Mexican Moments with Greg and Peg: This week is starting out.......

THOUGHT: "Being creative will help you enjoy life. It engenders a spirit of gratitude. It develops latent talent, sharpens your capacity to reason, to act and to find purpose in life. It dispels loneliness and heartache. It gives a renewal, a spark of enthusiasm and zest for life. Elder Scott

Monday, Mar 14th

Our week got all messed up yesterday. We had plans to fly to Reynosa to do zone conferences today. We were scheduled to fly there today, do zone conferences tomorrow and Wednesday and fly back Wednesday night. There are major problems in Reynosa with drug lords right now and people are being shot all over the city. 10 people got shot and killed today alone. All the missionaries have to stay in their places and so no meetings are allowed. It has always been the most dangerous place since we got here 16 months ago. So we got up and did the usual this morning. I walked only 3 miles on the treadmill today because in an hour I had to go with Sister Longhurst to visit a sister from our ward that needs a little encouragement. (Like what encouragement am I going to give her!!) So I met Sister Longhurst over at the church building across the street. I was sitting on a little retaining wall waiting for her to come out and a cute lady walked by with her son. I recognized her from the ward and we said hi and off she went down the street. We walked all the way UP the Pueblito to see Estrella. It took us a little wandering and asking and we finally found her "house". Some cute guy asked us what we were doing and when we told him we wanted to visit with Estrella he started whistling and yelling for her. If finally became apparent that she wasn't home so we headed back down the hill. I was so tired from doing the treadmill that I could hardly walk! We got ourselves all the way back down to the church building and met the same lady I had said hi too before I walked all the way Up the hill! Sister Longhurst calls out "Estrella!" Oh my gosh! It was her that had walked by me in the first place an hour before. I was so pooped that I came home, but Sister Longhurst went back up the hill and probably had a nice visit with Estrella! So much for me serving someone today! It's never easy!!!
I took a nap this afternoon and Greg had a new adventure by helping Pres. Whitehead with 2 disciplinary councils with 2 missionaries. He said is was interesting but very sad. The Pratts did FHE. They are part of the Pathway Program here in Mexico so they spent their hour telling us what they do and how they get people into education programs through BYU I . This seems like an amazing program for the Mexican people to get an education and also they have to take Institute classes. The Pratts took us through one of those classes on digging deeper into the scriptures. It was a great lesson. We had to hurry home to have a conference call with Greg's brothers about their mom. She has been a wild and crazy lady this past weekend and the family needs to decide what to do with her. It's too bad she doesn't have a daughter to whip her back into shape. I could do it, but it's hard from clear down here in Mexico! 6 1/2 weeks to go!!!

Tuesday, Mar 15th HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET HADLEY!!!

This will be the best part of going home - hugging and kissing the grandchildren. I hope Hadley has a fabulously fun day being five!!!! They are all growing up way tooooo fast!! Greg had some errands to run this morning and I did my morning thing with the treadmill and cleaning and a little crocheting. The Griffins stopped by so we ended up running down to Ruebens for a hawaiian hamburger and curly fries. It was a beautiful day today. The weather is a little warmer and spring is on the way. The jacaranda trees are out in full bloom now and flowers are showing up all around. We got home from lunch and took Bonnie with us to the grocery store. We haven't had food around for awhile because we were gone all last week and thought we were going to be gone all this week. The mangos are starting to appear and that is a good thing! They are yummy! We got home just in time to have a little yogurt and crusli with strawberries before we went up to the Griffins for movie night. We watched the All American. It was a true story about a football player who got cancer in his leg. It was sad. The Hackings came to the movie as well! He is feeling better from his food poisoning so whatever he got into this past week! Good times!! No good internet for a long time!

Wednesday, Mar 16th

Today was very fun! Sometimes this mission is so rough!!! Greg hurt his knee back when Sara was here the end of January so he made an appointment with Dr. Perez out in Toluca for a knee check. We left home at 9:30 am with the Griffins for an adventure after the dr. visit. The Dr. appointment was at 11 am. We got there about 20 minutes early so we had to wait for the dr to show up. It turns out Greg just has some tendonitis and needs to take a few pain killers and don't do exercise for 3 weeks. He's happy about that!! We then hopped into the car and drove off to find our destination Ville de Bravo. It took us about 2 hours to get there and it was worth the trip. The drive was fun cause we got to see all the little pueblitos along the way. Unfortunately it is the dry season and so the scenery is all brown but the green trees still looked great. The lake and all the buildings around the lake looked so pretty. The weather was perfect, the sky so blue and the town was so fun. We ate lunch on a floating restaurant on the lake. We watched people go out in boats for waterskiing or just a drive. It made me miss Lake Powell with the kids and it also made me want to go to Lake Tahoe. I love that place as well. Lake Powell is coming in July so that's not far off now!!! We walked around for awhile and then got back in the car and drove around the narrow streets to the center of town. There were lots of people there and I can see why! It took us another couple of hours to get home, but it was a very fun day!

I went to see an orthopedic in Toluca - this was his office.

Locked gate to his office.

He had a nice aquarium

Waiting for the doctor

Catholic church right outside of his office.

Shops next to the doctor's office.

Selling their wares

Leaving Toluca we started to climb into the pine trees.

Little villages at the base of Nevada de Toluca - the big volcano next to Toluca

Beautiful road

Little church on the way

We arrived at Valle del Bravo

Beautiful Lake where they were waterskiing

Lots of boats to take you for a ride

View from our floating restaurant

Boat behind our floating restaurant

The Griffins treated us to lunch

Large boat that was parked next to us - out for a spin

Even sailboats

Peg really wanted the Crocodile!

Homes build up the hillside

Tiny little alleys

The main square

It is a colonial town

More narrow alleys - look at the car coming down the alley!

Thursday, Mar 17th Happy St. Patricks Day!!!

Today was a mellow day. Greg had a meeting with the main Dr. from the insurance company down at the Linda Vista hospital so I got to stay home in the peace and quiet! He ended up being gone all day. After he got home Pres. Whitehead called and needed to have a meeting with him so he went to the mission office for that meeting. I had a great day, but I didn't do a whole heck of a lot! When he got home from that we took Bonnie Anderson and went shopping. I bought more yarn to make 2 more afghans. That should keep me busy for another month! We went to the Andersons and watched a short movie - one of the old murder mysteries they like to watch. Good times!!

Friday, Mar 18th

I am exhausted after today! I'm glad yesterday was such a nice relaxing day! Greg had his temple clinic to go to so I go to the temple. The Sandbergs asked to go with us because he had a family name he wanted to do. So we did that! All went well and we met Greg afterwards and had some lunch at the temple cafeteria. They serve Mexican food in the cafeteria here - go figure!!! We headed for home. The problem was it was the end of the week, and the start of two weeks of vacation for everyone for Easter and it was pay day. Needless to say it took us 2 hours to get home today. The next problem was that the Pratts were sitting on the front bench waiting for us to take them to the MTC to listen to Elder Cook (apostle) who was speaking there. We had planned this the other day, before we got our senses about us! I did not want to go, but it never matters what I want! We left -and it took us another 2 hours to get there! We went into the cafeteria to get some dinner and it was shutting down. We got the scrapings of dinner so you can imagine the mood I was in today. I'm glad the temple went so well, cause it's been down hill since! We did get to listen to Elder Cook who talked a lot about Preach my Gospel. I guess he was one of the head guys in developing the book. He answered questions from the missionaries and gave them some advice. We had a nice little visit with the Packards, Calls, and some cute missionaries. One story that was amazing was - We arrived a little late due to traffic (beginning of Semana Santa.) We found the Packards who were saving us seats in the huge cafeteria in the MTC. Next to Sister Packard was a sister who noticed our name tags and said, "Elder Stevens. We have an Elder Stevens." Elder Stevens was tall and skinny but said he was from Maryland so I dismissed that he could be related. We went to the self serve counters for what little was left and came back to sit by the Packards. I asked Elder Stevens if he might be related to a David Alma Stevens and he told me the story of my great grandpa's gun battle with land rustlers in New Mexico. So I asked for his parents' names and he said, "Ed and Kristina." Then he said his grandparents were Jack and Gerry - My dad's brother. Turns out he is the son of my cousin Ed - who was so much younger than me that I hardly knew him. He is in Maryland where he works for NASA. We then went to hear Elder Quentin Cook of the Twelve Apostles. He spoke about working with the missionary committee to develop the Preach my Gospel program. Some things that I wasn't aware of is that it was entirely written by the first presidency with some help from the Twelve. President Hinckley told them that he didn't want it to be something they could memorize - He wanted them to learn it. He then said that people often ask him if the leaders of the church still have miraculous events in their lives - they never talk about it. He said they do but hold them sacred and do not talk about them. He then said very powerfully, "But I know the Savior's voice and I know His face." that was pretty powerful.