18 Month Mission... Impossible

Who could have seen the developments that occurred during the last half of March?  And little did we know that this entry would be the last one for our Rosario, Argentina mission experience.

We spent most of the last half of March in mandatory quarantine, or what we liked to refer to as "house arrest".  The Argentina government has been very pro-active about containing the spread of the COVID-19 virus from early on.  Since many of the Argentines have roots to Italy, we think the devastating results of the virus in Italy really caught their attention.

The government issued a mandatory quarantine for those over 60 effective, Tuesday, March 17th.  Fortunately, the church is lead by inspired priesthood leaders and we had been instructed to purchase extra food in case of an emergency the week before.  We had also been instructed by President Allred to purchase an extra $150 worth of food on behalf of the church to assist any missionaries or members in need during these quarantine periods.  $150 in Argentina purchases A LOT of food!  The day before on Monday I had used the P-day to go purchase fresh meat (pork, chicken and beef).  So we were in pretty good shape.  The only thing we did not have a lot of was fresh fruit & vegetables as well as bread.

So Tuesday, March 17, we held district meeting at our house.  It turned out to be an extended district meeting as it started to rain just as the missionaries were getting ready to walk out the door.  We did not want them coming down sick due to getting soaked so we made them stick around.  The rain lasted awhile.  So we taught them Yahtzee and feed them french toast.

 L-R around the table:  Hna Ferrin, Hna. Silva, Hna. Moura, Hna Rhoades, E. Campos, E. Poroj, Hna Bueno

 Hna. Bueno helped prepare the french toast

Hnas Ferrin, Silva & Moura

March 18th was our one year mark as missionaries.  We spent it under "house arrest".  Lucky for us, the sister missionaries live above us and love us a lot.  Earlier in the week they had brought us a kilo of ice cream from Nahuel's and we still had plenty of that in the freezer so we were able to celebrate a little bit.

At least on Thursday we could do our BYU Pathway missionary assignment since it is a virtual gathering.  That made us happy to have something productive to do that day.  During quarantine, we would send out messages via WhatsApp to the people we were working with to maintain some bit of contact with them, but discussions or service projects were out of the question.

During this time, we were contacted twice by President Allred asking our feelings about going home due to the spread of the COVID-19 virus.  Each time we told President Allred we wanted to stay.  We did not feel threatened by the pandemic for a number of reasons.

1- We were pretty isolated.  Venado Tuerto is in the middle of the Argentina pampas and although it has 100,000 people it is surrounded on all sides by farmland for miles and miles.  It is a 2.5 hour drive to get from Venado Tuerto to Rosario, a city of 2 million.  Between Venado Tuerto & Rosario the only thing you have is farmland or small farming communities.  Living in Rosario would have been another story, but we weren't in Rosario.  We were in Venado Tuerto.
2- At the time not many cases had been detected in Argentina.  The government was reporting a mere 150-200 confirmed cases at the time, all of which were no were near Rosario or Venado Tuerto.
3- The government was taking great precautions.  Although we didn't like being in quarantine, it meant we were out of range of contacting the virus.
4- We both felt that we were low risk.  Yes, we are in the "elderly" category according to the classification for this pandemic, which meant we were considered at risk.  But feel we are in good health for our age and that we could weather the virus should we somehow contract the disease.

With six months left on our mission, we figured we could patiently wait out the virus and come out the other end with sufficient time left to still do a lot of good things there in Venado Tuerto.

By Friday of that same week, March 20th, the Argentine government issued a general quarantine for all ages.  The only times you could leave your home was to go grocery shopping, see a doctor, or go to a pharmacy.  Workers who worked in food production were still allowed to continue to report to work (or those working in stores where food was purchased but not restaurants) or other essential services (like medical).  This meant even the young missionaries were now confined to their apartments and no missionaries were out visiting or contacting people.

The first week of quarantine wasn't too bad for me as it gave me time to work on taxes without feeling guilty that it was taking away from missionary work.  I got it finished up and sent off to our accountant just in time to learn that the deadline for filing taxes had been extended from April 15 to July 15.

It also gave me time to catch up on the blog.  But by Saturday I was running out of things to keep me busy.  Dave had long before begun to be bored.  He did a lot of the messaging to the members and he helped a ton with the medical calls we were dealing with from the elders and sisters.

Medical calls did take up a big chunk of our time each day.  The requirements for reporting any flu like symptoms were quite stringent and it generated a lot of calls.  We were having fluctuating temperatures and heavy rainstorms which generally caused missionaries to come down with colds and/or flu like symptoms, all of which had to be reported.

Our favorite cold remedy recommendation in Argentina.

Due to the fear beginning to grow among the people as the virus cases increased, the church was taking extra precautions to keep any sick missionaries off of the street and out of people's homes.  Since COVID-19 symptoms include a cough, any type of coughing by the missionaries could be easily misconstrued as the virus.  It wasn't making the missionaries happy to be grounded more easily from going out.  We would explain over and over again how as representatives of the church they had to be extra careful of what they did so as not to cast the church in a bad light among the people.

By Saturday we had run out of bread and I now had free time to try to fill.  Thus my attempt at homemade bread.  Here is how it turned out.  I had no bread pans.  No one uses bread pans when they bake "pan casero".  I just placed them on my cookie sheet and let them rise.  They almost spilled out over the edge, but they raised well and I was quite happy with the results.  Homemade bread never tasted so good!

Sunday, March 22, we were down to only us and the sister missionaries for church due to the mandatory quarantine for all.  Rosa and Giselle were not able to come over and join us.

We gave an awesome lesson on Jacob 5 to these sisters.  They will never be able to say they don't understand the allegory of the olive tree any more.

Later in the day on Sunday we received a phone call from President Allred.  This time instead of asking us if we wanted to stay, we were told the church was bringing ALL missionaries home to their country of origin and that we were to prepare to leave within two weeks at the latest.  We were not mentally or emotionally prepared to hear that (although starting the day before I had felt it was coming, just surprised it came so soon).  We spent Sunday trying to get mentally and emotionally prepared for what would come.

Monday the packing started in earnest.  Winnie the Pooh and Minnie Mouse were quite startled by the chaos that ensued for the rest of the week.

Baking started in earnest as well as I tried to use up cooking supplies.  E. Rhoades just pretended to help bake.  His part in the project was eating them!

Above:  M&M cookies and below: Peanut Butter bars.  It didn't help being quarantined and eating all these goodies.  Exercise was a must during quarantine to keep the calories off and the body moving.

 Also the dispersing of a year's worth of collected items began in earnest.  We had a few big items we hoped to sell.

 As soon as word got out the missionaries were being sent home we had members contacting us about these items.  Our bargain prices made it easy to dispose of them.  Our metagol table went to the Naredo family in rama 1.

Our 32 inch screen TV went to Ruben & Maribel Sanchez in rama 1.

Elder Rhoades wanted to give his bicycle away to Angel in Rama San Martin.  We managed to get him over to our house, despite the quarantine.  He was overwhelmed when he learned of his good fortune.  Angel has been so faithful in his attendance to meetings and activities while we have been serving.  He had the best attendance of all our  mission prep course attendees.  And he walks everywhere!!

We couldn't think of a better person to give the bike to.  E. Rhoades also gave him a white shirt and tie along with the BYU T-shirt showing in the photo above.  We love Angel and hope he will continue to be faithful and progress in the Church.  He is the only active member in his family but despite the lack of family support, he attends and is striving to live the gospel.  Someday we hope to hear he is serving a full-time mission.

As we packed we would earmark different items for different people.  The trick was getting them dispersed to everyone.  Not only did we have things to give away, we had a lot of food to deal with.  We divided the food into four boxes, one for each of the branches.  The Menchi family became our drop off location for a lot of our stuff.  They live just around the corner and Sister Menchi is the Relief Society president in Rama 1.  We asked them to distribute things out for us as they could.  We are so grateful to them for this assistance.  Due to the quarantine, it was impossible for us to do this ourselves.

We said our goodbyes as best we could via WhatsApp a messaging application that is used widespread in latinamerican countries.  It was not a very satisfying way to accomplish this.  We had so much to do in so little time that we missed saying goodbye to some people and for that we feel terrible.

Friday, March 27th we received a call with details of our departure.  We were told our flight would be departing from Buenos Aires Monday morning at 9 am.  That meant the race was on to be ready.  Because despite everything we had worked on during the week, there was still much to do.

Saturday was the day of the great disappearing trick.  From morning to night our apartment had a continual flow of things out the door.  We were able to have some members come to us and pick things up, other things were shuttled over to the Menchi home.  It was miraculous that how we emptied out the place and found a home for everything.

Elder Rhoades also put the sisters to work making masks for the missionaries to wear.

It turned out we didn't need them as the church provided masks to all the missionaries, but it gave the sisters something to do.

Saturday was also Hna. Moura's 22nd birthday.  We tried to make it special for her despite the quarantine.  We fixed a lunch for them of Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes.  It was a new experience for them.  They liked it.

Yanina Farias, who is a cake maker, also came by and left them a cake first thing in the morning.

This saved me from having to make one.  Thank goodness.  I had plenty of other things to do!

 Later in the day we enjoyed the cake together.  Hna. Bueno with the birthday girl, Hna Moura.

Hna. Moura makes her wish and blows the candle out.

We hung out quite a bit with these two sisters during the quarantine.  We taught them how to play Phase 10 and Hand and Foot.  Hna. Moura hadn't enjoyed Yahtzee but these two games she thrived at and enjoyed herself immensely.  They were quite impressed with how the games we play make you think so much.  Hna. Bueno had been taught how to play Go Fish and thought that was a fun game.  I told her that is considered a kid's game in the U.S.  When she played these other games she could see how that could be true.

Hna. Bueno surprised Elder Rhoades with a gift - a shirt from Brazil in the colors of the Brazilian flag.  It will be one of the few recuerdos we will be bringing home and it really touched his heart that she would do that.

The rapid departure meant we would not be bringing home any of the gifts we had hoped to bring to our families.  The girls were going to be given a necklace medallion of the tree of life.  Everybody here wears them.  The boys were going to be given neckties (to keep the mission tradition alive).  We had also hoped to bring home some leather items (purses, wallets, belts, key rings etc.)  Our suitcases turned out to be pretty full, so I'm not sure where we would have fit souvenirs and gifts but under different circumstances we may have been bringing home less of our personal things.

Sunday, March 29th we had one last sacrament meeting with the sisters and a final testimony meeting together early in the morning.  Then we were off as soon as we received our traveling authorization from Pres. Riquelme.  We had to drive in to Rosario to drop off the rental car the church had provided for us.  We were nervous cats. 

 But there were still a few pretty things to see along the way.  Above we drove past this beautiful painted barn and below shows the miles and miles of Argentina pampa grass we drove past.

We knew because of the quarantine there would be check stops along the way and at any one of them we could hit a snag despite having papers authorizing us to travel.

 Above you can see Elder Rhoades using one of the homemade masks we made.  Wearing them would give the "good global citizen" impression that we hoped would work in our favor.  It turned out we made it almost all the way to Rosario before being stopped, which was a blessing.  We ended up having to clear two check points.  The first one was the toughest.  They asked a lot of questions despite our papers.  The answer that seemed to give us the green light was when they heard we had been in Argentina for a year.  That assured them we were not virus carriers since we arrived long before the virus broke out.

We breathed a sigh of relief once we were safely at the mission office.

Waiting for the next phase of our travels with local members who were helping transport missionaries.

At the same time we were making our personal journey, the U.S. missionaries serving in Venado Tuerto were heading out by bus together.  Here is a photo taken by a member before the missionaries boarded the bus.  What a great group of servants of the Lord!

Their route was to go through San Nicolas and Pergamino picking up more missionaries along the way and then heading down to Buenos Aires directly.

Once we finished up at the mission office we took a taxi over to one of the local chapels were the missionaries serving in Rosario were congregating waiting for their charter bus to arrive.

 Lots of luggage...missionaries keeping social distancing and wearing masks.

President Allred was with us giving one last message to his missionaries, wearing a mask as well.

We waited for...ev...er... for the bus.  We were supposed to leave at 2 pm but we ended up boarding the bus at 5 pm.  Then we had to wait some more because the neighbor living next to the chapel heard the bus idling outside and decided to call and report us to the police for violating quarantine.   So of course this is what happened.

E. Rhoades stands guard to the church to keep the police from sending the missionaries back into the building to check all their paperwork.

This photo shows just a handful of the policeman that showed up to investigate the neighbor's complaint.

And above is a journalist, come to report our apparent "violations" on the local news.  She is talking with the bus drivers.

Here E. Rhoades talks to one of the bus drivers.about who knows what?

Hna. Ellsworth & Hna. Condie waiting on the bus in Rosario

After what seemed forever, we were finally allowed to leave.  E. Rhoades was privy to some of the conversations and reported that the only way we were allowed to leave was eventually a phone call was placed with a judge who ordered the police to disband and allow us to proceed to the Buenos Aires airport.  But that was not the end of the drama.  We narrowly missed being booted from the bus.  In Argentina, when you travel long distance on a chartered bus, you have to provide a passenger list and documentation like DNI # or SS # or something that identifies you.   Turns out our names were not on the passenger list.  There was a misunderstanding and the office elders thought we were driving our rental car all the way into Buenos Aires so they did not put our names on the list.  Pres. Allred decided to send us anyway and hope that we could stay under the radar at any checkpoints that might occur.  Lucky for us, the drivers didn't check the passenger list at all.  We think they were tired of the delay and just wanted to get on the road.  And we didn't encounter any checkpoints for the rest of the route.  Hallelujah!

We arrived to Buenos Aires late in the evening.  Since the airport is closed we could not hangout there until our flight left the next morning.  So instead they had us wait at the Buenos Aires temple in the former MTC building that is next to the temple.

There were missionaries from many different missions by the end of the evening.  All four of the Buenos Aires missions were there - North, South, East, & West.  We met missionaries from the Bahia Blanca mission as well, plus our missionaries from Rosario.  So about 6 missions total.  They allowed the senior couples to rest in one of the missionary dorms on the second floor.  By the time we got settled down it was about 1 am Monday morning.

 Reloading the buses started around 4 am.  Above is one group of missionaries getting ready to go.  The church had chartered two Delta planes to come pick us up for a direct flight to Salt Lake City.  The first flight was leaving at 7 am.  This flight carried all the American missionaries that needed to take connecting flights to somewhere else besides Salt Lake.  The second flight was scheduled to leave at 9 am and this carried all the missionaries whose final destination was Salt Lake.

Upon arrival at the airport we were given face masks to wear

and we had long lines to wait in.

We all had to line up outside with our luggage.  The lines were loooong!  There were so many missionaries there.  The airport only let about 10 missionaries at a time enter the building to get checked in.  This photo shows just a portion of the line.  We stood there waiting for over an hour to enter.  It went from dark to daylight while we waited.  Once inside, we actually had Ariel Chaparro, an area seventy in Argentina assist us with our check in.  How's that for service.

Then to our very happy surprise, when we received our tickets and saw our seat assignments.

we realized we were flying in the first class section of the cabin.  First class!  That was a first for us and probably a last.

Sister Rhoades is feeling pretty classy.  And Elder Garrett's smile says it all.  We were extremely excited to know that we would have such nice accomodations on a 12 hour direct flight home.

These seats reclined 180 degrees into a bed.  They provided noise cancelling headsets, eye covers, pillow, blanket, big screen TV screen.  It was heavenly!

Our flight didn't end up leaving until about 10:30 am and we felt a big weight off of our shoulders once we knew we couldn't be held up by Argentine authorities any longer.  The Delta crew was so pleasant wonderful.  The food was delicious considering we had fasted on Sunday and then only had cookies to snack on once we broke our fast Sunday evening.

We arrived in Salt Lake about 7 pm Monday evening, after a 12 hour flight.  We gained 3 hours since Buenos Aires is 3 hours ahead of Salt Lake, so it felt like 10 pm.

 Merlyn, Elder Rhoades' brother and his wife were kind enough to meet us at the airport and bring our car so we could load it up and drive it home.

We headed home, well sort of.  We have to spend 14 days in quarantine and we are staying at Darci & Eric's Airbnb home - A Be-UTAH-ful home in north Orem.  It has great views, much better than the views we had during our quarantine in Venado Tuerto.

 Above - from our front door.  Below from our front window.

They have it furnished very nice and it has wifi.  They had some food stocked in the fridge and cupboards and Jenni has been our personal grocery shopper, so we've been doing pretty well.

We are continuing to serve as Pathway missionaries until our group finishes their Pathway experience at the end of July, so that makes us happy.

Here is a screen shot of our first Thursday night gathering with us in the states.  All of our students are down in Argentina, except for one who is in Peru.  It was one of our best gatherings.  The students had some great discussions without a lot of prepping.  It was a very natural, flowing discussion.  They made us think we were in a regular classroom here in the states.  They have come so far with their English abilities.

We had a virtual meeting with our stake president, Cabe Atkinson on Thursday morning.  After visiting with us and inviting us to share our testimonies, he extended to us an official release from our missionary service, making this a one year, two week mission rather than an 18 month mission.

These tags now get stored away and serve as only a reminder of our time as servants in the vineyard of the Lord.  Argentina will soon become just a memory, but the people we served and learned to love will always be in our hearts.  Venado Tuerto, a medium-sized farming community in the middle of the Argentina pampa, unknown to most, has now become a place dear to our hearts.

We testify that this is the Lord's work and he is directing it.  We saw so many miracles occur in the last two days of our time in Argentina.  I believe the angels that work in the miracle department were working overtime and will continue to work overtime until all of the Lord's missionaries return home.

We testify that as members of His church we are members of God's kingdom on earth and we truly have an important part to play in the on-going events of the restoration and preparing the world for the second coming of Christ.  As President Nelson has told us, "time is running out".  Please, we invite each of you to do all in your power to be what the Lord knows and needs you to be.

Spiritual Thought:  "And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard sent his servant; and the servant went and did as the Lord had commanded him, and brought other servants; and they were few.  And the Lord of the vineyard said unto them: Go to, and labor in the vineyard, with your might.  For behold, this is the last time that I shall nourish my vineyard; for the end is nigh at hand, .. and it came to pass that the servants did go and labor with their mights; and the Lord of the vineyard labored also with them; and they did obey the commandments of the Lord of the vineyard in all things....And blessed art thou; for because ye have been diligent in laboring with me in my vineyard, and have kept my commandments, and have brought unto me again the natural fruit, ... behold ye shall have joy with me because of the fruit of my vineyard."  Jacob 5:70-72, 75