained the custom to them, and they laughed and laughed.  Blaine harvested a bunch, and made up little sprigs of mistletoe with ribbon to give to all the senior couples at Family Home Evening last week.  We took a sprig to the office and asked everyone if they knew what it was, they all looked puzzled and asked, "a plant?"  We demonstrated how it worked in their office doorways.  Jaime suggested we go to all the doors in the building, then Blaine would get lots of kisses.  I think they were all shaking their heads at the crazy American custom.

Christmas Baking

Today I made Christmas sugar cookies.  It was an interesting experience.  The sugar here is very coarse, so I pulverized it in the blender to make it finer.  The vanilla flavoring is weak, so it changes the taste of the cookies a little, but all in all they taste pretty good.  My oven is very small, and I have two small cookie sheets.  The cookie sheets hold 6-8 cookies, depending on the size and arrangement.  One of the cookie sheets is too big to fit on the oven rack, but I discovered that I could take out the rack and slide the cookie sheet into the grooves and it works fine.  So, every other batch of cookies, I had to take out the oven rack and slide in the pan.  Then for the next batch I had to put the oven rack back in.  This is the way I made 12 dozen cookies.  I missed my kitchen-aid mixer, but I did remember how to make cookies without one!

Here is a picture of my tiny kitchen.  I'm not complaining, I know I have it pretty good compared to a lot of missionaries in other countries, but it is still a bit of a challenge to adapt to cooking here.

This picture was taken when the kitchen counters were free of clutter.  It doesn't look like this now, so I have even less room to cook in!

Music

I started the week with zero, and ended the week with 5 piano students.  It will be interesting teaching in Spanish!

Tuesday night I was asked to play my violin & sing for a group of people coming to see the temple from Dichato (one of the towns destroyed by the tsunami last February).  The sister missionaries that asked me, wanted me to play for 45 minutes, I told them I only knew 3 songs on the violin.  Another sister played a keyboard for me, and we played some Christmas songs & I sang a couple--We ended up taking up about 35 minutes.  I'm a firm believer that if I practice what I can, the Lord will fill in the rest.

Christmas Season

Here are a couple of pictures of the lights on the church office building and the pesebre in front.

Success!

Blaine would like me to tell everyone that he feels like this week was a tremendous success.  We found an outlet for authentic Mexican corn tortillas!  Now Blaine won't waste away to nothing because he'll have lots of tacos!

A Full Temple

Wednesday was a holiday in Chile.  It's a Catholic holiday, but the church office building was closed.  We decided to go to the temple.  We went over for the 10 am session.  The session was full, in fact all the sessions for the rest of the day were full.  We were disappointed we didn't get to go to the temple, but it was wonderful that it was so full!

Christmas Choir

We had an amazing experience tonight.  It was the first night of the pesebre (nativity) exhibit on the temple block.  The open house included a choir concert.  The first choir was a small choir about ward choir level.  The second choir was a choir from the Carabinero training academy.  The Carabineros are the Chilean national police.  They have a very good reputation, being considered the most professional in South America.  Picture this, the stage is filled with young men and women in dress uniform.  The first song they sang was Tell Me the Stories of Jesus.  The choir was not outstanding musically, but the sight of those young people singing simple Primary songs, and religious Christmas songs, was a spiritually uplifting experience after a long, tiring day.

Pomaire

Pomaire is a small town southwest of Santiago.  They make pottery.  All the little tourist shops in Chile have some Pomaire pottery.  We decided to go to the town to get some things.  Elder and Hermana Rundquist went with us.  The main street of the town is filled with little shops selling pottery, it goes on for blocks.

We took the metro to the main bus station in Santiago, Estacion Central, then took a bus to Pomaire.  We left home at 8 am because we didn't know how long it would take.  The bus that took us to Pomaire went the back way and picked up, then dropped off passengers along the way.  The bus ride was 2 hours long.  It was interesting to see everything along the way.  The bus went took back to Santiago, at 5 pm, went back on the freeway, the ride was a little under an hour.  We were glad it was shorter, we were pretty tired by then.

Besides pottery, another thing Pomaire is famous for is a 1 kilo empanada.  We ordered one for lunch and shared it.  It was good, but we certainly didn't need anything else to eat!

This week Blaine had to translate a 30 page training powerpoint into Spanish.  The powerpoint came from SLC and was for PEF leaders, talking about program changes that will be rolled out next year.  It took him a couple of days because it was so detailed.  Then Jane replaced the English with the Spanish in the slides, now we have a new powerpoint.  Blaine figured by the time he got done translate Salt Lake would have sent out their translation.  We haven't received it yet, but Blaine is anxious to see how the translations compare.  He figures he will learn a few new words with the process.