Happy Mothers Day and Happy 6 month anniversary!

Sunday, May 10th!  HAPPY MOTHERS DAY,   HAPPY 6 MONTH ANNIVERSARY!

THOUGHT: "MUCH THAT IS GOOD, MUCH THAT IS ESSENTIAL.....
                       CAN BE ACHIEVED IN LESS THAN IDEAL CIRCUMSTANCES."
                                                                                                                   Todd Christofferson

Well, well - guess who made it back to Mexico without too many rope burns on my body from my kids dragging me to the airport!!!   It really didn't hit me that I would be sad all over again until I saw the smog over the extremely large city!!!  To be honest, I am not excited to dive back into the traffic, but the work must go on and we must keep the missionaries healthy!!!
I landed about 1:45 pm and then stood in an 1 1/2 hour customs line!  Bienvenido Mexico!!!
See Mexico didn't even want me to come back!  It hardly let me in!!
Happy Mothers day to all of the Mothers I know!   You are all very special and a great example to me!  I wish I could wish my own Mother a happy day, but she is probably already having one!!
I got back home to beautiful roses for our 6 month anniversary!  Nice job Greg!
I spent the evening unpacking and catching up on emails.  We also met and visited with the Griffins who are the new couple since Friday.  They will be over the media and digital stuff for the church here in Mexico!!  They are from Thatcher and know Kim and Jan Hansen.  Small world!!
Good to be back on the mission!!!
Here are some pics from Greg and Spencer's week activities!

Quetzal head at the Pyramids

At the Basilica of Guadalupe in the garden

Basilica of Guadalupe - the church is sinking into the ground

Going up the stairs at the main cathedral in the Zocolo - they give tours of the bell towers.

Bell towers of the cathedral in the Zocolo

On the roof of the main cathedral in the Zocolo in Mexico City

Wooden stairs that are 300 years old in the bell towers

Los gigantes of Tula - probably Olmec ruins (read into this Jadeites)

Monday, May 11th  HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHANDLER!
Happy Birthday to my big 6 year old!  You are adorable!  I hope you had a nice day!
Monday, Monday! It has been a mild day for me, but I am pretty sure that the yellow cell phone has grown to his ear!  He has had all kinds of problems with missionaries today.  It has been a wild day and Greg sent home 5 missionaries just today!!  We walked down to the Telmex store to pay our stupid internet bill!  Every time we pay our bill our internet service gets worse for about 2 weeks!  Lately it has been bad all the time!  We stopped in at LaOnda for a chicken taco and then walked back to our place!  It was good exercise for the day!  Way to go to us for starting out the week like this!!  We don't get enough exercise!
The FHE lesson tonight was given by Pres. De Hoyos.  He is the area president.  The lesson was on loving and appreciating our mothers.  I learned you just can't do it with a mother!!!  I knew that already!
I am putting up some pics from my time at home!  I didn't take nearly enough pics!
Sara's wedding!

One wedding and 4 graduates!  Proud parents!!
Spencer - Utah State
Rachel - Weber State
Mitch and Beka - U of U.

The bridesmaid getting ready for the wedding!

There Perfect!!!

Hadley and Jason

All the guys in the Stevens family now!!

Lovely couple!
Best wishes to you both
FOREVER!!!

YAY!  They did it!!

Tuesday, May 12th
Today we had to get up and get going!  We had a zone conference in the north mission at noon.  Greg thought it would take us 1 hour and 20 min to get there!  We made it in 35 min.  Wahoo!  We were able to help the Titensors set up and get ready for the conference.  The conference went well - Greg did a good job as usual.  Sister Titensor had it catered so we had greasy tacos for lunch with salad.  The salad always tastes so good!  We don't get or make salad very often because you have to soak the veggies and clean them and go through all this trouble!  It's much more fun to stay fat and happy!!
The Titensores ( Mission Presdient) of the North mission are very delightful.  We like hanging out with them.  We have another date on June 6th to go back to the pyramids for another tour.  !
After the conference we headed out to go over to the MTC.  My neighbor Nathaniel Porter is coming to the MTC on June 24th.  I took some pics that I will post here so he can see what it looks like!  It is the garden of Eden inside with a wild and crazy world outside the MTC walls!  We went to the MTC to meet the Beechers.  This couple is so dang cute! They are both psychologists.  HI SISTER BEECHER!  I KNOW YOU ARE READING THIS!  Kathy Voorhees gave our blog address  to her and she has read every word!  The Beechers are the new mental health counselors for the MTC and the rest of Mexico until we find another doctor.  We got the Beechers all oriented to missionary medical and had a nice visit with them and the Gills.  He is the doctor and she is the nurse for the MTC.  Another funny story - guess who is coming to be the doctor for the MTC???
The Harstons.  We bought the Harstons home 21 years ago this September and we still live there!  Once again - small world!!  As we were leaving it started to rain!  Oh my!  I am going to have to make some new rules about driving around this city in this rain.  People drive even more crazy and you can't see the holes and dips!  UGH!!  I took a pic of us trying to get to our hotel.  It is a 2 lane highway and I think 6 cars were jammed in!  We barely made it home in one piece!
Also Greg doesn't think I am busy enough so he is having me read through the emed log and help him pick out the problems he needs to send to Elder Schwitzer.  I picked translate to English and some of the sayings are coming out so funny! I am pretty sure I am going nuts! Here are some of them!!
"Elder ? saw Dr. Ortiz our mission doctor for some balls that were in his neck causing him some concern. "   "The traumatologist said I would not recommend removing the plates and screws.  I said the inflammation and pain are walking from the Elder"  Elder ? said his teammates always very sore but he tells me he has nothing."  "Elder has severe acne.  cleared before eleven o'clock last summer with antibiotic treatment but I does not remember the antibiotic"  "He went to see the doctor again because they follow the inconvenience and problems in the urinary tract."
So there you go!!
Here are some pics of Spencer and Beka's graduation!

YAY! Throw that hat high!

Congratulations Spencer!
We are so proud of all you
have accomplished!

Home Sweet Home!

Look at the good job the gardeners are
doing!  Those pretty flowers that you can
blow all over the neighborhood are so nice!!

Graduation dinner at Famous Dave's!

Beka with her close friend Megan in the
Huntsman Center

On the jumbotron!
Thanks Jason for taking these!

Way to go to you too Mitch!

Congratulations Beka!
We are so proud of you and
all you have accomplished!
Love you!

OOOHHHHH!

A statue of Jesus
We saw this on the way to the MTC
in the middle of the hubbub!

I love this house with the plants on the ledge
and the laundry on the roof!

Looking down the street and at all the houses on the hills
in the background!

More houses on the hill!

A little market in the street!

I can't hardly drive down the street!

A family getting some food!

Pics of the MTC
Gate to go in to the Garden of Eden

Through the gate!
Greg used to tract in those hills with the
B on it!

Nice wide streets

Add caption

Basketball courts
The cafeteria is behind the courts!

Housing for missionaries

More housing!

This is what it looks like by our house
in a traffic jam!
Cars going every which way!

Right here there are only 6 cars  across on a 2 lane road!
Everyone tries to be first!!!
Actually there is no firsts!  There are always
more cars ahead of you and behind you!!

Nos Vamos!

FUN MONDAY - Mon. Apr. 27th -Wed. Apr. 29th HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATIE!

Monday, Apr. 27th  Happy, Happy Birthday Katie!

THOUGHT:   "WHO IS THE HAPPIEST OF MEN?
                          HE WHO VALUES THE MERITS OF OTHERS AND IN THEIR  PLEASURES
                          TAKES JOY... EVEN AS THOUGH 'TWERE HIS OWN!"
                                                                                                                             VON GOETHE

Today has been just like a regular P day!  We got up early and drove down to Cuernavaca.  Actually we drove about 40 minutes past the big city to a little town called Jojutla.  We picked up 2 sister missionaries - Hermana Avila and Hermana V.  I count pronounce let alone spell her name!  Sister Avila is the granddaughter of Bro. Avila that Greg baptized 43 years ago!   Greg just keeps finding connections to people that he baptized.  We picked them up and took them to lunch at this really cool resort.  This place was Cortez' home back in 1529! It was called Hacienda Vista Hermosa.   I took tons of pics.  We had a little struggle finding this place, but we are happy we finally did!  Lunch was nice - except the food was just OK and it was quite hot (air temp) but we enjoyed talking to these 2 sisters!   Cute missionaries!!
We drove around and found a big lake and took lots of pics of the towns we drove through!
We don't ever get a P day so we took the time and had a great day!
We got home just in time to eat a little something and get to FHE!  The lesson tonight was on the 5 love languages!  Since we all spend 24/7 with our spouses, I'm not sure the love languages are going to do much good for the next year!😜

The driveway to the Hacienda Vista Hermosa

Pics from around the resort!

Greg with Sister Avila and Sister V.

This is a huge deep stairwell down to a basement!

The restaurant with this old wall and arch!

The pool!

It's hard to see, but this tree's roots are growing on the outside of that brick wall!

Tuesday, Apr. 28th  Happy Birthday Dad! (would have turned 90 today)
Today has been a bit of a frustrating day!  I thought I would be having a mellow day where I could get some things done that I needed to!  Greg got a call from a Mission Pres who had a sick Sister in the hospital.  We had to drive (1 1/2 hours) to the LindaVista Hospital to check on this Sister.  Greg was able to visit with the Dr. and check on her.  She has a lot of abdominal pain and will probably end up getting exploratory surgery to find out what's going on since all of her tests are normal! After checking her we went across the street to the mall and had a salad at Applebees.  Then we got to drive back home! (which took us another 2 hours!)

Here are some more pics from yesterday!!

We were lost (of course) looking for the resort!
I like this little brick whatever!  House maybe??

Just a pic!

Some homes!

A neighborhood

Lovely home up on the hill!

Wednesday, Apr. 29th

We got to drive back over to the Temple clinic today.  Since Greg won't be here on Friday, he had to work in the clinic for a couple of hours.  There are workers all around the temple grounds trying to get everything ready for the re-dedication of the Mexico City Temple in September.  There is a big plastic cover on the angel Moroni!  They must be cleaning him up!   I got to visit with Sister Smith and Sister Pocock for an hour or so!  That was a nice reward for driving over there again!
We tried a new way home and hopefully made it in better time than if we had gone the usual way.  It took us 1 hour and 1 minute to drive home, and that was at 5pm.
I put more pics up from our trip to Jojutla.

This is a flower stand!
Each of those squares is probably 2 doz roses in a bunch!
I like it!!!

I like how they take such nice care of the median
of the highway!

Another median pic.

The outside of the highways!

Down a typical street!

Somebody's gate to their house!

A nice blue chicken store!!!

This little family living in this little hut
playing with their dog!

A little flower garden up on the top of the house!

Can you imagine carrying your baby
everywhere you go?

Downtown Jojutla

Sad!

PS  I am going to Salt Lake for some family activities!!!
I will be talking to you in 10 days!!

Lonely week

We had a wonderful weekend at home, made it through Sara's wedding and Spencer's graduation.  The area presidency told me I had to come back with a companion, but that my wife could stay the week and attend Rebeka's graduation this weekend so I have had Spencer for a companion.  His Spanish is coming back and it has been a great week.  It started off Sunday evening with a phone call about a missionary with a blood clot in his lungs in a city 3 hours away - he was really sick and nearly died.  I told the mission president that I would leave in the morning and drive to Morelia to see him and help them decide what to do with him.  Monday morning Spencer and I left fairly early to avoid traffic.  It is a really beautiful drive through pine covered mountains and beautiful lush valleys for most of the drive.  It was all on toll roads so it cost me almost $1000 pesos ($65 US D) for tolls.  The elder was in intensive care but doing much better off of Oxygen.  The doctor seemed very conscientious and well trained.  The elder's biggest concern was the cute female nurse insisted on giving him a bed bath the night before (elder instructed to tell her next time he would do his private parts.)  He will be fine.  Spencer took up a conversation with a man in the waiting room whose wife was in intensive care.  He softened him up so that when the companion came back up he was ready to read the Book of Mormon - Way to go Spence!.  The man even followed us to the parking lot to get Spencer's email to correspond with him.  We had lunch at VIP's (think Denny's) and came back home.  I got tired as always driving so Spence drove about half the way.  We arrived home just in time for family home evening and called it a night.  Tuesday we went to the pyramids and stopped at the Basilica of Guadalupe on the way home.  Spencer got in some major sight seeing and really enjoyed himself.  The pyramids are always awe-inspiring.  We stopped by the temple grounds to buy new scriptures for two elders who had theirs robbed and went home.   at the Anderson's then Spencer went on splits with the missionaries.  We were invited to eatWednesday I had my monthly meeting with the area presidency and had my proposal to change to volunteer mission missionaries instead of trying to call them as service missionaries presented to them for approval.  We have about 80 service missionaries, most of whom are now ready for release and we don't have another 80 to take their places.  My proposal was to ask those after release if they consent to continue to see the missionaries as mission volunteers, without giving them a calling that has a release date.  That was approved.  In the afternoon we went to the Zocolo (downtown) and the Latin-American tower.  Spencer had his first experience in the Merced - the extremely large market place in downtown Mexico.  Aisle after Aisle after aisle of "stuff."  He was looking for shoes - found some that quite frankly looked too Mexican.  He didn't buy them because the lady would dicker and later we couldn't find her store (thank goodness - I am not sure they would have been worn in the US.)  Thursday we went to a zone conference in Tula (90 minutes or so from our hotel).  We arrived a little early so we went to the archeology site with the Giants of Tula statues - possibly Olmec (read Jadeite) ruins.  We had a great conference, were fed and returned home.   I took Spencer to eat at the Olive Garden in the big mall near us.  Friday I had to work in the temple clinic then we went to another zone conference in the north mission.  Afterwards we tried to see if we could go to the castle in Chapultepec park but there was no parking, we arrived late and Spencer had to go to the bathroom in the worst way.  Found a gas station and got him taken care of and then must went home for dinner.  The Anderson's invited us over for movie night.  Sorry I have no pictures - without Peg I am lost.

On top of the pyramid of the Sun

On top of the pyramid of the sun

Basilica of Guadelupe

Gigantes of Tula  - probably Jadeite sculptures

He doesn't look that lonely to me!!!