Cueca dancing at the Barrio (ward)

September 11 is the biggest holiday in Chile. It is their Independence Day. It is a grand celebration, starting the week before with a celebration at the church meeting house followed with a beautiful catered lunch at work, with speeches, singing of the national song, cueca (kway-kuh) dancing (the national dance), and lots of music everywhere; singing with accordians, guitars, drums and primitive resonating music boxes we'd never seen before. Everywhere there were decorations in the street, beautiful food, fairs, pageants and rodeos. The week before the celebration is a re-enactment of the "coup". It's best just to stay inside that night, because it is not pleasant with a lot of looting, etc. But the following weekend is the most wonderful celebration. Friday morning begins with a great military parade and cueca dancing in the street.
You better sure you bought all your groceries the day before, at 4:30pm everything closes to make ready for a full day of celebration.

Elder D, in his travelings about found a very nice cab driver who was very helpful helping him find things he needed to be mister fixit in our apartment. He, over a couple of weeks began talking with him about the church. Long story short, he turned him into a "contact", and quickly found some wonderful Elders from our mission right in the neighborhood to begin teaching LR and his wife and daughter, who has a little girl and lives with them. This is a photo of their first day at church. It just happened to be ward conference, so the stand was filled with stake officers, and they had a large group attending the ward, the talks were wonderful and everyone was very warm in welcoming to the five of us. It is now a month later and they haven't missed a single Sunday. The Elders say they're learning a lot about the church and ask many questions. We hope they will come to know and love as we do, Heavenly Father's wonderful plan for all of his children here on earth.

Wa

Sunday, August 23, 2009
Today we left our apartment early to attend a ward some distance from our usual ward. We walked two blocks to the bus stop, rode the bus for 3 miles, went below ground to the metro (three flights of stairs) and rode the subway for about 30 miles, and flagged a taxi to get us to the chapel. (He was somewhat lost, but finally got us there.) We did a dry run yesterday, so we could be on time for the meeting. Yesterday we missed our metro stop - went one stop too far. Glad we made the mistake yesterday. Today was no problem, even with the taxi driver being lost for a bit, we were 30 minutes ahead of the meeting time. The bishop and his councilors were just beginning their planning meeting and so we got to introduce ourselves to them. I wandered into the chapel, a large room with folding chairs all set up for the meeting. I could see no piano at first, then looked around the end of the stand, and there was a small electric piano tucked behind. I wondered if anyone would play it today. I looked around to see if it were plugged in. Nope! In fact when I pulled the chord up from the back of the piano, it had no plug at all, just two bare wires sticking out! I decided they must not have a pianist. Elder D, without knowing all this, offered my services, but I showed them the bare wires...magically while my back was turned - someone wired on a plug and it was ready to go. I lifted the lid - and oh my - the kids had probably been playing on it during the last quilting bee. I ducked into the ladies room, dampened some paper towels and frisked the keys - just like new. I turned on the piano and played some hymns for a prelude. The councilor conducting the meeting thanked me for playing and said how nice it was to have a prelude after so long not having anyone to play the piano. The hymns went well and I was happy to meet the hymn conductor after the meeting. But.... this is all an aside to why we were there.

Elder R, my trainer for my secretary job . He is sitting at my desk.

Assistants to the President that are in training, one from the states the other from Argentina.

This is just one of three rows of elders from one of ten zones. We had a zone meeting with them just 3 days after arriving. What a handsome and awesome group of young people! We love them already!

Looking south west.
The mountains are magnificently grand.
They are often covered this time of year with fog and then smog from the big city.

Looking straight south. There are 6 million people in this city - lots of high rise housing.

Looking to the east and the Andes mountain range.