Fog and Regrets

A foggy morning looking out of our apartment window.

The first week in April we had a very unusual weather event for Rio Gallegos, fog. We couldn't quite figure out why people were so unnerved by clouds hugging the ground. It wasn't even that thick a blanket.  This is a coastal area, and in my experience, fog should be a fairly normal occurrence, but the people of Rio Gallegos found it unsettling.  Then it dawned on us; the air was completely still.  We hadn't had hardly any wind and that allowed fog to settle over the city. 

Sometimes I need to realize that opposing winds are there to keep the fog clear from my life, not just to make it difficult.   My wife states this much more eloquently than I can.  Here are Hermana Merkley's thoughts about a foggy night . . .

Last night we had an interesting experience. As we were out walking to do errands and visits, we watched the sky darken and thicken as fog rolled into the city when the sun set. It created an eerie, haunting atmosphere as the sounds of barking dogs, moving cars, and people talking bounced around in all directions. This fog was a first for us here in Rio Gallegos.

We had an appointment to visit a family from a different branch. When we got there, only the father was home. His wife and daughters were out shopping. We learned that this brother has been a member for 26 years. He served a mission in Córdoba, Argentina and at one time served in the district presidency here in Rio Gallegos. But he allowed some personal frustrations with a few of the members to cloud his thinking and stopped going to church, though he still has a testimony.

He has been married for ten years and his wife is a more recent convert of nine years. When he stopped going to church, his wife's testimony slowly died. With tears in his eyes, he explained how new converts need to be nourished and cared for and that he had allowed his own frustrations to damage the tender testimony of his wife. She is currently working in a Catholic school and doesn't really want anything to do with the church.

He has a strong desire to come back to church. He told us that he knows the things he needs to repent of, but the thought of going to church by himself is really hard. He has a daughter that will be turning eight soon, and he would really like to be able to baptize her. Hopefully he can find the strength to make those changes necessary to return to full activity in the Church.

As we left his house and stepped into the thickening fog, I thought of my own regrets in life. But regrets can only cloud the mind and confuse our purpose. When we turn our regrets over to the Savior, He can heal us and give us clear direction. How grateful I am for my Savior.

A Trip to El Calafate

The road to El Calafate

We don't get the chance to do a lot of touristy things here.  We are so busy with the work that it just doesn't happen.  However, on March 20 and 21, 2014 we had zone conference in the city of El Calafate.  It is three and half hours from Rio Gallegos by car.   We had to drive ourselves in our little Ford Ka because we had to be back here in Rio Gallegos early for choir practice for the district conference.   The trip was an opportunity to see some of the country and see some of what Patagonia is all about!  

Most of Patagonia is a flat dry plateau.  As you can see in the photo above, it looks a lot like parts of Wyoming or Idaho: dry, windy, with low grass and shrubs.  Much of the scenery in this area is in the clouds.  They are frequently very interesting.  We did see some interesting wildlife along the way.  We saw three Andean Condors hovering over the road.  They were really cool! Unfortunately, at that point there was quite a bit of traffic on the road (at least 3 other cars) and we couldn't pull over in time to get a picture.  
 

Guanaco on the road to El Calafate

We saw a lot of guanaco.  They are related to llamas and alpacas but apparently can't be domesticated so they are just wild grazing beasts that you have to watch out for when they decide they want to cross the road! The speed limit on the road to El Calafate is about 70 mph but people apply the same rules that apply driving through much of the western US.  You don't really want to hit one of these things going fast.   Our little car did hit 70 mph going down hill so we generally had a little more time to be prepared for the guanaco!

The city of El Calafate is next to Lake Argentino . It is a very large glacial lake.  There is a bird refuge on part of the lake but there were a lot of birds even right on the lake by our hotel.  There are two species of swan here that we have seen.  Black-necked swan and Coscoroba  (Thanks to Daniel and Wendy for the bird book!)  The Coscoroba look pure white when they are sitting on the water but when they take off you can see the black wing-tips in flight and it is pretty stunning.
  

Black-necked swan on Lago Argentino

There is also a species of flamingo in Patagonia.  I tend to think of flamingo as being more tropical birds, but Chilean Flamingo seem to flourish in all their pinkness even here close to the Antarctic and yes those are part of the Andes off in the distance.

Chilean Flamingo on Lago Argentina

The day after the conference we went to Los Glaciares National Park and visited a huge glacier called Perito Moreno.  The set of glaciers in Los Glaciares are some of the few in the world that are still actively growing.  Perito Moreno was very impressive.  The coloring of the glacier is an intense sapphire blue and the immensity of it difficult to describe and hard to comprehend from photos.
 

The Perito Moreno glacier in Parque Nacional de los Glaciares

We saw some people making a trek over the top of glacier and they looked like ants. The front of the glacier is about 70 meters high. We got to take a boat tour to see the glacier closer.  While we were on the boat, a huge section of ice calved off and created a rolling wave.  The boat had to move quickly away from the area and position itself to be hit by the wave. 

Looking towards the opening into Lago Argentino.

They have done a great job with the national park.  There are raised walkways that allow you see the glacier from many different perspectives and still protect the vegetation and wildlife.

The Perito Moreno Glacier and one of the overlooks.

 As you might have noticed we did get a good look at the Andes at last.  Most of the day was kind of overcast but we did get a few glimpses of spectacular peaks.  This picture turned out kind of cool.  It turned out looking like black and white just because of the lighting and the coloration of the rock and snow.  It was a pretty spectacular day.   

We did leave Los Glaciares in time to make it back to the choir practice in Rio Gallegos.  I was directing the choir and Hermana Merkley played the piano.  We sang Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd and it turned out really well.  The third verse states

Dear to the heart of the Shepherd,

Dear are the "ninety and nine";

Dear are the sheep that have wandered

Out in the desert to pine.

Hark! He is earnestly calling,

Tenderly pleading today:

"Will you seek for my lost ones,

Off from my shelter astray?"

The song fits well with the work that we do.  There are times when we have all wandered and  need someone to come looking for us.  There are some that we meet that truly just need an invitation to come to Christ.  There are some that it will take much more, and some that may never return but they still tell us that their door is open because they love the Spirit that we bring.  It is fun to go see the tourist things that are here at the end of the world, but it is more fulfilling to see lives changed as they allow the atonement of Jesus Christ to take effect in their lives.

Utilities (Part 2)

Here is part 2 of Hermana Merkley's account of our exploits with Argentine bureaucracies!   Enjoy!

Dear family and friends,

I promised you the rest of the story in getting our utilities changed into our name so here it is!

Day 1
After finally getting the gas changed into our name, we felt confident as we walked down to the public services which bills for electric/water/garbage. With copies of our rental contract and passport in hand and an approximate address on Kirchner, the main road downtown, we were ready to tackle this next errand. After wandering around and asking at least two people for directions, we finally realized we had passed the building twice, not knowing what we were really looking for. Feeling somewhat humbled, we walked inside and took a number. Most businesses here run on this system. If you want service, you take a number and wait for it to be called. There were at least twenty numbers ahead of ours with four boxes, or attendants, so we knew it would be a long wait.

The room was filled with people, with more people entering than leaving. It was just after 12:00 and many people were on their lunch break. Most of the businesses here actually close for lunch and the cultural siesta. The public services stay open until 1:30 p.m. but does not reopen later in the day. Soon I felt perspiration pooling on my forehead and running down my back. (That is the other thing we have noticed here; many people keep their homes or businesses very warm.) After feeling like we were starting to cook, we decided to step outside to cool off. We wandered down to a craft store and checked out the yarn prices. (Yes, Elder Merkley is very supportive of my wishes.) After a few minutes we headed back to the public services, hoping they would get to our number before they closed. There were still about seven numbers to go so we waited, anxiously watching the clock. Finally, our number was called. We went up to the attendant and presented our documents. She took one look at the copy of our rental agreement and told us that it wasn't sufficient. She needed the original certified copy. We left feeling discouraged because our certified copy was at the mission office in Comodoro Rivadavia, around 500 miles away.

Days 2-5
After talking with Elder Carter in the mission office and explaining our dilemma, he decided to send us the original document by certified mail. Three days later we received a notice in our mailbox that we had a certified letter waiting for us at the post office. The mail system within the country seems to be very efficient. Since the post office closes early, we had to wait until the next day to retrieve our letter.

Day 6
The next day we walked down to the post office and waited in line, thankfully a very short line, and showed the postal worker our notice. She politely told us that we were at the wrong place. We needed to go downstairs to a different room to request a certified letter. After finding the room, we were relieved to see that only one person was ahead of us in line. We proudly presented the new postal worker our notice, and he went to find our letter. We waited, and waited, and waited. I was starting to wonder if he had taken a lunch break when he finally returned with our letter. We left clutching the document, knowing that we would have to return to the public services another day since they were now closed.

Success at day 7!
Our second time at the public services the line was shorter and the room wasn't quite as hot. (We are learning to be thankful for small miracles.)  When our number was called, we showed the attendant our original certified copy of our rental agreement. She quickly looked it over and then told us we needed to give her a copy of the certified copy that she could keep on file. We handed her the copy we had made days earlier, puzzled by why she had to see the orginal copy in the first place. She then told us that she couldn't transfer the utilities into our name until the final bill was paid by the previous tenant, a bill that hadn't even been sent out yet. Not wanting to go through this process all over again, we agreed to pay the previous bill which was about $6.50 USD. The government heavily subsidizes the public utilities which is a blessing to those who are really struggling financially. The attendant gave as a hand written copy of the bill and showed as the window where we could pay it. And yes, you guessed it, we had to wait in another line. We paid the bill and went back to the first attendant. She verified our receipt and quickly and efficiently made the changes. She then told us we were good to go, but reminded us that when the next bill came in the mail in a week or two for the $6.50, we should ignore it since we had already paid it.

Love Hermana Gwen Merkley

His Grace is Sufficient

Here is another of Hermana Merkley's emails.   She writes much better than I do.  Maybe someday I'll get the comma thing down right so she doesn't have to correct it all the time . . .

Dear family and friends,

Lest you think we spend all our time doing mundane things, I thought I would share some of the other kinds of experiences that we are having.

We have spent a lot of time with people who are in a great deal of emotional and spiritual pain. It is often hard to know how to help or give any comfort. We often leave these homes feeling frustrated with ourselves, wondering if we made any difference in the lives of these people. Other times we definitely feel the hand of the Lord. The other day we were visiting with an inactive sister who was recently separated from her husband. During our visit she had an emotional breakdown. It was hard to know how to give her any comfort since I knew that I didn't have any answers for her. The only thing I could tell her was that God knew her and loved her, and that Christ's atoning sacrifice covered her pain and anguish. (Alma 7:11) Elder Merkley offered to give her a blessing for comfort and strength. It was amazing to feel the power of the Spirit come into the room and fill it with peace where just moments before it had been filled with pain.

We had a much harder experience with an inactive brother our first week here in Rio Gallegos. While still living in a hotel and spending a great deal of time apartment hunting, we tried to spend a little time each day contacting members. We had a branch list so we started knocking on doors of members in the area closest to the church. The second house we tried, a man opened his door and came outside to talk to us. At first he would not admit to being the member that we were looking for. After a short conversation where we thought at any moment he would tell us to get lost, he finally admitted to being a member of the church. Elder Merkley asked him if he remembered his baptism and the missionaries who taught him. He replied that it was a long time ago. His body language was still very antagonistic. We were getting ready to walk away, when suddenly something changed inside this man, and he invited us into his house. We sat around his table where he proceeded to tell of all his struggles and some of the reasons why he hadn't been to church for many years. His pain was so great that it hurt to be in the same room. It was one of the few times I was very grateful that I didn't understand a word he was saying. But I felt his emotional distress. Elder Merkley promised him that God still loved him and again asked him if he remembered his baptism. This time he responded by telling us the names of the missionaries that baptized him almost 20 years ago. He spoke of them with great love. He then told us he had been a former branch president. Then he walked over by his TV and picked up a magazine there. It was the last Liahona he had received in 2006. He showed us a picture of President Hinkley and we felt of his great love for this prophet of God.

We still don't really understand all the reasons why this man hasn't been to church for years, but we do know that God wants him to come back. We've tried stopping by several other times, but he has never invited us back inside. He seems almost embarrassed about having let us in that first time. But we keep running into him in the grocery store. The last time we ran into him, Elder Merkley mentioned an article found in the Liahona that we thought he might be interested in reading.  Last week we dropped off a copy of "Su gracia es suficiente" and he agreed to read it. We haven't managed to catch him at home to see if he has read the article, but we don't think it's a coincidence that we keep running into him.

Our days are filled with many small miracles like the examples above. We haven't really seen anything that most people would recognize as truly miraculous, yet we have felt God's hand in our lives time after time. We know he is there, and we know that he cares about the people here in Rio Gallegos.

Sister Gwen Merkley

Utilities (Part 1)

Some of you may not have gotten Hermana Merkley's email.  I thought it was to good to pass up so I'm going to post it here as well!

Dear family and friends,

I can think of so many things I would like to tell you, but I never seem to have enough time. Everything thing here seems to take at least twice as long, often three or four times as long. Nothing happens quickly in Argentina. For example, the other day we were trying to get the utilities changed into our name. We went to Camuzzi first, the company for the natural gas. We had looked up the information online and knew that they needed our passport or DNI (Argentine national identity card)  and a copy of our apartment contact. We had sent the original apartment contract back to Comodoro since Pres. Rogers had signed that one, but we did have a copy. We walked the mile plus and found the place, that in and of itself was amazing. So far so good. We got in line (it was amazingly short) and waited our turn.  When we got up to the desk and told the employee what we needed to do, he asked to see our documents. Feeling prepared, we proudly pulled out our documents only to be told that we needed to have copies made that they could keep on file. They couldn't make copies, we had to bring them ourselves. We asked where we could get copies made and went off to find the copy center. Luckily it was only a couple of blocks away. We had two copies made of each document since we knew we had to change the electric/water/garbage bill into our name as well. We went back to Camuzzi, waited in line again, turned in our documents, and the changes were made. All in all a simple process that only took about three hours out of our day.

Changing the other bill is a much longer story so I'll save it for another day.

Finding a copy center had been one of our goals since Elder Merkley wanted to make copies of a Liahona article from Brad Wilcox, "Su gracia es suficiente" ("My Grace is Sufficient"), to give to people. On another day, Elder Merkley downloaded this article onto a thumb drive, and we set off to find the copy center again. We showed the employee our thumb drive and were told that he couldn't use that. We left to find an Internet café where we could print off the article first, then bring the one copy back to the copy center to have copies made. (Copies are much cheaper at the copy center.)

When we arrived at the Internet café and plugged in the thumb drive, Elder Merkley couldn't locate the article. (He later realized that he had two thumb drives in his pocket and had plugged in the wrong one.) He got online, found the article again, and printed it off.  We got in line, paid for the computer time and the four page copy, and headed back to the copy center. At the copy center, we asked for 10 copies. The employee printed out the 10 copies, forty pages, and then proceeded to collate them by hand. Once they were collated, he stapled each copy. Then he went back and manually tightened each staple since the staples only loosely held the pages together. Watching him work, I felt like I was in a time warp of about thirty or forty years. We left the copy center proudly holding our ten copies, feeling like we had successfully navigated another mystery in Argentina!

This email seems long enough so I will close for now,  leaving the reason for the copies for another day. Please know that we feel of your prayers. 

Love Sister Gwen Merkley

San Benito

The outskirts of San Benito by evening.

So I need to tell you a little bit about one of the areas here in our branch.  San Benito was originally agricultural land outside of Rio Gallegos, but around 5000 acres of it got gathered up through allegedly nefarious means and purchased by an individual who wanted to subdivide it and create a new part of the city.   The city denied the permits because parts of it are boggy, it is too far away to provide any services, it is outside the city limits . . .  Well, this guy subdivided it and started selling lots anyway.  I think he probably made his money and took off leaving a pretty big mess.   The government "expropriated" (is that an English word?) the land and tried at first to drive away the people that had built there.  In the end, the government has had to accept that San Benito is going to exist.   Through the efforts of a Catholic priest, they have started to obtain water, power, gas, and maybe someday even a sewer system.  There is a beautiful school that has been built in the center of the area, but it can't open because there is no sewer. 

A San Benito house with the requisite DishTV satellite disk.

The place is an odd conglomeration of shanty town and really nice but compact homes.  Most of the construction is a work in progress done by the homeowners as they have time and money for materials.  The surrounding area  is all dirt roads, ruts and mud.  (We have to be very careful where we drive with our little car!)  The exterior of most of the houses is very unfinished.   The first clue that something may be different is the 1.5 meter DirectTV dish outside the home. (They may not have running water but they have to have their DirectTV!)  Inside the house things can be very nice.  Tile floors, granite counter-tops, 42 inch or bigger flat-screen TVs.  On the other end of the spectrum you have people who hold the land essentially as homesteaders.  As long as you can build and keep a permanent structure on land assigned to you by lottery it is yours.  Keeping the permanent structure is a little more difficult than you might think.   Remember the wind that we've talked about?  The structure has to be strong enough to withstand the elements.  Then there are the robbers who will try to steal the land or the materials used to build a house while it is still under construction.  Many of these homes end up being one room corrugated tin shacks that can be built quickly and have a lock on the door to protect the few meager possessions that they have.

We visited one of the families in a corrugated tin shack.  They have a three year old daughter that is absolutely precious.  She snuggled up to Hermana Merkley almost immediately.  The mother had surgery several months ago and is still recovering, but her biggest concern was that as part of the surgery they had removed a mass, and the results of the tests were yet unknown.  We went with her and her daughter to the doctors last week, and she found out that the tumor was not malignant.   They were in church for the first time in months on Sunday.  The branch president told us that he had never seen her glow like that before.

It is fascinating to visit the people in this area.  They live a long ways from the church, and the buses, especially on Sunday morning, are not very reliable.  It is a huge financial burden on some of them to make it to church.  As we talk to some of these less active members, we find that they have testimonies.  We asked to read a scripture with one of these families and all the kids went and grabbed their own scriptures to follow along.  They remember with great fondness the missionaries that baptized them, and they remember the day of their baptism as one of the best events of their lives.  We hope we can strengthen the people in this area so that we can have a chapel closer to them.

BTW, to all you returned missionaries, we have met people who were baptized 20 or 30 years ago that want to know what  happened to the missionaries that taught or baptized them.  If you put up a Facebook page and indicate that you served in a given area, they can probably find you now!  If you have their names try to find them.  It will bless your life and theirs.

Catching up

Yea! We have internet in our apartment.  OK so for right now it is only 512KB/s so don't expect me to be uploading any pictures anytime soon!  But at least it will allow me to post some text and let people know what is going on with us.

So first a little catching up . . . our trip here was, well shall we say, exciting?  Frankly, the last thing you would wish for anyone having an intercontinental flight is exciting.   We flew out on January 6 and the weather on the east coast was awful so our plane showed up in SLC about 3 hours late.  We landed in Atlanta with about 45 minutes to make the flight.  Tight but doable except that there were no gates available to let us off the plane!  By the time we finally got off the plane, our flight to Buenos Aires had already left.  They rerouted us through Santiago, Chile but there were mechanical problems with that flight so we missed the connection from Santiago to Buenos Aires.   We finally made it to BA at about 5:00 in the afternoon and met the good brother that had been waiting for us in the airport since before 8:00 a.m.  Unfortunately, while we made it, none of our luggage did.   We spent the night in BA and were advised to just fly on to Comodoro Rivadavia and our luggage would catch up to us.  Three days later it finally mostly made it.  There were a number of items missing out of our luggage and I am still working through that with the airlines. 

We retrieved the last piece of luggage from airport on our way out of town on Friday, January 10 to drive to Rio Gallegos.  Rio Gallegos is about 500 miles from Comodoro.   Stop and think about that for a minute.  That's like driving from the center of Utah, say Fillmore, to Disneyland.  This is all one mission and we aren't even close to the end of it.  Ushuaia is at the end of Tierra del Fuego and is another 350 plus miles from Rio Gallegos over dirt roads and including customs for both Chile and Argentina plus a ferry ride.   Comodoro is more in the center part of the mission.  If you haven't gotten the picture yet, this mission is geographically huge!

Wikipedia lists the 2010 census population of Rio Gallegos as about 100,000 people.  From walking and driving around it, I have to say that it doesn't feel that big.  The downtown area is fairly compact and very walkable.  The city feels to me more like Missoula, MT when I was growing up and that was more like 50,000 people.  President Rogers told us that as a couple we should plan a weekly date.  However, when we ask people what they do for entertainment here, they just kind of shrug their shoulders and say they go visit friends or go to Punta Arenas, Chile (we asked but that is outside of the mission and we don't get to go there).   Since we go visiting people all the time our dating is going to have to be a little creative!

As we meet people here they are always asking us how we like the weather here.  My response is that the people are really kind and friendly.  They say that Rio Gallegos has four seasons in every day.  This morning early it was calm, sunny and a little warm.  This afternoon the wind blew relatively hard only about 30 mph with a few stronger gusts.  Tonight it is cold and rainy.  That is a typical summer day here.  (Remember that this is the southern hemisphere so while you are having winter we are having our summer.) Very seldom do you see people walking around without a jacket or sweater on.  I think we hit 70 on one day but that has been the high and most of the time it is quite a bit cooler.  Winter could be interesting.

We got here in the month of January which is equivalent to August in Europe.  Everyone was on vacation and not much was happening.   We bought some furniture from a store that had free delivery except all the delivery people were on vacation until the beginning of February.  So we got one of the members with a truck and the Elders to do the delivery.  Our first Sunday here, all the of the branch presidency was out of town, as well as the Relief Society Pres. and the Elder's Quorum Pres.  We now have all of the branch leadership back in town and it feels like things are moving forward.   We have been called to teach the Temple Prep class and we are contacting people that the branch council has singled out for that class.   President Rogers said he was going to call the branch president and let him know that we should have 3 or 4 callings in the branch, one is just not enough!  It reminds me of my parents in our small ward in Montana.  I'm sure there were times when my Mom normally held down at least 4 callings just to keep things working!

We have met a number of people in the branch and we hope to get into all the homes eventually.  I am amazed by the faithfulness of many of the people here.  There are many who are classified as less active but I am astounded by the level of sacrifice it takes just to get to church for many of them.   We walk into a home of someone who has not been to church for sometime and we read a scripture with them and the whole family runs to get their personal scriptures to read along.  I feel a little embarrassed about the complaints that I sometimes made about having to run over to the church for something.  It is incredibly humbling being here and working with these people.