A Good Day - Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010

Not a cloud in the sky today. Beautiful!! The air was refreshingly cool somewhere in the 60's as we walked to the office. We were loving it and had to chuckle as we observed some people in fleece vests, jackets, and sweatshirts. The least hint of chilly weather finds most Argentines bundled up. Come on folks, it's going to warm up in a hour. They don't tolerate cold weather around here at all. We find it somewhat amusing.

Antes de irme a la oficinia (that's a phrase I've learned studying español which means before going to the office), I put half of my Tapa de Nalga in our small crockpot to let it cook on low all day while we are gone. Tomorrow I will cook the other half.

In preparation for our elders lunch we are having on Saturday, I have had to organize our week to get some things out of the way -- like the laundry done, white shirts washed and ironed, and some food prepared ahead of time. Then, Saturday morning we can clean the apartment, and finish the food preparations. I don't know why it is such a big deal to entertain, but always is for me. And these cute missionaries could care less about all the things that stress me out. They are just grateful to be together and to have a home cooked meal.

Right at 9:00 when we got to work, our mini zone conference began. The special conference and mission tour a couple weeks ago with Elder Aidukaitis took the place of the regular zone conference this time. So the President just had to conduct interviews. Our zone's turn was this morning. He addressed the zone prior to the interviews so we participated in that meeting. Then we went back to the office to work while interviews went forward.

Rich prepared a deposit to take to the bank later in the day and I worked on baptisms. I also emailed parents of missionaries going home in the June transfer to obtain needed information to prepare for their release. It is amazing how far in advance we have to start to make this transition go smoothly.

Hermana Argyle came into the office to discuss what we are going to do when Dr. Petersen is released from his mission in March. They have no one to replace him yet, and she informed me that they probably won't have anyone on board until next September or October. Good grief!! That means for the rest our time here, there will not be a medical advisor close at hand to call for treatment. They have asked Dr. Petersen to be available at his home in Burley, Idaho to take medical calls until someone can be brought to Argentina. But, we suppose that there will be a window of time during the day that we will be able to reach him. He just can't sit at home all day every day waiting for Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay to call.

It has been a blessing to have him at our disposal. I will really miss him. It is so convenient to have an elder stop by his office occasionally to have an evaluation on some problem, or to have an ingrown toenail operated on, or to have him accompany a missionary to the hospital when surgery is required. The problem is that we need more retired doctors to serve missions. In fact, we need more retired senior couples to serve missions. Sister Argyle said that as far as she knows, there is no one scheduled to take our place. She said they were going to stress to the new president the importance of having a senior couple in the office and that maybe he could find someone to recuit to fill our positions.

As our cute elders were leaving to go do the "real work" they were called to do, I told them to pose for a picture. I needed one for the entry today. There is no significance in holding their placas as they are doing -- Elder Coria stuck his out there and the others followed suit. We get the cream of the crop in office elders. We love these guys!

We found the perfect time to shop at Disco. We had some things to pick up at the store along with going to the Farmacia next door for Rich's pills, so we decided to go right when we got home. There were no lines at Disco - none! We hurried along with our selections and walked right up to a cashier. Sure beats what we experienced at WalMart last weekend.

We watched Olympic Ice Dancing tonight which actually took place last weekend. We are a little behind, but it doesn't matter as we never hear the winners. It was great!