Dear Family and Friends, 31 August 2013
Tis a
beautiful morning here in Viña del Mar. Lately the temperatures have
been really nice, getting down to the mid 50s in the mornings and mid
60s during the day. Spring is in the air and the trees are budding out
and the flowers are really starting to bloom. I’ve even seen some of
the cactus with some blossoms. Only one morning this past week did we
have a mist enough that you could feel it.
This week has
sort of been routine. Sunday we went to church and enjoyed the
meetings. Colleen has met a gal from the states who is kind of in the
same boat, she speaks very little Spanish. Her husband is a P-3 pilot
and is on exchange with the Chilean Navy. Nice couple with two boys and
two girls. It’s been a little rough on them but slowly they are getting
the hang of it. Language is a little slower coming, but it to will
come. Kind of like Colleen, she is slowly learning and even getting
bolder as she will say a little “squeaky” Buenos Dias to the people we
pass on the way to the cemetery. She’s turned out to be a pretty good
computer operator for the imaging – all I do is turn the pages and don’t
do a very good job at that. She says it’s all team work, I do all the
work and she is the team. Together, we get it done – well maybe.
Haven’t sent anything to Salt Lake yet for evaluation so we’ll probably
be doing a lot of rework. Comes with the territory I suppose.
Most of the
people at the cemetery know us by now and greet us very friendly like.
Some of the people we pass on the way to and from the cemetery, just
keep their eyes fixed straight ahead or down and make sure they don’t
make eye contact with us because that would mean they would have to say
good morning back to us. It’s comical in a way, but really very sad
that there isn’t much trust in them.
This week we got our exercise in as we walked an extra 3 miles on Thursday.
On the way to the cemetery, we got a call from someone in the mission
office stating that the person to fix the stove would be there at 11 am. So that meant we would have to quit work at the cemetery at about 10:30 and then return after he was done. We got there a little after 11 and he showed up about 11:20
or so. He did some fooling around with the stove and then looked at me
and said: “murio” which means, “It’s dead.” He was able to do a
temporary fix and said that it would be good for a while but that it
would eventually go out again. He said he would get with the owner and
let her know that she would need to buy a new unit. The oven, on the
other hand – turns out that it is an electric oven and not a gas one,
which we thought. One would think that you could see that, but in the
dark and 40 watt light, it wasn’t readily apparent to me. Win some and
loose some.
I was told
today that we had another earthquake the other day. That would be the
second one we’ve had since we got here. I didn’t feel the last one so
didn’t know about it. Been told that that is a regular occurrence.
Don’t have to worry about any tsunami’s because we are pretty high up
and away from the water. We really can’t complain about the weather
since we’ve been here. Some mornings have been pretty cold, but nothing
that is intolerable. So far I’ve been able to get by with just my
sweater. We broke down and got Colleen a jacket vest (down) because the
people were complaining of the building shaking from her shivering.
As I type
this, I can hear a “rally” at the University across the street and it’s
the typical rally – someone is speaking in a rather loud and brash tone
and the students are lapping it up – at least the one’s who are there.
This morning at about 5am,
we heard some pretty loud arguing going on. Then there was the sound
of what appeared to be wood beating on something and then “bang”. One
shot and the whole neighborhood became totally silent. Not even the
dogs were barking. I saw one emergency vehicle drive up, looked to be
the police, but too far away to be sure. It had it’s lights on but no
siren. So I’m sure someone’s day was ruined.
Today we are headed for a baptism in about 15 min (2:30pm) and then at 7pm there is a stake function I think. I guess we will find out when we get there. By the way, tonight at midnight, we turn our clock ahead by one hour and so we will be three hours ahead of MST.
We are
grateful to be here and thank each of you for your prayer’s and
sacrifices on our behalf. I am sure that Mike, Kendra and Janina had a
tough time Monday.
I personally want to thank those members of our family who took the
time and made the effort to go to the memorial. I know that Mike and
family really appreciated it. I’ve been in contact with Kendra mostly,
but did talk with Mike to let him know that we were sorry to see Marina
go, but as Mike said, if you have to go – quick is the best way. Anyway
thank you clan.
We’ll include
a few more pictures – one show’s the size of the books we are working
with now and a couple of cemetery shots. Love You.
Elder & Sister Smith
This is the letter that my husband sent out. It might have a little more information in it than mine did.
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