Day 1 of Mission Health Visit - Sunday, May 31 continued

Sunday, May 31 ended with Walt pondering as he is writing a letter to Aimee, our missionary granddaughter in Oklahoma. (ActuallyAimee's first area is in Springfield, Missouri, a college town where she is having marvelous experiences. I just figured out that the OTM or "Open Thy Mouth" is a takeoff of the initials for their Oklahoma Tulsa Mission. Those who know that Aimee was a shy person--key word being "was"--will be astounded at knowing how she is on fire to talk with everyone she passes about the truths of the Gospel.) I must do a blog soon about this amazing missionary...for now back to our health visit to the Argentina Resistencia Mission.
Before we retired at the missionary bedtime of 10:30p.m., Walt added a couple of things to his health presentation for the 7 zone conferences coming up in the next 5 days. We were looking forward to being with the 172 missionaries in the Argentina Resistencia Mission, as well as with the mission president and his wife. We had been asked to gather with the mission president and family for their 5:00 study of the Book of Mormon. They had just finished The Book of Jacob and were starting The Book of Enos. As we read Enos 1:10, President Del Castillo asked us what "struggling in the spirit" meant. What do you think it means? Right now I actually can't remember what we came up with as Walt translated along the way since it was all in Spanish. (I'll ask him later...I'm up at 5a.m. because my back is hurting too much to lie in bed any longer.)

After the mid-day dinner when we had been in our room, I was using the laptop to type my weekly letter to Aimee, but closed the lid to take this photo of the apple and banana snack Hna. Del Castillo had left in our room, along with purified water. We'd already had an apple and banana, as she'd had two of each. Mission presidents and their wives really do spoil us when we are with them.

After dinner we had had our Sunday afternoon nap, before joining them for the Book of Mormon study hour, and then at 8:00p.m. they had us join their family again for a light supper.

Here is the typical, delicious Argentine dish of Neopalitin Melanasia. It's like chicken fried steak...with a very thin steak, topped with cheese and sauce. When she served two of these on the plate given to each person after the yummy split pea soup, I put my second one on the salad plate because I knew I couldn't eat two. (The tortas you see in the background were individually wrapped in plastic and a total of over 180 were taken throughout the week to go with the sack lunches at the end of each zone conference. I'll have photos of the lunches when I post the zone conferences.)

And here we gathered with President Jorge Del Castillo, Hermana Olinda Del Castillo, and their two darling daughters who are with them on the mission (4 older children are married with families), Ruth is 20 and Mariana is 17. The soup was served in fun soup bowls with little handles on each side...but no, none of us picked the bowls up and drank our soup.

As we entered the mission home, Hna. Del Castillo and her daughters were busy putting the toppings on the melanasias to put back into the oven. I didn't have my camera out then, but after dinner got this photo of Hna. Del Castillo. She is a sweetheart and we loved her instantly, as we did the mission president, also. I could understand enough words to be able to know whether to respond with a "yea or nay". And Walt was by my side most of the time to fill in snitches of the conversation for me to follow along. We were in for a delightful week with them.

As President Del Castillo was driving us from the airport to the mission home, I was wondering which streets Janie and Brian had each walked along taking the truths of the Gospel to the residents of this city of 50,000 when they were here on their missions. Janie was here 25 years ago...1984-1986 when it was part of her Argentina Rosario Mission, and Brian here 17 years ago 1992-1994 when it had been divided into just the Argentina Resistencia Mission.

Yes, I should have done the photos in reverse to go through the day chronalogically (?sp)--but my brain wouldn't think backwards with "the end in mind" at this time of morning. So here you've had our first day of this mission health visit from "end to beginning..."

Zone Conferences coming next...