Sunday, February 7, 2016

February 1st to February 7th, 2016 Back to the Temple,Stake Conference, and Eating Chapulinas

This week we want to wish a very Happy birthday to my sister Debi, on the 8th, to Doyle and Erika who get to share a birthday on the 9th, and to Ross' sister Ramona on the 12th. This is a week of very special birthdays for very extra special people! It's too bad we can't get together for a very special party and celebrate. We hope you all have the most wonderful day and that it is just the beginning of the best year of your lives. 

Monday our week started with going to the temple to help with some of the cleaning and laundry in preparation for it to open the next afternoon. To get in we had to dodge tools and tarps and paint sprayers and workmen and furniture underneath tarps, if you ever doubt that God is a God of miracles just visit a temple that is under closure for maintenance the day before it opens! You would never believe it would be ready the next day, we worked on what we could until a little after noon and then went home, the next morning when we went back the change really was miraculous! We helped again Tuesday morning with the final details and then went home for lunch and back at 3:00 with all ready  to open for patrons.

It has been a great week, it is nice to see all the familiar faces of our friends that come regularly to the temple as well as the workers who we have come to know and love. We have come to love the customary abrazos of greeting and it is just second nature now, we will probably have a hard time not greeting everyone with an abrazo and a beso and a greeting of "Gustan Verlo" when we come home! 

Wednesday we had a great experience, our good friends the Villanuevas came with their youngest daughter, Adele, to get her endowment.Adele  just received her mission call to Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Dad got to do the interview in the office, I was the secretary and then I got to help with her ordinances, President Serrano was the president on shift and his wife was sick so he asked me to give the instructions. It was such a privilege for both of us to be able to help this beautiful young lady that we have come to know and love. She reminds us of our sweet precious grand daughters and we both had tears the entire time, just one more sweet experience to treasure in our hearts. There was another sister this same evening that came for her endowment and I was able to work with her and give her the new endowment instructions also, to me it is so amazing that the spirit is able to give us the gifts that we need when we need them, such as the gift of tongues and interpretation of tongues, I know that there is no way that I have the ability on my own to do the things that I do, it is only through the enabling power of the spirit that I am able to give these beautiful instructions to these precious sisters and have them understand and feel and know the importance of the things they are learning in the temple. 

Friday we had 2 couples come  from Puebla to spend 2 days working on their family names in our temple. It is actually closer for them to go to Mexico City but they told us that they prefer to come to Oaxaca because of the feeling they get here. That the workers are all so kind and friendly and so much easier to work with. They spent most of both days in the temple and were delightful people, they were in and out of the office, the men were brothers and both spoke excellent English, we helped them print name cards and they got a lot of their work done, they left very happy!

Saturday we had 3 buses from Tehuacan Stake with 125 people, we also had a young couple come at 4:00 for their sealing and a special session at 5:00 for the Barrio Independencia, so it was a long, busy day. We did almost 1900 ordinances!

After the last session we had been invited to a birthday dinner for our friend Luis Perez, we thought we were meeting at a restaurant, turns out it was a catered meal at a restaurant/ party place. There were a lot of family members there along with us and the Peñas. They brought us a great salad to start and lemonada to drink, then the main dish, pechuga relleno con chapulinas, translated that is chicken breast stuffed with grasshoppers, with a side of cactus salsa and broccoli and carrots. We wished that we had said no thanks we are fasting! But we had already eaten the salad and the hosts were sitting right by us and we really didn't want to offend them, so.... we ate the chapulinas! It took a lot of hot sauce for me to get them down, especially since the chicken was very dry and we have both been a little "jumpy" ever since we ate them but other than that it's all good!


Singing to Luis



More Birthday Celebration

Eating Capulinas, Notice the looks on the Peñas Faces.They had never tried Capulinas either.They think people in Oaxaca eat some weird food! Laura is at the end of the table, she loves chapulinas! I was trying hard to swallow!  


Today we went to Amapolas Stake Conference,  Amapolas is the stake we have been in charge of. The visiting General Authority was Elder Toris of the Seventy. He talked about a lot of different things but one of the things he said that really hit me was that we are eventually released from all of our callings, except that of the calling of parents, never underestimate the importance of that calling! Hold family counsels, give father's blessings. Set righteous examples. Sister Madsen said much the same create a spiritual ambiance in your home, and President Madsen added we are a church of order and it starts in the home!


The choir warming up before conference.
President Junco to the side, the leader is Sister Albrecht from Argentina.


Pres. Junco

Elder Toris and Pres. Cardenas after conference

Part of the choir,middle front is Adele Villanueva, facing forward.


It was an amazing conference, the first speaker was the stake president, President Junco, he talked about how great our Savior's love is for each one of us and how he can heal us of our wounds our imperfections, our doubts, and our fears he used the stories found in Mark 5 about the woman who had so much faith all she had to do was touch Christ's robe and she was healed, then the story of the leader of the synagog who came to Christ because his daughter had died, he was told " she is dead  so why are you bothering the Master?"
But Christ heard him and said "Don't fear, only believe" and Christ went to his house and raised her from the dead. As he talked to us and bore witness of the truthfulness of these accounts I felt so strongly the assurance that through Christ's love and atonement and our faith He truly can heal any and all infirmity or affliction, no matter how great or small. I believe with all my heart this is true.
We love you and appreciate you all, you are all, always in our hearts and prayers.





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