March 27

  We went on a bike ride with three other people from the office on Saturday.  This is a park along the Mopocho drainage.  

In one of the parks along the bike path this statue of a llama made of plastic parts. Notice the person underneath to see how big it is.  There are parts of barrels, garbage bins, plastic car bumpers in it.  

Here we are in front of the Costanera Norte building. The highest in South America.  

We want to rent this apartment that we checked out this week. The bedrooms are upstairs and this is the stairway to the up stairs.  It is pretty narrow.  

This is a metal kitchen cabinet which still has doors to put on it. We put it together thinking it would only take a few hours...about 6 hours later we still are not done. We bought 4 of them because houses here generally come only with a kitchen sink and cabinet below it. LUCKILY we paid to have the others assembled. 

This is in the house where Jacob Roberts will be staying. Once again our paths cross. Elder Roberts is Emily Gilmans son. He was named after our oldest son Jacob. Emily used to babysit Jacob when he was a small boy and she said she wanted to name one of her children after him.

January February

It looks like we are posting monthly now.  We have been here about 4 months now.  It is starting to feel like the new normal for us  The normal life functions such as driving, shopping, using Whatsapp are not so stressful. 

For those of you who are from Hockinson I found this good photo of the big spider. The rest of you have missed out as it has been gone for years. 

We attend the Recoleta congregation. About 30 people attend.  They Zoom the meetings for those not comfortable attending. People in Chile are concerned about Covid.  A large majority wear mask all the time. For church meetings we have our temperature checked and show our covid passport. We are hopeful that the reduction in cases will allow us to back off on mask wearing and social distancing.  

This is the van we drive. It is a Hyundai H1. It is a good vehicle we can haul 9 people or several beds and mattresses, fridge and washer.  We paid some guys down the street to wash and shampoo it.  They did a decent job for about 20 bucks. 

I thought that this guy had interesting eyes.  It is a poster that was plastered along the streets. 

We have enjoyed this Peruvian restaurant. Good burgers, good prices.  A dollar is worth about 800 pesos.

This is a big pool in the park on the hill nearby.  I don't think anyone was swimming in it. 

This is an apartment that we just rented called Principal. It is an addition to a larger house.  The apartment has an upstairs but the floors were soft and we didn't need the room so we blocked the stairway off.  

We cleaned it up and added misisonary furniture.  It was marginal but turned out better than expected.  The landlord cleaned up the out side as well making it more appealing. This has been a big part of our work getting apartments rented and prepared for missionaries.

It is starting to cool off a bit.  We have a portable air conditioner but don't use it often.  

One of our coworkesrs is from Columbia and with the help of a Columbian friend made us a big Columbian dinner.  Lots of good food.  

Wheat flour is not typically used in Columbia. Instead they use a tapioca flour or corn flour. All of this food including the bread biscuit was lovingly prepared for us to experience the Columbian foods.

We went to a Thai restaurant fot Hermana Granges birthday. This little paradise is hidden behind two large tall doors on a busy city street. It is amazing to find such beautiful courtyards.

 

The food was fabulous. They brought a Grange watermelon birthday cake. Some wanted chocolate for dessert  so the plate below which looks like a fotograph really is a delicious treat. 

                                                       Notice the paradise back ground.

We were sent this cute picture of the twins (Jacob and Tatia's) raiding their Dad's ice cream stash.

Ross Grange and wife Sashiko live here in Santiago. We have had the pleasure of getting together with them atleast 3 times now and hope to again soon. This was at a great Japanese restaurant close to their                                                                 rock and mineral shop.

Jackie loved the rock shop (the Drewery blood likes rocks and minerals) and purchased a few cool                                                               rocks and plans to go back for more.

                     

                       This is the park outside our gate. Jackie is feeding the birds some bread.

You notice we are still wearing masks here. They moved to phase 4 and no longer have PCR tests required upon entering the country and no required quarantine for arriving missionaries. The masks have not been lifted as of yet we will still wear them everywhere in public.

 

12/26/2026 Day after Christmas

We are celebrating opening up an apartment with the landlord Pedro.  Everyone drinks Coke. 

This is Jackies tub shower.  I just spent several hours removing black stained caulking and grout and replacing it. The tubs are are small and raised up so you have to step up into them and then step down.  It is good we have a grab bar. 

We went to dinner with my cousin Ross and Satcheco. We had some good steaks and out of the picture is Jackies salmon.  

This is our local market where we stock up on basics...ie sugar free coke..;the basic at meals in Latin America....well not necessarily sugar free.

One of my assignments is to program the phones for the new missionaries.  I did it in our apartment and had a little assembly line. 

This is Hermana Mendez, the mission secretary who helps with everything; here she is getting ready to take home goods to a missionary apartment.

 

 

December 19, 2021 Almost Christmas

 It is election day in Chile.  It is similar to our last presidential election in the US with the two candidates representing extreme positions.  We saw lots of people out on their  way to the polls and  traffic jams. It seems like a good  problem to have, lots of people voting.  Praying for there to be a fair election and everyone accepting the results.  

On Tuesday we went to a town in the foothills of the Andes called Los Andes.  It is about 50 miles from the Argentinian border.  We were looking at repairs done to an old apartment that we have been using and looking at new apartments.  We had a good lunch there. 

Our coworker had a good looking steak and it went  down fast.  It was all good.  The desert was "pancake celestina".  It was like crepes with dulce de leche in them with several kinds of ice cream on top.  We could see lots of avocado orchards in the area. 

This is the old apartment. Large but pretty woodwork and clean. 

This is the new apartment that we looked and are trying to get a contract signed for it.  It is small clean and has a good view,  

It looks pretty dry except for the crops that must be irrigated.  

These two missionaries helped us for most of the day and we hadn't eaten yet. Elder James had been hinting about McDonalds for a few days.  I am not a fan of McDonalds but we stopped and Jackie and I split a double burger.  It tasted real good.  I hadn't eaten all day so maybe my judgement was a little off but I would go back anytime. 

This is a local hardware store.  It is more open than most. Usually all the goods are behind bars and you have to describe what you want. 

We took a couple of recently arrived young sister missionaries to their apartments, They are paired up with a missionary that has been here a while. We had new pillows for them.  This town is call Llay Llay.  It doesn't sound very Hispanic so we think it must be a native Chilean name.  These smaller towns outside of Santiago are much quieter, cleaner and slower.  

Actually many of the towns are named using indigenous peoples language, much like in Washington, for example; Puyallup, Willamette, Skamania.

This is the second sister and her new companion.  This apartment had been empty during Covid.  We had it cleaned twice and it was still in need of  a little more love. We made a mock  Chip and Joanna Gains video showing them their home for the first time. We actually thought the house still needed a lot of TLC, but the sisters were such good sports about it. Sister Scott (newbie) and Sabaitis.

37 lb watermelon anyone?

City lights from a 23 floor apartment for missionaries.

Darla can bring her dog Dotty for a haircut.

Stop lights in the city are never boring. You are either entertained, serviced with a windsheild cleaning or scared by this guy. 

Jackie made the best Tom Ka Gai soup for dinner and invited Luz Mendez and Cecilia Garcia Rodriguez over for dinner. 

Jackie looks for excuses to go see Nora in San Francisco.  She is the landlord of 2 apartments and really nice. All roads lead to Nora's. 

We are invited to Christmas parties on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday so it will be a short fun week.  We miss being at home with friends and family but have made some good friends here.  The 90 degree weather doesn't really increase the Christmas spirit either.  We appreciate the opportunity to study the Christmas story in the Bible. The teachings of Jesus Christ are the best solution to most of the worlds problems.  We are comforted to know that we will see our deceased relatives again and that this life isn't the whole story.  Have a Merry Christmas.