Temple Open House

Wow what a month! It feels like we have been on Mr. Toads Wild Ride! The open house for the Temple is in full swing, we just completed the second week with one week left. The people are coming by the busload to visit.

Then they have to stand in lines in order to get into the Temple or the Visitors Center.

I visited with a Stake President from Aguascalientes the other day in the Temple. They left at midnight in order to be at the Temple in the morning. A 7 hour bus ride! The nearest Temple for them is Guadalajara which is a 3 hour bus ride. What a great feeling they brought with them.

Last Sunday and today they are having a special open house tour for the women here.
The mothers and daughters etc. to show them the Brides Dressing room to encourage Temple Marriage. They have also come by the busload. The lines winding all around the grounds.

We had a couple of Birthdays this month. First was President Anaya's. We surprised him with a cake, and a book of remembrance of sorts.

We had the missionaries write a short note to him, either a birthday wish or a special experience they had in the mission. We had it bound and presented it to him.

We also had a party for Elder Mejia. One of the Elders here in our ward. He completed 3 years as a member. So we had a party with cake for him.

We had a few other missionaries in the office along with President Anaya. Elder Mejia enjoyed the day. He didn't know Pres. Anaya was behind him as he was blowing out the candles.

You can see the results!

 We have some great missionaries here. We have missionaries busy entering referrals of the people who have expressed interest in knowing more

and others helping giving tours.








 There are sisters here that have been called to work in the Visitors Center. They are all hispanic sisters, most from Mexico but we also have some from Peru, Guatemala, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic.

As usual we have missionaries whose time has come to go home. This is always a fun time, but a sad one as well.

We wonder who will take their places, who will be the new leaders. Then we get new missionaries and watch them as they go with their new companions and you can see that some are a little more scared than others. Then after 2-4 months you see them again and marvel at how they have grown!

The other morning President and Sister Anaya came into the office  and told us to turn off the computers and come with them. We did not have a clue where we were going but if the President says come we me ...you do it.  We jumped into his van and off we went. He took us out to see some of the mission. As we were driving he kept telling us where we were, which Stake and Ward. It was really fun to see different part of the mission. We really hadn't been able to see any of it before. Well we were in for a big surpise...

Tacos Shakira!

That is what the missionaries call it..it is actually Tacos Claudia..but since she has reddish hair the missionaries say she looks like a popular singer whose name is Shakira. What ever you call it..they are great tacos!

We each had one order of 4 tacos..and we each took 2 home! They were great. Now that we know that we can get there by subway..we will be back. But you have to go before 12 noon or 1 o'clock because they sell out fast.
We are always finding new food here...some, like Tacos Shakira are great! On the other hand sometimes we are pretty sure we are not going to try them!

 Everyone at the market said they are delicious when ground up in fresh salsa but we will take their word for it!

We did find a lady selling mole (pronounced molay)..kind of a sauce that you put over meat. Some times it is better than others...we bought some and it was pretty good.
Then we have this new fruit for us... they are called rambutan and have a citrus like flavor. You peal off the outside and lucky those spines are soft and not pokey at all. There is a big nut in the middle so there really isn't a lot of fruit or meat to each one. But they really are quite tasty .

Well  time to close this entry..This next week will be a busy one as well. Working in the office from 8am to 3pm, our day job, and then to the Visitors Center from 3 pm to 8:30 or 9pm. Our second job. The President did say that we would be eligible for a raise in our salary! He is so generous!
Elder and Hermana Anthony
aka
Dave and Marilyn
Mom and Pop
Grandpa and Grandma
Beautiful sunrise here in Mexico!

Six Month Mark!

Well we have completed 6 months here in Mexico! The time has flown by and we have had some wonderful experiences and met and made some good friends. We have seen missionaries come and go,

Hermanas Jones, Young, Pres Anaya, Elders Hall y Farnsworth.

we have felt their love for missionary work,

2 great Elders from the D.R.Gomez and Polanco

their longing for home and families and at the same time their reluctance to leave not only the mission but the work as well.

Elders Avila and Porter

So many have looked forward to their missions for so long that they really have a hard time believing that it is over and they have to leave.

What a group..they all left August 1..met them at the airport at 3am!

What a wonderful experience it is for them.

Elder Farnsworth y shuttle driver Pres. Anaya

Many of the young missionaries here that are not from the US are recent converts themselves with only a year or two of being a member before they came on their missions, so they really learn a lot!

Great Food = Happy Elders!

Many also are the only members of their family while others here have grown up in the church just like in the US. What a great experience it is for those who devote themselves to this work.

Elders Merrill y Navarro

Hermanas Woodard y Fowler

Hermans Anthony, Heywood, Rhoten, Woodard, Elder Anthony

Elders Buston y Smith

Elders Medina y Walker

Elders Shillig y Alvarez. Hns Lopez, Hernandez y Castañeda

We have had a great and interesting last two weeks. They have started to remodel or redo the bathrooms here in the apartment complex. They started with the apartments of the Smiths and Pococks while they were away. Then they started on ours. They came and stacked all our furniture in the front room/ dining room and covered it with plastic to protect it from the dust.

Then they chipped out some of the tile in the bath room,

removed the vanity and toilet and retiled. It really does look better. While we were without a bathroom we used the Pocock"s while they were away. Things have not gone quite as planned with the remodel however as they put in new glass around the shower and didn't allow for the light fixture in the ceiling

so they had to take the take the glass doors off, replace them with a shower curtain

and will reinstall new glass walls in the future. Oh well...it will be nice when finished. At least we have hot showers, and in door plumbing!
These past two weekends we have decided to get out and see the city using public transportation. What a fun experience!? The small buses or "micros" as they are called only cost about .28 cents US each and take us to the metro or subway. There for another .32 cents each we can ride the subway all over the city. Yesterday we went down town without too much planned, Dave wanted to visit a leather store that one of the Elders had told him about. Turns out it has been in business at the same spot for 102 years! We didn't buy anything but across the street is a museum ..The museum of Mexico City. It is an old Palace that dates back to the 1600's. We took an hour tour from a young guide there...very interesting place. Across the street from there in the first hospital built in Mexico and the place where Montezuma first met Hernan Cortez. We didn't have time to go there so that will be another fun trip. They are both located in what is called the Historic Center of Mexico City with a lot of old building..some in better shape than others. We had a good time walking around and seeing people, people, and more people out shopping etc with their families. We had a couple walk up to us and introduce themselves as members who will be working the kitchen here on Temple Square during the open house and when the temple opens.
We ended the day by taking the subway to Polanco where we went shopping in Costco and then took a taxi home $12.00 US, no way to bring all our groceries home on the subway. It was a fun day ...and when we got home they had finished our bathroom, put the furniture back and cleaned the house!

FSY at El Guarda

Two of the couples who live in our building and who have become very good friends are finally seeing all of their hard work of the year coming to fruition.  They are the FSY directors for Mexico, the Smiths, from Idaho Falls, in the southern half and the Pococks, from Sugar City, Idaho,  in the Northern part.  Their jobs are to coordinate with the various site directors to make sure they know how to get things going, keep to a budget and be able to follow through.  One of the goals here in Mexico is become self-sufficient, not only in leadership, but financially too.  Next year when the two couples leave, they hope to be able to turn their work over to couples from this country.

















FSY is our equivalent in the states to EFY and stands for "For the Strength of Youth."  The councilors here have to be Returned Missionaries for the boys and to be temple worthy for the girls.  El Guarda is the Church camp.  It is southwest of Mexico City and up in the mountains where the air is more clear and it is cooler, almost chilly at night.




Last weekend we traveled with the Pococks and Smiths to help set up for the session from the Morelos (Morelia) area, north of Mexico City.  We met some wonderful people, great youth leaders and worked hard.









The camp is beautiful this time of year with all of the greenery and wildflowers. Sunday we attended a Sacrament meeting with excellent talks and felt the strong Spirit, not only of the Lord, but the enthusiastic spirits of the youth.

The youth leaders arrive

This is what we do on our P-day....set up 31 spring-bar tents from Kirkham's in Salt Lake City

Backpacks stuffed with t-shirts, pens, and notebooks etc.

These young guys can carry twice what we can!

Getting the name tags ready for registration on Monday

 A mountain of cots, cots, cots!

Richard and Jane Pocock, with Hyrum and Pahoran Guzman, from Leon, Guanajuato.  They are brothers who served missions at the same time and returned just two weeks ago from North Carolina and Oklahoma City.  They both spoke great English.

Things are all set to go. 

These are huge, temporary tents called domos, set up to accommodate  7-800 kids, plus 150 councilors and leaders.  These were the eating facilities, set up around the living trees...adds quite the touch, no?

One of the youth councilors had his own business of making banners and made this for the session.   Each picture represents a lesson or theme taught throughout the week.

Happy Birthday America!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

To celebrate the 4th we had hot dogs and potato salad today for dinner! Plan on having root beer and pop corn tonight!  Hope everyone back in the USA had a great Fourth of July. 

We spent the last 3 days, July 2,3 and 4 on a little trip with 8 other couples to Veracruz. There is a Temple there so we went to 2 sessions, one on Thursday evening and the other on Friday morning. 

It is a pretty Temple, a small one that is much like many other small ones the church is building.  We have been to the Columbus Ohio temple and it is much the same.

It is about 2 blocks from the beach in a nice business, tourist area. We even stayed in an American Hotel, Holiday Inn Express! it was just like being on a trip to California! We had a great time! 

Veracruz is a port city and has been the site of numerous battles over the years, from Cortez down to the USA invasion! We drove along the beachfront and walked around in the old part of town but really only had a few hours there. Luckily it was cloudy but still plenty humid and hot! We did miss the coolness of Mexico City but it was nice to breath air that you can’t see! It rained on us as we took a walk on the beach in the evening but it was still worth it. 

We had dinner in a nice seafood restaurant that opened up to the beach. It was a fun city, wish we had another day there.

On our way back we went to a town called Cholula. There are old Aztec ruins there and a “pyramid” that is larger area wise that those in Egypt! In fact when the Spanish Conquistadores saw it, it was covered in vegetation with just a small Temple on top. They destroyed the small one and built a Catholic Church, what else is new, in it’s place.

The whole complex is huge, there are tunnels that were dug out in the 1950-60’s that you can walk through,

more that 5 miles in all but they only allow you in less than a miles worth. Still it was a really fun time. Look up on the internet for Cholula and you will find better pictures than we took.

It is fun to get out of this big, huge city and see some beautiful county, some really lush green forests , farms,  etc.

Many on the little towns we went through still have a poverty feel about them and a difference about them. Some remind me of little dried up towns in West Texas. I can’t quite describe them though…

We had fun buying some little jewelry pieces while in Cholula, fun to talk with the people in their little stands, they are really friendly and are doing what ever they can to make a living. 

Marilyn said this was our reward for a couple of really grueling weeks! We had a lot of missionaries finish up in June, we had 18 go home one day, and 4 or five earlier. Then we got 12 new ones. Change cycles are just a lot of work!  We only will have about 4 leave this month but then August, Sept and October will be big groups and lots of work. Not complaining (too much) it just wears us old folks out sometimes. 

We are in the rainy season now and it can really rain…and lightning and thunder that just rolls! 

We do miss our friends, the enemies not so much!