We love it!!! Beautiful place, beautiful people, fantastic strawberries, melons, tomatoes, avocados….. Our little home is just that. It feels like home. We eat well. We sleep well. We have FaceTime to see the kids and grandkids at home. Every day is a good one.
We teach at the Learning Center, in the field and/or in homes Monday through Saturday. We have some regular scheduled home lessons and are finding addresses (directiones) rather un-straightforward, but have had some miracles in this regard. Also some total misses. We teach on Saturdays at the church building. At the farm's Learning Center, we have a number of computers with language programs loaded on them in addition to the Church's Daily Dose lessons and things we concoct. I brought some little plastic animals, which have provided a great starting-place with the children--and even the adults. One cow. Two cows. Brown cow. This is a cow. These are cows. How many white animals? It’s fun.
We have had some real "missionary" opportunities--as different from our teaching roles. We were asked by the Elders (there are 4 sets in our Branch!) to pick up some investigators and we are enjoying taking them to church. We also took a couple of the young returned missionary/farm manager trainees to a restaurant last week and the proprietor recognized our name badges and told us that he was a member of the Church who had recently moved here from the southern part of Chile but had not made contact with the Church. He was excited about the chance to get his kids to our English classes. We were expecting him on Thursday but so far he hasn’t shown up. (I think this calls for another dinner at his restaurant, don’t you?!) We teach a family on Saturday nights with their 4 children. They are members but not active. The mother cleans here at the Fundo and brings her kids for additional English lessons. We love them already. One young man is particularly eager to learn English—15 years old and bright and personable. *** Late breaking news: they were at Church yesterday!!*** Could singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" at our lesson Saturday night have inspired them to attend?!
Our biggest miracle was when we were trying to meet up with this same family for the first time. We had a loose arrangement to go to their house on Saturday afternoon and to call first, but they didn’t answer the phone, so we decided to head to Melipilla for the appointment at the church. We knew they lived somewhere along that 34 km between here and there. At a wide spot in the road, Jay said, “I think we should call again,” and pulled the car over. The woman answered immediately and said she could see us. "Are you in a red Explorer?" Their home was just five minutes away!
We are dazzled by the farm here. Every day there is great progress on getting the ground ready for planting the areas where they don't have trees yet. We love watching the different stages—turning over the earth, surveying, lining up stakes, laying out the irrigation hoses acre after acre. It is incredible the scope of this project. It is neat seeing the trees at different stages and then watching new areas being planted, the trees staked, plastic sleeves around the bottom of the trees, then the young trees tied to guide-wires—all requiring intensive man-hours. Someone here is even working to invent and build an olive tree planting machine! Incredible. Eventually, they will have an olive oil processing plant right here on the farm. We are impressed by the way the company takes care of its employees—big pump bottles of sunblock, plenty of water and a nice shady pavilion for lunch for the workers plus a steam table arrangement and refrigerator for their lunches, big crates of fresh bread at lunch and rides to an from various places where they live or where they can get public transportation. Young college students and university graduates are given every opportunity to learn English, get further training and advance in the company. Quite a few have homes provided right on the property.
Wow. I had no idea I had so much to say. Maybe it’s because I’m almost mute in Spanish ; )
Every blog needs a picture, so now you get to see a totally different agricultural product. Tuna. No, not aceituna (olives), no, not the fish, tuna. Tuna. aka: prickly pear. Can you imagine harvesting this field? It is massive, with gigantic prickly pear plants packed tightly together in rows. Yikes! We understand that they do the picking in the morning with tough leather gloves when the spikes are not as long, put the fruit in gunny-sacks where they roll around and get de-prickled a bit, and after that, I don't know what. But I'll tell you when I learn more.
Wonderul update k. So glad to know you are settled and happy. We are leaving for Seattle tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteLiam's birthday.