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!

Side Walks of Rosario

It's 8:30 in the morning and a city cleaner is sweeping the gutters. Businesses and apartment buildings throw water on their part of the side walk every morning and then sweep the water and trash into the gutters. Then this city worker sweeps and gathers the leaves and garbage into a bag and it is picked up later. They do this every day and this street is especially clean! Usually there are papers blowing all over the sidewalks. We walk through a lot of water on the sidewalks on our way to work because almost every building is washing their part of the sidewalk.

The varied colors of the sidewalks are where they have patched them. They use little square tiles for the sidewalks.  Some lay flat, but most are loose and tippy so you can twist your ankle very easily.

And then you'll come across just rocky dirt which is no fun in the rain!

All of these pictures are the sidewalks that we use to go to work everyday. Sorry about the color of these photos below, a filter was on my camera and I didn't notice it.

We walk over 2 miles on these sidewalks everyday. I can't take my eyes off the sidewalk or my foot will fall into a hole or step on an unstable paver or dog poop (that's another story).

The plumbing and utilities are placed under the sidewalks for accessibility.  This way they don't have to dig up the streets.

Watch your step and certainly watch out for doggie dudu which is all over the sidewalks.

If the Travel Bureau of Rosario is listening, I have a suggestion.  They could increase visitor's to the city if they'd just create or enforce an ordinance that required dog owners to clean up this filthy mess.
I'm quite certain that this one problem alone is keeping vacationers away.

Actually, as I look at all the pavement pictures, they somehow look nicer than when I am walking on them!!

Primary Program

Last Sunday we attended two Sacrament Meetings and they both had their Primary Program! Best Sunday yet!!! This Ward had 10 Primary children and that included their nursery age children and one Deacon (picture below, left side, long hair). Yes, yes, I took a picture during Sacrament meeting! I had to document those 3 fabulous red ties that the 3 young men were wearing, they were made of felt! They were cut straight across on the bottom and had an elastic neck band. Two of the ties hit the boys at their chest, the other tie went to the (shorter) boys belt. The Primary must have made them for presentations like this and use them year after year. 

This Stake Center had beautiful benches but they are not bolted to the floor.  They move around and slide around when you sit down and tip if you lean foreword.  All the buildings we have been in so far have benches like these.

Below they had the fathers sing with the Primary children and the whole Bishopric went up.  The Primary Presidency were all standing and moving around the whole presentation.  They were either chasing after the Nursery age children or shuffling children to the podium or being the Primary chorister. Bless their hearts, they earned many blessing this Sunday, they worked so hard!!! 

It was a lovely Primary Program and they had no pianist for any of the musical numbers! I did find out that the little 5 year old children can read Spanish faster than I can, very, very depressing!

Argentina Toilet Paper

I'm sure my daughters were wondering when I would blog about toilet paper. I take toilet paper on every trip. I have my favorite, Charmin. I buy it in large quantities at Costco. It would not fit in my suit case this trip, nor could I bring a years supply. I was hoping that Argentina would have Charmin toilet paper.... no such luck.

Alan describes the above toilet paper to crumbling up a sheet of lined writing paper and using it, I agree. It does have some cute pictures on it and the blue design one even smells like baby powder (really smells and probably is not good for you to use). So the best one available so far is the Scott pink and blue pkg. The others are now on a shelf for our emergency preparedness kit.

We even tried their paper towels (below), not bad but very expensive. We might be moving on to try some of their tissues (which come in very small pkgs). 

Missing the comforts of home and this fixture thing below on the right is looking better and better as time goes by.

Sleeping on the Streets of Rosario

Just when I start feeling safe about walking the streets of Rosario we come across something like this. This is 4 buildings away from our front door!

At least he got some card board to lay on and cover himself! This was taken at 8:30 in the morning and our street is very, very busy and loud. The broken glass, goblet and bottle just add to this picture story!

Then here (below) is another sleeper on the street, but he was not on our street.

And then we get to the street where our office is and we find this guy!! You can see the gate to our office building!  I thought about giving this guy a swift kick in the rear!! But wait... that's not what a missionary should do or think!! So I just took the picture and ran into our office!

What else can I say, I think I've said too much!!