May 29, 2022

 

I have tried twice to put the pictures in chronological order but failed both times, so this may be a little confusing.  

Jackie bought this flower arrangement about a week ago.  It about died.  She dressed it up with eucalyptus leaves today and it looks good and smells great.  A woman of many talents.  She also made some good tom kha gai soup today.  

We have a young missionary here that likes to cut hair.  It looks like a barbershop.  He makes enough money at it that he can pay for his own haircut by a professional. 

We went to a town called Pomaire yesterday. Jackie wanted to buy some pottery. The whole town is pottery shops.  When we were walking back to the car she saw what she wanted and bought it.  Jackie is wearing a blue vest with a reflective stripe in the center of the picture. 

The streets of Pomaire we pretty empty.  It was a cold cloudy day.  

We ate dinner in Pomaire.  It was a open restaurant. There was a patio heater near our table but we still froze. 

The waiter could see we were still freezing about halfway through the meal and brought a metal box full of hot coals and put beside our table.  It warmed us up pretty well and didn't catch the table on fire. We struggled to understand the waiter when we were ordering.  When we went to pay he started speaking English to us.  He spoke perfect English.  I wish he had started it sooner.  

We donated a large washer that we no longer needed to a fire station out by Pomaire. That is the van we use. 

The firemen were watching Arnold Schwartz... on the TV when we arrived. 

We no longer let the young missionaires ride bikes due to excessive danger so we are donating them also.  

We came out of a restaurant and some people had their 3 dogs in a stroller and had them at the table with them. 

Jackie eating a quinoa salad in a German restaurant. 

My anniversary card for Jackie.  Thirty eight great years. 

Jackie feeding a homeless man outside our office. 

Some awsome young missionaries.  One of them going home for heart surgery and hopefully coming back. 

Last Saturday we went to a nice French restaurant.  President Simpson likes to take us out to dinner.  It was good but took about 2 for the food to come.  

We went out to the front of our apartment building to see the lunar eclipse.  The watchman came out with us to watch it.  He sits behind the counter that you can see through the window and opens the little gate for pedestrians and the big gate for cars.  Jackie made him some tres leches cake last night.  It was good. 

We regularly visit missionary's apartments.  I went to the Assistants(head missionaries) apartment to fix lights.  I noticed a lot of stuff in their spare room.  There were 2 tables(that we have been looking for) and lots of other stuff. So instead of working on the lights we pulled out the excess stuff and loaded up the van.  

There were blenders, heaters fans,

tables, big chair, shelves

bags and bags of old clothes and more.  I went back another time to fix the lights and found another closet full of extra stuff as well.  We like cleaning out the apartments as we encourage them to keep them clean and they are much easier to clean without all the extra stuff.  

Tuesday we closed the office at 12 and rode the teleferico(gondola) to the top of Cerro San Cristobal where the statue of the Virgin Mary is.  Our apartment looks right at it.  

Up by the statue is a place to burn candles and hang stuff on the wall.  It is an interesting collection of things that are hung here. 

When we got back to the car I took a picture of the Costanera Center(the tallest building in South America). It was a nice day.  We have only had a few days that didn't clear up and warm up during the day. 

 

We buy white boards for the missionaries apartments for planning purposes.  I am not sure these elders caught the vision.  

Today I went with 2 other men to find Condors.  Last Saturday one of them saw more than a dozen up near the Argentine border.  Today we went back there to see if we could see some. It is slow going as lots of  trucks are going to Argentina.  It climbs to a tunnel at about 10,000ft. 

We only saw one condor from a distance. We did see about 20 guanacos. They are similar to alpacas. 

We turned off the highway before the tunnel to Argentina to go up over the pass but the road had snow on it. We had to scrape snow off the gravel road to get the van back up the hill. 

    

This is Inca Lake at the Portillo ski resort . We stopped their for lunch on the way down. It was beautiful

Here is the google map view of the road.  Lots of switchbacks, lots of semis.  

 

On May 11, 2022 we stood in line at Independencia Mall in Recoleta, Santiago Chile neighborhood waitng to get a 4th, yes 4th covid booster so we could continue to be legal and serve in Chile. Masks are still worn inside at public places. They are not required outside however it appears that 90% of the people still choose to wear them outdoors.

We were waiting in line underground at the -2 parking level. There were atleast 100 to 200 people in line. We arrived at 5:05 pm and received our injections around 7 pm. This is not the greatest picture but it may give you the idea.

These are some of the coveted sofas we have taken out of missionary apartments trying to improve the asthetics and living conditions. We put them out front of the office and within one hour the red vinyl one was picked up and the other was gone within 24 hours. We live in one of the poorest sectors of the city so many of the goods we put out front are welcomed and used by others. Jeff's shaddow is compliments of the photographer.

 

Virginia works for O Y M, which I think is office and maintainence  for church buildings. She keeps our office very clean. She also has created a side business and cleans apartments for us when our schedules coordinate. She is the most amazing cleaner and goes the extra mile taking out windows and washing both sides, cleaning the window gutters or slides, etc. etc. I wish all our contracters had her high standards and skills. Everything can get very dusty here in a single day and if it is not cleaned regularly it takes several scrubbings and rinsing of rags to get the "dust turned to mud"off of everything.

This is what I have started texting to missionaries to let them know that Elder Grange will be by to hang their white board. Most the walls are concrete and need a good drill to hang them.

Because we help de junk apartments we find some amazing treasures. This being one of them. We need to study up on a great dutch oven meal for the office crew, I was reminded that these also can be baked in our ovens. It is a Lodge and was probably bought by an Elder at Lider (which is wallmart here) missing some good camping food from prior days.

This one is for our grandchildren. I am not sure where Jeff found this, but we are all about pirates when it comes to play with grandkids.

This is a classic Jeff picture. I do not know how many pictures we have of passengers in our cars. This one is Hermana Cauthen and Hermana Guerrero who just moved into a newly rented apartment and went shopping with us to buy some needed furnishings. They got to pick out the curtains and they had agret time doing it. I can only hope that the apatment does not change to Elders anytime soon, They may not appreciate the mauve velvet curtains in the bedroom of the black/white geoprint in the main living quarters.

We may have already posted Elder Vlakovic because he did leave on April 26th or so. He is so darling so I am posting just to make sure we have not missed him.  He is from Punta Arenas Chile. Way down south where penguins live. His great grandparents moved to Chile from Croatia during World War 1. It facinates me to learn of all the migrations and that the world is comprised of so may different and beautiful people wherever we go and they are all Heavenly Fathers children. 

April 16, 2022

 We were able to attend this sweet wedding for this refugee couple from Haiti. Her family is still in Haiti, his family went to Brazil first and now he and two of his brothers with their families are living here in Chile. They have known each other for 7 years, but 3 months ago he was able to pay for her passage to get to Chile. They are preparing for a temple marriage. I hope to see it before I leave Chile.

This is the Golden Circus which we have seen set up at several SODIMAC store parking lots around the metropolitan area. We frequent SODIMAC regularly; it is our Home Depot of Chile and being in charge of missionary apartments we just possibly may be one of their most frequent customers including the other 3 missions in Santiago.

Elder Grange has been in charge of bikes, but recently missionaries have been taken off of bikes in South America due to injuries and some deaths. These are some of the bikes that have been collected and will be reassembled to donate to a local college who will give them to stidents who could benefit from this transportation.

I am not sure what this is. It could be many of Elder granges projects, lets see....the inside of a cell phone plug in that has been damaged...no....a drawer slide on the pressed wood cabinets here that continually fall apart...no...oh perhaps the underside of a gas oven that he is adjusting the fittings or the valves where the gas comes out to be larger holes so that the natural gas in some of the apartments will actually work with the stove. (most of the apartments where missionaries live do not have piped in gas but rather a propane tank of liquid gas that sits beside the stove). It only took us 5 months living here to discover why our oven and cook top did not have big enough flames to cook effeciently. Elder Grange has now changed valves on several stoves that are in the high rise building with piped in gas.

May 8, 2022

Our work is slowing down. The surge of missionaries coming after Covid has finished so our head count is pretty flat.  That means fewer new apartments are needed.  We  still have missionaries doubled up in some apartments and need some in new areas.  Jackie is busy going through the contracts based on the consumer price index.  It is written in to most of the contracts.  Now that inflation is high I think more land lords are paying attention and asking for their increases. 

The weather has cooled off. It is getting down into the 40s at night.  We did have a good rain about a week ago.  It is the first decent rain since we arrived.  

Here are my 2 home improvement projects.  A coat rack and a shoe rack/bench.  The bunk beds we buy have rails and ladders that we don't normally use so it leaves me with wood and bolts 

for projects.  

My cousin Ross and his wife Satcheco came over for dinner.  Jackie made Tom Kha Gai soup.  It turned out well as usual. This picture shows our entire kitchen.  The fridge is between Jackie and the door.  

After the Tom Kha Gai soup and sushi we roasted marshmellows over the gas stove and made smores.

We said good bye to a great missionary yesterday.  It is hard to see them go. 

We went to this apartment and did some improvements.  Jackie hung a curtin, we tossed out a worn out couch and chair. 

The chair is hiding under the clothes in the center of the picture.  

This is the same wall after the makeover.  We hung a rod to hang hangers on, put up shelves for underware etc.  

These are 2 long Completos, Chilean hot dogs.  They put some good stuff on top but in the end they are still hot dogs.