We hope you had a Valentine’s Day filled with love. We have noticed couples in Chile greeting each other or answering the phone with this sweet saying. One will say, “Me amor!” (my love) The other will reply, “Mi vida!” (my life) We want to adopt this sweet sentiment. Elder Lamb made us a delicious shrimp dinner on Valentine’s Day and we spent the evening online with our dear English Connect students.
VISIT FROM ELDER Y HERMANA JACKSON
Elder Jackson, an Area Authority Seventy is the Medical Advisor for missionaries all over the world. He and his wife Ann were on a South America tour and visited Chile for a few days this week. We had the privilege of being Sister Jackson’s escort on Monday while Elder Jackson was in meetings. Elder Lamb was the chauffeur and Hermana Lamb was the tour guide taking her to two favorite local shopping spots. We had lunch with Elder and Sister Jackson with other senior missionaries before they went on their way to Peru. At lunch Elder, Jackson thanked us for our full-time missionary service and shared a rather shocking statistic with us. He said that out of the 800,000 possible senior missionaries in our church between the ages of 55-80, 4,000 are currently serving. We encourage any of you who are able, to join us in the mission field. It is an incredible, life-changing experience!
ULTIMO PJF 2023
On Friday we attended our last PFJ session at Camp Cumorah Casablanca. Our faithful helpers this week were the Lindquists, the Salgados, and Elder Bruland.
The youth of the Rancagua Mission assembled the remaining 350 kits. We did it! We finished 8000 kits this year- no small feat. It was a bittersweet moment. We are relieved that this ambitious project is complete and sad that it will be our last, probably forever. We are savoring these “last time” experiences as our mission draws to a close. Our hearts feel like what Luke describes in Luke 6:38, “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together and running over.”
One way we tried to simplify this project this year was to donate to organizations that sponsor schools instead of individual schools like we did last year. We asked them to pick up the kits at the donation sites instead of us shipping them all over the country like last year. This being our last session, our Salvation Army friends came to retrieve the last of the school kits and we had a ceremony with our dear friend and stake president Victor Ramos from Valparaiso West Stake.
We ended the school kit season with a thank-you dinner for our helpers at a wonderful North American barbecue restaurant close to Cumorah Casablanca. Elder and Hermana Mora, the directors of the campground joined us.
SCHOOL KIT MIRACLE
On Thursday, the day before our last school kit assembly a stake president in the Santiago suburb of San Bernardo told us that the municipality had asked his church congregation for help in donating 41 school kits to vulnerable children in their area. He asked for our help. We explained that all the kits we were assembling were already promised to other organizations and that we could not open up a duplicate project for such a small amount. Sometimes at the end of the assembly, we run out of an item. Rather than give a kit without a pair of scissors or eraser, etc. we stop the assembly and donate the remaining items individually rather than in a school kit form. On Friday, driving to our last assembly we had a thought…..if there were 41 items left when that happened during our last assembly, we could donate them to the Municipality of San Bernardo instead of giving the leftovers to the Salvation Army. And that is exactly what happened. When we ran out of one item, we counted and had approximately 50 of all the other items left. Viola! It felt like a small tender mercy from Heavenly Father to provide the needed supplies for this good stake president. He and his wife were thrilled when we dropped the boxes off to them Saturday morning.
Saturday lunch with the missionaries in our ward: Hermana’s Dermisache (Argentina) & Andrade (Oregon, Mexican heritage), and Elders Hoagland & Higbee from Utah. It always brightens our day to be with these faithful energetic young people.
Unicycle street entertainment this week- who knew you could sit on it or hold it on your head while you juggle!
We wish you a week filled with love and miracles.
Abrazos, Élder y Hermana Lamb, (aka Ed & Debbie, Mom & Dad, Pop Pop & Tu Tu)
Lambs in Central Europe 