Hi to all our family and friends,
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving.
On Monday, our FHE (family home evening)group met at our apartment and I gave the lesson. I had fun using my computer and putting it up as a power-point presentation. As we were visiting President Hall mentioned a few things about the Monterrey Temple. It was expected that the temple would go over 1 million ordinances for 2009 this week and sure enough sometime Wednesday evening we passed 1 million ordinances for the year. Last year they had less than half of that and were challenged to see if they could pass 1 million. President Hall said that not too long ago they had a conference call with the temple presidents of all the temples in Mexico. They were encouraged to have more temple workers called in their temples. One temple president said, “What would I do with all those workers?” Well, President Tenorio has the vision. When he was first called to serve as temple president he found that it was the practice here at the Monterrey Temple that if there weren't enough patrons to do a session or other ordinances then they would just cancel the session and close the temple and all the workers would go home. But now, if we don't have patrons to perform ordinances, and we have enough temple workers we just have some of the temple workers be patrons, especially for confirmations and initatories. When the assignments are made for the women workers, one is usually assigned to be a patron, getting the initiatories going right away, even before patrons start arriving. I think this has made a lot of difference and a reason why we have such success in the number of ordinances being performed. Several times when Lynn and I get to the temple early before it's time for our prayer meeting they will take me and do a bunch of female confirmations, which they tend to get behind on.
I have to tell you about the Treviño's, who are a couple who serve as the coordinators on Tuesday evening. Brother Treviño and his family are one of the stalwart families here in Monterrey. There was a story about him in the church news when the Monterrey Temple was dedicated back in 2002. Here is a link to the article, �gA Life Enriched by Sacred Vows – Temple, family, faith are anchors for Monterrey convert.�h published Sat. June 8, 2002.
http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/41933/A-life-enriched-by-sacred-vows.html
He wrote a history of the church in Monterrey and it was put in the cornerstone of the temple when it was dedicated. Brother Treviño gave Lynn a copy of the history. The copy he gave Lynn actually has a bit more in it than the one put in the cornerstone because the church wanted some of the story removed, mostly what he told about the controversy surrounding the first temple site chosen for the temple. Evidently, originally the temple site was in the San Padro area and it was going to be a large temple like the one in Mexico City. The people in the area put up a big fuss about it. It was in the news and everything. So, the church stopped plans and started looking for another area. President Canto, who is in our present stake presidency, had a relative that had the land where the temple now stands. He talked him into selling it to the church. It was about this same time that President Hinckley made the announcement about building smaller temples so we could have more closer to the people. Thus, this temple was built with the smaller plans, along with the stake center on the same piece of land. There is a large section at the back that they are planning to build a large reception type building for those coming from several hours away to spend the day. Right now they are using the stake center for this purpose. It will also have several apartments for the temple president and temple missionaries serving here. If it had already been built when we came we would probably be living in it. President Hall says that they got word that they plan on starting sometime after the first of the year, but he said, they have heard that before so they aren't holding their breathe.
In the history Brother Treviño told about how, before the temple was built here, the members in northern Mexico would have to travel to the Meza Arizona Temple. At first they would travel in back of large semi-trailers with benches from the church house put inside to ride on and we're talking about at least a three day trip, in sweltering heat. The members in Meza would help them and provide housing for them when they got there. They thought they were in heaven when they got buses which were like school buses with hard bench seats and no air conditioning. But then they were really in heaven when they finally were able to travel in buses with air conditioning and reclining seats.
On Friday most of our FHE group met at the local Sirloin Stockade for my birthday. They had the employees sing a special birthday song, “Las Mañanitas”, which is a popular birthday song here and then they gave me a little cake with two toothpicks lite up for me to blow out. It was a great day.
Saturday, when we got home from the temple our landlady gave me a package that arrived from our son, Jarom and his family. It had a Christmas tree with all the ornaments to go with it. Now I can really start to feel like Christmas is coming. It's kind of funny to go to the store here and see all these yard signs for sell that say, “Let it Snow” in English or large plastic snowmen to put up in the yards. They don't even get snow here, except maybe high in the mountains. This is really going to be a different kind of Christmas for us. You will all be in our thoughts as we go into this Christmas season.
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