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.