We Arrive in Argentina!

Here we are on Monday, June 30, 2008, with President and Sister Ramos (the brother and sister we replaced in the Buenos Aires West Mission), and our wonderful "Assistentes" (Assistants to the President), Elder Pennier (on the left), and Elder Stephens (on the right).

President and Sister Ramos were very kind and gracious to us (as you can see by the huge bouquet of flowers they gave me), and we absolutely would not have survived our first 9 days in Buenos Aires after the Ramos family left without the constant, caring, excellent help and support of Elder Pannier and Elder Stephens. They both speak excellent "castellano", and they had planned a very busy schedule for us all around the 300 miles of our Buenos Aires West Mission boundaries, to visit zones and take photographs with the missionaries, attend a ward sacrament meeting, visit local church leaders, attend a baptism, attend our first "Zone Transfer Meeting" with all 168 missionaries in our mission, hold a dinner at the Mission Home with the "Senior Missionary Couples" of our mission, welcome 10 new missionaries to our mission, and say "goodbye" to seven missionaries who are returning home after serving honorable missions. These two dedicated missionaries have literally carried us and our stuff from one place to another, doing everything they needed to do along the way to help us start out our new Mission responsibility with excellence and to be the Mission leaders the Lord expects us to be.

(A few added "Tender Mercies" for us are that Elder Pannier reminds us so much of our much-loved three year old grandson William Taylor Henderson, and both Elder Pannier and Elder Stephens remind us of our dear sons, Aaron, Brad and Adam. Because of the great love and service these guys have shown us, they have both won a place in our hearts as "family" forever!)

How can we ever thank you enough Elder Pannier and Elder Stepens?