Mexican Moments with Greg and Peg: Road Trip to Guadalajara!!!!!

Thursday, Mar 12th

THOUGHT: "I AM ONLY ONE, BUT I AM ONE.
I CANNOT DO EVERYTHING, BUT I CAN DO SOMETHING.
AND I WILL NOT LET WHAT I CANNOT DO
INTERFER WITH WHAT I CAN DO!"
Edward Everett Hale

Yay! We went on a road trip All ten of us couples - Stevens, Andersons, Hackings, Rices, Toblers, Hobbs, Montoyas, Smiths, Pococks, and Sandbergs left this morning and drove to Guadalajara to go to the Temple there. The Mexico City Temple will be rededicated on September 13th so we only have one more chance for a road trip in June to see more country and a different temple. Once the temple in the city opens back up we won't be able to travel anymore!
Greg was very excited to go to Guad. since he spent the last 2 months of his mission there! We got to the city just in time to get something to eat, check in the hotel and race to the temple. It is a small temple so we had to make it in time to get seats! We went through the 5 pm session. The other couples did initiatory or dealings afterwards, but we were picked up by the Guad. East Mission President and his wife - the Camarillos! They are from Mexico City and will be moving back there in June when their mission is done!!! They took us to a Brazilian restaurant like Rodesio Grill in Salt Lake. The food was pretty good! They brought some meats around to the table that were not quite known to some of us! They got a big NO TO THAT MEAT!!! We got some chicken, BBQ ribs, steak meat(?). It was a good time and visiting with the Camarillos was very fun too. They are done with their mission in June so they have things pretty well figured out! They don't really need any help from us. They did ask us to come back after July to help the new President and wife!
We got back to the hotel and went to bed - exhausted!

A view as we drove out of Mexico City!

Another view!

This pic got lost in translation!
In front of the car is a little itty, bitty truck
piled sky high with a tarp over it.
You can kind of see it compared to the cars around it!
It's funny how high they pile things around here!

This pic of us in front of the Guadalajara temple makes
me laugh very hard!
We asked some guy standing there to take our pic
with the temple behind us. He took 2 pics and we looked
at them, then asked him to take another one without the stairs
and with the spire!
He took 6 pics and they are all exactly the same!!!
He gets his photography skills from Greg! HAHA!

Here is my pic of the Temple!

My first Pina Colada in Mexico!
(It wasn't even spiked this time!)

Friday, Mar 13th

THOUGHT: "FOR IT IS IN GIVING THAT WE RECEIVE" St Francis of Assisi

I think this is the worst Friday the 13th I have ever had! Hands down! We got up, had breakfast and went to a zone conference to do Greg's schpeel! We met the Wagners who are also leaving this June. They are from Arizona and they don't need any help either! We will have to make a double trip to Guad. to help both new Mission Presidents! After the zone conference we had to find our friends that had left the hotel and gone to a big market area called Tlaquepaque We walked around but didn't buy anything. My crazy friend Janey bought a nativity set for all of her kids! I hope they like it! If any of you want one, please let me know!!!
We finally left Guad to drive to Guanajuato. Someone got a bright idea to take a little detour up to Leon. I'm not sure how far off the regular route we had to go but we followed the crowd. Greg kept saying - let's not go to Leon, lets just go one to Guanajuato! I kept saying - no we are staying with the crowd! So we went to Leon - which is famous for leather stuff. We walked and shopped around for a little while and decided to get going on to Guanajuato! So off we went - happily on our way. We had a 1 hour drive to get there! NO BIG DEAL! That was at 3 pm! We got barely to the edge of town and ran into a little traffic. SO WE THOUGHT! Let's just say 6 1/2 hours later we drove into Guanajuato! We were in the biggest traffic mess that I have EVER seen! We found out about 4 hours in that a tanker truck full of gas had tipped over right before the exit where we needed to go. That happened at 10:50 am. At 9:30 pm we drove past where the accident happened and on we went to Guanajuato. It was 10:15 by the time we got there. We were so tired, it was dark and we were hungry because we hadn't had lunch cause we wanted to eat in Guanajuato! Do you remember the old movie with Jack Lemon - The Out of Towners! That was us! We found ourselves in the hotel restaurant at 10:45 with most of the other guys that had just gotten there too! We had soup and yummy bread. We dropped in bed. This hotel is so awesome. I tried to take pics but not sure you can catch the awesomeness of the hotel! This is where Greg stayed over Y2K New year with Rachel, Sara, and Richie! We definitely will be coming back here to visit!!!