The Busiest Day

This past Wednesday was the busiest day we’ve had on our mission. We got up early so we could do our laundry, get ready, and arrive at Hacienda de los Morales by 7:30. Mark L. Pace, the general Sunday School president for the Church, and Ahmad Corbitt, the first counselor in the general Young Men Presidency, and their wives visited Mexico last week. Wednesday morning our department hosted a breakfast for them. Also invited were government officials and officers of other organizations which are concerned with the welfare of young people. Ron has been involved in making the arrangements for this event, so we arrived early to get a few things set up and make sure everything was ready. (The venue took care of the tables and food, so we didn’t have to do any of that.) We are the behind the scenes people at these events. At this one, we helped greet the guests and direct them to the room. Traffic can be very congested here, and we had people arriving up to 40 minutes after the breakfast began. Then we had the folders ready to hand out for Gustavo’s presentation and the gifts ready for Michelle and Gustavo to hand out at the end. The meeting was a big success. Usually when we have visiting authorities, they are on such a tight schedule that they immediately rush off after an event. However, on Wednesday, our meeting ended a little early, so they stayed for a few minutes. It was fun to get to visit with them. We even got a photo.

From the left: Us, Gustavo, Alfredo, Michelle, the Corbitts, the Paces, the Cervantes (he is an area seventy)

   

The flowers in the massive arrangment in the lobby of Hacienda de los Morales are real flowers not fake ones!

    

After we finished at Hacienda de los Morales, we went back to the office where we had a three hour planning meeting. We listed on a white board everything our department has going on from now until the end of the year, and it was crazy how many things were on that list! They almost didn’t all fit on the board. We had snacks, Alfredo ordered pizza, and we brought a cake (Gustavo’s birthday was the week before and we hadn’t celebrated it yet) so even though the meeting was long, it felt a little bit like a party.

Wednesday evenings we go to the CCM, so right after the planning meeting ended, we ordered an Uber for the hour long ride from Tecamachalco to the CCM. As a member of a branch presidency, Ron gets a list each week of the new missionaries who are arriving. Our good friend Evalee Matheson had messaged us that her grandson, Tyler, would be coming to the CCM, and we saw him on the list for that week. Tyler’s dad is Ryan Matheson, who was one of Ron’s priests. Ron has worked with a lot of young men over the years, and Ryan was one of his favorites. The new missionaries arrive on Tuesdays, so we said we’d look for Tyler that evening, but to be serious, we doubted we’d find him. There are over 1,000 missionaries there, and the campus is large. When we arrived, we headed directly to our branch’s meeting room, but it’s quite a distance from the front gate, so we had a bit of a walk. We hadn’t gone far when we came to a large group of elders walking in the opposite direction. Right in the middle of them was Tyler, who I recognized from his photo. We said, “There’s Elder Matheson.” That made him pause. Then Ron said, “How are you Tyler?” and that made him stop. He had a puzzled look on his face until we told him who we were. Then he said, “My grandma told me about you.” It was fun to get to meet him and to be able to send messages to his grandma and dad telling them he’d arrived safely and seemed to be doing great. After speaking with Tyler, we went to our meetings, which lasted two and a half hours, then caught an Uber home and arrived just in time to fall into bed. It was a long day, but a good one.

During a 24 hour period from Friday evening to Saturday evening, we covered two devotionals and two 2-hour training sessions. Fortunately, these events were all being broadcast, so we got to sit on our bed and watch them online rather than having to attend each one. The speakers at each of these included different combinations of the area presidency and the visiting authorities, so I had to make sure I was very clear in my notes about which meeting those notes were for. The talks were all really good, but after listening to so many, especially when the speakers were duplicated in more than one meeting, it would be easy to get confused about what was said in which meeting.

Because we were covering those events this weekend, we didn’t make plans to go anywhere. However, we did take a long walk through our neighborhood Saturday morning and explored some streets we haven’t been on before. Then after the morning training sessions were done, we caught a bus to the tianguis to stock up on produce. A little girl there approached us and said if we wanted, we could give her money and she would sing for us or tell us a riddle. She said we didn’t have to, but we could if we wanted. We sometimes get approached by children who are begging and who have obviously been coached on how to do it. They have sad expressions and keep their heads slightly bowed. We usually give them a few coins, but it makes me sad to think that adults are teaching children to do this. However, this little girl was different. She was not polished or practiced at all. We found out later that her parents have a booth in the tianguis. We see a lot of vendors who have their children there. The children are usually playing or sitting around bored. However, this little girl saw all the people selling things there and came up with a business plan of her own. How could we resist such a charming little entrepreneur. We gave her some money and said we’d love to hear a song. I think she was a little surprised that her pitch to us actually worked because she didn’t seem to have a song ready. It took her a little while to decide what she should sing for us. She sang quietly and seemed a little nervous, but if she is at the tianguis the next time we go, we’ll buy another song from her.

Almost every corner in our neighborhood has a flower stand on it, but onour walk we passed this full-fledged florist shop.

    

Most of the sidewalks in the residential areas around us are kept immaculate. We passed this man who had finished sweeping the sidewalk and was now sweeping the street!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the video we were involved with making at the temple visitor’s center. Here is a link to the final video. It turned out so cute! I’ll leave you to enjoy it! Ramos Children's Temple Video