WHAT WE DO AND CHRISTMAS IN ARGENTINA

What We Do

We have previously written that we are part of a district of 9 senior couples and 2 senior sisters. The district is composed of the senior couples from the Area Office. There are 2 doctors and their wives, the Nielsons and the Ashtons, an area auditor and his wife, the Williams, a mental health specialist and her companion Sister Redd and Sister Hancock, a couple who work in public affairs, the Wieses, a couple who digitize government records for family history work, the Licursis, a couple who travel throughout the area training mission and stake leaders in the “Open Chapel” missionary initiative (using chapels as temporary visitor centers) and who were recently asked to help temporarily with stake treks throughout the area, the Nortons, the assistant executive secretary to the area presidency and his wife, the Smiths, and us, the Loves, who have been called as Associate Area Legal Counsel and administrative assistant for the Office of General Counsel in the area. It is a diverse group of wonderful, dedicated, seasoned missionaries who perform important work.

Our day to day work is at an office about 2 miles from our apartment. We walk about three-fourths of a mile to the subway each morning around 8:30, ride three stops, then walk about half of a mile to our office on Avenida Virrey del Pino, where we arrive just before 9:00. The doctors, the mental health missionaries, and the public affairs couple also work at our location. The other senior couples work at other locations in downtown Buenos Aires, about 7 miles from our office. Each week begins with an area-wide devotional that is broadcast by internet to all employees in the area and the area offices in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay take turns presenting the program by live video. It is a neat experience to begin the work week with a hymn and a prayer and a spiritual thought. Around 1:00 we break for lunch and the senior missionaries normally eat together. It is a great time to enjoy each other’s company and catch up on what’s going on. We have truly come to love and appreciate these great people we are blessed to work with. We generally finish up at the office around 5:00 and head back to our apartment on the subway, where we change into casual clothes and relax, do laundry, run errands, shop, etc. Saturday is our p-day.

The work is varied and runs the gamut from ensuring that the Church is properly represented by competent local attorneys in lawsuits or other matters involving any of the Church’s entities in the 4 countries in the area, to arranging for proper handling of property damage claims for car accidents or missionary apartment incidents, etc., to keeping track of all of the legal requirements the Church must comply with in each of the countries in the area, to arranging for proper legal advice in employment matters (the Church has several hundred employees in the area), to ensuring that the documentation necessary for more than a hundred Church managers to act for the Church is up to date and properly executed, to advising Church leaders concerning a variety of sensitive matters and projects. The Church has outstanding outside attorneys and has developed some excellent technology to help us with all of this, and Sister Love has become quite an expert at running reports every day to help the legal staff know what matters are due or need updating and to otherwise focus their efforts. Although the work is not physically demanding, we generally arrive home at the end of the day ready for a rest, but we truly feel like we are helping and making a difference.

In addition, although we all live within just a few blocks of each other in the geographic area of the Palermo Ward, Congreso Stake, each senior couple has been assigned to attend a different ward in either the Congreso Stake or the Belgrano Stake, in order to spread all that experience as broadly as possible. Each couple has a calling in their assigned ward in addition to their full-time missionary assignment. One of the couples teaches the young single adults, another teaches institute classes, one of the sisters is a veil worker at the Buenos Aires Temple every Tuesday, others teach Sunday School, etc. We attend the Villa Crespo Ward in the Belgrano Stake, which has not had senior missionary couples for a long time. Bishop Cascallares has asked us to look after a sister in the ward who is going through some difficult times, so we are trying to make contact with her.

General Authorities Come to Our Family Home Evening

We work in the same office as the Area Presidency, Elder Tiexiera, Elder Packer and Elder Bragg, all of whom are general authority seventies. A couple of weeks ago, they asked if they could attend the weekly family home evening all of the senior missionaries attend. Responsibility for lessons and activities are rotated among the couples and it was our turn to do an activity. The presidency wanted to tell us about an update to the mission personal travel policy and then share a special Christmas message with us. It was fun to have 3 general authority seventies as guests and to enjoy their spirit and their love for us.  Because they work all week and then travel most weekends to stake conferences around the area, as well, they get Mondays off, so we thought it was pretty cool they would come on their p-day to visit us.

Area Presidency - Elder Packer, Elder Tiexiera, and Elder Bragg attend our family home evening.

Getting Ready for Christmas

In the days leading up to Christmas we had a chance to participate in the ward Christmas party on December 16. The ward provided shredded chicken and rolls and the members were asked to bring salads. Sister Love whipped up a great tuna macaroni salad for us to bring. The announcement was that we should arrive at 7:30 and dinner would begin at 8:00. So, we arrived at 7:30 and we got to help set up. 8:00 came and went and hardly anyone else was there. Everyone started arriving at around 8:30 and dinner was served at 9:15. The food was great and the attendance was very good. We had a nice time but we had to leave just as the party was getting started around 10:00. We had practiced with the choir to sing a special musical number and the youth were going to put on a program but all of that apparently came later, probably around 11:00. This is how it’s done in Argentina. We just get used to it.

Villa Crespo Ward Chapel

Villa Crespo Ward Christmas Party

We also had a chance to celebrate Christmas at the office. The Area Presidency held a nice devotional for all of the employees and senior missionaries on December 15. It was broadcast to all of the other area headquarters, as well. Each of the members of the Area Presidency and their wives spoke and then we had a nice lunch. Each employee and senior couple received a triple combination as a gift from the Area Presidency. The employees got the rest of the day off but we went back to work. Then, on our last day of work before Christmas, there was a traditional Christmas toast with all of the employees in our office. We truly work with some special people.

Exec. Sec. to the Area Presidency, Elder Walker, Legal Assistant, Julia Villasboa, and Sister Walker

Sec. to the Dir. of Temporal Affairs, Gabriela Orleanski, and her daughters

The table ready for Christmas toasts.

Sister Love's office Christmas decorations

We were off the Friday before Christmas and we took the opportunity to go to the Buenos Aires Temple with all but one of the other senior missionary couples. We visited the gift shop and ran into the president of the Buenos Aires MTC, Pres. Benton, and his wife. The MTC is located by the temple. They are a neat couple and they had even prepared some gifts for each of us, which was a really special surprise. We rode to and from the temple with Elder and Sister Norton, and after the session, they asked us if we had ever been to Kansas, a local restaurant that is popular with Americans. We hadn’t, so they invited us and treated us to a late lunch as their Christmas present to us. The food was wonderful and we really enjoyed their company.

Buenos Aires Temple

Us at the Buenos Aires Temple

 

Christmas flowers at the Buenos Aires Temple

A special treat at Kansas Restaurant

Christmas

A few Christmas decorations around Buenos Aires.

Christmas Eve we went to the shopping district of Buenos Aires along Avenida Florida, where we shopped for souvenirs and we stopped and had KFC at the beautiful Galerias Pacifico Mall before heading back home to get ready for Christmas Day. We enjoyed just having a couple of hours together to explore and enjoy the shops.

Galerias Pacifico in Buenos Aires - beautiful hand painted art work on the ceilinngs

Our Christmas started at midnight, when we heard from the apartments in the buildings that surround us a countdown, similar to New Years eve. Precisely at midnight, there was a joyous shout and, we're sure, toasts, and lots of fire crackers throughout the city. 

Christmas day was rainy but we enjoyed a lovely sacrament meeting combined with the Chacarito Ward, which also meets in our building, but attendance was down because of the rain. The messages were very good and to close the meeting, we had been practicing for several weeks with the combined ward choirs to sing a special Christmas medley of songs arranged by the Villa Crespo Ward choir director and the Chacarito Ward pianist. It is a wonderful arrangement and she was so appreciative of having someone participate on a regular basis. There were some practices when Elder Love was the only man there. We got used to 2 and 3 hour practices that consistently started about a half-hour late but, in the end, the choir came together, and we thought it sounded pretty good.

The women's section of the Villa Villa Crespo/Chacarito Wards combined choir with our director, in red, on the back row

After sacrament meeting, we walked in the rain with the young missionary sisters to the bus stop to make our way to our apartment for dinner. The Villa Crespo Ward takes good care of the young missionaries who are assigned there. For example, most of the other couples have the young full-time missionaries in for dinner virtually every Sunday, but our ward has been without senior couples for a long time, so they are well organized to feed the missionaries. We had to fight to get a turn to do that, even on Christmas day. We truly enjoyed having Sister Collado and Sister Singleton here. Sister Collado is from Malaga, Spain, and Sister Singleton is from Salt Lake City, Utah. Sister Love cooked a ham in our Chinese crock pot, and made some sour cream potatoes and other great fixin’s. Then, after we ate, Sister Collado Skyped with her family (Sister Singleton’s family was traveling to Disney World, so she had already Skyped with them the day before). Sister Love also prepared small Christmas stockings for the sisters and we had a couple of small gifts for them under the tree, so we all opened presents together. We had a lovely day before the sisters had to leave for an appointment, after which we Skyped with most of our family.

Dinner with Sisters Collado and Singleton

Skyping with the fam

Sister Love made a gingerbread house

Sister Love's Light the World advent calendar

While we were having a really different Christmas than perhaps we thought we would a few months ago, it was really special and an experience we wouldn’t trade. We hope all of you also had a wonderful, peaceful Christmas and that you will have a happy, prosperous New Year.

Until next time, when we will tell you about our trip to the Pampas and the Gaucho capital of Argentina.

LIGHTING THE WORLD

Lighting the World on Our Anniversary in Buenos Aires

On Saturday, December 3, we celebrated our 45^th wedding anniversary. After a relaxing morning and going grocery shopping, we celebrated by going back to our favorite spot, Coco, for their delicious Lomito and steak fries. We enjoyed getting to know our waitress a little. She is studying hotel management here in Buenos Aires but is from Medellin, Colombia and has 5 brothers and sisters, which is kind of rare in Buenos Aires.

After dinner, we headed back to our apartment to get into our “uniforms” (missionary clothing) so we could fill an assignment to help with an area youth activity for Light the World. Elder Batalla, an area seventy, and the area presidency had planned to have the youth gather in a large park for a program with a wonderful choir and the launch of 1,000 balloons with small LED lights in them and Light the World pass-along cards with Christmas messages written by the youth. We were assigned to help hand out the little cards to the more than 1,000 who came. It was a lot of fun and very successful. Here are some photos and a video of the launch (at the end of the launch there is a count and then the crowd shouts, "Ilumina el Mundo", which means Light the World):

We attracted a lot of attention in the crowded park, ran into a lot of friends from our ward and the office, and made some new friends, as well. The youth were enchanted with our name and they chased after us later as we were on our way home to say good bye. We also walked with some young women, one of whom had just gotten home from her mission 13 days earlier. We were really tired as we walked back home along Avenida Libertador past the Monument to the Spanish and the U.S. Ambassador’s home, but we thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

In all, it was a great day and a fitting anniversary celebration. And the Light the World event was a success. It was also live streamed to the other areas of Argentina on Facebook at Noticias SUD, if anyone wants to see more.

The next day, Sunday, December 4, was also a day of memories and quiet thoughts, being the 14th anniversary of Kim's passing. We don't dwell on it, but it is never far from our hearts and minds, especially on this day.

Getting Around Without the Subte

Sadly, on Tuesday night of this week, a subway worker was electrocuted in an industrial accident. He was also the son of one of the subway workers union leaders. As a result, on Wednesday, all of the subway was shut down. We’re not sure if it was a strike or some form of paying respect or if it was for inspections but the result was dramatic. A million people ride the Subte every day, on the average, so on Wednesday, all of those people either drove their car that they usually leave home, rode a bus they normally don’t ride, or took a taxi. We chose to take a taxi to work and Sister Love rode home with the mission doctor couples while Elder Love finally grabbed a taxi after a late telephone conference at work. The bus stops had massive numbers of people waiting for rides and when a taxi stopped to let out a passenger, another one immediately jumped in. We hope not to have to go through anything like that here again.

Barrio Chino

Just as in most major cities, Buenos Aires has neighborhoods that were settled by diverse ethnic groups. One of the neighborhoods here has a high concentration of Chinese people, like Chinatown in New York or San Francisco. We had heard that there are many things available in the Barrio Chino (Chinese Neighborhood) that aren’t available anywhere else in Buenos Aires so we wanted to go and see. Barrio Chino is only a few blocks away from where we work and it is close to the Gardners’ apartment. While they are on vacation, they have asked us to water their plants every few days. Yesterday being a national holiday (Immaculate Conception Day), which is the day most Argentines put up their Christmas tree and fix a big meal, we decided we would kill two birds with one stone and water the plants and then just walk on to Barrio Chino. We had a great time just browsing the little shops and smelling the wonderful smells from the Chinese restaurants. Sister Love was able to find some thread she couldn’t find anywhere else and a couple of other things. Later, we were walking by a little shop like all the others when we noticed some small kitchen appliances high on the shelves of the shop so we ducked in to see if, by chance, they had a crock pot. Seems like a simple thing but crock pots are not as universally used here as in the U.S., and they are hard to find. We have seen them in the stores before but they are $200 or more for what would be $30-50 or less in the U.S. One of the other senior couples told us they found their crock pot in Barrio Chino. It has no English markings and is definitely Chinese. Sure enough, there there in that little shop was a crock pot at the top of the highest shelf. We wanted to check it out so we asked if they could get it down for us to look at. The little Chinese gentleman brought a step stool over but he was so short, he just gestured to the stool as an invitation for Elder Love to climb on up. It checked out so we bought it. It was still about 3X the price of one back home but we decided it would be worth it to spend the extra. All of the writing on the box and the directions and the markings on the pot itself are in Chinese but there are English markings for the temperature control. At any rate, Sister Love is very happy with her new crock pot (Elder Love wondered if it will cook American food - guess we'll see). While we were there, we also went to a nice Chinese Restaurant for lunch and enjoyed the change in fare from all the meat at most of the other restaurants here. Here is a picture of our new Chinese crock pot and another photo of the entrance to Barrio Chino:

Wonderful Artisanry

Every December there is a huge artisan fair in Buenos Aires, with hundreds of exhibitors and lots of beautiful craft items of every kind. We are so fortunate that this fair is always in a great venue called La Rural, which is located just a few blocks from where we live. This fair is going on this week so, after resting up for a while from our jaunt to Barrio Chino, we headed to the Artisan Fair. It is unbelievable. There were exhibitors there from Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Salta, Bariloche, and many other areas of Argentina, as well as Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Pakistan, and other places. La Rural is a wonderful covered exhibition area that is probably as big as 3-4 football fields, and it was full of exhibitors of every kind. We bought some things for our apartment, some wonderful candy from Bariloche, a couple of nativities from Peru, and some items we will take home. We will definitely go back next year with a pocket full of cash to buy special remembrances of our time in South America.

Temple Trip Fail

This morning we planned to go to the temple with our assigned ward, Villa Crespo, for a 10 am session and the sealing of a couple afterwards. Getting to the temple in Buenos Aires is not easy. It is about an hour’s drive from where we live by car. A taxi ride is about $30-40 each way. However, public transportation is about $.40-.50 per transit or a total of about $5 for the whole trip. So, Elder Love spent a long time studying the transportation routes and had planned out a combination of Subte rides and bus transportation that would drop us off just at the driveway to the temple. We started off early on the Subte and then, when we got where we were to transfer to another Subte line, that line was temporarily closed due to technical problems. So, we grabbed a taxi to drop us off where we thought we would meet the bus. After we stepped out of the taxi, Elder Love found that his Church-issued cell phone, the only one we have with working cell service, had either been stolen in the Subte or dropped out of his pocket in the taxi, and the taxi was gone. We decided to press on anyway but we couldn’t find the bus stop. It was not where it was supposed to be. We asked directions to it and walked up and down several blocks looking for it but couldn’t find it. By this time, it was too late to get to the temple in time for the ward session, so we admitted defeat, grabbed another taxi to take us back to the working Subte, and slunk back home. We will get there some other time but we will have to get much smarter about the transportation system here.

Final Musings

We went this week to complete our application for temporary residency in Argentina and we’re told that we will have our National Identity Card within about a month. That will permit us to go in and out of the country more easily, use our debit card at the store without having to show our passport, etc., and just generally make life a little easier. A lovely lady from our area travel office, Guadalupe, helped get us through all the administravia with a minimum of hassle, for which we are very grateful to her. While we were at Immigration, we ran into 2 different pairs of sister missionaries, one from Texas, one from North Carolina, one from Mexico and one from Brazil. There are more than 4,000 missionaries in the South America South area and about 15 missions just in Argentina.

We are feeling much more comfortable in our role at work and we feel like we are making a contribution. We will be getting new Associate Area Legal Counsel in Santiage,, Chile, in late January, Elder and Sister Enke, which will permit Elder Love to concentrate on some more long term and focused projects.

Our little waitress in Coco, on the day of our anniversary, said she felt that Buenos Aires is not very friendly towards foreigners. However, we have found just the opposite to be true. In general, we have found that the people of Buenos Aires are friendly, and those who don’t seem friendly at first, as we engage with them or otherwise get to know them, and especially as we show them appreciation and respect, are just preoccupied with their own lives. As we engage them in conversation, they show warmth and friendship and they are interesting people. We were in a cab this morning with a grey-haired cab driver who has been driving for a living for forty-six years who, once we got to talking, began to talk our ears off. He was funny and engaging and very friendly. This has been a typical experience for us. At church, the members are caring and thoughtful and very loving. In Argentina, everyone greets each other with a kiss on the cheek (only cheekbones touch and there is usually a big smoochy kiss sound), even the men, which was a little disconcerting, at first, but it is just their way. Our first week there, some of the sisters wrote Sister love little notes of welcome and one sister, in particular, has taken it upon herself to help Sister Love learn Spanish. It is fun to watch her, as she doesn’t speak English, but she apparently thinks if she speaks a little louder and slower to Sister Love, and repeats what she is saying a couple of times, she will understand her. She is very sweet and really just wants to help. We are in a WhatsApp group with the ward members and it is clear they take great care of each other when they are sick or need help. We are loving our experience here.

Well, that’s it for now. More soon. Love you all. Abrazos from Argentina.