Week of Jan. 18th to Jan. 24th, 2016 New Babies and Mexico City

The big news this week is grand baby number 25! Little Ruby Fern Ray was born early Saturday Morning (around 5:30) weighing 8 lbs 5 ounces and 20 inches. She has quite a bit of dark hair, which is different for Jared and Jen's babies, they have all been little blonde's. Mom and baby are both doing great last we heard and Ross and I are having a hard time not being with them.

Baby Ruby Shortly after Birth

Baby Ruby With Abby

New babies are such a special gift from God, we feel so very blessed to have this sweet new spirit in the family  and can't wait to meet her and cuddle and kiss and love on her. In the meantime we know she will be getting lots of love from her family. We also feel so blessed to have her wonderful mother as a part of our family, thank you Jen for putting up with our crazy family and for loving us, we love you more than cake and ice cream and we really love cake and ice cream!

We have had a wonderful week! We left Oaxaca at 2:00 p.m. with the Peñas and the Roesberrys, the Peñas had to go to Mexico City to take of some business to do with selling their home and packing some of their belongings, so they gave us a ride. We had an enjoyable ride until we hit the city traffic and got stuck in a traffic jam. I am not sure why the traffic was so bad, but none of us had ever seen it that bad the entire time we were on our last mission! We were in one intersection for over 30 minutes. The worst part was we all needed a bathroom and there wasn't one anywhere in sight! We finally arrived at the temple and got checked into the hospedaje, the rooms were on the 3rd floor and were dormitory rooms with 2 sets of bunk beds in each room and a common bathroom down the hall, but the price was right, it cost 100 pesos a night or roughly 6 dollars a night! We were in the temple complex with purified water, security guards, and it was very peaceful and quiet, or at least relatively so. The Peñas stayed the first night with us and went to the temple with us Tuesday morning and then went on to their house to take care of their business. We (the Roesberry and us) spent most of the day in the temple then went to dinner at Panda Express. Next morning we got up and went to the temple again and then we went to the Zocolo. We had never been to the National Palace as it was always closed on Mondays, we finally got to see it, it was amazing, there was an art display in the courtyard of Photos of Mexico that was fantastic. The walls of the palace were covered in Diego Rivera Murals that told the history of Mexico, they were indescribable.President and Sister Ruiz part of the Presidency from when we were here before knew we were coming and wanted to get together with us so they had arranged to take us to a show at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, or Palace of Fine Artes the premier performing arts theater in Mexico City. We met them at the theater at 8:00 pm to see the Folkloric Ballet de Mexico, it was tremendous, very hi energy, with great music and fantastic costumes. The building was gorgeous inside and out and was another building that had been on our list of laces to see!
 The Palacio was started in 1912 and is one of the most prominent cultural performing arts centers in Mexico City, it wasn't finished until 1934, it is absolutely gorgeous inside and out. The performance we saw was a folkloric ballet, or folk dances of Mexico, it was fast paced, the costumes were stunning, and the music was beautiful. We were enthralled!
Thursday morning we went back to the temple again, we took some of our family names with us and were able to get a lot of them done, we did 4 sessions, initiatory, and sealings and we felt the Lord's love for us through His sweet tender mercies during the week as we saw many of the good people we worked beside during our previous mission, including the entire temple Presidency.

Our room in the hospedaje at the Temple.

Jan and I in front of a bronze statue at the Zocolo

Ross with anothe Statue

This is a photo of one of the Photos in th Palacio Natioanl

Isn't she cute!

Rivera Mural

More Mural

Some of these Murals showed how cruel the conquistadors were to the natives, they were very graphic and very sad.

On the walking street downtown, you can find just about anything!

From one extreme to the other!

Local Color

Inside the theatre, this was the curtain.

More of the Ballet

Drummers, The front stage rose out of the ground with the drummers.

The tree was lowered from the sky for this number

This guy and the orchestra were on the sides of the theater part of the time.

Visitors Center

   The newly remodeled Visitors center is very modern and is said to be one of the best in the world. Ross and I did not spend a lot of time there but we did spend some time in the section that told about the history of the church in Mexico, we had heard most of the stories before but is was very interesting to review it again. It is a beautiful visitors center.

On Tuesday evening we were sitting in what used to be the main building of the CCM but is now the Perpetual Education Fund Building and the Family History Center so we could get internet.A couple about our age came down the stairs and greeted us and then started to visit, we had seen them in the temple earlier, they introduced themselves and we found out they are missionaries and are in the apartments where we lived, we talked a bit then they invited us to go home with them to eat, we had already eaten, they also volunteered to take us downtown the next day or anywhere else we needed to go. That is just the way people here are, they are so kind and gracious and so willing to do anything to help others. 

We are looking forward to another great week as we travel to Huatulco, it will be fun to see the DeWolfs and to spend a little time at the beach, but we are also looking forward to being back to work in the temple the following week. We miss seeing our temple family. Yesterday and today we had dinner at our house with the Roesberrys and President and Sister Cardenas it has been fun to spent time with them and get to know them a little bit better. They have offered to stay up late and take us to the bus station at 11:00 tonight so we don't have to worry about finding a cab so late, such sweet, thoughtful people.

The thought I want to leave you with today comes from President Uchtdorf's confernce talk "Be Not Afraid, Only Believe" 
" I wish I could help everyone to understand this one simple fact: we believe in God because of things we know with our heart and mind, not because of things we do not know. our spiritual experiences are sometimes too sacred to explain in worldly terms, but that doesn't mean they are not real.
Heavenly Father has prepared for His children a spiritual feast, offering every kind of exquisite food imaginable- and yet, instead of enjoying these spiritual gifts, the cynics content themselves with observing from a distance, sipping from their cups of skepticism, doub,t, and disrespect.
Why would anyone walk through life satisfied with the light of their own understanding when, by reaching out to our Heavenly Father, they could experience the bright sun of spiritual knowledge that could expand their minds with wisdom and fill their souls with joy?"

I truly believe that the light of the gospel and the love of Christ is what fills our souls and hearts with joy and peace and that this is a lasting joy and peace that we can not find any where but in and through our Savior Jesus Christ, it is what He wants for us, what he paid with His life so we could have, I am and will be eternally grateful to Him for this amazing gift.
We love you all.