Week 39 from Mexico

23 May 2010

¡Hola!  ¿Cómo esta?  ¿Qué hay de nuevo?

Another great week here.  I've still been meeting with Cynthia off and on.  Some days she doesn't come for one reason or another but when she does we spend about an hour and a half going over her English workbooks and practicing English for her.  Sometimes we go over some Spanish for me.  I enjoy getting to know her.

We were so excited to learn this last week that our son, Joel, and his wife, who have five boys, will be adding a girl to the family this next October.  That will give us 30 grandkids (including the two step-grandsons): 11 girls and 19 boys.

Monday's FHE was at the Riggs apartment.  We really enjoy getting to know these new couples.  It's kind of a nice phenomenon that when great people leave others come to take their place and fill that empty spot.  Our circle of friends just continues to grow.  We still hear from the Oliver's and the Shaklee's and about how they are returning to “normal” life and filling their days with different activities and getting reacquainted with grandchildren. We were so glad to hear that the Oliver's have been called to be temple workers in the Salt Lake Temple two days a week.  They will do a great job.

Tuesday was a very wild but wonderful day at the temple with the missionaries coming for a couple of sessions when the temple is usually closed.  I had the hours wrong last week. They were planning on having the two special sessions for the missionaries at 12:30pm  and 2:30pm, not 10:30am and 12:30pm as I had said.  We got there about 12pm to help with a 12:30 session.  We ended up not starting the session until after 1:30pm because the missionaries were longer in their meeting with Elder Bednar than had been anticipated.  We then had the second session a little after 3pm and were done in time for the regular 5:30pm session.  I spent a good portion of the afternoon and evening, when I wasn't helping with a session, helping Sister Hall in the laundry washing and repacking the clothing that the missionaries had used.  We had about 70 missionaries and that made for a whole lot of clothing to take care of.  President and Sister Hall were at the temple that morning about 6:30am and didn't leave until around 7pm when we finished most of the clothing. I'm sure they were exhausted when they got home.

On Tuesday I gave Sister Perales the special notebook of pictures of the temple workers that I had been working on to help her and President Perales in getting to know the names and faces of the workers. It's not nearly complete but will help.  She was very appreciative of it.  Even though they have been serving at the temple for a while they only have been there on Saturday mornings and haven't had an opportunity to meet very many of the workers.

On Friday afternoon, when we were getting into the car to head to the temple we found that the side mirror on the passenger side was broken off and gone.  Because that was the side on the street we're not sure if it was knocked off by another car or what but the mirror was no where to be found.  I guess we'll have to see if we can get it replaced this week.  When you're used to using that mirror for changing lanes and backing up it's really hard not to have it there.  The Halls said that a couple of years ago, while they were gone, someone had gone down their street and taken all the side mirrors and antennas off the cars.  Luckily, because they were gone, theirs didn't get taken.  Makes you wonder why someone would do that but vandalism usually doesn't make much sense.

Friday's seem to not be a very popular day for temple workers. Tuesday's and Wednesday's seem to be the most popular.  We always seem to be very low on workers on Friday's.  This Friday we only had three obreras (sister workers), besides Sis. Hall and Sis. Zavala, the coordinator.  We started out with just two: me and Sis. Esparza, who has a really hard time getting around. Sis. Zavala asked Sis. Esparza to do the 5:30pm session but because there were about 28 sister patrons Sis. Esparza knew she would have a hard time getting around to help that many so Sis. Zavala asked me to do the session with her.  That meant that if they had a 7pm session either Sis. Hall or Sis. Zavala would have to take that session. Luckily, Sis. Noemi Lopez arrived in time to take the 7pm session. I felt a little guilty again to leave early but Lynn and I needed to get to bed early to be back at the temple the next morning before 5:30am.

Saturday was more like our normal, busy Saturdays. We had nine bus loads with most of the sessions overfull.  The stakes that came brought many workers but most of them are still in the training stage and only come about once a month. We had over 35 sister workers and several brethren. We were really short of experienced workers. We had many marriages and first time endowments and I was able to help many of the first time endowments at the end of several sessions.  Lynn needed to be about three people.  The one that usually takes charge of the baptistery on Saturday's wasn't there so they put Lynn in charge of that. He was also supposed to be training all the new workers.  And, because they didn't have enough experienced workers, he had to be at the veil at the end of every session.  It was really crazy, but he did the best he could.