23 Dec. 2013 Monday.
This morning I was pulling out from in front of the chapel when the District
Leader and his companion stopped me and said he had the names to draw for our
little missionary Christmas present gift exchange. I reached in his little
white plastic bag and a drew out a couple of names just as a Carabinero
(national police) went buzzing by on his motorcycle. He swerved around
and came back and said “let me see what’s in that bag!” The elder said
“its just little pieces of paper!” “Let me see it!” He looked in and
then, embarrassed, sped off. He probably was embarrassed because he’d
thought he’d just uncovered an international drug smuggling operation involving
the Mormon missionary/ preacher. The Elders were not dressed in white shirts and
ties, but I was, because it was Pday and they’d come to the church to play
soccer on the church’s court. It probably looked like I was buying drugs
from some local youth! That’s my sixth encounter with the
Carabineros. 5 of 6 have not been too impressive.
This town is a haven for drugs and other bad
behavior though, we've been told by many people. The few times we've
been out very very late, such as leaving on the bus at 2:30 a.m. to travel to the Santiago Temple, for
example, we see the night life. At that hour, there are more people on
the streets and out and about than at 2:30 p.m.
24 Dec. 2013. Christmas eve
is Noche Buena. Here in Chile, it is the time for the real celebration.
Everyone stays up late and has a meal after midnight and
opens all their presents. We were invited to President and Sister
Calderon’s house for noche Buena, in Salamanca. They had us and the
Saldivars and the Salamanca sister missionaries over for a nice, early dinner
and program where we each bore our testimonies about the Savior. We
had to do that part quick so the sisters could get home by their 10:00 deadline. Sister Calderon had
pre-meal snacks, music, decorations, a big fancy cake afterwards and
gifts. They thanked us profusely for allowing them to carry on their
tradition of 28 years of having the missionaries over for Noche Buena as a way
of thanking the Lord for the many blessings he had given them. It made us
feel pretty humble. We drove the Saldivar’s back to Illapel through the
torn up mountain road, and then on to LV after midnight.
It was nice to travel that torn up road (they are widening it, so it is all
torn up for about 20 miles) through the mountains with no construction stops
for one lane traffic, for once.
I forgot to mention sneaking Carolyn’s
Christmas present, a juicer, into the back of the car while she was going to
the bathroom at the Saldivar’s house. I then snuck it into the house
under her nose before we went to bed and put it by the couch under the
tree. She never suspected anything. The Saldivar’s wrapped it (not with
Carolyn’s paper… she checks stuff like that) and hid it for 3 weeks in their
house.
25 Dec. 2013 Carolyn was
awfully surprised to have a Christmas present, and especially the juicer she’d
been longing for for 6 months. The lack of a juicer was the reason for so
many ills… not feeling good, not having energy, not sleeping good, gaining
weight, not speaking Spanish good (j/k), etc., but she had finally given up
pestering for one, and even yesterday had mentioned that “it’d be too much
trouble washing the fruit and vegetables in chlorox solution to have a juicer
anyway.” Well she forgot all that real quick when she saw it.
Luckily I’d stocked up on plenty of fruit and veggies so she was happy as could
be. But she couldn’t figure out WHERE that present had come from, and why
she hadn’t seen it. That was pretty funny. She almost believed it
was really from Santa (j/k).
We FaceTimed with most of the kids today in
between preparing Christmas dinner for Saldivars (other mature missionary
couple, assigned in Illapel), the Q’s, and Mirella and Kelly…. This is NOT a
Chilean tradition, dinner on Christmas day…well, technically they have a big
dinner on Christmas day, but it is always like 1 a.m. in the morning. We agreed with
the Saldivar’s before T day that the Saldivar’s would cook Tday turkey dinner
and we’d do one for Christmas, just to kind of bring a little of home to Chile.
Dinner was ready at the appointed time of 4
pm, but at 5:15 we were still waiting for 4 of our
guests to arrive. “We’re living right now” they had said a half hour
earlier. We got going about 6 pm just as
Elder Villatoro and Hidalgo showed up to use our laptops to Skype home and talk
to their families. These two elders, if stacked on top of each other,
would barely be as tall as me. Hidalgo from Colombia out for just a
couple of months, and Villatoro the District leader from Guatamala, both great
missionaries. So we had a very busy, full, little house. We had lots of
deserts which the Elders hung around for, and TWO red jellos, one made by
Kelly, which was the hit of all the deserts. Our carrot cake was
delicious and just like home, but the Chileans could not eat much of it….too
rich with too much cream cheese frosting.
It was a wonderful day to reflect on our
Savior’s birth and life and gifts to us. We hardly missed not being
“home” we were so busy all day, and because we were able to talk/video chat
with each of our parents, kids and grandkids throughout the day.
26 Dec. 2013 Thurs. To Illapel in
the afternoon before district presidency meeting. While running errands,
we had one of those series of “coincidences” that really adds up to being a
small miracle when you think about it.
We were walking down an unfamiliar street to
reach a shop from an unfamiliar direction. Sister B. hollered at us from
down the street. She had just stepped onto the street leaving work and
saw us. We exchanged greeting and she asked where we were going and
informed us we’d already passed the shop and needed to backtrack a block and
turn left. She walked with us on her way to meet her husband, who is not
a member of the church, but someone we had wanted to meet for a long time. All
his kids are members. They’re all waiting patiently (Sister B for tens of
years) for him to join.
Even though his wife is very active in the
church, he has not been very receptive to church members. Carolyn
mentioned to her it was hot, and that she liked the ice cream stand in the
plaza. When we parted ways, Carolyn bought her 100% cotton yarn she’d
been looking for, and then we walked around the corner to a different store a
block from the plaza to try THEIR ice cream. Then, into this same store,
walked Sister B. with her husband. We finally get to meet the missing
husband! We all buy ice cream (we got chocolate dipped soft serve (which
WAS very very soft, but WAS NOT chocolate… more like brown wax, ughh, would
have thrown them away if we had not been with Sister B. and her husband), and
walked to the plaza together and tried to eat our ice cream before completely
dripped onto the plaza tiled walkways. We were not successful. But
all the stray dogs were happy to lick up the melted ice cream. The interesting
part is that I was able to strike up a conversation with sister B’s husband
about his work. He’s into mining (a 4 man gold mine owned by his cousin
is his present work) He is the dynamite man. He showed me his explosives
license. He’s been mining (blowing up dyanamite) for 30 years, big and
small mines. I also have a background in mining with JMH corp., so I had
lots of questions and he was enthusiastically answering all of them. Our
conversation ended with an invitation to his house, and another invitation for
them to come to our house and watch the New Year’s eve fireworks.
The Saldivar’s have been trying forever to
make friends with this man and hopefully help bring the family together.
But the Lord works in mysterious ways and figured out a way to work through us
even though we were from a different city. It was kind of mind boggling to
think of how many things had to have gone just right to meet up with Sister B.
in that weird place and time, just when she’d be with her husband, and then
bring the 4 of us together in that one little out-of-the-way store that also
sold ice cream, (like all the other 50 stores within the two block area, which
all also sell ice cream) where we met Sister B., and then to have the mining
connection and have to talk (while we sat and ate our dripping ice cream), and
strike up a very nice friendship…That is the kind of thing there is no way to
plan in advance. We’ll invite the Saldivar’s to the firework show
as well so they can become better friends.
Just for the record, it was interesting that
these four men, extract the gold from the ore they mine and pulverize into
powder, by using a process using liquid mercury, which I assume will float off
all particles that are not heavy enough to sink, such as, only, gold.
This month they will clear $36K USD because they have no big expenses. Last
month it was only $8K, because they had lots of bills due. Their biggest
expense is diesel fuel. I think he said they expect to yield a half kilo
of pure gold once they purify later this week all the ore they’ve been
processing this month. Apparently Chile makes it very easy to stake a
claim and be granted mineral rights by the state. There is some safety
oversight by a government agency, but it did not sound onerous like MSHA and
OSHA in the USA. He says with $20-30 USD you could easily get into business for
yourself, like this 4 person mine. They also have a copper mine that they
switch back and forth on, between gold and copper, depending on the prices of
gold and copper. You’d never know this man was part owner in a gold mine.
He and his wife and 3 teenage kids live in a house (hut) about the size of two
Chevrolet Suburbans. I kept thinking about those guys on the cable series
“gold rush”, thinking they should be down here instead of up in Alaska or in
some jungle somewhere.
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