Welcome Lyla!

 

Grandbaby #1 Lyla Brynn Francis

It's been a while since our last update and much has happened but by far the most important and exciting is the birth of our first grandchild, Lyla Brynn Francis.  Welcome Lyla!  Eric and Ashley welcomed Lyla into the world on October 16th.  She is the cutest granddaughter.  We are very excited for Eric and Ashley and even more excited to be able to return home for 10 days to visit and get to know her.  We can't wait!  Ashley has been great keeping us up to date with lots of pictures and videos but nothing replaces the in-person experience.  Hard to believe we are grandparents.  We love you Lyla!!

Not much to say after that. Everything else pales in comparison but we will try and give an update on our happenings for the past few weeks.  

October 5th-6th was the General Conference of our church.  It takes place every 6 months, in April and October.  We loved listening to the prophets and apostles speak, it always strengthens us and gives us hope for the future. We also feel closer to the Savior as we listen to his servants share his words with us.  It was a different experience viewing and listening to the conference this time.  We watched the first session on Saturday morning in our home watching on YouTube.  But then the elders here in Ibarreta called us asking if we could go to the church for the afternoon sessions because it was only them and a few youths at the church (they are not supposed to be alone with the youth).  So we of course went.  I watched in Spanish but Martha used her phone to listen in English.  Listening in Spanish is still a bit difficult, I get about 60-80% of what is spoken and try to fill in the blanks.  

You can see from the pictures there were not a lot of people at church watching the conference on Saturday.  The chapel was empty!  All the youth and young single adults were in the back cultural hall area sitting at tables. Sunday had many more people but we did not take pictures.  If you want to check out the conference you can watch all of it or any of the specific talks here:  General Conference

Empty chapel on Saturday afternoon

Everyone at the back watching

I was about to talk about the rain we've had over the last two weeks and all of a sudden it started raining right now!  It's been about 95 degrees today so the rain is very unexpected.  That's how it goes here in Ibarreta.  The weather forecast always changes.  When it rains it is almost impossible to go anywhere.  The streets are almost all dirt roads, with only the main road and a few others that are paved.  I would say about 90% is all dirt.  The roads fill up with this thick slimy mud. Our truck is four-wheel drive but that doesn't help with this mud.  The truck just slips and slides all over the road.  Since we can't really go outside we use our time to study and send messages to the church members that we are working with. 

Our backyard swamp.  It really fills up with water.

Muddy road on our street (Martin Polo 470)

Another view of our street

You can see how the water fills the ditch right in front.

Another thing we discovered with the rain is frogs!  We had no idea there were frogs here.  It's been so dry and not a lot of water but with the rain, they all came out of hiding.  At night their croaking can be heard from all corners.  It is kind of cool.  I think they are actually toads.  They are about 5-6 inches in length. We find a few of them smashed on the roads. 

Frog/toad in front of the house

Another toad in the back

Martha has enjoyed doing some gardening!  There is a man that comes from Formosa city with lots of different plans. She has bought and planted several plants and flowers including roses, impatiens, and bougainvillea (called santa rita).  I found a pepper plant and we are waiting to to see how hot they get.  We cannot find anything spicy here where we are in Argentina, they do not like spicy foods. 

Santa Rita (bougainvilla)

We have been teaching an English class every Friday night and last Friday the missionaries asked if we wanted to come to the church early to play ping pong with some of the friends they are teaching, who also wanted to come to English class.  Martha was the champion ping pong player.  She beat everyone.  During the pandemic we borrowed the ping pong table from our church and as a family we played a lot of ping pong since we couldn't leave the house.  Martha go to be really good playing against Ethan. 

Martha playing against Elder Gonzalez

We've been visiting the Maldonado family and trying to help them to have family home evenings.  They have 5 children (two are nieces).  We have talked about this family before.  The two nieces were rescued from a very bad situation.  One of the daughters is blind as the result of some abuse.  They are a sweet family and do many things for the church.  The mom and dad took it upon themselves to plant some flowers and plants in front of the church.  Weekly they go to weed the garden area and water the plants.  We went one morning to take out a bunch of weeds to try and help, but the weeds grow like crazy. 

One day we were visiting them and their youngest son, Panchi, was trying to catch a bird.  They had told us before that he is an expert bird hunter and catches them all the time. This day we were able to see his setup.  He has a box held open with a stick attached to a string.  Once the bird takes the bait, which is bread, he pulls the string and whammo.  He has a bird.  I don't know what he does with them afterward.  

We also had a family home evening with the Maldonado family and taught them how to play Shawn Sheep.  This is a game we played many times with our boys.  As part of the game Martha had them make sheep using cotton balls.  This helped little Sophia (the blind niece) to be able to play the game. 

Shawna Sheep game with Maldonado family

Panchi the bird hunter

bird trap

This past Sunday was Dia de la Madre (mother's day) here in Argentina.  It's a big day for everyone.  People leave to go visit their mother or come home to see her.  It's nice that they make the effort to celebrate their mothers.  It was great timing since our daughter-in-law just become a new mother and Martha became a grandma.  The branch here in Ibarreta had a mother's activity on Wednesday night.  Martha put together a great tribute to all their mothers.  She had them send her pictures of their mothers and grandmothers. She then created a slide show with music and had them talk about their mothers.  It was a great activity.  The pueblo celebrated Saturday night with a huge party in the plaza.  We found out they were playing bingo and gave away a bunch of prizes.  We've discovered that all the excitement and action takes place on weekends starting at about 11PM. We discovered the action at 11PM because we attended a birthday party in the church on Saturday night.  It was a quinceanera.  Lots of family and friends attended from the colonia and we made several trips back and forth to the colonia bringing people to the party and then taking them home afterward.  We didn't get home ourselves until about midnight.  

Mother's activity at church

More muddy roads

cool sunset, but you can't really see it in the picture

Well, that's about everything we can think of over the past two weeks.  We are getting more comfortable here and beginning to do some work with the members.  English class, temple preparation lessons, self-sufficiency group meetings, and personal visits with members.  The time keeps flying by and we can't believe it's almost Halloween, and then before you know it Christmas and the New Year.  Crazy fast. 

We visited with our friends the Quiroga family and their little pig decided to join us. 

It's political season and the local politicians have their mugs plastered all over the place.  This is a huge billboard at the entrance to the pueblo.  This guy Gildo (on the left) has been the provincial governor for a very long time. His picture and propaganda are on every light post and telephone pole. 

Flat toad

Another big toad that came after the rain