The Pope's Progress

Greetings from Santiago Chile on this beautiful Sunday, December 29, 2013. This is our first Christmas season that we have not been around family members. While it has been a little lonely, and we have missed our children, grandchildren, and friends, we have had a wonderful week. On Christmas eve when we would usually be having dinner with family, we were actually having a wonderful Christmas dinner with our mission family. Elder and Sister Candland hosted a delicious turkey dinner with all of the trimmings at their tiny apartment (all of the apartments are quite small, around 7-800 square feet). Finding a turkey and all of the ingredients necessary to bake is no small task here in Chile, and when you can find them, they are quite expensive. Turkeys for example run about $2.00 per pound. Evone made her famous homemade dinner rolls and pecan pies, which actually had walnuts, because you cannot buy pecans in Chile. As always, they were delicious and much appreciated.

On Christmas morning, we woke up to some beautiful email letters from our children. Definitely the highlight of our day. A group of senior missionaries that are close to the temple gathered for a Christmas brunch of the usual eggs, bacon, waffles and wonderful fresh fruit. Being that it is summer, we have water melon,cantaloupes, strawberries, grapes, etc. and they are fresh and delicious. There are 11 senior missionaries who work here in the church office buildings in various capacities (legal, auditing, medical, mental health, humanitarian, and of course perpetual education fund). There are also a number of senior missionaries who are serving in mission home offices, temple and as member leadership support missionaries. There are four missions headquartered here in Santiago, and so we had some of those missionaries join us for our Christmas brunch. It was truly wonderful to see them all and to visit and compare missionary experiences.

Then we came home and spent the next several hours calling and "Face timeing" with our kids and grandkids. It was so fun to have them show us what they got for Christmas. We love our weekly phone visits with the family!

On Christmas afternoon, Evone and I had the pleasure to visit a woman who is investigating the church. She lives about 45 minutes to an hour away from our apartment depending on how the buses are running. Her name is Victoria and I would guess she is in her late 60's or early 70's. The young missionaries who are teaching her met us at a stake activity in Sept. We told them that if they ever needed our help, that we would love to go with them to teach and to fellowship. They called us about 4 weeks ago and asked if we could go with them to teach Victoria. We did, and have been back several times with them. Christmas afternoon was very warm (high 80'- low 90's), but we had a wonderful visit with this dear lady. She insisted on serving us some peach juice and some pan de pascua (Chile's version of fruitcake, but very, very dry).

After a wonderful visit, we made the 45 minute return to our apartment and then over to our friends the Candland's for turkey leftovers from the night before. Overall, a truly wonderful Christmas. Oh, by the way, if anyone doubts that Santa is for real, we are here to tell you that he is. On our way over to visit Victoria, we were walking across the street to make a bus connection when we saw a cab pull up to a house. I first saw two red legs emerge from the back seat, and I thought to myself, can this really be Santa Claus. The next thing I saw was a beautiful white beard and long white hair. It was indeed the Chilean Santa. As I said hello and asked for a picture he was glad to oblige my request. As I saddled up next to him, I could tell he had had a very long day. He had quite the smell of Christmas Cheer and was feeling no pain. What a fun occasion.