CASABLANCA
Our week was wonderfully consumed with school kits. We spent Monday and Thursday at Camp Cumorah Casablanca with our fellow missionaries and the wonderful young people of the Santiago south area. Our group of eight senior missionaries is really in a groove now, each finding our own place in the process. We beat our own record and set up the supplies in 30 minutes on Thursday! The youth camps were able to continue despite COVID by dividing the groups in half. Instead of all the young people attending Monday through Saturday, half come Monday through Wednesday, half Thursday through Saturday. For us, that means two trips a week to the campground instead of one. We could not do what we are doing without the help of these three wonderful fellow missionary couples
We would like to share what we now call The Miracle of the Tents.
It is summertime in Chile. As you know, one of our humanitarian projects is to prepare 4,600 school kits for rural school children during PFJ sessions. The kits will be delivered in March when school starts.
The youth from Santiago have PFJ at a campground outside the city. Covid restrictions require that only one person can sleep in each tent. When our buyer was told two months ago that he needed to find 750 tents, the task seemed impossible. There are not that many tents in all of Chile and he did not have time to place an overseas order to have them manufactured. After several local attempts to find tents, he called a US vendor who said that he usually would have no inventory for camping equipment in November. Tents would usually have been sold during the summer in the US, but his shipment of tents had been delayed, due to the current supply chain issues all over the world and had just arrived. He had hundreds of tents available to sell. We consider this a tender mercy. Each week, as we enter the campground and see tents stretching as far as the eye can see, we are reminded that Heavenly Father is happy to be involved in the details of our lives if we ask Him to be.
CO-WORKERS
We enlisted the help of our two favorite teenage boys again. Collin Hawkes (his father works at the US Embassy) and Jacob Bohn (his father is mission president of the Santiago East Mission) spent several hours counting and moving heavy boxes for the school kit supplies that will be picked up this week to be sent all over the country for our February assembly projects. Many hands make light work.
CONVEYANCES
On Friday we drove further down the same road we take to Casablanca to Quilpue to deliver the TVs, Roku’s, and bottle warmers that we purchased last weekend for the pediatric unit of this hospital. The people were so grateful for each item. Hopefully, the rest of the equipment will be delivered next week.
CENA (dinner)
We enjoyed dinner at Bali Hai with the Lindquist’s and Crockets on Friday night. Such good, good people! We look forward to these Friday night dates with our fellow missionaries.
COLUMBIAN CENA
We spent most of Saturday in the office catching up on paperwork and correspondence that we had received all week while we were out of the office. The truck came to load the Concepción supplies so that cleared out a space for us to count out next week’s items for Santiago North PFJ at Casablanca. While at the office, Sister Mendez texted to invite us to a Columbian dinner she was preparing for the Santiago North Mission office missionaries. We hurried to finish our work and took an Uber to their office. Sister Mendez and a Columbian chef had worked all day to prepare a typical Columbian meal. It was so kind of her to invite us! It was lovely to meet these good missionaries. President & Sister Simpson (mission president & companion), Sister Mendez (executive secretary to the president), President & Hermana Esmiol (counselor & secretary), Elder & Hermana Cook (vehicles & finance), Elder & Hermana Grange (housing) Sister Maria Cecilia Garcia Rodriguez was also in attendance. Sister Ferguson had told us about her. She collects clothes for refugees and has presented projects to previous humanitarian missionaries. She has a service heart. It was wonderful to make connections with these good people.
COVID SERVICE AROUND THE WORLD
During the challenges of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Latter-day Saint Charities has taken unprecedented measures to help all of God’s children throughout the world. Last April, we teamed up with UNICEF in an effort to distribute two billion COVID-19 vaccines to at-risk populations worldwide. Recently we marked the halfway point of that great feat delivering the One billionth dose in Rwanda. This work continues thanks to your generous donations.
COOKIES
In a FaceBook post, last January Russell M Ballard (one of the 12 apostles of our church) shared the significance of an Oreo that sits on his desk. He explained that several years ago while visiting a refugee camp in Greece he met a nine-year-old boy, Amer, who had just recently made the treacherous trip across the Aegean Sea and had received some snacks from the volunteers there, including a roll of Oreo cookies. He said, “In what was one of the most selfless acts I have ever experienced, this sweet boy offered me the first cookie. In fact, he refused to eat anything until I first took one. I couldn’t help but be profoundly touched by the selflessness of one so young who had so little.”
May we all be so selfless.
With love, Elder y Hermana Lamb, (aka Ed & Debbie, Mom & Dad, Pop Pop & Tu Tu)
Lambs in Central Europe 