Week 88 from Mexico

2 May 2011

Hola! Hope you had a great week. Ours has been great. We've been a bit busier during the mornings at the temple this week. Because the schools were closed again this week for Spring Break [they get two weeks off] we had youth come almost every morning this week to do baptisms. Since the new policy here at the temple, of requiring youth to bring enough priesthood with them to perform the required ordinances and not using temple workers to fill in, we haven't had baptisms in the morning for about four or five months. So, this week was pretty busy in the laundry room.

The routine has been that we just start a load at the end of the shift and then who ever is on the afternoon shift puts it in the dryers when they arrive for their shift. The exception is on every other Wednesday when we have the 7am sessions for the missionaries from the Monterrey West Mission. The change in policy also included the missionaries not doing baptisms, which they usually had a good part of them doing before. Now a few of them do initiatories and all the rest do an endowment session, which can sometimes be 30 or 40 missionaries. Because we provide most of the clothing for the missionaries these mornings we are very busy doing their borrowed clothing after their session. These mornings usually fall on the shifts that the Clarks do instead of us, so Sister Clark is usually the one very busy with the laundry on these mornings.

This increase in the missionaries doing the endowment session has also caused a bit of a problem because we are almost always really short of male temple workers for the end of the session. The previous temple presidency would usually all come to help on these mornings before, this new presidency hasn't done that. It sometimes takes as long as an hour and a half to get them all through at the end. To help with that they called a few weeks ago Elder Neil and his wife, who are the missionary couple serving in the mission office, to be veil workers when the missionaries come. Since he already knew most of it he has been a big help. But it has been a challenge for him with him having to stand for so long considering his physical handicap from muscular dystrophy. But he is willing and does his best.

Saturday was fairly busy but not overly so. With it being the fifth Saturday there are no stakes scheduled for this day and it's open for any stake outside of Monterrey to come, which means that we never know for sure which of the stakes will be coming. It was a good day.

We had a funny thing happen at church yesterday. Lynn had dropped me and Sis. Santos off as he usually does at the main door. Then he took an especially long time coming in after parking the car. When he finally did come in, after the opening song, I asked what took him so long. He just smiled and said Brother Casanova, the second counselor in the bishopric stop him and talked to him. I asked, about what and he said I'd find out in a few minutes. At that point Brother De Los Santos, the other counselor, who was conducting the meeting, continued the meeting by saying that Elder Nelson had been called to be a Sunday School teacher and asked for a sustaining vote. He would be teaching the young adult class. This is in addition to him being the instructor for the High Priest group every other week. He's thinking of asking the High Priest Group leader to make a change there. Anyway, as Sacrament meeting ended and we were heading to Sunday School class, Brother Casanova stopped Lynn and asked if he could start today. After a bit of a discussion they just decided that he would start next week and that the young single adults would attend the regular adult class this week. Lynn loves teaching gospel doctrine but it was a bit much to come up with a lesson with no preparation, especially in another language.

We usually also bring Lupita to church with us. She's a young single adult who has only been a member for about eight or nine months and lives with her grandmother just around the corner from us. But, when we stopped to pick her up she said she wasn't going. There was also a car at the home that hasn't been there before. After we got to church we found out why she didn't go to church with us. Her grandmother had died on Friday and this was the first we had heard about it. The car evidently belonged to her parents, who were here for the funeral and to take care of her grandmothers affairs. Lupita is the only member of the church in her family.

Last night we got an email from the Riggs saying that the Romneys would like the missionary couples to come to their home tonight for FHE. Sister Romney just returned from Utah with her daughter and new son-in-law after being there for their wedding a week or so ago. They would like us to meet this new member of their family. President Romney was not able to leave his responsibilities here as mission president to attend the wedding, which I'm sure was a bit hard for him. I'm looking forward to a great evening.

I was sadden to hear of the death of my brother's wife, Louise. She died from complications from breast cancer yesterday morning. Our prayers and love to her family and their loss of a good mother and wife, who has had a struggle with her health most of her life. She is now in a far better place and no longer in pain from arthritis, which she has suffered from. She will be greatly missed.