"Echoes of Eden" Dayle King Searle

            One of the Teca Once couples finish their mission and return home next week. I’m not mentioning their names because they really don’t want a fuss made and would prefer to just slip away quietly. However, the women couldn’t let that happen, so this week we all went to lunch together. We went to a restaurant about a block away. It is in an alley like area lined on one side with little restaurants and on the other with little shops. The seating for most of those restaurants, including the one we went to, is outside. We had just sat down and gotten settled when we heard an alarm going off in the distance. It sounded far away and we didn’t know what it meant, so we just ignored it. Then the waiter came and told us it was an earthquake alarm and we all had to “go outside,” which meant stepping out from under the awning over the tables. People came out from all the restaurants and shops, and there were too many of us to fit in the green square. (I told you about the green square g

  We had a wonderful treat this week! We got to visit with our bishop from Idaho and his wife--Mike and Stephanie Balmforth. They were on a trip to Mexico with friends and gave us a call. We were able to meet them at their hotel for a short visit. If you know them, ask them about the adventure they had driving motorcycles from Mexico City to Oaxaca. It was good to see faces from home.

  The first couple of weeks we were here, we loved eating fresh mango from the little fruit stands around the city. Then suddenly there were no more mangos. We were told they were out of season. Thinking about how the fruit season works in Idaho, I figured we’d have to wait nearly a year, eleven months at least, until they came back into season. I was wrong, and I’m so happy! After just four months, they’re back. I took this video of a man at one of the stands peeling and cutting up a mango and sent it to my kids. Lalove replied back that she’d been buying a lot of mangos but didn’t like how messy they are to cut up. However, after watching the video, she realized she needs a screw driver and a machete to do the job properly.