The Rosas Family

When I served my mission, most of the time we lived in member homes.  One of those homes was the Rosas family, which was actually the last family I lived with on my mission.  There was a young man in the home, a few years younger than us, who was preparing to serve a mission himself.  Although we lived with the Rosas family, another sister did our laundry, and we ate lunch (big meal of the day) with the Diaz family.  However we had a room with the Rosas family, and then had use of their kitchen as we needed.

This is one of the areas where we had bikes, and that was our major means of transportation.  We lived in San Miguel, but the branch was called Jose C Paz.  The church was actually on the border between the two cities. 
I thought of the Rosas family today as I received the message through Facebook.  It came from Lucy Chico, who was a branch member at the time.  "Billy, do you remember familia Rosas? You used to live at their house while in San Miguel. Well, the mom, sister Rosas passed on and now Alberto, the son, the only son she had, who is a very close friend of ours and a wonderful bishop is dying of cancer (pancreatic cancer) he doesn't have very much time left and they are devastated."  Alberto was the young man who was leaving on a mission just a few weeks after I was heading home.  I was in a position to help him, by leaving my old suits, (which were pretty much worn out, the jackets had some life left, put the pants had been re sewn many times at the tintorerias (dry cleaners)) and a few of my missionary materials like a film projector.  My thoughts and prayers are with friends in Argentina.