Christmas Visit with Tyler

Ty came for a short visit for Christmas break.

We picked him up at the airport a few days before Christmas Day.

It was great to see him!

We took him to see the pyramids at Teotihuacan.

Here Ty and Russ are on the pyramid of the moon.


This is on top of the pyramid of the Sun.

I took the picture - I made it up to the top for my first time!




Ty took this picture to prove I really did make it to the top.

In the background is the pyramid of the moon.

We went over to the Visitor's Center for a visit, saw the displays and

Ty especially enjoyed the Walter Rane exhibit

We went to La Onda for tacos al pastor, gringas and

Delaware punch. (Ryan's favorite drink!)

We have a brand new Best Buy store near us, so we went over there to do some shopping and they had drums set up for people to try.

We talked Ty into trying it. He's still really good!

This is in front of the Aztec Calendar at the Anthropology Museum.

It's really dark because they don't allow flash pictures.

We went to Santa Fe mall and got to see Santa and a couple of elves

doing a little dance for all the shoppers. (I think this was a first for all 3 of us)

Miscellaneous Pics part 2

The church traded in the TrailBlazer for a brand new Toyota Sienna.

It had 30 kilometers on it when we received it. (That's only 18 miles!)

It has lots of great features, but the thing we love the most is the compass. In between the TrailBlazer (which had a compass) and this van, we had a loaner van with no compass. We got more lost one night than we had ever been.

We were roaming around the city for an hour and a half with no clue which direction we were going. We finally stumbled upon a street that was familiar to us and that's how

we finally made it home. A compass is an absolute essential in this city!

These are the current assistants -

Elder Fillerup from Arroyo Grande, California

and Elder Christensen from North Salt Lake.

We take the new missionaries to a restaurant called "La Onda" for tacos al pastor.
The tacos are really good and the missionaries love going there.
The office elders and the assistants go with us, too. It's a lot of fun.



This is Elder and Sister Bailey from Salt Lake. They went with us to La Onda the night before they returned home. They served a CES mission up in Pachuca for 18 months.

A few miscellaneous pics

This is an apartment building we pass by on the way to the southeast part of the mission. It looks like an abandoned building to me, but there are actually a lot of people living in it.

This is a street in the worst part of our mission and the city. It's called Chimalhuacan. Not pretty.

This lovely lady is one of the "Katarina's" that are all over the place for "Dia de los Muertos" or Day of the Dead, which is November 1st and 2nd. I think maybe they should call it Night of the Dead because they stay all night in the cemtery from the 1st to the 2nd. They decorate the cemetery using orange marigold flowers and the favorite foods of the people that have died. I don't think it is connected to Halloween, but the orange and black color scheme is the same, and the skeletons kind of fit in with that, too.

I'm not an animal lover, but I do feel sorry for the dirty little dogs running all over the place. It makes me wonder what they did to deserve a life like this.

Time Flies!

200 days to go! We've been gone for 896 days and have 200 more to go! There is so much to do and not a lot more time to do it. We'll keep on going - but when the time comes we'll be ready! :)

Zone Leaders Council for December

The 2 Assistants and 16 Zone Leaders are here again today for the consejo. They came in from their areas last night and slept in the lower level of the mission home. We have 20 bunkbeds downstairs, and only two bathrooms. Pretty tight schedule for showering!

Last night they ate 7 pizzas and drank 18 bottles of caffeine free diet Coke. This morning they were joined by the 5 secretaries and for breakfast they had six dozen eggs, 100 slices of bacon, 1 gallon of refried beans, 150 tortillas, 25 containers of yogurt, and 25 sweet rolls. They washed it down with 3 gallons of juice.

Today for lunch they'll have 50 portions of milanesa, a mountain of mashed potatoes, and about 1 1/2 gallons of gravy. Also one very large bag of mixed vegi's and 6 large cans of fruit cocktail and 8 loaves of french bread. They'll have water to drink, (we go through about 60 bottles of water) and about 6 dozen homemade cookies for dessert (the senior sisters over at the visitor's center helped me out with these!). They also went through 40 juice boxes, 23 granola bars, and various other things I send with them for the trip back to their areas. Missionaries are always hungry!

It is a great meeting though, el Presidente's favorite. They meet together to discuss the direction of the mission, and plan the training for the coming cycle. These missionaries are the hardest working elders we have here and they do a great job.

Next time they will meet at the stake center by the temple. There is much less travel for them, and they also only have lunch together on these days. It is much easier for me when they meet at the stake center since they eat at the MTC cafeteria, (I do provide some snacks, though) but I enjoy having them here - they are a wonderful group of missionaries.

Since we only have four more consejo's before July 1st, two will be here, and two will be at the stake center. Hard to believe the time is going by so fast!