It's a Boy for Brandon and Camille

Won't our first grandchild (grandson!) be cute with these two as his parents!!! As Ty wrote in his email today "The next generation of Bulloch Boys has begun!"

Congratulations B & C - We love you!!!!!!!

Guacamole Recipe

Reyna makes very good guacamole - and there is a secret "ingredient" that she uses to help it from turning dark so fast. Here is the recipe:

3 avacadoes, fully ripe and soft
2 T minced onion flakes, or to taste
1/8 t. oregano
1/8 t. cumin
garlic powder - just a couple of tiny shakes
salt, to taste
juice of 1/2 a lime
1 c green salsa - more or less to your liking
water - make it as thin or thick as you like

Mix everything together in the blender, just until blended, but not pureed.

Here is the secret - put the avacado pits in the guacamole and it doesn't go dark! Maybe this isn't a secret to everyone else, but it was a revelation to me. Also, try using jicama cut into strips for dipping. It is so good! Let me know what you think if you try it.

Zone Leaders Council

Russ held the Zone Leaders Council for June here at the mission home. We have nine zones, so that means we have 18 Zone Leaders. They came to the house on a Tuesday evening and stayed overnight so they could get an early start the next day. We give them pizza when they arrive, so they are very happy about that. On Wednesday morning they have breakfast, then they meet and discuss the issues and plans for the mission for the current cycle. After lunch, they finish up and always take a picture. We always hold this meeting the week after transfers. We consider it week one of the six week cycle.
Here we have all the Zone Leaders, the Assistants and the three Secretaries. These are some of the finest missionaries in our mission. We will lose four Zone Leaders and one Secretary in the next transfer, they are going home. The time goes so fast!

Our schedule is a six week cycle. Week one is the Zone Leaders Council - "Consejo". Week two we have four days of Zone Conferences. Weeks three, four, and five are interviews with the President, (he interviews all 203 of them!) and week six we have transfers. During transfer week we receive the new missionaries on Monday, and do their training and paperwork. They stay here overnight, then on Tuesday we have the transfer meeting - "cambios". The departing missionaries come back to the mission home with us for the "Despedida". This is the dinner/testimony meeting. Then EARLY Wednesday morning they leave for the airport. It is a busy few days, and there is never a dull moment. The last two cycles we have had missionaries come from the Provo MTC, but they have been late because of visa problems. This kind of puts a wrinkle in the schedule, but somehow it has all worked out. Sprinkle in a few Stake Conferences, committee meetings, Stake training with the Area Seventy, weekly emails, calls on the cell phone, etc.......... and there you have the mission life.

Family Home Evening

We had the Castillo and Doxey families here for dinner and family home evening on Monday night. The Castillo's are in the MC North, and Doxey's are in the MC South. The Castillo's are getting ready to return home, their 3 years are almost up. We will miss them a lot, they've been such a great help to us.

Benemerito Performance

Russ, Ryan and I went up to Pachuca to attend a performance by the Benemerito (Church High School) Dancers called Ballet Folklorico. We enjoyed it very much. The costumes were bright and colorful, the students were very talented. The auditorium it was held in holds about 2,000 people and it was FULL! We went to the evening performance, but there was also one in the afternoon. It was full, as well.
There are two stakes in this area, Pachuca and Pachuca Centro. They are the ones that sponsored the performances. All the members brought their friends and family and of course the missionaries were there in full force. Here you can see the missionaries sorting out the referrals they received in the afternoon. I don't know how many they had for the afternoon, but I know that they received over 500 referrals at the evening performance! I know that the Stake Presidencies of these two stakes are very happy and consider it all a huge success. The missionaries will be very busy for quite a while with all those referrals!

Final Version of Mission Photo

This is how the final version of the mission photo turned out. We have 214 people in the picture here! A few of these missionaries have already returned home and we have a few new ones in their place. We are planning to get a new photo in May 09 and then a last one (for us, anyway) in May 2010. It will be fun to see how the mission changes from year to year.