Lynn and JaAnna Nelson Family: Week 96 from Mexico

26 June 2011

Hola! We are now down to four weeks. This time next month we will be on our way home. The goodbyes have already started and it made me feel sad. On Friday, before the morning shift started, Sister Angelica Treviño came up to me and said it would be the last time she would see me because she wouldn't be back to the temple until after we left. She is going on a LDS Church History tour next month to visit the various sites of significance to church history. It brought tears to my eyes as she said goodbye and gave me a big hug. Then, a little later as we were ready to start the shift Sister Bertha Garcia, the coordinator on Friday mornings, gave me a crocheted doll that she had made. My younger granddaughters will enjoy playing with it when they come to visit. Then, yesterday, just before Sister Leticia Ramirez left for the day she slipped a beaded ring into my hands. At first I wasn't sure what it was for. When I asked her she said that she had made it in Relief Society for me. It's not really my style to wear rings such as these but it was a very thoughtful thing for her to do. I love these sisters that I have worked with in the temple so much and will miss them greatly. They have taught me what it is to show love, unconditionally.

Monday was our last turn to host the family home evening group. We will be gone the next time our turn would come around. I'm sure this next month is going to be full of lasts.

The Machuca's want the record keeping system that I developed over the last few months to continue after I leave so they decided to have me teach Sister Laura Charles, one of the office workers, how to record the attendance of the workers and enter new information. Since I was on the morning shift Sister Charles came in on Tuesday and Friday morning so that I could train her. She already knows how to use Excel and she speaks very good English so our training sessions went very well and I feel that the record system will be left in good hands. We also spent some time on Saturday. It was fortunate that we had some new workers that needed to be entered so it gave her some practical experience in actually entering the records. After the temple reopens in two weeks we will continue going over it so that she feels comfortable with the system.

The temple has been very busy this last week, probably because the temple was closing after this week for it's two week summer maintenance break. We now have two weeks of free time. We finally decided against making a trip to Colonial Juarez, as interesting as that may have been. We decided to stay closer to Monterrey and will probably make a couple of visits to Saltillo and do some weeding out of our collection of stuff that we have accumulated over the last two years and get rid of some things and do some packing.

Saturday afternoon we were invited to return to the temple after our morning shift to attend the sealing and marriage of Reyna Villegas, one of the office workers and daughter of the coordinators on Saturday afternoon, Maria de la Luz & Luis AntonioVillegas. The room was packed with friends even though they had no family members who are members of the church who could be there. We felt privileged to be invited to take part in this special occasion for them.

Today the Clarks and us were invited to be the speakers for the Sacrament meeting for a branch of the church in Garcia, which is about an hours drive northwest of Monterrey. We have been through the community a couple of times on our way to see the Grutis de Garcia [the caves], once with the Halls and once with our daughter, Brin and her husband, John when they were here. Since we have not been to the building before and were not sure how to find it we left about 2 hours early. When Brother Clark realized that he had left the instructions for finding the building and the phone number of the branch president home we called President Romney, the mission president to get the phone number of the missionaries in the area. With their help on the phone we were able to locate the building fairly easily. We arrived about 50 minutes early and met a couple of young men and other members who were there early to prepare the building for the meetings. The little branch meets in a small building and have about 100 in attendance. The branch president has been a long time member of the church but most of the members have only been members for a short time. I gave [read] a short testimony, Sister Clark bore hers and Lynn and brother Clark talked about temples and the importance the covenants we make there are in our lives. Since they had no piano or keyboard the hymns were sung without accompaniment. We felt the sweet spirit of these humble saints who meet in very humble circumstances. As I met with these saints I realized how blessed Lynn and I have been to be able to meet in a very modern building, very much like our own meeting house back home, for the last two years as we've attended the Campestre Ward. Not all the saints in Mexico have such a blessing. In returning to Monterrey we ate lunch with the Clarks and enjoyed a visit with them.