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.