April/May Zone Conference . . .

This past zone conference was especially nice because we were joined by two senior couples from Santiago that are serving as the Area medical and pyschological support for the missionaries. In the picture above with Susie and I are Elder and Sister Davis and Elder and Sister Dixon. Sister Davis, a psycholgist, provides counseling support for missionaries in all of Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. (Now that´s a tough mission) Elder Dixon is a medical doctor providing medical support for the nine missions located in Chile. This is his 4th mission, having served first as a proselyting missionary 60 years ago to Japanese speaking people in Hawaii. He and his wife have also served medical missions for the church in California, Spain and now Chile. They are such a wonderful resource and help to us in the mission. It was nice to have them accompany us on the conference tour to provide additional training and instruction to our missionaries.

Above you see members of the Coyhaique zone modeling the new rain gear we will be using in the mission. We are hopeful this will keep them drier as the winter rain season arrives. They are actually trying to imitate a "Charile´s Angel" type pose that the Sister have done. From l-r are Elders Rivas (Panama), Hogan (Texas), Nash (Utah), Ribera (Bolivia), Saade (Argentina), Aspitia (Argentina), Wohlfart (Germany) and Opazo (Chile).

Here is Susie at the mission home with several of our sisters after the conference in Osorno. From top to bottom are Hermanas Biggs (Oregon), Guevara (El Salvador), Bustos (Bolivia), Aguilar (El Salvador), Koontz (California) and Crook (Utah).

At the Osorno Zone conference, Sister Davis leads the missionaries in a stress relieving "hand dance". At least the missionaries can do this dance. It was a lot of fun.

At some time during our zone conference in Valdivia, an Elder took this picture. I can´t even think of an adequate caption for this photo, so I´ll leave it to your imagination. Pictured with Susie from l-r are Hermanas Moemai (Utah), Torrico (Bolivia), Perez (Panama), McClellan (California), Butler (Utah) and that is Hermana Wood from Utah in front. She is actually a very accomplished Ballet dancer, so I can only guess that is where this got started.

In the spirit of equal opportunity, we have some of the Elders from the Coyhaique Zone with their own interpretation of the sister´s dance pose. Here are Elders Aspitia, Wohlfart, Ribera, Saade, DeGroot and Nash. Fortunately, I was in interviews at the time and was unavailable.