Sunday Jan. 25th to Sunday Feb. 1st, 2015

Good afternoon, I suppose for a lot of people today's preoccupation is the big Superbowl game, for us it really isn't even an option. We weren't even certain which teams were playing until we were eating lunch today with the Peñas, Atkinsons, and the Normans and we were talking about it. To me it seems like such a big waste to think of the amount of time and money spent on one day's game, when that money and time could do so much good in the world. Not that I think there is anything wrong with pro ball in general, just that things are a bit out of proportion.

Last Sunday Jan and Greg decided they wanted to have everyone over for dinner, but their house is too small, so we ate at our house. They made chicken cordon bleu, and rice, we made salad and dressing, Peñas brought fruit and Normans brought desert, we do eat well!

Peñas



Sunday dinner this week with the Penas, Normans, and Atkinsons



President and Sister Atkinson, dinner this week Feb. 1

Just about ready to eat!
 

 

 

 Monday we went to a lab downtown to get a chest x-ray for me, the lab did a lot of testing and looked pretty full when we got there and I thought great we will be here half the day! We checked in and went to pay first and found out they wouldn't take our insurance, but the x-ray would cost 320 pesos, roughly 21 dollars. Then we sat down to wait, in about 15 minutes they called me back took the x-ray and said it would take 20 minutes to get the film ready for me to take, so we waited, it was more like 40 minutes, but they brought the film out with the typed report and handed it to us to take to the Dr. We left called the Dr, who came by the house at 1:30 looked at the x-ray and read the report, said the lungs are looking good, no abnormalities, everything is clearing up, the broncials are still a little inflamed, stay on the meds a little longer, charged us another 200 pesos, about 14 dollars and said to call if I get worse again. I am doing so much better and think I will just continue to improve. Sister Norman has to have an MRI on her knee and we found out that they will take our insurance but you have to call ahead and arrange it through the HMO. Although I'm not worried about it for the amount we had to pay. That was less than our deductible would have been at home, although we understand we have no deductible here.

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty good days in the temple, the sessions were nice, I ended up being the coordinator Wednesday evening shift. Thursday we had 2 busses come from Cuautla, they brought 22 kids and the rest were adults. They are what is called an autosuficiente estaca, or a self sufficient stake, that means they bring enough family file names that they do not have do use any temple names and they also have enough temple workers of their own that they need very little help to be able to run the sessions etc. Their Stake Pres. is an amazing man and the people adore him. They come for 3 days, this is the second time they have come since we have been here and we are getting to know some of the people, they recognize us and of course hug us and tell us they will see us the next time, the temple has an amazing spirit when they are here! President Ziga told me how much he loves and admires Ross and what a wonderful man he is, I had to agree with him.

We also had a bus from Nialtican with 42 youth and  their leaders, coming to the temple was their reward for doing indexing! After baptisms they got to go to Monte Alban. Ross was the baptism coordinator for most of the weekend and Friday there were 86 kids, that is a lot for a little temple.

It was great to have a busy weekend! You can see the joy in the faces of the people as they enter the temple, We love the feeling we get of pure love for people that we don't even know, we know this love comes from our Father in Heaven and He is allowing us to feel just a tiny bit of the love He feels for us. His gospel is a gospel of joy and peace, He loves us, we know this with more certainty each day, He wants us to love one another and care for one another, we love you all so much and miss you, take care of yourselves and each other.