I've just reviewed this entire blog, and I think that it was a wonderful thing for our family. I want to thank Cordell for giving the family this opportunity to stay in touch for the two years we were gone. Sometimes in this computer Internet age we take things for granted, but we need to remember that all this marvelous technology doesn't do us a bit of good unless we use it. The trick is to keep it within the bounds of sensibility, and not to get so tuned in to the technology that we tune our family out. We love you all, and thanks for being there while we were gone.
Thanks again to Cordell for his thoughtfulness and techno-savvy.
Grandma & Grandpa.

One Year and a Half Update

These are just a few of the eternal brothers and sisters we left behind in Mexico

Well, we have been home for a year and a half, and it only seems like forever. We miss the people of Mexico. We hear from them once in awhile, but we really have no clue as to what is happening down there.
Since we got home:
We bought a car
Drove to Boise a half dozen times
We went to see 4 plays at the Old Lyric Theater (simply marvelous)
Marjorie had foot surgery and recovered (6 weeks)
I had surgery on my upper spine and have recovered (8 months)
We put our home back together (still working on that)
We planted a garden
We went fishing (We do that often now)
All in all we are doing just great, and we are healthy and happy. I don't think we are up to going on another mission to Mexico, but it's not because we wouldn't want to it's because our bodes are just to old and decrepit to walk 5 or 7 miles a day and knock on 2 or 3 thousand doors and climb 1500 sets of stairs. We will just hope that the Lord will find enough useful work for us to do right here at home, helping to build the Kingdom of God on Earth.
Our mission to Mexico taught us both a very important lesson. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is true; Joseph Smith is a prophet called by God to restore His church and Kingdom on earth; and the Book of Mormon is the word of God.
I hope that any of my converted friends who read this, will make the decision to put their life on hold for two years, and go on a mission with their spouse to a foreign land, and preach the gospel to people who will become your eternal brothers and sisters in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We believe we're at home now

Family fun at Corinne's Pool

Mom mows Rich's lawn

First family Dinner

Eternal friends we left behind but will never forget

Actually we've been home for two months plus a week, but it is hard to believe. We both are in for repairs, but nothing serious. We hope to be up and running good as new in another month or so. Missionary work in Mexico is not for wimps or sissies, but it was the best thing we have ever done together besides raising our four children.
When we got off the plane our entire family except for 4 were waiting near the baggage claim. And they were all in sombreros and they had a huge sign saying "Welcome Home Grandma and Grandpa." I wish we would of had our camera ready, but we were in shock. Then as we approached them they flipped up two "Great's" over grandma and grandpa. All the Bush Kids had on tea shirts with either Aunt _____ or Uncle _______ and Jessica and Nicole had tea shirts with "Baby #1 and Baby #2." What a great surprise, and welcome home gift.
When we got home we found out that Michael had to be life flighted to Primary Childrens Hospital in SLC, he was in diabetic coma, and he gave us all a really big scare. He's fine now but he is officially a diabetic and has to take insulin every day. He is handling it like a pro, with help from his family.
Since we have been home we still have to give ourselves a reality check ever now and then, it is so different here, and we just love it. We miss our converts, contacts, and friends in Mexico, and we are trying to maintain contact, but it is hard. We are hoping things will settle down when we get all our repair work done.
To all our friends and family who read this If you haven't done it already, we hope you put a senior missionary experience on your "Bucket List" it really is a worthwhile goal, and we promise you, you will never regret it.

Waiting for Takeoff & Thinking About the Good and the Bad

We will fix this for you all when we get home

Two years passed us by like a herd of elk, and we are still here waiting to go home and thinking about all the things we will miss and some of the things we won’t miss about Mexico.
Of course nowhere in this world is all good or all bad, but we can’t help thinking about all of the things we won’t miss about Mexico. We won’t miss combies, topes, holes big enough in the street to swallow a Volkswagen, impossible traffic jams that are worse than gridlock in L.A. at rush hour or the smog caused by these traffic jams. Drivers who think the four most important pieces of equipment on a car are the 9,000 decibel sound system, the horn, a tailpipe that will rattle windows on both sides of the street when passing by, and a car alarm that they can play with as they wait outside their latest girlfriends house while she puts on more lipstick and perfume. We won’t miss the taxi drivers and merchants who try to rob you when they think you don’t know what the correct price is. Even though some of the graffiti and tagging is quite imaginative or artistic, we won’t miss it because it is literally everywhere you look. It is on every single blank wall and it is even on some peoples beautiful iron or plank doors to their private courtyards in front of their houses. If we were living here in our own house, and they did this to us, I’d be out at night hiding in the bushes with a baseball bat or a rubber hose. Another thing we won’t miss is the cannon blasting that goes on at the drop of a hat, and sometimes lasts all night or even days or weeks at a time. We won’t miss parties in tents set up in the middle of the street, that hire an MC and a disc jockey or mariachi band that plays all night, even after all the kids are in bed and all the relatives and neighbors have passed out. We won’t miss poor, homeless, filthy dirty, starving dogs, that people don’t care about, and drivers run over just for fun. We won’t miss tap water we can’t drink, and that leaves the toilet bowl with a ring of nasty looking grime that you cannot clean off with any cleaning product now on the earth. While we are on the subject of toilets we won’t miss the 16 inch high toilet seats either. We won’t miss the rickety, ugly, broken down, on its last legs couch that was given to us by some very kind members, and has served us faithfully until its very last gasp. Actually we should give it a proper military funeral because it looks like it has been through the war of 1812. We won’t miss nasty little bugs that come out of the walls at night and try to eat us alive in our sleep. We won’t miss the people who either steal or borrow someone else’s child to go door to door with and beg for money to buy medicine for their supposedly cancer ridden grandmother. We won’t miss the explosive sound of the boiler in the middle of the night when the temperature of the water drops below 80 degrees. We won’t miss our tiny little cement house with no heat or air-conditioning. We won’t miss the people who go around stealing the electric meters right off the front of your house, and we certainly won’t miss Pedro who rented us a house which he didn’t even own and then disappeared off the face of the earth with or $3400 pesos (1st and last months rent).
Despite all these negative things we’ll miss Mexico and all the beautiful little children we see passing on the street. We’ll miss all the long black thick hair that they seem to grow from the minuet they are born until they die. We’ll miss the cheerful smiles of the people when we say “buenas días,” and their cheerful attitude despite the impossible economic conditions that they have to put up with, for now. We’ll miss all of our eternal friends, and the missionaries we have worked with. We’ll miss the birds that come to our front walk by our window and eat the birdseed we put out. We’ll miss year round watermelon, avocados, fresh fruits and vegetables, and flowers that never cease to bloom. We’ll miss the excitement of seeing someone whose door we knocked on and told them the truth, when they change their ways and start coming to church with real joy in their hearts. We’ll miss real Mexican food, cooked by real Mexican women and men served with real Mexican love. We’ll miss the genuine besos y brazos we receive when our Mexican friends greet us. We’ll miss the sounds of happy children playing in front of their houses, or as they walk to and from school. We’ll miss piñatas, trompos, and the little kids being pushed down the street in their racecar strollers.
Don’t get us wrong despite all the bad and because of all the good we have loved this experience of being in Mexico and serving the Lord by helping to build the kingdom of God on earth. Missionary work is grand and glorious and we recommend it for all those senior citizens who want to do something worthwhile with their retirement years, besides sitting around and discussing all their infirmities or their latest cruise or trip to fantasy land. Missionary work is definitely not for the feint of heart, but it will fill your heart with memories that are just as precious as the memories of your children and grandchildren growing up, and we are sure it will make us appreciate our family and our home a lot more when we return to our former life, which we are sure will never ever be the same, because after this experience we will always have the missionary attitude to motivate us to share the gospel with people who need and want the better life that the gospel of Jesus Christ offers.
In case anyone who cares is reading this, sister Willson and I will be returning to the United States, SLC airport sometime on the 25th of April, and this is causing us to be torn between extreme joy, and soulful sadness. We will survive and live to return to our mission for a visit in a few years.

Winding Down in Mexico

Our district except for us at devotional

At the Temple in Secember.

Our District at devotional (front row)

Reading my poems (2) at the Christmas Devotional

The performers at Aztec Stadium.

One of our missionaries imitang his hero Dan Jones.

Picture with President and sister Nancolas.

Our zone in December 2008.

The Nancollas´s at the MTC

Presidents Monson & Eyring at Aztec Stadium

President Monson waves to the crowd

This is six Missions at Aztec Stadium. We´re the ones in the suits

Our zone at the Christmas Devotional

Elder Walker. playing for us at the Christmas devotional. He is our zone leader

We can hardly believe it when we look at the calendar and realize our time here is almost finished. Two years has passed us like a herd of gazelles, with a cheetah on their heels. We have been working hard and we have met and taught a lot of people, but there is so much more left to do. We will just have to continue when we get home to Logan. But first a little rest and recreation are needed, maybe a week or two fishing in Yellowstone, after we get the house set up again.
This has been a beautiful experience for us on so many different levels, and we have found so many new eternal friends. The lessons that this culture and people have taught us alone was worth any little bit of inconvenience or discomfort we have experienced, and actually we have been in the very best part of Mexico. There are other parts right here in this mission which are much more primitive; there are houses with no running water, no indoor plumbing, they have leaky roofs, and dirt floors, so we have been very fortunate.
Most of our family has absolutely no idea about how many things we Americans think are basic necessities, which in reality we can get along very nicely without. We have survived for two years without: drinkable tap water, 30 or 50 gallon hot water heaters, air-conditioning, forced air heating, wall to wall carpeting, vacuum cleaners, washing machines and dryers, dish washers, personal Internet connection, In a house that is about a third the size of our home, convenient shopping centers, personal transportation, television, movie theaters, and frequent recreational opportunities.
We walk daily on streets filled with cheerful people who work 10 to 12 hours a day six to seven days a week with one or two hours each way of commute time, and only receive four to eight hundred dollars a month. On top of that there is no such thing as free education for their children. If they want their children to have an education they must pay, and buy their children school uniforms. If they can’t afford school the kids stay home all day, many of them unsupervised, unless they have a grandmother who lives either with them or near by. How do they do it? I have no idea. They are very resourceful and they have a knack for making the most of every second of every day. They appreciate the simple things and they never give up hope for a better day.
In many ways Mexico has made us better people. We have more appreciation for the blessings of the gospel, and we have stronger testimonies of its truthfulness. We appreciate the blessings of living in a free country, and the abundance that we have become so accustomed to. We are the most grateful for our membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and our awareness of the necessity of sharing the message of the plan of salvation with everyone we meet. We love the Lord and His church. We love this opportunity we have had of serving Him by serving and teaching all the good people of Mexico City. When we think about the more than 50,000 missionaries serving in every part of the world, it gives us great joy to know that we have been a small part of this work and we hope and pray we will continue to be able to do a small part f this work for as long as we are able and God is willing to let us do it.
I didn’t mention in the last blog that we had a Christmas devotional at the temple grounds when the Mission President and his wife took our zone and two other zones for a temple session and a Christmas dinner in the Temple cafeteria. At the devotional which was announced a month in advance, we were given the opportunity to share a talent with all our missionary companions. I shared two of my poems with my mission companions and an America missionary, Elder Walker from Las Vegas translated for me. Sister Nancollas also asked us to send her all of our favorite missionary photos for her to make a CD to give to each of us as a souvenir of the mission. She only used one or two photos from each missionary, because this mission, the Mexico City North Mission has a little more than 200 missionaries. During the devotional she took additional pictures to include on the CD. She also shared the photos that we had sent to her at the devotional. The pictures I have included here are a few that I thought were especially good. There were 368 photos on the CD she gave us so I will only share a few of the best ones. Enjoy and we will share the rest when we return home in the spring.
We love you all, Bill & Marj; Mom and Dad, and Grandma and Grandpa.

Christmas in the Piñata Pueblo

Well the people of Mexico are getting set for another Christmas. They actually start before Thanksgiving, because Thanksgiving is actually an everyday occurrence here with no special day of recognition. When you ask a Mexican How they are they reply, “Muy bien gracias a Dios.” Which translate to, “very well thanks be to God.” During the Christmas season which starts the first week in November and continues on until the first week of January, concluding with the Day of Three Kings, there are many piñata parties so there is a high demand for piñatas.
Anyway, last year in our old neighborhood we only saw one Piñata get smacked, but we saw ten others go down at the ward Christmas party. This year in our new neighborhood, which is basically working class, self employed folk, many families make piñatas starting with the shell upon which they add brightly colored foil, and crepe paper in many different shapes, from Christmas trees to SpongeBob. We have seen Pooh Bear, Cinderella, Batman, Spiderman, The Hulk, Snow White, and just about any other fantasyland or action hero you can think of. They cost anywhere from $300 Mx pesos to $500 Mx pesos ($21AD – $35AD). The more expensive ones, besides being larger, are constructed on a clay pot. The less expensive ones have a paper machè body which is constructed over a balloon form, which is then deflated and used again. The smallest ones we have seen are about the size of a large hamburger, and the largest we have seen is about five or six feet in diameter. The elders tell us that they are building one about 15 feet in diameter in the next little colony.
We took these pictures on the way home from the church last week. We also decided to get into the spirit of Navidad ourselves this year so we stopped at the papelaria and purchased some things to decorate the house, and we also bought a nice poinsettia. The house looks very festive. Our little tree complete with lights is from Jessica and Levi last year.

The work of the mission is going very well. We have some very spiritual experiences to share with you all when we return. Almost every week we have a very special spiritual moment which is what fuels our engines and keeps us going. These experiences can be as simple as seeing someone we spoke with during the week, who hasn’t been to church in five or six years, come walking through the chapel doors, or witnessing the Holy Ghost influence someone who is struggling with the decision of when they will be ready for baptism, and the complete transformation of their countenance when they receive the witness and make the decision to fix a date.

Mexico City, Mexico Temple Rededication

What a special privilege to participate in this historic event. A prophet of God came to visit the people of Mexico and to rededicate the Holy House of the Lord. This event, the Saturday evening cultural celebration, only lasted 3 hours, but months and months of work and preparation went into the planning and execution of this wonderfully blessed event.
The cultural celebration was massive with thousands of beautiful participants in handcrafted authentic costumes. It took place in the Aztec Stadium, the largest stadium in Mexico. The stadium was filled to near capacity with approximately 70,000 spectators. The event was free, but a ticket was required for entrance. Tickets were available at the churches in the area.
In addition to the actual performers there were about 1500 to 2000 missionaries who made a grand entrance and greeting to the host of admiring saints who absolutely love and adore the missionaries, many of whom are responsible for their family’s membership in the church. This was the finally or conclusion of the evenings display.
It was such a thrill and privilege to be numbered among those missionaries, and for us to actually be the very first missionaries to set foot on the floor of the arena. We stood in the midst of the huge throng of admiring saints and waved our white handkerchiefs, and waved, and waved, and waved, until I thought my arm was going to fall off, and then I kept on waving, and the crowd waved right back at us. We found out afterwards that our friends the Perez family whom we lived next to for the first year, took a video of this special moment for us and they will put it on a CD for us.
Sunday morning, we went to the actual rededication which was broadcast live via closed circuit TV channel to all the Stake Centers. A special ticket was required for this sacred solemn meeting which actually took place in the Celestial room of the temple. Presidents Monson and Eyring were there, dressed in white, along with the president of the temple, and the Area presidency. Those in attendance were Mission presidents, Stake presidents, Bishoprics and their wives. Almost all of the talks were in English and then interpreted in Spanish, so we were able to understand everything. I even understood most all of what was spoken in Spanish only. This is truly a blessing from the Lord. The most miraculous thing was what happened in our chapel where we were watching. There was a technical problem with the TV transmission. We were getting a perfect picture, but no sound. The person who usually does the technical support was not with us, and the brethren who were in charge did not know what was wrong or how to fix it. We watched the meeting commence in complete silence, and the people watching were in shock because they thought they would not be able to hear what was being said. This went on for 15 or 20 minutes of complete silence. At first I was mad, and I felt like I was being denied my first and only opportunity to witness such a sacred event. Mom said, “Be patient and have faith.” Then I began to offer up a sincere prayer that those who had been left in charge would somehow find the solution to the problem and we would be able to view and hear the remainder of the broadcast. I’m sure there were many sincere and humble prayers offered up from that chapel on this day. After a few minutes of a blank screen and no sound the picture came back on with beautiful clear sound, and President Mickelson of the Area Presidency was concluding his remarks. I offered up my gratitude and enjoyed the rest of this very beautiful and sacred meeting. President Eyring’s remarks were truly inspiring, and President Monson as always was magnificent. The one thing that President Monson said that will stay with me forever is. “God gives us flowers in June so that in our December years we will have beautiful memories.”
It was truly an incredible blessing to sit at the feet of a prophet and listen to him dedicate a Holy House of God, and to participate in the sacred Hosanna Shout and wave our white handkerchiefs, in sacred salutations to our Lord and King Jesus Christ.
Love to all Mom and Dad
Grandma and Grandpa
Marj and Bill Willson