Happy Mother's Day!

Editor's note:  Missionaries are allowed to call or skype their families twice each year, once on Mother's Day and once on Christmas Day.  Both Thomas and Catherine skyped home and we enjoyed a 45-minute session with each of them.

Here are a few interesting tidbits from the conversations:

For Catherine's mission, the infamous bicycle has broken once again, and so when Catherine sent her weekly e-mail update to her mission president recently, she notified him of this.  And asked for a horse instead.  Her mission president wrote back that he enjoys reading her weekly updates and that she is very funny.  (I think that means "no horse.")

Catherine thinks she has lost about 30kg (or about 60lbs).  We thought it must be because of all the bicycling and walking that she does, but she says it is more because they only eat one meal a day.  They are on a very very tight budget, apparently.

She does her laundry at a laundromat, but because it is expensive and they must stretch their limited funds, they only do laundry once a month.  Which means wearing their clothes (she has outfits to last about two weeks) twice as long as normal, or doing some handwashing in between.  There are no dryers, and she says nothing dries completely.  (It has been raining a lot and humidity must be high.)  The weather is changing to the fall season and they are essentially on the coast, so temperatures have been cooler.

As far as her apartment, she says their "pension" has hot water, but there is only one temperature available:  scalding hot.  Or in other words, waaay too hot to tolerate for showering.  So they take cold showers.

Catherine is coming up on her one-year mark (in early June).  At that point, she will only have six months left on her mission.  When asked about upcoming transfers, she feels she will be staying put.  She says it cost a lot to get them to their current area and it isn't cost effective to be transferring them around too often.  She believes she might be asked to train a new missionary at some point.

And finally, she indicates that the thing she misses most on her mission is frito pie.

The news from Thomas is that he has gained at least some of the weight that Catherine has lost.  He has managed to accomplish this feat on only one meal a day (usually).  A "mamacita" cooks a large early afternoon meal for some of the missionaries there.  Thomas says it is huge but expected to last them all day.

Although he could, he says he does not eat breakfast often.  Chilean missionaries "rise and shine" at 7am (instead of 6:30am).  He spends time in the morning exercising, in individual scripture study, in companion scripture study and planning for the day, and then heads to the office.  After completing office duties, they head out into the "sector" to do missionary work.  They get home to their apartment at 9:30pm or 10pm at night.  Sometimes he makes "alfredo", which he said was boiled noodles with alfredo powder sprinkled on them, and then parmesan cheese sprinkled on that.

Church members do the missionaries' laundry for them, usually once a week but sometimes every other week.

The weather there has not been rainy lately, but they are heading into the rainy season (it is turning fall there also) and that means it may rain for days at a time.

Thomas' mission president (the Firestone executive) is going home soon.  He and his wife have only a few weeks remaining of their three-year assignment as the Osorno mission president in Chile.  At that point, the new mission president who is from Mexico will arrive to take over.  Because of this change in mission leadership, Thomas feels he will remain assigned to the mission office for one or two more transfers (six-week periods).  Until the new mission president learns the ropes, it will be up to the young missionaries to ensure the mission runs smoothly.  After that, Thomas thinks he will be assigned to a new area, because he is approaching the limit of a normal assignment to any one place.

The thing Thomas misses most on his mission is his violin.  The only violin available in his current area is someone's from church, but it is a three-quarter size violin and therefore smaller than what Thomas is accustomed to playing.  He has not played since the conference at which he was asked to perform a musical number with two other missionaries several months ago.