Version 3.5

Here it is Sunday again. In some ways it seems like it has been a long week and in some, very short. We intended to get to one of the big shopping places yesterday, but instead walked up the hill to the ¨pueblito¨. It is much more typical Mexico, with the smaller stores and shops, etc. We live and work just down the hill and one would hardly know that it is there. There are car paint shops, hardware shops, restaurants (kinda), laundry-dry cleaners, tailors, and about everything else you can imagine. There are basically two long streets that bracket this and at either end is housing and our business district.

The Dry Cleaners where the owners were baptized by Jayden Sanders and his companion when he was here.

We were invited to go by the Hackings, who needed some fresh fruit. So did we, so off we went. I also needed to start my suits getting dry cleaned. (It has been several weeks, so I better do something so they don´t throw me off the top floor. It was a lovely walk and I´m sure we were as much of a spectacle to them (4 gringos), as they were to us. Everyone is generally very polite, although they sometimes try to avoid us. We found the store that Hermana Hacking was interested in and got what we needed, toured the streets and came back to the apartments.

We had been invited to attend an ´old folks¨ dinner (well, that´s how it translated), by the Primary at Church last week. All the missionary couples were invited along with many members of the Ward. It was to begin at noon, but really didn´t get started until some time later. This was also kind of a send off for the Hobbs, since they have been teaching in Primary since they arrived. It was also a welcome to the the Muñoz´, since they are new and will be taking the Hobbs´place.

The food was very good and the Primary children were in charge of serving us. They were very cute and no different than kids at home, a little short on attention. Made us feel right at home. There are several families that are living here from the States that work for the Embassy or other companies, so their children make this a very diverse ward. The children often speak better spanish than their parents. What a great opportunity for them.

We attend Church in this lovely converted home that the Church bought and transformed into a chapel. It is unusual in many ways and yet has the same spirit. It has some very quaint features in the building, such as arches and amazing windows and ceilings. It also has a beautiful staircase that goes upstairs. The Bishop´s office is outside in a small attached building. Dalene has taken several pictures that hopefully show how pretty it actually is. It is located in a residential neighborhood and is across the street from a Jewish synagogue. There are two wards that meet in this building, the Palmas Ward spanish speaking and an english speaking ward.

R.S Room ceiling

The Chapel doors seems to say to me.......

I should also mention, our very young Bishop (Bishop Arestogui) is from Uruguay and he is also working for a multinational company here in Mexico. Both counselors are from Mexico. He is very much a Bishop, very deep and inspired and trying to lead the ward as any great Bishop would do. The ward here is exceptional. They love the gospel and each other and who could really ask for more.

Bishop on the left, his counselor accepting tithing from a member

We recieved an email from Sandino this morning with a request from Elder Christensen, via the Area Presidency, for some specific photos that he needs by tomorrow morning for a report to the First Presidency on Wednesday. Fortunately, we have some of them in things we have been working on and we also loaded the camera and took it to Church to capture some of them. Dalene was able to get a few and we will try to put together the rest in the morning. It is really kind of fun to get these requests and feel like we are contributing.

The unfortunate part for me is that I stayed after long enough for one of the High Priest Leaders to catch me and ask me to teach a Priesthood lesson in two weeks. I guess we will see how my Spanish is coming along. Our PSD group also is in charge of the devotional in the morning for the Church employees, so I was asked to conduct and Dalene is leading the music. They want us to feel involved. We have a running joke that before we got to this group, there were three of them, thus version 3.0. Now we are there it is version 3.5! And frankly, I am the minor portion of the .5!!