"Echoes of Eden" Dayle King Searle

Thursday was our wedding anniversary. We’ve been married 44 years! In some ways it seems like it hasn’t been that long and in other ways it feels like we’ve been together forever. Either way, putting a quantitative number to it—44 years—just doesn’t seem to express it correctly. Still, it was a reason to celebrate. However, we celebrated in a rather unconventional way. We got up early, caught an Uber, and arrived at the temple visitor’s center before 8:00 am to watch the filming for a video our department is doing.

 This week we only ate dinner in our apartment one evening! Seriously! I think there is stuff in my refrigerator that is going bad because it needed to be used, but we just haven’t gotten to it. The first dinner was Monday evening. Let me give you some background. When we got our mission call, it confused us because it said we were called to be area missionaries and would be working under the Area Presidency, but it also included information about the Mexico City West mission president. The best explanation we got of how it works is that it’s like the Mexico City West mission president is our bishop, but we have a stake (area) calling. Because of the way it works, we don’t have a lot of interaction with the mission, but they oversee taking care of things like paying our rent and making our travel arrangements when we return home at the end of our mission. We got a new mission president about a month ago, President Grant. Bob Alsop arranged for the Grants to go out to dinner with some

The activity that was the most fun for us this week, was going out to breakfast on Saturday with the Zapatas and their granddaughters who were visiting them this weekend. We went with them to the tianguis a while ago, so the girls have met us before. They were waiting for us in the lobby when we came down in the elevator, and as we stepped off, the girls ran over and threw their arms around us. That sure was good for our hearts! It’s been a long time since we’ve received such an enthusiastic welcome, and it makes us miss our grandchildren even more. We rode a bus and then walked a short way to a restaurant called La Casa de Toῆo, which is a chain of restaurants that serves authentic Mexican food. I asked the older of the girls what she liked best on the menu, and she said, “Sopes.” I was going to order a “sope de pollo” (chicken) but she corrected me to “carne” (meat.) She was right. It was delicious! We miss being around children, so it was a fun breakfast for us. By the time it was d

The missionary training center in Mexico is called the CCM. They are expecting a big influx of missionaries in the next few weeks. A lot of young people leave on missions this time of year so that when they return in two years, it will be just in time to head off to college. As a result, the CCM is anticipating being a little shorthanded. They received permission from the Area Presidency to ask the Senior Missionaries to help out if their schedules allow it. There were two options for scheduling. We and the Alsops volunteered to help on Sundays and Wednesday evenings. The men will be part of branch presidencies and the women will give support to the sister missionaries. We don’t officially start for a couple of weeks, but we went to the CCM on Wednesday to become acquainted with what we will be doing. It took about an hour in an Uber to drive from Teca Once to the CCM. It is in a very different neighborhood from Tecamachalco, the neighborhood where we live. The CCM sits in more of a