Week 85 from Mexico

Hola! Hope all is well with you. We are doing well and keeping busy. On Monday we ended up not having FHE. The basketball game that everyone wanted to watch was being broadcast too late in the evening so they decided that those interested would just watch at home. So, Lynn and I had a nice quiet evening at home, since neither of us were all that interested in watching the game. The Clarks and Riggs and their families are big fans so they enjoyed the evening, I'm sure.

We are finally legal in Mexico. Lynn and I went with Elder Arce to the immigration office and spent a couple of hours getting our renewed visas, which had expired last September. Don't ask me why it took so long but we were thinking we would never get them. Luckily we haven't been stopped yet because the permission/registration decal for our car to be in Mexico didn't need to be renewed if we had good visas. Now it doesn't matter. At least for the last four months of our mission everything is in order.

We are still thinking of renting a car and taking a trip to Colonia Juarez and visit the temple there during the two weeks that the temple will be closed from June 26th thru July 11th. The week before we entered the MTC before coming here to Mexico we attended BYU Education Week and one of the classes Lynn attended was about the Mormon Colonies in Mexico and ever since he has wanted to go and visit there. In addition to that Sister Pratt lent us a book about the history of the colonies in Mexico and that has also sparked our interest. We'll just have to see what the situation is like as it gets closer.

Most of my time at the temple is spent in the office continuing to work on getting the temple workers organized. I came up with a roll system for the male temple workers that Pres. Machuca really likes and has implemented starting this week. I made rolls for each shift with the names of those who are supposed to be working those shifts. These are being kept in a small folder where each coordinator for the brethren is to put a check mark by the name of those who are in attendance. Previously, the only thing we had was a sign-in book that the male workers were supposed to sign, but some would forget to sign it and even when they did most of the time their signature was hard to read. Now, with the typed list with the names on it the coordinators can easily check their name or add any that are missing from the list that will be updated periodically. I then will transfer this information to a master list of all the male workers that will show how often they are coming. It gives a pretty good picture of what is really happening. We are finding that there are some that are working different shifts then what they first agreed to work so this helps to get them on the correct shift that they are working. We are also finding that there are some who have not worked at the temple since last November so those will probably be released. With the previous system we really had no good idea when the temple workers were really coming in, except for the really regular, dependable temple workers that are pretty consistent.

With the sisters Sister Machuca, along with my help, has developed a system that is working pretty well where we have pre-printed sheets for each shift with spaces for the sisters to put their name and which ward and stake they are from along with their phone number. Each day I go through these lists and mark a master list or roll with all the sisters names on it. This gives Sister Machuca a really good idea of who is really coming in. One thing that has happened since we've started this system and the workers now know that we are keeping track of their attendance, the attendance has become a bit more consistent than it was before. Since word has gotten out that if they don't come in very often, without getting excused, they will probably be called in to talk to the president about being released.

Last Thursday, Sister Machuca was on shift in the evening and had brought in a project she wanted my help with. In a couple of weeks she will be giving a presentation to a young single adult group about family history and wants to prepare a wall hanging of a tree with her families names, dates and pictures on it. She had a huge book with her life story hand written, along with those of her parents and lots of pictures. She wanted me to scan the pictures so that she could transfer them onto cloth to be attached to the family tree. I was having a hard time using the scanner at the temple, since all the instructions were in Spanish and I couldn't work with it very well. Besides the fact that it doesn't have any kind of photo editing program on it. So she removed the sheets with the pictures she wanted me to work with and I took them home. One of the pictures was of her parents wedding picture. It was a copy of the original that had many tear marks on it. After I had scanned the picture I used a free photo editing program that I had on my computer called GIMP. I was able to do a pretty good job of removing the marks. She hasn't seen it yet, as she hasn't been on shift at the same time as we are since last Thursday. I'm excited to see how she likes what I did to it. I'm going to attach the before and after pictures so you can see what I did.

As we arrived at the temple on Friday night one of the gardeners noticed that our back right side tire was going flat with a very slow leak. It evidently had a screw in it. Lynn decided that he would deal with it after our shift was over. When we got out that evening it was low enough that Lynn decided to change it rather than take the chance of driving home with it as low as it was. So for the last two days we've been going with the spare on. He'll get the tire fixed tomorrow.