Another week has passed us by but a lot of change.  We had some very good training for our mission from the field managers from PEF  Self-reliance during the week.

 

This is a picture of the old self reliance pef office.

It's located in the financial center in Santiago.

Main lobby

we will not be located here because they closed this office.  It was in a very high rent area and hard for volunteers as well as patrons to reach. Not much work has been done since it closed in July.  The contacts are way behind and the wards and Stakes have discontinued using the Self-reliance service center.  Our manager wants us to contact all the priesthood leaders; reorganize the stake and ward committees; and get the new initiative moving along.  I suppose that is why we were sent here.  It looks just like what I faced when I took over the Storehouse and Cannery in Houston 20 years ago.  So having experience training priesthood leaders in welfare will help me when doing the same in Self-reliance.  I am grateful for the opportunities that Elder Nielson gave me to train in Spanish while in Houston, for now I really need to rely on that experience in a real sense.

We still do not have a permanent place to live.  We are presently living in an apartment that is reserved for the Area President when he visits Santiago.  We have a lead on an apartment that will be available November 1st.  It is in our price range and not too far from the center.  

  They also have a nice office that is empty except for the church lawyer.  There are three large offices and a nice conference room just sitting unused.  The area office has been moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina and this one is used only when they visit for some reason.

Our office is in a really good location on the first floor and will be ready by the end of November which means maybe by Christmas.  We shall see.  In the mean time we have the choice of going to the closed office to make contacts or work where ever we can find space open in the main office building (or in the hall).  We have been assigned work that is the duty of the volunteers to do because there are only two now and they are only coming in one day a week.  There are participants who need transition interviews (about 138) but have not been contacted in six month.  So tomorrow we will start.  Chris will start answering emails (408) and I will start making transition calls.  The transition calls are to inform the participant that there payment is going up since they have been out of school for over six months.  Some of them have not received the call and are up to a year behind on their payments.  We called one student who had not paid since July 2013.  We talked to her mother and found out that she is saving all of her money to get ready to go on a mission.  So we have to talk to her directly and help her get caught up on the payments before she will be able to go on her mission.  She doesn't know or suspect that that is the case.  There are many ways she can become current which will allow her to go and some may not even mean she will have to pay a large amount but she needs to contact us and make arrangements.  So the work is very different in some ways than we expected.  We shall see. 

We have connected with several senior missionary couples, some who work in the Temple, the mission Doctor and his wife, the assistant area attorney and his wife, the humanitarian missionaries, and the other couple who work in the other office in Santiago.  It is a pleasure to get together and do things like go shopping and have lunch together.    We are scheduled to go on a tour of the Church's olive orchard on Monday which is about an hour out of Santiago.  They produce specially processed olive oil that is very expensive and export it to Spain and Italy.  We will post some pictures after the visit. 


I was walking around the Temple grounds the other night and took some pictures which are not very good because there is not really a good place to get a good shot of the temple but here we are:

This the entrance from the Street during the Day.

 I attended a session last night which was very good for me.  I was feeling very restless because we do not have a home, an office, nor any of the tools we need to do the work.  So I went and in the process felt I need to just be patient.  Sister Johnson held up her hand with the fingers spread and says.  Starting with the thumb: "because we live in Chile" "be patient it will happen but on their time schedule not ours.  So I am being patient at least until tomorrow.  My family knows how impatient and restless I can be when I can not do what I think needs to be done but I am learning SLOWLY.  What can I say I do not like to waste time and each day that passes is one less that we have here to do so much work. 

I love the people I have met so far and they are very grateful that we have arrived but I think the big problem that they do not know what to do with us is because they were not aware we were coming.  Now we are here they are scrambling to get things ready for us. 

I read some emails from some of the participants that made my heart warm today.  They explain how much their life is changed for the better with the loan and education.  They finally have hope for a better future which was unattainable for them before.  There are a lot of people from Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina here fleeing from the socialism and communism and the unrest in those countries.  They fear the same issues that are already in Venezuela to be in the other countries who are aligning with Venezuela.  They see Chile as a stable government and economy where their own countries are very unstable and fear retribution from the government because they do not see them going a good way.  The Chileans have a little fear in that the immigrants are here illegally and the are taking some of the jobs of the lower class people making it hard for them to find work.


Up to now, our mission has been getting settled, but we look forward to some inspiring experiences as we get to actually work with the Saints.