March 30, 2017

Oh, gosh you guys, there's so many things I would like to tell you about our mission.  As far as missions go, this one was custom made for dad and I...in fact, we've actually designed our own mission.  It was a bit frightening to me at least to be sent to the boonies, the furthest place from our mission home/president, given the assignment to teach the people self-reliance, with zero budget to work with, and then to figure out what to do and how to do it.  It's actually pretty darn awesome what we get to do.  And, the good thing is we don't have someone breathing down our necks all the time wanting to know how we spend our time.  It's been totally left up to us, and we LOVE IT!!!  I miss my family tons and get a bit blue now and then (thank heavens for technology), and oh, how I miss the many beauties of my own country, but with inspiration from above we have figured out what to do and how to do it...we just keep putting one foot in front of the other, slow but steady wins the race! The people and their culture are extremely frustrating at times...many can be so negative, with no vision of the future and what they can do with their lives.  We working to put that vision in front of them...it's hard.  But we are very happy to be here together doing this work for the Lord, establishing His people in this part of the world.

We were blessed to be able to attend the temple in Oaxaca this a couple of weeks ago and as much as we loved being in the Temple, the trip there is dangerous and horrible!!!!!!!!  It's ten hours of windy, dangerous mountain roads, and I'm sure the missionary angels were working overtime to keep us safe.  The first time we went we used the bus (I told you about that trip) and so this time we decided to use a shuttle van and go a different route because we were sure it couldn't possibly be as bad.  WRONG!  It was equally dangerous and sickening.  I'm going to attach a photo of Pop hanging onto the door handle trying not to slide out of his seat as we kept going around curves 90 miles an hour.  We had the windows open in the van which made his hair (what little he has) stand up and he said to me the hair on my head isn't standing up because of the wind...he was scared for his life!  It was funny.  While in Oaxaca we were able to attend 3 sessions, do initiatories, and sealings.  We miss being able to attend the temple weekly, so it was a wonderful, peaceful experience.

Another photo I'm attaching is a salt mine where a member of the church works with his son.  Dad finally found work that he decided was even worse than the work he did for almost 50 years!  The guy owns this property which is salt flats near the ocean.  He shovels into a wheel barrow salty sand, carries it over to a raised bed made out of dried mud, fills the bed with salt water from ocean, then the water filters through the mud bed and fills a pond below.  He then takes this salty water to several shallow pits (also made out of mud) until it dries and then rakes up the crusty salt.  The salt is then sold for livestock purposes. It was so danged hot and yucky there and we were only there for 30 minutes.  This guy works from sun up to sun down, sleeps in a little lean-to, has no refrigeration to keep a drink cold, cooks on a grill he made out of fence wire stuck a raised mud fire pit.  It is amazing to me how creative these impoverished people have to be to survive.  But his silver lining is this:  he is diabetic and because he works so hard and so long, his body doesn't require any insulin to keep his diabetes under control.  And he's really happy about that!

So, as you all know I teach a cooking class every Thursday afternoon and so to get ready for that I've been searching the internet for ideas of what to teach and then learning how to make it. What a gig, huh!!! I spend so much time in the kitchen baking, and making, and we tend to have more stuff than we can eat, so we give it our 4 missionaries who live above us...they have yet to turn anything down!!!  So, yesterday I'm practicing some bread ideas for today's class, had an extra loaf and gave it to a couple of the missionaries to share with the others when they all got home last night.  So, we ended up also having some extra chicken enchiladas from dinner so we called the elders to come get it if they wanted to (these were the other two missionaries).  They came down and Dad told them that we had given the other elders (who were gone to a meeting at the time) some bread earlier in the day, but theses guys didn't know anything about the bread, and I was thinking, good grief I can't believe they ate the whole loaf themselves and didn't share.  So the second set of missionaries looked everywhere for the bread, couldn't find it, called the first set of missionaries and asked where the bread was...they had HIDDEN it way in the back of a cupboard!  That cracked me up!  It's so fun being able to interact with all 12 of our zone elders...we just love them.  Oh, another story.  One Sunday evening we told a couple of the elders to come down and we would show them how to make kettle corn and then they could show the others how to, but instead they just brought all 8 of them down. We showed them how to make it, and from there each one took a turn making it, and probably spent an hour just having a good time with each other making kettle corn.  Every time we have them in our house it feels like the crickets have been here eating and drinking everything in sight!!!!!  Dad makes really yummy juice that they all really like...in fact, he makes literally gallons of it every week for us and the elders.  It's so danged hot here and they come home just dripping sweat, so we're always glad to give them a cold drink.  And the other thing they enjoy is the trail mix we make every week and have it sitting out to munch on, so when they come in, they munch also!  I had to tell one of the elders that it was against the rules to pick out the M&Ms, and embarrassed the heck out of him.

This mission is the one I've always dream about having...one that has the potential of making a difference in someone's life.  One of our sisters who comes to the cooking class, Hermana Eugenia, has taken the class very seriously.  She's a single mom with a daughter to raise alone, was working at a job making $10 at day (that's $10 for 8 - 10 hours of work), which is NORMAL here.  It"s so pathetic.  Anyway, she quit her job a couple months ago, starting making some of the things we've taught her in our class, and she tells us she sells everything she makes every day and no longer has to work that job.  That is awesome!  Dad and I feel that if she's the only one who does this, we've been successful.  She's really the one I want to show how to make these different breads because she thinks she can sell them too.  Last week I showed just her how to take the basic white bread recipe I have, roll it out and make cinnamon bread, and she loved it.  We're anxious to find out today if it sold.

So, anyway, now this letter is long again, and I didn't finish my list of things I wanted to tell you about.  We feel really blessed to be able to serve at this time in our lives.  Heavenly Father has blessed us with the incredible gift of good health and we are using that gift to serve and share some of the experiences we've been blessed with through the years with these people.  It's very frustrating at times, but very fulfilling also.  We hope that each of you can see the Lord's hand in your lives also.  

We love you,

Mom and Dad

Non and Pop

March 29, 2017

These are my newest experiments.

This is a super simple basic recipe I'm teaching tomorrow, so I had to learn it today!  We figured it cost about 8 pesos to make which is about .25 cents to make all of it.  I taught a lady last week this recipe but we made cinnamon bread and it was awesome!  What a mission:)

March 13, 2017

Hi Boys and Girls,

How's everybody doing?????  I know you're all busy, busy, busy with all your comings and goings and work and school.  We're doing great here in Pinotepa.  The work is slow but steady, frustrating, and rewarding, as all of you RM's know.  But we've been blessed with a couple of missionary paydays, so we're happy about that!

We hope all is well with you and the grand-kiddos.  We look forward to seeing you all in a few weeks for Wes's wedding.

First photos are our ramada chapel and the priesthood meeting under the shade trees.

Second couple photos are one of our neighbors her outdoor living area.

Love you all,

Mom/Nonny

March 5, 2017

March 5, 2017

So me and my bad Spanish might get me in trouble some day!! Ken and I were in a store one day to buy some laundry soap.  I asked the store employee if they sell sopa para la lavadora.  He looks at me a little strange, so I repeated, se vende sopa para la lavadora?  Still a strange look, but he turned around kind of scratching his head to figure out what I was wanting to buy, when dad steps in finally and told me what I had asked for!!!   Sopa in Spanish, for those of you who do not know is SOUP, not soap!!!  I knew that, but it just seems so right for sopa to mean soap, right???  Anyway, that happened several days ago and I’m still laughing at myself.  The guy must have thought this gringa was absolutely crazy asking for soup for the washing machine!

I had a crazy experience with one of our piano students, the branch president.  He’s been faithfully coming to class and really putting forth the effort to learn.  Anyway, a couple of weeks ago he came to class when he was the only student and we were working on a couple of exercises at the piano, which he was barely able to do.  Then he proceeds to tell me that he wants me to help him learn a couple of songs so he can play them when the casa de oracion (their meeting house, which is not a church-owned chapel) is ready for them to move into in a couple of months.  Ok, show me which songs, I say.  He shows me two songs in the Hymn book, one has two sharps and the other has two flats, and I wouldn’t even attempt to learn them myself right now.  I was speechless!  We are just beginning to learn the names of the notes and where they are located on the music, he has no idea what a sharp or flat is, he can’t play a simple exercise, and he thinks that he can learn a complicated song in two months!!!  No, TWO complicated songs.  Anyway, it was difficult for me to keep my composure, I was just blown away.  The trouble is, he doesn’t know how little he knows!  So, I tried to convince him to choose a couple of songs from the simplified hymn book instead.  I haven’t seen him since.  More power to him, though.  Maybe he’s more gifted than it appears!!!

This ratty little town that we live in reminds me of a beach town…not that it’s pretty or cool though.  It’s like everyone is camping out…many of them live outside the house because it is so blasted hot inside, not many have AC, and they have shade trees.  So they eat outside, sit outside on the patios, cook outside, some shower outside, sleep outside in the hammocks, play outside, etc.  Most of them don’t have glass in the windows either, just bars and then curtains for use at night.  And many of them have only a sheet hung in the doorway also.  The streets are all very sandy and people dress in shorts and skimpy tops and flip flops.  I have to say that there are also some nice homes, but most of them have high walls around them and we can only see the tops.

And it is hot. We’ve already hit 100 a couple of times.  Everyone keeps assuring us that it will get a lot worse before the rains come in June to cool it down.  Oh, and we had a couple of earthquakes last week two days in a row.  It was so weird, we both heard them coming a few seconds before we felt them.  I’ve never experienced that before.  We live on the bottom of a three story building of concrete, which could be a bit dicey in a strong quake.

Wow, we had a missionary payday the other day.  It was cooking class and the District President and his wife came became she wants to come and they only have one car so he came and just watched.  By the way, he’s a trained chef and some of what he does for his living is to teach others how to make different foods and specialty items to serve in restaurants.  Anyway, we made a carrot and apple muffin that day and after tasting the finished muffin he got a copy of the recipe and proceeded to figure out how much it would cost to produce.  Dad and I are trying to teach them things that they can duplicate and possibly sell as a means to supplement their incomes.  Anyway, President Olquin broke out in a “sermon” about the worth of the things they are learning in the cooking class.  He told them that he would have charged 800 pesos (about $40) each to have taught them the same thing, told them how much they could make selling them, how to sell them, and tried to encourage them to do so.  And then he told them about a woman he knows who is raising two girls by herself, learned how to make a similar type of muffin and began a business making and selling them to support her family!  One of our elders told us a few months ago that his aunt in Costa Rica started a business selling bananas that she dries, so we know it can be done.  Anyway, the same night one of the ladies told me that she comes to our class to learn the new recipe and then the following week she teaches the ladies in her branch who can’t come to our class because they work.  Which is way cool.  I had no idea she was doing this, but thought that to be pretty awesome!

Last experience is about our trip to visit the branch in Huazolotitlan for their branch conference and must say that I was a bit surprised.  We rode a camionetta, (an open truck) to the little pueblo, got out and started walking to the chapel following a path that weaved in and out of peoples’ yards and ended at the “chapel.”  It was nothing but a ramada situated kind of in the middle of three or four members’ homes, in a very tropical setting with large beautiful trees and flowers everywhere.  The chapel even had an outdoor bathroom with curtains for a door and a big barrel of water that you dip a small bucket in to get water to flush the toilet!  During the sacrament service we had a dog wandering in and out and could hear the goats bleating and the roosters crowing from the neighboring yards.  In all the places Dad and I have been to all over this world and attended church this was a new experience for us.  I loved it.  The priesthood quorums met outside under the shade of a couple of trees and there was a 5 gallon bucket of drinking water for people to enjoy, using the same cup to drink out of!  In case you are wondering, neither one of us used the toilet or had a drink of water!

President and Sister Avila was here last week for Zone Conference and took all of the missionaries to have lunch on the beach.  It was a very enjoyable day.