These first are from the End of my trip! (Sept. 4-7)

 What a wonderful 12 days I spent in northern Chile! These first photos of La Serena, Coquimbo, and the Elqui Valley (Vicuna and Montegrande are home to Latin America's first Nobel Prize winner, poet and educator Gabriela Mistral in 1945) should be last...I'm sorry but they just won't go where I want them!
Elqui Valley is filled with avocados, small papayas, vineyards, artichokes, etc.
The last pre-Columbian peoples of the north, the Diaguitas, made beautiful pottery. Weather was perfect!

La Serena's gorgeous old early 1600's stone San Francisco Church was about the only building not destroyed by British pirates!

It was fun to meet French woman who takes care of an old heritage home. Below, La' Serena's lovely Japanese Garden

Coquimbo is a quirky port just south of La Serena with an old English quarter (the British built the railways and had a large role in area's mining during Victorian and Georgian times)

Angela, Lily and Luis Gonzalez were gracious, generous hosts, helping me see as much as possible. Their son is serving a mission in Buenos Aires, their daughter is in Utah, and older daughter and family are in La Serena.

Elqui Valley with dam and reservoir

I loved every artifact and quote in the museum/ home/school of Gabriela Mistral in Vicuna and Montegrande. She loved children and promoted education, led a simple, humble life, traveled and lived in many places in the world, but was very attached to this area of Chile where she grew up.

Our small tour group led by wonderful Alejandra and Fernando Godoy. Delicious lunch all cooked by solar.

It was fun to meet Mistral's former pupil and caretaker of the Montegrande school/home/church/grave of Mistral.

 

 For more photos and detailed history and descriptions of La Serena, Vicuna, Montegrande, Elqui Valley, please click on link: 
https://photos.app.goo.gl/TgnjB4gcXSgrHQ4q8

The next are in order from the beginning! I am a changed person from my time spent with great people, all of whom went out of their way to make sure I was safe, saw as much as possible, learned more about Chile's culture and history. I'm so grateful!

 Beginning of the trip! August 25-Sept. 7, 2018
(Santiago to Antofogasta to Calama to San Pedro de Atacama)

Anny Olmos and I flew from Santiago to Antofagasta ((Chile's second largest city and shipping port for minerals and metals from the desert, August 25, where I stayed with her husband Jorge, mother 92 year old mother Yolanda and herself for 4 days, seeing the sights, learning much from their service and sacrifice and challenges. What wonderful people! I met many of their friends and some of family.

I was thrilled to see the Zunigas at all-Chile church conference broadcast.  I had served with them in Guayaquil, Ecuador Temple in 2014. They had me over for Sunday lunch and drove me around that afternoon to see the beach, an old silver refinery, Japanese garden, and more.

Anny and I visited the city center, old wharves, museums, railroad, etc. by bus and went with her friend Myriam to see "La Portada," a natural archway formed between 2 eroding rocks, over millennia by bird and shell deposits.
For lots more photos of Antofogasta and San Pedro, with detailed history and explanations, please click on this link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/jcwkHMq8DCgWJceS6

Antofogasta's "Pozo"wharves from where train and ships
connect(ed) to bring coal and minerals. The War of the Pacific fought from 1879-83 by Bolivia, Peru, and Chile was mostly over nitrates and other minerals. Today Chile produces about 1/3 of world's copper.

 From Antofogasta I traveled northeast by bus to Calama,  the service and miner's town to stay with Narda Tito and her sister and husband. We took the bus to San Pedro de Atacama, the jumping off point for the high desert with volcanoes, geysers, salt flats, lagoons with flamingos, oasis towns, Valley of the Moon, and mines.

Chiu Chiu (one of Chile's oldest churches)

Pukara de Lasana, pre-Inca fortress

Chuquicamata, world's largest (3 miles long, 2 miles wide and very deep) open pit mine (copper), which in 2 years will transition to mostly subterranean mining.

 more photos with explanations: https://photos.app.goo.gl/aT3hKa5m6sWvhVkV6

(From Calama I took a 15 hour overnight bus to La Serena, Chile's second oldest city, where I was blessed to stay 3 nights with another wonderful family, the Gonzalez, who took me around La Serena, to Coquimbo, and found me a wonderful all-day tour of the Elqui Valley). See first photos...

After lots of buses, a power outage, a mild earthquake, uncertainties about connections (I do not have a working cell phone here), some very cold weather, I still had a great and adventuresome 12 days in northern Chile. But as I arrived at my apartment, I was delighted to be welcomed back on Friday by my fellow missionaries at a pizza party given by the Isaacsons (especially for the Downers who have returned after a month at home in Nevada). It is always good to be "home." Sept. 12 marks the halfway point of my 18 month mission. It has been a time of growth and learning. I hope I have been a good ambassador for my country and church, that God is pleased with my service to Him and to others here in Chile. It is always humbling to be at a cultural and language disadvantage. But we are all novices in life...there is much more we don't than what we do know. That's where hope and faith come in. I'm so grateful for the miracles, tender mercies, inspiration and love I receive daily from the Lord, and never want to take any of these blessings for granted, but want to be more aware of and ready to follow the promptings I receive. I know the Lord can make weak things (me!) strong.