Back to Chile

From the moment I arrived back here in Chile it has been non-stop activity...literally! The night I got here was the 1st night of the CO visit. He and his wife are so nice. They're from the Netherlands but he has Chinese roots and she was born in Portugal so they know several languages...now they're both learning Chinese and are living in Santiago. It was a very encouraging visit & one of the main things he emphasized is that we should be focusing on foreigners. So now we spend a lot of our service time going to places foreigners visit and trying to start conversations w/them.
There's been a couple of accidents. The most serious was when one of our friends fell off of a tall roof. He is recovering well but it was pretty scary at 1st. Then Buffy had a little dog bite. And a couple of us sisters have tripped recently & have scrapes & bruises to prove it...but nothing serious :)
The friends have been so warm and welcoming as usual & it's been so nice getting to be back.

March Madness

So this month has been crazy busy with all of the campaign, circuit assembly, and memorial activities. One exciting highlight was that a local college allowed our English congregation to write letters inviting their exchange students to our meetings, giving them a sample of our literature, and directing them to our website....for around 300 students!

Another highlight was getting to attend my 1st Chilean wedding. It was so beautiful and fun! A brother who served for a while as a special pioneer in Currarehue (where Wade & Tirza lived) married a sister from New Zealand. They will be moving to New Zealand this week. 
Our memorial went really well. There was an attendance of 62 which is good since I believe there are only around 45 publishers.
Those are just a few of the main highlights from this month. Hope all of your special activities for March went well too :)

February Fun

It's been another extra busy month. A couple arrived here to visit from Norway & it has been nice getting to see another example of the bond that exists between our worldwide brotherhood. We had CO visit, which was very encouraging. One of the things I love about service here is that it covers such a large area so we end up getting to see so many of the touristic and artsy parts of town that most tourists don't have time to visit.

The girls and I just got back from a little trip...had to take advantage of their freedom before they start back at work at a local university. 1st we visited the English cong in Santiago. We got to stay w/a really sweet sis who used to live in Hawaii and Santa Cruz. It was fun to get to meet friends in the cong from all over the world. Then we stopped by the Ponce's on the way to a town that the girls used to live in, called Parral. It was nice to get to do some pueblo preaching and meet the friends there too. On what we thought was the last day of our trip we visited some friends from Brentwood CA and Australia who are living in Chillan. They told us that the next day the speaker at their hall would be Wade...Wade and Tirza are part of the reason I came down to Chile w/Jenelle in the 1st place. So we decided to to stay an extra day to see them and it was so worth it. His talk was amazing and we even got invited to hospitality afterwards and got to spend some quality time w/all the friends there.

So that's the latest from down here in sunny Chile :)

Vina Fun

Well I'm happy to say that Vina has continued to be such a boost. My roommates are amazing...always busy doing good things and going out of their way for others. In the month that I've been with them they've had visitors come stay from Argentina and a couple from Washington. We got to go help a day cleaning and cooking for the workers of the assembly hall & KH remodel project in the nearby town of Belloto. And the girls are helping teach some of the workers there English....I got to go to the class last week for the 1st time and it was a lot of fun. 

The preaching is so varied here which keeps things interesting ..there's pier witnessing, telephone witnessing, letter writing, evening RV's, and of course a lot of door-to-door censusing. Vina had their district convention this month too so I got to go again...you can never hear those good reminders too many times :) 
Something adventurous that happened was that a big fire one day headed towards the girl's neighborhood. The same thing happened last year and that time the fire reached just steps from their front door. So needless to say we spent that night at a friends house just in case. But they ended up getting it under control & we were able to return to the house the next day.
So those are some of the main highlights :)