Our trip to the Ciudad Juarez Mission!

Wednesday, Sept 30th

THOUGHT:  "If we look at us only through our mortal eyes, we may not see ourselves as good enough. But our Heavenly Father sees us as who we truly are and who we can become."
-President Dieter F. Uchtdorf

We had a mild morning but early afternoon we headed to the airport by way of the temple for a ride with the Smiths AGAIN! to the airport!  They are the nicest people on the planet!  We were off to Ciudad Juarez for a mission tour and training.  Ciudad Juarez is suppose to be a very dangerous city with all the drug cartel.  We found it to be quite calm.  President and Sister Derbez didn't seem too concerned about the safety of the missionaries there.  We flew in about 6 pm and the Derbez' picked us up and drove us to the chapel next to the mission office.  President had scheduled a meeting with the Stake Presidents in the area to discuss how to interview prospective missionaries.  I guess these kids are not getting asked enough questions or are not digging deep enough to get the real answers.  I hope this helps because we seem to see a lot of missionaries that are not ready or worthy or healthy enough to be out on missions down here.  Our hotel - Real Inn is right behind the chapel.  It was a very nice hotel.  We had some soup for dinner around 10 pm and were so tired - off to bed!

Ciudad Juarez from the air

Temple in Ciudad Juarez - beautiful building.  We now have seen 10 of the 13 temples in Mexico 

Another picture of the temple with the sun going down behind it.

Water park out side our hotel

View out of our windows of our hotel of the stake center

This is pretty much a standard design for the stake centers here in Mexico.  The little building on the left is the mission offices.

Houses in Ciudad Juarez

Thursday, Oct 1st

Time is moving right along!  It's October!  I can hardly believe it!  Fall will be over soon and I will have missed the whole thing!  President wanted to start the zone conference at 8 am so we were up early and moving forward!  We went back over to the chapel behind the hotel for the zone conference.  Greg did his schpeel and I talked to the sisters.  We didn't have any sister that spoke much English so we played a great game of charades!  I can understand most of what they are saying so I hope I got the gist of the questions and I hope they got the answers.  Anything I couldn't understand I sent them to see Greg after the meeting.  We then had an hour to hang out at the mission offices until the next zone conference at 11 am.  We went through the same thing all over again in the same church.  I don't know why they didn't combine the zones, but oh well!  I'm not in charge! Thank heavens!  We got done with that conference and jumped in the car for a nice long 3 1/2 hour ride down to the Colonies.  We stopped about an hour in at a little place for lunch.  Ciudad Juarez and this area is famous for burritos so that is what Greg and President and Sister had.  They were much too spicy for me so I had a ham and cheese quesadilla.  Everyone was happy and we were soon on our way!   The drive was quite boring, except for the extreme stress I had watching President drive on this skinny 2 lane highway with no shoulders.  He liked to keep one tire on the center line.  I was certain we would crash head on at some point.  A lot of drivers would even flash us with their lights to get us to move over.  He would sometimes - especially with the big trucks - but not very far over!  I was exhausted from stress of the drive by the time we made it to Casas Grandes where we stayed for the night.  We had another meeting with the Stake presidents there for the same thing - getting missionaries ready to serve missions.  We stayed at the Hacienda Hotel.  It reminded me of staying at the Homestead in Midway.  Very nice!

Dry desert outside of Ciudad Juarez. 

Burrito shop in a little dusty town between Ciudad Juarez and the colonies

Really good burrito

Inside the burrito shop

John Wayne?

Store across from the burrito shop
Who knows what that guy is waiting for?
Probably nothing.....just waiting!

Typical housing in this neck of the woods

Young boy happy to be out riding his bike in the heat

Road jam as we get to the colonies

I don't know - ask Peg
This is a little burrito stand in someones front yard!

A carnival was in town in Colonia Dublan

Our beautiful hotel in Casas Grandes

A typical home in Colonia Juarez

Catholic church in Colonia Juarez - for the one family that is not a member of the church

Stake Center in Casas Grandes - inside looks like a chapel in the states

Friday, Oct 2nd  Happy Birthday to my friend Sharon Larkin!

Up early again and off to another zone conference.  I loved the chapel here.  It reminded me of a Salt Lake church with beautiful brown brick and the style of church I am used to!  The zone conference went well - about the same as all the others.   We left as soon as we could get away and drove to Colonia Juarez to see where Gregs ancestors lived.  We found the street and lot where his grandfathers house was.  We got to see the Temple up on the hill and the school there.  We drove around.  I felt like I was in a small town in Utah.  Lots of brick homes and stucco homes with big yards and horses next to the house and so on!  Dirt roads and huge old trees where all around.  I loved it here!  There were giant houses being built in this town.  I don't know who is moving in, but I wonder how expensive the land is!  We got back on the road and stopped at a bitty town (can't remember the name but it did have a train station in the middle of it)  to see a museum of a guy that was famous for his pottery.  He is quite the artist in this area.  We got back to Casas Grandes which is right next to Colonia Dublan.  We ate lunch at another  hole in the wall.  I loved looking around at these places but had to pray extra hard to eat the food!  I don't ever eat much at these places BECAUSE I REALLY DON'T WANT TO GET SICK!  You would think I would be skinny by now, but my fat loves me and won't leave, no matter what!!  After lunch we drove around Dublan looking for Greg's grandmothers side of the family home.  I will let him write about this.    We then drove the 3 1/2 hours on the center lane back to Ciudad Juarez.  Again my nerves were shot!  We stayed in the same hotel as the first night.  President Derbez was so tired he barely made it home!  He then picked us up the next  morning and drove us back to the airport!
The colonies have always been a special place for me.  I visited them in 1986 for the centennial.  I still vividly remember sitting at my grandmother Stevens' knee and listening to her stories about angels protecting the colonies from an angry Pancho Villa and the soldiers burning down her house and killing her pet dog.  What she didn't tell me was how she almost missed the train to El Paso for the Exodus from the colonies when General Salazar was threatening to kill them all - she was on a buggy with a cousin and lost track of time - the train was already moving out and she had to get the train to stop so she could get on.  I have read stories about how kind the people in El Paso were to the fleeing members of the church.  I still have some relatives there but they don't know me.  

Our hotel in Casas Grandes

Beautiful Farmland

Shrines

Fruit orchards

Homes in Colonia Juarez - looks like small town central Utah

Home of Guy C. Wilson - brother in law to Irvin W. Stevens, my grandfather.  Apparently they had identical homes - my grandfather's is now a tennis court.

Guy C. Wilson home

Guy C. Wilson home in Colonia Juarez

Colonia Juarez - across the street where the trees are is where the house was where my grandfather was born

Colonia Juarez

Colonia Juarez temple - smallest in the church

Juarez Academy

Entrance to Juarez Academy (my grandfather's brother-in-law was the first principal (1904)

Guy C. Wilson's photo in the school

The acadamy

Guy C. Wilson

Class donation to the academy

Intricate stonework on the school

Clock tower on campus

Front doors

I think this is a Robinson relative's home

Enticing isn't it?

The Piedras Verdes river - My grandfather Stevens was baptized here.

Orchards in Colonia Juarez

The tithing office from early 1900's

These are the cubby holes where they all used to put their tithing.

Leaving Colonia Juarez.

The Mexican towns around here look a lot different.

Another small town.

An art gallery of a really famous potter (not Harry)

Beautiful pots

More fabulous pots

More shrines

Town hall in Nuevas Casas Grandes

Lunch - I had a filet with mushroom sauce
Yum!  Great Mexican food!😩

Our restaurant

Another view of the chapel in Casas Grandes

We could have eaten at Tito's

Relief society building in Dublan - now a family history center

This building was built in the 1800's

Old factory in town

Typical old Dublan house

Tree lined canals

This tree looks like it is 300 years old!

Lucille Robinson Taylor's house (Grandma's sister that died in 1990's)

Cute little girl that lived in this house.
She wanted her pic taken but wouldn't smile!

Home of Samuel John Robinson - my great grandfather

Front porch of Samuel John Robinson's house

Another view

Saturday Oct 3rd - 
We left Ciudad Juarez about an hour after conference started - I was able to get an audio feed on my phone for the first hour.  We made it to Mexico City in time to go up to the Smith's apartment on the temple grounds and see the new apostles sustained (went to Med school with Dale Renlund.)  The talks were great and I watched the priesthood session at the Griffin's.  

When we got home we went down to  do our laundry!
Someone had left the washer running or actually filling
and it flooded the whole first parking garage floor!

So here are the famous washing machines.
I decided I need to take a pic so I could always
remember them.  The washer on the left is a new one! YAY!
The washer in the middle will only fill up and wash your clothes.
It will not rinse and spin the water out of them so then we have to
take our clothes out of it and put in the washer on the right.
This one will keep filling up with water until the whole planet is flooded
but it will rinse and spin the clothes.  So washing with these two
 is a two step process.   

 

Here are the dryers.  The one in the middle doesn't work very much
of the time.  The other dryers will work as long as they feel like it.
Sometimes that is 20 min and other times it is 5 min.
Mostly our clothes are damp when we take them out
but hey!!!!  

Greg taking his shirt off and scrubbing his cuffs.
I love that he helps with the laundry!

Sunday Oct 4th - 
We watched conference Sunday morning on our computer and the afternoon session with the Griffins.  Wonderful talks that were very applicable to our lives as missionaries.  Still translating ponderize into Spanish.  We had dinner with all of the couples that live in our hotel which was nice to have everyone present.
Conference was so nice this time!  I felt like everyone was talking directly to me!
I am happy to have the 3 new apostles as well.  Elder Rasband, Elder Stevenson, Elder Renlund.