Christmas Lockdown 2014

This is the outside of our apartment door and we are locked inside our apartment on Christmas Day because our lock broke! Luckily we were locked inside with food and an air conditioner and not locked outside of our apartment! (door decor was a gift from a volunteer at our office)

The key would not work, we tried and tried! We even tried to take the door off it's hinges, but the door hinges down here are not the same as in the states.

Christmas day and no one was working, the streets were empty! We were scheduled to deliver bread to homeless people on the streets with 2 sister missionaries at 11am.  We picked up the bread on the 24th (picture below) and the bread was at our office, we were locked in our apartment. So to my happiness and joy we got to FaceTime with our children and see the grandkids open their presents!

Grandma (me) couldn't be happier!!!!!! Christmas Day was full of family, laughter and cheer! Very selfish I know!

On the 26th we called our building attendant, no answer. We called our landlord and she gave us a number for a locksmith, no answer. So we called our good friend Eduardo and he was here in 5 minutes with a locksmith! For future reference, if you live on the 5th floor and you need to toss keys to your apartment building security gates to let someone in, you wrap the keys in a towel and put them in a bag and toss! And everyone needs a good friend like Eduardo (pictured below)!

In 5 minutes we had a new lock installed and Freedom!!!!!

Testing the new lock and it worked! $60 US dollars for parts and labor and a house call on a holiday (the 26th is also a holiday in Argentina) and remember he was here in 5 minutes! Now what should we do with this old heavy broken lock!!! Down here you don't throw away such a heavy item, it should have another use, any ideas?

FREEDOM!! Now if our building should catch fire I don't have to use a chair to break down the door to get out! (yes I had planned a strategy for such a scenario, be prepared is my motto)

Feliz Navidad

The Rosario Stake Center has this large nativity outside of their chapel.  I have no idea how they keep the little kids from playing with it! Those planters won't keep them out!

The  Christmas tree (below) is in the entry of our chapel, Parque Urquica

Sunday we traveled to Las Delicias Ward (below) and we found this darling nativity. The plant/tree is real and after sacrament meeting some sisters were taking a heart of the plant/tree and hurrying to the Primary room. Never did find out what that was all about.

This is real grass that the nativity is sitting on.  It was so cute and once again, how are they keeping the children from playing with it?

The Nativity scene below we found in Our Lady of the Rosary's Cathedral Basilica built in 1731. We went there last week and baby Jesus wasn't in the display, but on Christmas Eve he was in his place.  They were holding a service inside and we quickly walked to the front of the Cathedral and snapped these 2 pictures so they aren't the best.  Confessions were also taking place, but I couldn't get a good shot of that. The priest was sitting in the open with a divider between him and the confessor, there was a long line waiting for their turn.  The line moved very quickly! We could see the priest as we walked by, he was wearing levis, tennis shoes and was young.

And this is our little nativity decor in our apartment! Merry Christmas everyone!

HO HO HO

We have seen some classic Santa's down here! Of course I like the Saxophone Santa the best! I think he road into town on his red motorcycle!

The gals in our office went and bought a Christmas tree for our room and made a couple of little decorations. I am becoming a tinsel fan.

This Santa looks better in this picture than in real life.  I call him Slick Willy Santa.

The Costume stores have strange looking Santas.

This wall Santa is my favorite! Right out of the 1950's.  The picture doesn't do him justice, he is sparkly with gold glitter and a tan face!

This poor Santa (below pic), it was so hot!!  It was 91 degrees with humidity! I wish I would have gotten my picture with him!

Walking to work we found this fun meat shop with a very festive cow!

Moo.....y Christmas everyone!

El ES LA DADIVA - He Is The Gift, Rosaria

Since the Church was showing this video in Times Square New York(picture below) we thought let's show it on our Big screen in Rosario! Missionaries received pass along cards to #sharethegift. We have shared these cards with many cab drivers and a few people we have met on the street. We also posted the video on Facebook in English and Spanish. And Alan sent it to his friends in China in Chinese.

We pulled a TV out of a class room at our office and played the video non stop in our building entry. Lots of non members come into our center to find jobs. Pictured below is Norma who cleans our building and is a member. Norma also decorated the Christmas tree with sparkling lights!

For our premier showing of the video on our out-door wall at our center we invited one of our Missionary Districts to help. We are missing one Elder and two Sisters in the pic below.

We made a street sign and unlocked the security gates on our center. As I rolled back one of the gates I got teary eyed and felt like we were totally welcoming all to our center (kind of like opening up Temple Square gates around the Temple).

 

 
We showed the video 3 separate nights and we had to wait till it got dark. And then we discovered that we had a lovely street light that created wonderful shadows on the wall.  The pictures show the shadows more than when we were just watching the movie. We started at 8pm and ended at 9:30 (people our out late down here). With 3rd World extension cords we had a little fire that flared up on my hand when I moved the cord.  I then tried to stamp out the fire with my shoe and quickly decided that my skirt was going to start on fire. We ran and bought another cord and we were back in business! I was in charge of keeping the lap top safe (I needed a security baseball bat)!

On Wednesday Dec. 10th we had 8 Missionaries and 24 people off the street came in and sat down and watched the video at least 2 times through and secured 5 solid referrals. December 11th we had 2 Sister Missionaries and 13 people came in and watched the video numerous times and 5 solid referrals. Monday December 15th it was really raining but lightened up right before 8pm!  We had 4 missionaries, 6 people off the street watched the video and we got 5 solid  referrals and 1 first discussion was given and many conversations were taking place on the sidewalk in front of our center.

The 2 Sister Missionaries that are located in our area are awesome at street contacting.  Sister Siapo (Chiclayo Peru) and Sister Cruz (Nicaragua).  They are short, cute, fabulous and great missionaries.  My favorite picture is the one below.  Sister Cruz was down the street when she first started talking to this lady. The people don't stop walking when the Missionaries start to talk to them so the Sisters just start walking with them. By the time they hit our 2nd open gate Sister Cruz got this lady to stop and watch the video multiple times.  The lady didn't want to come in and in the end she gave Sister Cruz her name, phone number and address and wanted to know more. I love this picture because this lady is me. I would never go in and watch a video even if they said it was 2 minutes, even if they had cookies and candy (which we did).  The 43 people who came in and sat down to watch the video are very special people.  We had many people who would watch the video from across the street and at the street corner and at our gates but not come in. You could here the music from the video at the street corners.

We ended up one night bringing the projector home to our apartment and we have a huge blank wall next to our apartment so we shined the projector out the window (set-up below with our dish drying rack on top of the microwave) and showed it to the neighboring apartment buildings.  We had some neighbors out on their balconies and people watching from their windows and one gal was on her phone watching and pointing at the video. We have tried to do our part in Sharing The Gift and hope you all have Shared the Gift too.

Rosario West Stake Conference

Just as we were leaving to attend a Stake Conference today, the heavens opened, and it poured.  Thunder Storms are wild in Rosario, umbrellas don't hold up to horizontal rain and wind. We stood on a street corner and finally flagged down a cab and the seat had huge puddles of water on it from some one who had been soaked.  My skirt did a great job of soaking up all that water!  When we arrived at the Stake Center the Elders were helping members out of their cars or helping members who had walked without an umbrella. The Stake President grabbed our 2 umbrellas and gave them to the Elders to help others into the building.

Four Elders were dripping wet, soaked to the skin because they didn't have umbrellas but were helping members anyway!! Umbrellas get ruined quickly in the wind so a lot of members don't use them. This family (below) brought their own towels to dry themselves off when they got to the Church.  I went in to the bathroom to get a paper towel to dry off my skirt, shoes and legs but the bathroom was filled with sisters soaked to the skin.  Water dripping off of every inch of their bodies. Most women's hair never did dry even after the 2 hour meeting. Everyone sat with dripping hair and wet clothes and didn't seem to mind! It's what they do when it pours!!

This is the Program for Stake Conference.  On one side a coloring page for the children and on the other side the hymns we would sing.

Thank goodness it was just a light rain when we got out of Church!