Week 26 from Mexico

21 February 2010

Hola. Saludos de Mexico. Hope this week has been a good one for you. If not, may God's blessings be with you to sustain and comfort you.

We've had a good week. It started out with our visit to the Galaviz home. They are such a sweet, humble couple. We found out that they have been members of the church for about 25 years, joining when their oldest was about 20 and their youngest was a small child. They have five children: one daughter, who is the oldest (now about 45) and four sons. All four sons served missions. Their youngest son and his wife are temple workers on Saturday morning. Hermano (or Obispo) Galaviz, is presently serving as bishop of their ward, this being his second time serving as such. They told us that they traveled to the Mexico City temple to be sealed as an eternal family to their children. They said that before the Monterrey Temple was built they would have temple trips to the Mexico City temple and spend a week doing temple work. They have lived in their home for 30 years and run a family printing business from it. Their sons help to run it. The temple is using their service to print some of the needed forms and schedules. It's very common for families to run a business out of their home. We see them often as we drive through the neighborhoods. If the family has a dog it's common for them to be kept on the roof of the home. The Galaviz's have two dogs that they keep on the roof of their home. Hermana Galaviz is trying to learn English, even though her English is about as good as my Spanish we are developing our own way to communicate with lots of hugs.

Our weekly Family Home Evening was at the Spencer's. We made plans for the going away party for the Shaklee's that we'll have next week. We have so enjoyed getting to know these couples. It's really hard to see them leave us. But, we look forward to getting to know the two to three new couples when they start arriving in the next few months.

The week at the temple was pretty routine. But, Friday afternoon we had a special visitor stop by for a short visit. As I was leaving our obrera's meeting after prayer meeting and walking to the laundry room I just got a glimpse of Sister Cheryl C. Lant, the General Primary President, with a small group including Elder Julio C. Gonzales of the fourth Quorum of the Seventy. She is in Monterrey this weekend to do a special training on Saturday for the Primary leaders plus had a special meeting on Saturday evening for the parents. I guess they were just stopping by for a look at the temple and not to do a session. I was a little disappointed because I was helping with the first endowment session. These meetings had a great impact on our temple attendance for Saturday afternoon. We were very busy in the morning with seven bus loads with large youth groups and over-full sessions. But, it dropped down to almost nothing in the afternoon. We even canceled the last two endowment sessions because of no patrons. But, we still had large youth groups that kept us busy. Lynn made an observation about the statistics of the temple work performed in the Monterrey temple. He figures that about 90% of the temple work performed is baptisms and confirmations. That's not hard to believe with the large youth groups that come in some evenings and on Saturdays.

Friday night was supposed to be another all night stake group but they called and canceled. The one problem with that is they weren't able to get in touch with some of the obrero's to let them know. Hermano Castaneda comes from the other side of Gracia, which takes him over two hours on the bus. They couldn't get the word to him in time for him not to make the trip. So, Lynn offered to take him home. He also has a home on the west side of Monterrey, in Santa Catarina, which his son lives in. It's only about half as far so we took him there. There were a couple of other obrero's that also needed a ride home so we dropped them off on the way. It saved them having to spend an hour or more riding the bus home. It never ceases to amaze me how faithful these members are. They make such great sacrifices to serve in the temple. They are such great examples for me. With this little side trip and a couple of wrong turns we finally made it home a little after midnight. Then up again the next morning to be at the temple at about 8:30 am.

Today in Relief Society they asked me to say the opening prayer and said it was OK to do it in English but I made a try at it in Spanish, a little rough but I made it through. They were all so pleased that I made the effort.