"Echoes of Eden" Dayle King Searle

I will say “Happy Halloween to all of you,” but here, we are celebrating Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead.) The actual holiday isn’t until Wednesday, but at Teca Once we already held a special evening to celebrate. Pat Wright set up tables for us to use as our “ofrenda” where we put pictures of people we wanted to remember and honor. That evening, we took turns telling a story or memory about one of our relatives. We had pan de Muertos and hot chocolate, which are the traditional foods for the holiday, but we also had a variety of other treats. It was a fun evening. We will be leaving our ofrenda up until after the holiday so we can all enjoy it. To make it even more sweet, Pat said one of the men who works at Teca Once and one of the other long term guests asked if they could add photos of their own to the ofrenda. Of course, she told them yes. We loved that! Pat Frandsen took this awesome picture of Ron talking about his grandparents and the next photo of our whole group.    ...

Last week on Monday, PSD turned the conference room at the office into a filming studio, and we did the video for an ad for a project we’re working on with several humanitarian organizations. I wrote the script, and Tabatha was the director. You’d think we’d be getting to be old hats at these filming sessions, but it’s still fun to be part of them and to see what goes into the making of even something as short and simple as a 30 second advertisement. We were able to attend another event for a humanitarian project. These events vary widely—from outdoor rural settings to fancy schmancy parties. This one was like a business meeting. Pat Frandsen went with us to take photos. This project was for a diabetes foundation. Diabetes adversely affects many organs, but the eyes are particularly vulnerable. With the traditional ways of checking for eye issues, the problems were often so advanced by the time they were found that the damage was irreversible. For this project, the Church donated the...

Monday was my birthday and Tuesday was our one year mark on our mission, so it was a week of celebrations. When we woke up Monday morning, our door had been decorated. Pat Wright usually does that, but the Wrights were out of town, so I don’t know who did it. That evening, the missionaries all gathered to have cake. Ron told me that was going to happen, so it wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise is that instead of getting one of the cakes from the bakery just up the block, the Frandsens went all the way to the Zocalo to get me a cake from the Ideal Bakery, which is famous here. The cake was delicious, so the bakery lived up to its reputation. We have a great group of missionaries, and it is always fun when we get together, even if it is to celebrate me getting older.       During the day on Monday, we had a visit from Ally, who was the secretary to the DTA when we first arrived. Her desk was right outside our office, and she helped us a lot as we adjusted to our assig...