I look like a clown

One thing I have learned is that the Mexican people do not know how to light a bathroom, at least to be able to put on make-up.  Everything is very dim, even in the beautiful hotel we stayed in while visiting Acapulco.  That means that for these first few days I would put on my make-up, think I looked okay, get in the car to travel to a conference or something, pull down the mirror to put on my sun glasses, and see the reflection of a clown looking back at me.  So the moral of the story is tone it down so you don’t look you are ready to join the circus!

We had the chance to go to the big market here called Mega.  I went up and down the rows just to see what was there and was glad I had Bruce with me so he could read me labels in case I had no idea what the item was.  Sometimes the pictures on the box/can don’t adequately represent what is inside.  We saw 2 ladies standing outside the pharmacy part of the store and one approached Bruce and said, “Are you Mormons?”  I think the fact that we were in Sunday dress (on a Monday afternoon) and had our missionary tags must have been a giveaway.  Anyway Bruce had a nice conversation with her and she agreed to have the missionaries come by and talk to her.

We met all of our missionaries this week beginning with Cuatla and Palmas, then Cuernavaca, Galeana and Civac (all areas here in the city), then on to Acapulco, Costa Azul (on the coast just next to Acapulco) and Guacamayas (this is near Zihautanejo and the missionaries here took a bus that left at 1 am in order to be on time for the meeting, and lastly Chilpancingo and Iguala.  We only had to be gone one night for these but the days were long and missionaries stood in line to talk to Bruce and I after the meetings ended (me because they were sick, and Bruce because they had special interview needs or questions).  With each conference there was a special musical number (exceptional and moving), a spiritual thought by a Latino missionary in English and by an American in Spanish, and then all the missionaries stood and recited the 4^th section of the Doctrine and Covenants and the first line of Preach My Gospel which is “my purpose as a missionary.”  It was awesome to see them all stand and be united.

We have had an elder break his ankle, while another was rushed to the hospital with heart problems.  There have been between 5 and 10 missionaries call me each day to say they are sick and ask what they should do.  It is easy to take care of the English-speaking missionaries, but I have had to rely on Bruce and the Assistants to help me translate with the Latin missionaries.  Everyone tells me my Spanish will all come in time and to be patient with the language – O ja la ( I hope so).  We had an elder who twisted his knee getting off a bus and wanted me to approve him joining a gym – no.  We have had a lot of diarrhea and vomiting, and ingrown toenails.  In one companionship, one elder was constipated and the other had diarrhea.  I guess together they were perfect.  We have one elder with a dislocated knee cap and another with an infection of his privates so bad that we may have to send him home next week (one transfer early).  I am grateful for a wonderful mission doctor who has been so helpful and has helped me decide what to do, including this last missionary who may have to be released early.

We have met some wonderful people on our journeys throughout the mission.  We visited one lady whose son makes backpacks for the missionaries (with their name embroidered on them along with the mission name) and we were going along with the Assistants to pick up the ones for our new missionaries coming in 2 weeks.  She asked us to come in and gave us a yogurt drink.  I looked at it and thought, “I have to drink this regardless of whether it seems weird to me or not.”  The yogurt here is very runny and she had added cut up peaches and toasted walnuts to this drink she had just made.  I took the first swallow and was so relieved to discover it was cold, that certainly took away a lot of angst on my part.  We ate dinner the next afternoon with a family that one set of missionaries are teaching.  The sister is a member and they have a son on a mission, but the father wanted to meet the Mission President before committing to being baptized.  We drove along a very tiny, crowded, and congested street when suddenly the missionaries stopped us to say we had arrived – there was simply an old gate along a very tall wall.  When the brother (Salvador) opened the gate there was a lovely home behind this wall with beautiful plants and nice furnishings (brightly colored of course).  The sister (Maria Los Angeles, and yes you say all three names when addressing her) had prepared a lovely meal.  She had made homemade chicken taquitos and arroz con pollo with the best guacamole I have ever eaten.  She finished the meal with flan (which had very bitter, burned sugar which made Bruce very happy).

We had dinner with the Assistants and 2 Zone leaders at a restaurant in Acapulco called Texas Ribhouse.  This was American food and I was so happy – ribs and a baked potato!  I did a really stupid thing though while we were in Acapulco – the hotel is right on the beach and our room faced west .  I opened the sliding door to take some pictures and didn’t realize that if you don’t get the door shut all of the way, the air conditioning shuts off.  Bruce had gone out with the missionaries in the area to visit a sister with one leg who wants to be baptized, and I was alone in the hotel room working on entering all of the sick missionaries in the data base. After about an hour (and no sign of Bruce) I thought I was going to die in the blazing heat as the afternoon sun just scorched the room.  I texted Bruce to see when he was going to back to the room and to tell him he might find me melted on the bed when he got back, and he told me to call the front desk.  What?  I can’t call them.  But I did and asked if the girl of the front desk spoke English – whew she did.  They sent a man up to see what was wrong and all he did was close the door and the air started right back up – I am an idiot.  It got late enough that when Bruce was finished with his visit and a stop at the church to meet the members that had come for a social, that he decided to take a taxi back to the hotel.  The driver said that he could not go back into Acapulco proper to go home because he had ventured out of his area and that if he tried to go back, the other taxi drivers would kill him because he took one of their fares.  He was going to sleep near the hotel and go home in the morning.  The nice part of the evening is that we finally got dinner about 8:30 and sat by the beach in the restaurant just looking at the lights and enjoying the breeze.

We had dinner with most of the 11 Stake Presidents in the mission on Saturday night as well as our Area Seventy.  One of the office elders gave us directions – you can’t miss it, it is on the main road through town.  Okay we had been to Cuatla earlier in the week so we knew we could find it, right? Not so much.  We drove around for 2 hours (speed in town is controlled by speed bumps – large ones- instead of speed limits and after having driving over these speed bumps for that long you have a headache) looking for this hotel and finally Bruce stopped a taxi and told him we would pay him if we could follow him to the hotel.  He said that it was easy and they all we had to do was drive straight ahead and we would not miss it – we had already driven on this road four times and never saw it – but we told him we would pay anyway.  He said, “It will be $60. I will rob you.”  Bruce said he didn’t care what it cost, we needed to get there.  We drove forever and then he just pulled into this gate and pointed that we were there.  Are you kidding?  We had driven by it 4 times, but there is no sign, no marking, nothing, to indicate there was anything behind this gate.  The resort was beautiful and was built on the grounds of an old hacienda.  It is called Hotel Hacienda Cocoyoc (which means coyote).   The diner was wonderful and the hermana who had prepared the food tried to give me chicken with no “salsa” because she thought I would like anything hot.  Bruce asked her to bring me a plate with the salsa on it and I enjoyed it very much.

We love our missionaries and I am so grateful for the office elders who have saved me more than once.  I think our ears will be popping for 3 years because we drive from 5000 feet to sea level and back several times in a month.  Fortunately I packed some good gum.  We got a call on Wednesday tell us that our goods from home are in transit so I hope it won’t be long so I have pictures from home to look at.  I did put pictures of our children and grandchildren up of the refrigerator so it looks more like mine at home and I made rolls and cinnamon rolls today.  Different yeast, different sugar, different flour together yield bread that is not exactly the same as home, but the office elders didn’t seem to mind.  The oven is gas and has markings only every 50 degrees Celsius so figuring out how hot to have the oven (which by the way the gas went off once while the cinnamon rolls were baking) is interesting.  The house is feeling more like home with every day and the work is true.  We got home very late from a very long day and we simply didn’t have the strength to carry the luggage up the stairs.  I looked at Bruce and asked if he really thought we could do this for 3 years, we laughed, went to bed, woke up the next morning and we had a bounce in out step and were ready for a new day.