Welcome Home

First, we hope you all had a wonderful Easter.  It is such a good time to get together with family and enjoy the love we share.  We can hardly wait to get home to do it next year.  I must say that the Jelly Beans that I received from home are soooo appreciated.  Also, I hope we appreciate the blessings the Savior gave us through his Atonement and Resurrection.  As I said today in Church: “where would we be and who would we be without the Savior."  I hate to think of it.

Whenever we have an odd number of missionaries, we request part time missionaries from the Stakes.  I often have the opportunity to pick them up or take them home.  It is one of the best parts of our job.   Our friend Pablo served for a month and did a great job.  You can tell how happy his family was to see him.  He plans to put his papers in this summer.  Some mission president is going to be real grateful.

Another one of our jobs is to keep the missionary apartments in good repair including appliances.  For some reason, the missionaries really like blenders.  Here the assistants were more than excited to get a new blender.  They couldn’t stop talking about it.  I guess it doesn’t take much to keep them happy.

The new missionaries came in on Tuesday.  Well, they were supposed to come in on Tuesday.  One of the sisters leaving from Salt Lake had airplane trouble in Miami and didn’t get here until Wednesday.  We only had four missionaries this time including one Elder from here in Uruguay that is waiting on a visa to serve in the Salt Lake City West Mission.  So the change went pretty smooth.  The new missionaries were enthusiastic and excited to get going.  I made a few shots of them milking alfajores.  This has kind of become a tradition to show the new missionaries how to do it.  You can also tell that the office missionaries don’t have any problem taking part.

I decided to put in some extra pictures that I call “the faces of Elder Childs”.  A few things you need to know about Elder Childs: 1. He loves being a missionary. 2. Loves milking alfajores and 3. We love him.  These shots show just how much joy there is in the mission.

Now for the ones going home.  We only had a half a dozen going home.  The sad part is that all but one of them is from South America, so the chance of seeing them again is diminished.  Sister Mejia and Sister Alonzo both lived next door to us.  We attended several charlas with them and fed them a few times.  They are great missionaries and we will miss them.  Next we have the Elders.  We managed to work with them several times and became very close.  In fact, as I have said before, it gets harder and harder to say good bye each change.  I can’t think of them without tears coming to my eyes.  I hope you can see how much we love each other by the pictures.  We didn’t get the usual airport pictures as they left on several different flights and we were not there to see them all off.  I’m telling you, it gets harder every time we say good bye.

As we were waiting to send off some of the missionaries there was some commotion at the arrival gate including TV cameras.  It was the Peñarol soccer team coming in.  This is real big news in Uruguay.  About 90% of the people in Uruguay are Peñarol fans.  The rest are just misguided.  Maybe we can convert them at the same time we baptize them.

To end the week we spent Friday inspecting apartments in the Maronas zone including cutting grass on some of the apartments, checking heaters and smoke alarms and doing general repairs.  I took another picture of the “bird of paradise” flower.  This is so cool.   I really wish I could grow it in Blackfoot.

Saturday we took a much needed rest and cleaned the house.  And I had nine shirts to iron.  It was good to take a break.  This morning we were on the road by 8:00 A.M. to do a presentation in Canelones which is about an hour from our apartment.  This is a community in the country.  The people are so friendly and eager to help.  Our presentation went well and we look forward to an exciting time in two weeks.  Renee not only did her normal presentation but also spoke in Sacrament Meeting.  She is getting braver all the time.  I am proud of her and all of her efforts.  I would say that our Spanish is not quite ready for General Conference but the people do seem to nod once in awhile indicating that at least they act like they understand.

So how do you end off a perfect week?  How about a turkey dinner with the Temple missionaries in the afternoon and dinner with the Sisters at night?  Ya, it works for me.  The Wibergs and Atkinsons go home next month so this may be our last hoorah.   We try to do the dinners with the Sisters when the Sister Training Leaders come in for training.  It is always good to see Sister Campbell and Sister Luker.  It doesn’t hurt to have Sister Perales and Sister Anderson here also.  We had so much fun.  It was so good to hear about the people that they are teaching.

Well another change is passed.  We have a lot to do in the next change that will keep us hoping.  We hope we have the energy.  We love you all.

Love Gordon and Renee