We’re still here, in Mexico

The holidays are over, we think, but we heard a Christmas carol at the shopping center today. We are back to work, and the work, and our zone celebrated this weekend with a small baptismal service right after Stake Conference. We have five new members in our ward who will be confirmed next Sunday. I got to baptize one of them, Oscar Ivan Saldana Gonzales. He is a nice 27 year old man with two children 4 & 6. He wants to baptize their mother and get married in the temple. They are separated right now. We are including the baptism photos in this blog. So far in our 8 plus months we have been involved in finding, teaching and baptizing 15 people, and we have 7 more hopefuls that we are working on. We try to visit with Rodolfo and Martin at least once a week, and encourage them to make the next step towards baptism; they just have a few little details to take care of. We love this work. It is truly incredible to see the change that comes over people when they receive a testimony and enter the waters of baptism.
We have moved our tracting over across the main street into a large area of single family dwellings. They are two stories similar to ours but each house has two floors. We love this because we don’t have any stairs to climb.
It hasn’t rained here in three or four weeks and as a result the water delivery system is a little bit miserly. We have run out of water three times in the last two weeks. We have water to drink of course, because we buy that, but the bathing, flushing, and dishwashing water is scarce.
Thanks to Cordell we got to see some great photos of the family this week. They are of Halloween, and various candid shots of the family. We enjoy sharing in the family gatherings and special events. We hope we will see some baptism photos of Josie and DJ, and more of the family having fun together.
We were asked to keep an elder with us for a couple of days, just during the day time when the office staff had some special meetings. He has just recently been diagnosed with diabetes, and he has to take it a little bit easy while they get his blood sugar levels stabilized. He was able to help us a bit with our Spanish, and also talk to a couple of our contacts and set up appointments.
We will look forward to seeing some more posts from anyone who has the time and or feels the urge. We love you all and we appreciate all your prayers and support for this work. The gospel is true, and God’s church has been restored to the earth for the last time in these last days. Families can be forever and we are all immortal and can have, through faith in Jesus Christ, eternal life. It’s our choice.
Love to all Grandma and Grandpa / mom and Dad.

PS
The blog isn't accepting photos right now, I´ll add later.

New Photos

Mom And Dad

Colie let me use her computer to surf the net and she let me take some of her pictures from her hard drive and add them to the picture album.

I got your email and was not sure what you wanted me to do. Do you want me to take the pictures you posted to you blog and move them to the picture album?

Things here are going well. Its a Saturday night and Corinne and I are hanging out with the Bushes. Some are watching a video (A Knights Tale) some of making a blanket (Jamie and Colie with my supervision) and others are doing whatever.

Im glad Andrew is emailing you and Im glad your posting his letter on this blog. Its interesting that he sends things to you that are completely different from what we see from him so its kind of cool.

Cordell

New (some old, but recently released) Pictures from Mexico

Sanchez family Baptism 10-28-07

Aldo´s Baptism, 10-27-07

Dad and Aldo

Roquie and Gabby, New Year´s Eve FHE

Mom, Luci´s mom, David, Luci

Family Home Evening House Building

Familia Perez and our gingerbread houses

Roquie decorated Gabby

Mom and Daughter Luci

Let the decorating begin.....ooops!

Gotcha back!

The Familia Perez

Leilani Flores at Family Home Evening in November

Dad, a really bad picture of Mom with Ezra Flores at FHE

It was Ezra´s birthday too.

Dad and Mom with the three kings, 1/4/08

Here are the pictures that were trapped in my camera until I received the driver that was lost during a technical adjustment or whatever.
We had a very festive Holiday season, and we ate way too much, as you may be able to detect we both put back several unwanted pounds, but we have the hot summer months to look forward to and literally thousands of doors to knock on. We are hoping to lose those Holiday pounds along with at least 20 more 8-). We love you all and would love to see some of your Christmas photos and or other interesting photos here on this blog. We would also love to see a photo or two of the newly weds shoveling poop together at their ranchero vaca , and the other newly weds new house, and speaking of new houses we would like to see at least one photo of The new Bush residence, other than the Real-estate listing.
Oh … I almost forgot this interesting cultural note. Mexican cuisine is noted for its picante quality or characteristics, Right? Well here’s one for the book. Two little known facts which I have just learned:
Ø Pepper is only used or available in the finest restaurants or by the rich people. Some Mexican people do not even know what it is or where it comes from, and yet the pepper tree is the most abundant and common tree around. If the poorest Mexican only knew that the little red berries on these trees was in fact pepper, they could harvest all the pepper they could ever want.
Ø Cinnamon candy is much too picante, for the average Mexican palate, they would much prefer fruit, candy and even watermelon and ice cream liberally sprinkled with chili powder.
Ø This has nothing to do about eating, but we just figured this one out on the way over here this morning. We have been noticing the last few days a lot of helium balloons for sale on the streets. They had pictures of the 3 Reyes de Mago. Then we saw some of these floating heavenward with notes attached. We asked and were told that the children send their list of desires to the 3 kings in this way, and they do it the day before they come.
Anyway enjoy the pictures. We love you all and miss you very much, but we know that every day when we wake up that we are where the Lord wants us to be. We love Mexico, the people we serve, the missionary experience, and the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. The church is true, and families can be forever.
With love from Mexico, Mom and Dad

From Andrew..the latest

Date:
01/04/08 04:09 pm
Subject:
hi again
Attachments:
Hi Grandpa and Grandma,
thanks for your email. i really like to hear from you. i was wondering some things about senior cupouls. like what are the diffrent rules for you. i heard youu can whatch tv and read fun stuff and have a computer. is that stuff true or is it just the older elders pulling the greenies leg. like did you get to read the last harry potter book? do you get to go see movies. i was just wondering about thatAll that stuff about you mission is really cool. a 1000 baptism a month. that crazy. really cool but crazy. our mission goal for 2008 is 300. they must have to have a font ready like every day of the week. how the laguage coming? are you fluent yet? have you eaten anything really cool or really spicy? what mexico like? do you eat with the members often? What do they feed you? Ive already had some intressting food. like stuff bannana peppers they were stuffed with lamb. it was really good but really spicy. that was from Butch Kucken. he a really cool guy. he almost became a jewish rabbie but stopped when he found out about the restorred gospel. he's a jew by ethnicity. he even wears a yamaca to church. he's really fun to talk with. he was recently reactivated so the bishop askes us to go over about once a week to meet up with him. his sister is in our list of possible investigators. but anyway he feed us that on christmas day because Elder hill and i told him we were tired of eating ham. so he offered to cook us a mediterranian dish. and it was good.well i look forward to hearing from you. love you both very muchEdler Rich

The Latest from Andrew

From:
andrew rich
Date:
01/02/08 04:39 pm

hi grandma and grandpa
it was great to get your email. how your mission going. mine is great. it's not what i thought it was going to be. alot more rejection and angry rejction than i thought it was going to be. we work really hard to get new referrals and new contacts but we only get like two or three new a week on a really good week. and it seems like most of thoughs are just yes people. they are just to nice to say no. then they start to avoid us its a little frustrating cause we waste so much time trying to get in contact with them. but its seems like on all of the frustating days we always end on a good note. like some one will progress will show some inietive that we didnt know they had or a really good message on the answering machine. just small spiritual moments that make the downer days all worth it. so what new in your mission. are the lamenites progressing. any really cool stories about baptiams or big bugs. how hot is it there. its 24 degrees today in PA and the sun is shining.

well love you. talk later.
Elder Rich