Our visit to the cemetery last Monday was enjoyable. Much like our visit last year, with one difference. It was kind of sad to see some of the damage that the flooding last July did to the south end of the cemetery. Some of the cement graves are right next to the edge, ready to fall in the river. There was one of the deep graves that was open so we could see down into it and how deep they go. These are the ones that are about 10 to 16 feet deep and with each burial it's just sealed with cement and then the next one is on top of that. Kind of interesting. John found out from Ricardo, his landlord and our barbecue expert, that his father is buried in the section just to the right as you enter the cemetery. He said that at first his father had chosen a site further up the mountain and they were visiting it one day. When they were looking at it they noticed that it was open, as if ready for a burial. Ricardo's father said, “I'm not dead yet. Why's this open?” In talking to someone there he was told that they had to do some digging to make some kind of repairs to pipes or something and that they were giving him a site further down. When he saw it he liked it better than his first choice, so that's where he was buried
I also want to share a little bit of background information about the Day of the Dead, which is what it is called here, as apposed to what is celebrated in the USA, namely Halloween.
Dia de los Muertos (sometimes called Dia de los Fieles Difuntos), or Day of the Dead, is one of Mexico's most important religious holidays. It's celebrated on All Saint's Day (Nov 1) and All Soul's Day (Nov 2). Traditionally, November 1st honors deceased children and November 2nd honors deceased adults. Far from being a morbid event, Day of Dead emphasizes remembrance of past lives and celebration of the continuity of life. Day of the Dead is celebrated passionately throughout Mexico, and especially so in smaller provincial towns and cities. You can read more about Dia de los Muertos at:
http://www.mexperience.com/blogs/mexicoinsight/?p=48
Our time at the temple has become a little bit of a novelty now, with doing the trade back and forth with the Clarks between morning and afternoon shifts. We are meeting some of the temple workers that we had never met before. We are really enjoying getting to know the Clarks. They are a wonderful couple. He was serving as patriarch before coming here. They also served in the Meza Temple, but Bro. Clark had never helped a first time patron through the veil and that's one of the first things he did here so it was a nice experience for him. They have had to make adjustments to their housing situation and are glad it's just temporary. The house they are living in is right on the lateral next to Garza Sada, which is a very busy highway. The noise gets really bad. Also, the refrigerator doesn't work very well so they have had food go bad and have to be careful what they try to store. Even as difficult as it's been they are glad to have at least some place to stay until the Halls house becomes available after the repairs are completed. Right up to the weekend before they got here we didn't know where they were going to be staying. The Halls fasted and prayed for something to become available and then found that the Torres' son was moving just days before the Clarks arrived and that they could stay in their house, which was an answer to prayers. President Taylor, who is the landlord for the house the Halls were staying in, told the Clarks today, that the inside work should be done this week and they should be able to move in next Monday, a week from tomorrow. That is great news for them.
Friday, on our way to the temple, as we were entering Garza Sada, we found it to be solid cars just crawling along, going both ways. We later found out that there had been an accident just north of the temple and that Garza Sada had been like this for most of the afternoon. The Clarks, with them getting a front row seat, so to speak, said that they saw several ambulances and emergency vehicles go by during the early part of the day. After working our way in, it didn't take us too long to get to the temple as we entered the highway just a short distance from the temple, as we usually go by a back road most of the way and miss having to travel on Garza Sada for a good portion of our trip. As we passed the place where the accident had occurred I saw a car on a wrecker trailer that looked like it had been blown up, just a large piece of twisted, melted metal, hardly recognizable as a car. I don't know any details, as we don't listen to the local news, but it must have been a very bad accident. When we got to the temple just after 4pm the only cars there were the gardening staff. President Granados' car was not to be seen. The member of the presidency on shift are usually at the temple to open up and prepare things by about 3 to 3:30, so this was very unusual. Slowly, a few temple workers arrived. As we were all waiting outside the door to the temple the Granados finally arrived at about 4:25pm, five minutes before our prayer meeting was supposed to start. The whole evening was kind of like that, really slow, with not many patrons. We didn't have a youth group come in for baptisms. Saturday morning was about the same. When we got there at about 9:30am there were no buses. It kind of picked up in the afternoon, with a few buses arriving from Satillo. They said that there had been more violent attacks by the drug traffickers and that the members who have to leave at about midnight were too nervous to travel during the middle of the night to get to the temple by 5 to 5:30am. Those that did make it to the temple were able to do a couple of sessions.
The Clarks came over for lunch today. They actually kind of invited themselves. They had the power go out in the middle of the night (morning) about 3am early Saturday morning and wanted to get some meat cooked before it went bad and so we had them over with them providing the food. John and Brin came as well and we had an enjoyable afternoon visiting. The power did go back on later but we enjoyed having them over anyway. Later we went to stake choir practice. We are preparing for a stake Christmas music program. This brings back memories of last year at this same time.
No comments:
Post a Comment