We had a 9 1/2 hour flight to Santiago, arriving at 9:30 am. We were so tired after flying all night and getting no sleep. Elder and Hermana Hughes met us at the airport. They are the other office missionaries and have been here for 6 months. They are from St. George, Utah. President and Hermana Brotherson soon joined us and we had breakfast at the airport before we headed to our new home. We took a long nap and then the Hughes took us shopping for some food for the apartment.
This gated apartment complex has about 200 apartments
It has a playground area and
a swimming pool for the children
Elder and Hermana Hughes also live here along with a set of sister missionaries
As we walk up to our front door, we have a guard house. This is for people who are walking or taking a bus to leave the complex. We have another entrance for the cars on the opposite side of the complex
Our kitchen is not too big. When we wash dishes we think we are in the camper. We wash in a tub because the sink has no stopper and won't hold water but we do have hot water. Inside the long cupboard that you can see is our calefon.
It heats the water as it comes through this water heater. So you have very hot water for a period then it goes cold. We are still practicing with showers to get the water just right.
The other side of the kitchen. We have a washer and dryer YEA!! Our stove has no temperature dials so we will have to practice on it to get cookies baked without burning them.
The dining room
Our living room. The couch has two recliners. The windows with the curtains opens up to the street in front of the complex.
This is the first bedroom. It is the office for us
Using the closet for storage
The bathroom, not hard to clean cause it is so small
The second bedroom has been made into our walk in closet
We don't have enough clothes to fill them up but it is very nice to have room for everything
Our bedroom
This is our air conditioner and our furnace
When winter comes, we may have to get another furnace. They have a catalytic heater that the Hughes use that will work better
The electricity is very different here.
This city is made up of apartment buildings. The buses do not blow out black smoke and the water is drinkable right out of the faucet.
We had a cold front come through on Monday evening and it cooled off and rained for several hours. The mountains got some snow!
We drive on this street to get from our apartment to the mission office
It is definitely the biggest city we have ever been in
On Monday morning we went with the Hughes to deliver the pouches to each district and meet some of the young elders and sisters and pick up their pouches to be mailed. We have 10 zones, one for each of the 10 stakes in our mission. The Hughes are our trainers, but we still really don't know exactly what we will be doing here but for now we are helping them.
On Tuesday morning President and Hermana Brotherson took us to the temple.
It was starting to cloud up on us as a cold front is coming through and we had a good rain storm. We even had to turn on our "furnace" to take the chill out of our apartment this evening.
We went to church with the Hughes. We attended the Nueva Amanacer Ward. There were about 50 in the Sacrament Meeting. Elder Hughes plays the piano/organ for Sacrament Meeting. Today was the Primary Program and the kids did a great job and really sang their songs with gusto. After church, we went to the home of the Hara's for lunch. They have two older children and two younger children. They each had a child when they were married and have two together. They are very grounded in the gospel and an asset to this small ward. We had spinach lasagna, very good. We left for church at 9:15 and got home at about 5:00. Sunday's may be very long if we get invited to eat with members every week.
The city has lots of trees and flowers but the country side looks more like the area around Ginger's town. The rain that we had this week was the first for many weeks. Summer is just beginning here and today it will be in the high 80's. We are enjoying the weather!
These are all apartments
We are assigned to look after 70 apartments that the church rents for the missionaries to live in. No one that is here right now has ever seen all 70 apartments. Today Elder Thompson went with Elder Hughes to look at an apartment that had a water leak and flooded the gym that is below it. No one inspected the house or gym and now the people want the church to replace the floor of the gym cause they claim we damaged it. We are to inspect each apartment, take pictures, and document damages that are already there, especially as we get new ones, so we know what damages our missionaries caused and what were already there when they moved in. The President wants the missionaries to live in homes where they can feel the spirit as they enter. We will be busy driving - YES - driving around the mission to inspect each of these apartments.
We will be driving a XLT Ford Ranger 4x4 crew cab pickup. It is a 5 speed, standard which is sometimes a bit challenging in this traffic.
Wednesday the 14th we followed the Hughes to take the pickup to the dealer to have it serviced. We need to learn how to use WAZE navigation to get around.
We are also going to be in charge of putting on "Capilla Abiertas" open houses in the wards. We will be working with the bishops and young elders assigned to these wards to accomplish this. Most of these will take place on Saturday and Sunday evenings. We are reading the material for these and talking to the South Mission couple who have these going very well in their mission. They have one almost every weekend. We will need to visit each of the wards who are going to put one on and teach them what to do during their church block. If we get it going as good as the South Mission, we will be in a different ward every week of the year. We are excited to get these started.
Elder Thompson spent most of Thursday and Friday helping Elder Hughes with paperwork both for the housing and the finances of the mission. I helped Hermana Hughes get paperwork ready for our 7 new missionaries who will arrive next week and for the 4 going home.
We went out to pick up our pickup on Friday. This time Elder Hughes followed us and we tried to follow Waze. We took the wrong turn twice and had to be rerouted. We told Elder Hughes that we did this on purpose just to test out Waze. Don't think that he believed it! But we made it home! It took about one hour to drive 9 miles because of the traffic.
We still have no internet in our apartment.
On Saturday, President Brotherson came to our apartment to help us "hotspot" our computer and phone to Elder Thompson's mission phone, which has internet in the apartment. We now have very slow internet but can now use the computer.
We walked to the big mall that is only 15 minutes down the hill from us and bought Elder Thompson some new shoes. Then we drove to the store called Lider which is our Walmart.
They carry many Walmart brand foods but in smaller containers.
We left our apartment at about 4pm and drove 23 miles in an hour to attend a Capilla Abierta in the South Mission to see how they do it there. The Brooks are the Senior Couple in charge of them. They took us on the tour and we learned a lot from them. We got back home about 8:00pm. We are very happy that we were able to drive there and back without any trouble. I think we will be able to get around, with the help of Waze.
We have been leaving our apartment each day at 9am and haven't been home until 8 or 9 each evening. We are tired but happy to finally start to serve here where our President needs us. It is so wonderful to be with the young missionaries daily as we are in the office with the secretaries to the mission president and the office always has missionaries stopping in for something. It has been a wonderful week. We are finally starting to adjust to the time change. We are 4 hours ahead of Jerome. The weather is great. It has been in the high 70's and cools off each night so sleeping is easy. We testify that this is where we need to be at this time. We are in the service of our Heavenly Father and we are thrilled to be here. We send our love to all. You are in our prayers always. Hope you have a wonderful week. We will write again next week.
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