Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Trip to Batallas - Aug. 19, 2012

Another one of the chapels in La Paz where we teach English to the missionaries.  All the chapels are on hillsides with lots of steps because La Paz is totally a canyon.

We took this picture on our 45th Anniversary, August 18.  Elder Dibb bought me some beautiful flowers and we received congratulations from children and friends.  We visited a sister who just got out of the hospital after a 2 month stay and took her some flowers.  It was good to visit.  We had a great "lunch" at the Argentine Steak House.  It was delicious, then spent the rest of the day practicing with a choir (I accompanied) for the Saturday session of stake conference.  It was a wonderful conference and the choir sounded really good.  Pres. Crayk (President of the Cochabamba temple) spoke. He called me up out of the audience (I thought he was going to have me speak) but luckily, he just had me play the left hand of "As I have Loved You" and asked the congregation to guess what the hymn was.  No one was able to guess.  Then he had me play the right hand.  Of course, everyone recognized the melody.  Then we put both hands together, then he sang the words.  It was such a sweet spirit and we understood his message that in the temple you have every part of the Gospel that we need to return to our Heavenly Father.

After conference on Sunday, we traveled to Batallas (about 2 hours from La Paz) to give training to the YW, R.S. and Primary leaders in that branch.   This is our driver.  He is a secretary in the stake and really a nice young man. 

We are waiting at the chapel for the missionaries and leaders.

Here come the missionaries down the street.  Elder Gonzales on the left is an amazing missionary.  He is the Branch President and was previously the secretary to the mission president. When we arrived in the mission, he and his companion (Elder Cuellar) took such good care of us.  They will always be some of our favorite missionaries.

The training went really well - one on one.  We took some Personal Progress Books, Faith in God pamphlets and Visiting Teaching information.  We set some goals and worked through some ways to organize things. We will return in about 3 weeks to see how things are going and continue with some more training. We also visited about the Church's music program and will try to set that up in our next visit.  Things seem to be progressing.

We are always amazed as we watch the building going up across the street from our apartment.  This little lady works twice as hard as any of the men.  Every time a big truck dumps a load of sand, she is the best "shoveler" you've every seen.

She turned around just in time for another picture.  These people work hard.

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