Choking Down the Bread

Have you ever had bread get stuck in your throat and had a hard time swallowing it?  Well, that’s how we have been for a few months.  There are two houses in Melo that need to be painted and we were not looking forward to the project.  But it is finally over.  Yippee!!!!

We started off Monday with the simple task of getting ready for the paint project.  All we had to do was go to the store and purchase the paint.  Until Humberto called….Sunday afternoon and asked if we could take him to the Doctor on Monday at 3:00 P. M.  No problem we had plenty of time to do that.  We also wanted to help the Duffin family get their phones set up.  But we had plenty of time to do that in the morning, until we also decided to take a de-humidifier to the Sisters in La Paz.  We still had plenty of time to do that and still go to lunch with the Duffins.   We took the Duffins to the phone company and then dropped them off at a shopping center on our way to the La Paz house.  About half way there we found out the appointment was at 2:00, so now we were in a big hurry.

We were able to make it work but had to skip lunch.  When we arrived to pick up Humberto they were making empanadas but they weren’t done yet.  They sure looked good about 2:00 in the afternoon when I was already hungry.  After the doctor appointment took way too long we were in luck with the empanadas as you can see.  They were made with hamburger and grapes inside… way delicious.

We picked up the paint and supplies on the way home.  Wednesday we took off for Melo, a 400 kilometer drive, at about 8:00 A. M.  We got to Melo at about 1:30 P. M. and got to work with our crew.  It only took us about 2 hours to paint the Centenario Elder’s home, a fairly large apartment.  The missionaries were exceptional and did a wonderful job.  They then went to their apartments and got ready to do real missionary work for the evening.

After that we had headed for the Zone Leader house which has four bedrooms, 2 baths etc.  The Zone Leaders had to take off to travel to Rio Bronco overnight to do a baptismal interview so they left us the keys so we could paint the front room that evening.  We got done about 7:30 P.M. and headed to the motel.  We hit the hay tired and exhausted.  I was very grateful for Ibuprofen.

Wednesday morning we met the missionaries at 8:00 A. M. to finish the Zone Leader apartment.  They arrived ready to go and really jumped into the task.  The Zone Leaders got back from Rio Bronco about 9:00 A. M. and helped us finish.  By 11:00 we had it all done except two small bedrooms.  We had to get to the motel to get changed for the ride home so the missionaries agreed to paint the other two rooms later.  What great missionaries.  They work so hard to be successful.  It is a privilege to work with them.  That left us nothing more than a 5 hour drive on a two lane highway clogged with semi trucks and we were finished for the day.  But we had finally choked down that piece of bread, it didn’t go down easy but it did go down.

Thursday we were pretty tired but we still had the energy to take the Capilla Abierta kit to the Colon/Ferrocarril building for their Capilla Abierta.  We finished out the day doing inspection in two of the houses that are close to the office.  Friday morning we finished the Este zone inspections and headed to Castillos for the weekend.  On the way we dropped off some stuff at the Rocha house.  The four Elders were in exceptionally good humor and we had a great time talking to them about their areas.  I think I’ll ask the mission president if he’ll transfer us there.

Friday afternoon and evening we had a dinner appointment with the Lopez family.  I remember that in my first mission that we were counseled to spend only 45 minutes on charlas and an hour and half tops for dinner and charla.  Well, we spent a little more time than that.  We started out with watching Jhonny finish our painting.  What a great artist!  You can tell how much he loves to paint in his work.
Then we went shopping.  We had a good visit while dinner was being cooked and then feasted on an asado or BBQ.  It was delicious.  We ate too much including the meat, salads and Renee’s hot fudge cake dessert.  There wasn’t much left over.  We are really going to miss the Lopez family.  We got done about 10:00 P.M.  It was a great evening.

Saturday we made some really good visits to some of the members.  Lunch was at Narda’s as usual where she served us “pastel” or something that is more or less a cross between Sheppard’s pie and chicken pot pie.  I can’t figure out why I keep gaining weight?  Saturday afternoon we again helped with the branch activity that included a scavenger hunt and ping pong.  We finished off the night at the home of Tito and Patricia that included a video of the song, “I Know That My Redeemer Lives”.

Today we had pretty good attendance at Church and then took some pictures afterwards.  We really love the people in Castillos and it is going to be difficult to leave them.  Renee gave a talk in Church on the Tree of Life and did a real good job.  To round out the day we had another asado at Narda’s.  It’s kind of a long story, why we got fed twice by Narda, but let’s just say that we really didn’t need the food, although we didn’t turn it down.  That would be crazy talk!

This week was spring break so the roads were packed coming home.  It took an extra hour but we made it okay.  Now we are ready to get a good night’s sleep so we can be ready for changes next week.  We had a wonderful busy week and really enjoyed all the time we were able to spend with the missionaries.  We look forward to another one.

The highlight of the week was hearing one of the missionaries tell us that his parents are getting baptized at home.  I told him that was one of the highlights of my mission.  He said it was one of the highlights of his mission as well. Go figure.

Thanks for all of you support.
We love you all.
Gordon and Renee