Uneventful Weeks?

Great Sisters!

Wow what luggage!

Presidente y Hermana Anaya with 4 sisters going home and one
sister who had served here a few months ago and came back to
say good bye to these sisters. 

Just when you think that things are starting to become a little routine, you look back over the pictures you've downloaded and are amazed at the interesting things that have happened!  We are having a flood of missionaries starting to go home, now that the generation from the age change announcement are coming into their 2 years.  This month we only had five leave, one Elder from Uruguay and three hermanas from the United States,and a fourth from Canada but in May we have 17 leaving and in June and August are looking at 30 or more each month.
   
Happy Birthday to one great Elder!
He had a lot of well-wishers and little candy bars were handed out to all.  Later, we spent a night out with some of our other missionary friends at a great Italian restaurant called Italiani's in another section of town.  They even sang a birthday song to him in Spanish-Italian.

Dinner at Italiani's... Great food!

Well wishers!

Spring has really sprung here.  Although many things stay green all through the "winter" here, the temperatures stay in the 60's and 70's.  Some of the trees lose their leaves.  It is beginning the "rainy season" now, summer, and we have seen the low 80's with a few rain storms but more to come they say. Things are "greening up" and the grass and flowers are really coming up!  The flowers we have to baby at home or plant inside grow like weeds here.

We made a trip with a couple of Hermanas and the office Elders into Polanco to work on Visas.  The new downtown areas are amazing.  There are many beautiful buildings.  We've thrown in a few pictures to show you.  If you double click on the pictures they should enlarge, so check out the window washers on the tall glass one.

We have some very cool pictures of the men who are working to recover the Angel Moroni with gold plating and last week we were able to get up to the Girls' Camp southeast of the city, so we'll post them next week.

We are grateful for this chance to be here and hope we are doing some good.  We are learning a lot.  We love and appreciate our wonderful family and friends.

Carl's Jr in Down town

Two happy Elders after each had a hot dog and
slice of pizza at Costco. Then a big ice cream to top it off! We
really had to talk to get Elder Egües to try the pizza and ice cream
but we have now made a convert!

April Conference and more

We hope all of you had the chance to listen to and or watch General Conference this past weekend. There were some wonderful messages given. We had the choice to either go to the Stake Center and  watch or to stay in our apartment and watch it in English and in comfortable clothes on the computer. We chose the latter. Actually went up to Pococks and watched it on the big screen projector. We did enjoy conference, great messages on the family, atonement staying true to the Savior. A talk by Brother Causse about "would we have listened and heard if we had been with the Savior during his ministry?" really made Dave think about his message. Brother Nielson's talk about the Prodigal touched home to all of us senior couples who were at the Pococks, the Smith's, Zapata's and us. Pres Oaks made us think what are we doing to prepare our "soils"  or to continue to nurture our testimonies and our selves so we don't fall by the wayside. Great Conference!
We love the fresh tortillas and the salsa they sell with it..made from Serrano and Habanero peppers!

We continue to learn and enjoy the people, missionaries and the work.
Yes the work!

No planning a zoning here or parking cops either!Notice the car on the sidewalk.

At the end of each month Sister Anthony has to prepare a report to send in of the baptisms, which is a challenge to make sure dates, names, places are correct. Sometimes not all dates or names are available such has parents names, or birthdates. She also has the chore of going through the referrals that come into the mission, where from the missionaries, the visitors center, members, or people calling into the church offices. Remember Mexico City is a big, big city and there is not a planning and zoning commission or a plan that governs the building. So it is not easy to try and find out where the referral is, true it has an address but they didn't have the blessing of having Bro Brigham plan out the city with North and South coordinates...so it is a real challenge!!But she gets the Elders to help her since they know the city and the mission areas.

When the missionaries are going home they are all so excited as are their families...but they leave here early in the morning so they can be home before the end of the day. That means that for a 7am flight they have to be at the airport at 4am. Guess who gets to go with them to pay for bags, help them get their tickets and show them where to go?
You guessed it..Elder Anthony...so we leave here about 3:30am to get to the airport and greet them! Wonderful time though and fun... then back to the apartment in time for breakfast and to the office for the rest of the day.
So even though we really are glad to be here...it can be work. But by us being in the office we can free up 2 Elders to do their work, and we can bring some much needed stability and organization to the office.

 We really do LOVE IT! Every confusing, frustrating to find addresses, try to get books to balance, and long 16+ hr day of it!







We have great missionaries..here are the two assistants..Elder Smith and Elder Sumano. Both great young men.

Missionaries Love ties..especially at .70cents  to $1.50 each!  Some have hundreds!

These fried crickets are called Chapulines.  The people love to snack on them.  We thought they tasted just like bugs, but we did try them.  Sometimes they will fry them in a chili flavoring.  Also, the chickens here seem to be a lot more yellow-colored than at home, but they taste fine.

This man is removing the spines from the prickly pear cactus so that they can be cooked and eaten.  They call them nopales and they taste somewhat like a very mild green pepper.  They are difficult to cook so that they don't get slimy.

Enjoying Dairy Queen in a Downtown Mexico City mall