"Echoes of Eden" Dayle King Searle

  Monday we went on an errand with Manuel from the purchasing department. On our way back to the office, he pointed out a restaurant and said it had the best tacos pastor in Mexico City. How could we ignore a claim like that? The restaurant was not far from where we live and along a bus route, so the next afternoon we got on a bus and went to check it out. Our verdict, Manuel just might be right! We told the Wrights about it, and they wanted to try those tacos too, so we took them there for lunch a day or two later. As we walked from where we got off the bus to the restaurant, I forgot one of the cardinal rules of walking along sidewalks in Mexico—watch the ground. The sidewalks here are often uneven and have all kinds of tripping hazards poking up out of them. I found one of those tripping hazards. I’ve tripped a multitude of times before, but this time I went flying and pulled Ron along with me. He was worried he was going to step on me, so he leaped over me and stumbled around but m

  On Monday of this past week, we hit our nine-month mark, which means our mission is halfway done! My sister asked how we celebrated. Well, we spent the day in the office and then went to get groceries—just a normal day. That evening the Teca Once missionaries got together for crepes, but that was in honor of the Cluffs who go home in a couple of weeks. In some ways it seems like nine months have flown by. In other ways, nine more months seems like a long time.

 Just like all of you, we started the week celebrating the 4 th of July. Our celebration was a little different, though, because it’s not a holiday here. So we thought about all of you having the day off while we were in the office. I wore a red sweater with white and blue jewelry, and a couple of the Mexican people wished us a “Happy 4 th of July,” which I thought was nice of them. That evening we had the Teca Once missionaries over to our place for a 4 th of July dinner of hot dogs. Our apartment and the Davis’s are the only ones on the 5 th floor and our doors open across from each other, so we set up the serving table in their apartment and the eating tables in ours. It worked great. After dinner we played a patriotic music trivia game I made up. That was our celebration—no fireworks, no parade, not boating, but we were all still very grateful for our country. We love Mexico, but we’re thankful to be citizens of the U.S.A.    My attempt at decorating in red, white, and blue    

 This week we had the opportunity to attend a “protocolo” for a humanitarian project the church was involved in. Michelle normally attends those, but she along with Gustavo and Alfredo were attending a training for all the communications teams in Latin America and the Caribbean. When they first told us they’d be going on this trip, Gustavo told us it would be a good week for us to plan a vacation. Then this protocolo came up, and he said, “There goes your vacation.” He didn’t need to apologize. It was such an amazing experience to see this project that it was better than any vacation we could have planned. Plus, we did take Friday off and have a quick two-day trip (more about that later) so we did get a bit of a vacation after all. Protocolos are the formal meeting where Latter-day Saint Charities and its partners on projects make the official announcement of the project. They’re usually done when the projects are complete or nearly so. This one was for projects being done in little