A lot of changes are taking place here. First, the Alsops
are going home on Monday. They’ve finished their mission. The Wrights were
leaving town, so they invited a group of us to go with them and the Alsops for
a farewell dinner early in the week, and on Friday, the Teca Once women had a
farewell lunch for Jessica. On top of that, the Alsops had us over for dinner a
couple of times. Jessica is a great cook, and she was trying to use up what was
in her fridge. She has fixed dinner for us a lot since we’ve been here, and Bob
loves to go out to restaurants and often invites us to go along. We’ve joked
that we’ll really miss them because now we’re going to have to start cooking for ourselves.
But in truth it will be more than that. They’ve been our cohorts on many of our
adventures, and we have many fond memories of all the time we’ve spent together and the fun things we've done.

Another change is that today was our last day helping at the
CCM (the Mexico City MTC). We said good-bye to our last two districts and
branches 14 and 15 were disbanded. Those two branches were formed to help get
the CCM through a stretch where they had more missionaries than usual arriving.
Now the numbers have dropped back to normal. We have loved our time there. Ron
was the first counselor to President Aguilar in branch 15. He and his wife,
Blanca, are such wonderful people. They are warm, and kind, and wise, and fun.
You can’t beat that combination. Plus it was so fun and inspiring to be able to
spend time around the young missionaries. We only spent a short time with them,
but we came to love them all!

Saturday Aguilars took us and the Thomases (the other
counselor) for a farewell dinner. (We had a lot of those this week.) We live in
Techamachalo, which is over half an hour from where they live when the traffic
is good. (When it isn’t, it’s even longer.) The Thomases live by the temple,
which is about an hour from us. The restaurant they took us to was about half
an hour from there. The Aguilars insisted on picking up us all and taking us
there and back home. It made for a lot of driving for them, but we enjoyed the
conversation. As we were parking, Blanca jumped out of the car and took off. I
didn’t realize what she was doing until the rest of us walked over to the
restaurant and saw that there was a line nearly a block long of people waiting
to eat there. She was in line saving us a place. They said there is a line
there from the moment it opens in the morning until it closes. Fortunately, the
line moved quickly. It was a huge restaurant—three stories tall with a large
dining room on each floor, and it was packed. We and the Thomases were the only
gringos in the place, which we took as a good sign that the food was authentic
and good. In that we weren’t disappointed. It was delicious! We ate all
different kinds of tacos, including one that President Aguilar handed Ron half
of for us to try. I didn’t understand the word he used to say what it was, but
as Ron handed me a chunk of it, Linda Thomas whispered to me that it was
brains. My piece was big enough to be one big bite or two small ones. I decided
to make it one bite so if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have to have another
bite. However, it was pretty good, so another bite would not have been bad.
Blanca taught us something interesting. If you’ve ever eaten street tacos,
which are the closest you’ll come to authentic Mexican tacos in the U.S., you’ve
probably noticed that they always come with two tortillas. I assumed that was
because there’s always enough meat on them for two tacos. However, Blanca said
the practice of having two tortillas per taco was started by moms who were
trying to keep hungry kids fed. Tortillas are cheap and filling. By putting two
around a little meat, which is expensive, the kids filled up faster. Besides
the good food, one thing that made the evening fun was the good company. It
helped that I have been doing better at understanding Spanish. There are still
times I don’t get anything at all, but the past week or so I’ve noticed that I
do understand quite a bit. We had one meeting with our department this week
where I understood almost everything. That was a good feeling. It makes it much
easier to feel like part of the group. I’ve even got a little braver about
trying to speak.

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Some of the delicious food we ate |
Another change is the month when we will be returning home.
As we considered going on a mission, we thought if we left in October and
served for a year and a half, we’d get home in April—the perfect time to start
working in our yard and garden and getting them ready for the summer. It was a
great plan. But sometimes the Spirit has different ideas. It’s like they say:
“How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans.” Just yesterday the Church
News posted an article about some changes for the Tabernacle Choir. One brief
line in that article explains our change of plans. It says, “The choir also
announced plans to travel to Mexico City, Mexico, June 13-19, 2023.” A few
months ago, Gustavo told us the Choir was considering coming to Mexico. On top
of that, he told us that Justin Smith had been hired to be in charge of the
Choir’s tours. Previously, Justin was in charge of the tours for BYU’s
performing arts department, and we worked with him to coordinate the Living
Legends tour of Mexico last Spring. As Gustavo told us about this, I was filled
with this intense feeling of excitement, and felt like this was meant to be. Although
I love it here in Mexico, I have really missed being with my children and
grandchildren, and have practically been counting the days until April, when I
would be going home. After Gustavo told us about the Choir, we walked from the
office to Teca Once in silence. When we got on the elevator, I said, “I’m going
to say something I never thought I’d say. IF the Tabernacle Choir decides to
come to Mexico, and IF our department is going to be involved in the planning,
we could extend our mission.” Ron replied, “I was thinking the same thing, but
I didn’t dare say it.” As the weeks since then have passed, those IFs have
become definites, so a few weeks ago we sent in a request to extend until the
end of June. We were approved two weeks ago. There are moments when I really
feel homesick and think, “Why did we do that?” but then I remember the feeling
I had when we first heard about it. I know that was the Spirit telling me it
was what we’re supposed to do, and that tells me it will be a good thing.
Multiple departments in the area office will be involved in the planning of the
Choir’s visit. We’ve already been in a couple of planning meetings, and the
scope of this project is massive. I’m sure we’ll just play a small part in the
planning and execution of this event, but if enough people help, it’ll get
done.

Meanwhile, we are gearing up for the launch of Illumina el
Mundo (Light the World) and the Giving Machines. It’s only a week away, and we
still have a lot to do! If at this point we were a month out, I’d feel
comfortable. The great thing is we have signed contracts for the locations.
Just like with Living Legends, getting that done was a major hurdle. We’ve
looked at a lot of malls in Mexico City checking them out as possible
locations. There are tons of them here, and they are as nice or nicer than any
I’ve seen in the U.S. A month ago, we thought we had spots in two very nice,
higher end malls. Gustavo had pulled a few strings to make that happen.
However, right as they were getting ready to sign the contracts, one of the
major department stores protested letting us in because we are a church.
Gustavo tried to explain that the Giving Machines are not a religious project.
There is no proselyting at them; they are strictly humanitarian. But that was
to no avail. Fortunately, Alfredo had already been in contact with a woman who is
an agent, and with her help he was able to get us spots in two other malls very
quickly. These malls aren’t as high end but are still very nice—more middle
class. When we visited them, they had lots of people, and especially families,
at them. We’ve decided they might be the better options after all. On our visit
to Town Center Rosario, we discovered that their security is really on the
ball. I took multiple photos of our spot from several angles and locations.
Then we were standing along a rail talking and a security guard came up and started
speaking to us. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but Alfredo did. He
told us the guard was concerned about all the pictures I was taking. Alfredo
explained to him that we were renting that spot. He was very nice, and I never
felt threatened, but it’s good to know someone will be keeping an eye on
things.
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This photo and the previous ones have Ron standing in the spots where the Giving Machines will be. This was the mall where the security guard came up to us. We were standing across the way by the Christmas tree when he did so. |
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The cards for in the Giving Machines arrived this week. These ones will be in the machines. The large ones like the one below will be for people to take their photos with to post on social media. |
Here are a few random pictures from this week:
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Another change this week--they took the Christmas tree out of our lobby and put it in the finance department. Then they put up a different tree in our lobby. Marybelle, the receptionist, gave everyone who was there that day a bag with about six ornaments to put on the tree. This is me with my dear friend Ginny Zapata while we were helping decorate the tree. |
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With the beautiful weather here, it is sometimes hard to feel like it's the holiday season. However, our visits to malls have reminded us that it is. I particularly loved this from a mall we went to this weekend. |
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There's hardly a store we have in the U.S. that they don't have in Mexico. This weekend we found a Bath and Body Works. I've been hoarding the last tube I brought of my favorite scented body lotion, but now I'm stocked back up!
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving this week. It will be a work day for us, but the Teca Once missionaries will be having a dinner together that evening. I think we'll even have turkey, and I know we'll have pumpkin pie. All we'll be missing is our family and friends from home. |
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