Adventures in Mexico 2: Visiting Like There's No Yesterday

Monday, December 28, 2015, found us in San Cristobal De Las Casas ("San"), Mexico. Like I said, we were staying at the home of "Mama and Papa Lowe" even though they were up in Utah at the time.

Unfortunately, Linette had a cold and was feeling pretty wiped out.

Before we could tell Sister Lowe's sister not to feed us, they had made us a breakfast of scrambled eggs, green beans, salsa and tortillas. It was actually kind of amazing.

Sister Lowe's sister was hand stitching clothes to sell at the market. She was also helping Linette feel tall! :)

The daughters in the family also did hand embroidery. It was fun to watch them work and see the amazingly even stitches.

Here are some of the things they had made by hand.

As we drove through downtown, we bumped into the elders and invited them to come have pizza with us at 2pm. (Later we ended up having to make it 3:30. Er, sorry, Elders!)

Then we started visiting in ernest. Our first stop was a butcher shop. Kelsi walked in and said something like, “I’d like some sausages, please!” and Rafael Lopez was really surprised to see her. He teared up and kept putting his hand on his heart, saying “Mucho gusto,” and you could tell he was just so happy to see her.

It made all of us tear up, too, and it was a good way to kick things off.

Our next stop was just around the corner, where we visited Eologia, an older lady who would enthusiastically go visiting with Kelsi and her companion. She gave us some cinnamon tea and cookies.

Then we walked around to find the rest of the Lopez family.



There were a lot of dogs around. I thought this one looked cool with its backdrop.

And this dog made sure nobody tried to hop onto the ledge and sneak into the house.

*I* sure as heck wasn't going to!

It was really fun to meet the rest of the Lopez family. They were very sweet and I could tell that Kelsi really adored them.

Alín, Dulce, Kelsi, Natan and Carmen.

I thought this roof-dog looked like a panda bear!

When we went to our next place, someone let us in the front gate, and one of the members of the family saw us and said, "¡Es Hermana Wilson!" and I heard someone else say, "¿En serio?" (Are you serious!?) There were three generations and some friends there, so we had a nice visit.

And, as usual, there was hugging and crying, which was sweet.

Our next stop was to visit Juan and Petra de la Cruz. Their daughter Judith opened the gate for us and got a big smile on her face and gave Kelsi a hug. The mom and dad were inside slicing onions and such for their job (cooking cow and pig heads for tacos).

Randy, Petra and Juan de la Cruz, Kelsi, Judith, Erika.

They had a funny, scruffy little dog named "Wilson" (named after the volleyball, perhaps, rather than Kelsi). They said it was curious because the dog usually barks when it's someone they don't know and wags his tail when it's someone they do know. This time is was barking and wagging its tail, so they thought, "It must be someone we know that we haven't seen in a while!" And sure enough, it was! I thought it was adorable that the dog would remember Kelsi.

Here's Judith saying good-bye.

Next we hiked up a steep hill. The road and stairs just kept going...

...and going...

...and going. Taxis sometimes refused to drive up the steep road.

And, of course, the person we were visiting wasn't there.

But we had a lovely moment enjoying the view of the city.

That afternoon we met the sister missionaries at "Pepe's Pizza". Of course, in Spanish they can get away with spelling it like this, but I don't think that would fly here.

It was fun to meet Hermana Carvajal (2nd from the left), who had been one of Kelsi's hijas. Mari-Ester (the gal we visited our first night in San) joined us as well.

Hermanas Alcinar, Carvajal, Wilson, Cook; Mari-Ester, Hermana Juarez, Erika, Linette.

Ve have vays of making you talk...

Hermanas Cook, Juarez, Alicnar, Carvajal and Wilson, and Mari-Ester

As we walked down the street on the way back to our car, Kelsi saw a member who runs a clothing shop.

Mari-Ester accompanied us back to our van.

That evening we visited the guy who used to be the bishop (but is now the district president). He also served a mission in Riverton, so he spoke English well.

Rodrigo Nicolas, Humerto and Laura Perez with Kelsi.

They had an American-looking home and he had Erika play something on the piano, after which he played a great number as well. (They also served us a warm, thick strawberry drink that Kelsi joked was "yogurt" once to her companion to freak her out).

The next stop was to visit Humberto's sister Suzi and her husband, Dr. Ivaín Perez. (Both being named Perez was a coincidence, although they joked about it being such a common name that everyone was named that. I'm pretty sure. I never knew exactly what anyone was saying).

After we visited and had a thick warm grain drink, they whipped out a birthday cake for Kelsi (since her birthday was the day before and we had arrived late), and sang "Las Mañanitas".

Ivaín and Suzi Perez, Kelsi with a birthday cake, Randy and Linette.

We didn't know that cake was coming, so we had also bought a cake for Kelsi, which we took to the Lopez family when we went back to see them again that evening, as promised.

At the end of the day, we were all like, "Holy Cow! We can't handle too many more days like that!" It was really fun to see everyone's reaction when Kelsi arrived, but we had had to cram a lot into that one day to make up for lost time.

In our next episode, we visit Tuxtla and its amazing canyon.

Adventures in Mexico 1: Getting there is half the fun!

On the day after Christmas, Saturday, December 26, 2015, Linette and I flew to Mexico with Kelsi and Erika. Kelsi returned from her mission to Tuxtla Gutierrez in July, and this was her chance to introduce us to some of her favorite people down there.

The trip got off to a bumpy start when our first flight (to Mexico City) was delayed enough to miss our connection to Tuxtla Gutierrez, and both Delta and their partner AeroMexico seemed to think there was no way to get there for three more days (!). But we saw that there was a midnight-to-noon bus from Mexico City to Tuxtla Gutierrez that could get us there if nothing else worked out, so we boarded our plane anyway.

Linette battled to get us $100 flight vouchers along with seats in first class, so while we were disappointed to miss our first day of the trip (including seeing everyone at church on Sunday), it was sort of fun to try out first class, which I had never done before.



The steward on the flight turned out to be a guy who was working on the flight that Kelsi had flown home on from her mission.




I'll have to admit that the food in first class was indeed tasty.



It was dusk when we arrived in Mexico City.

Kelsi got a message from a former missionary, Rubén Salinas, who had been an assistant to the president (AP) and had returned home from their mission a week before. He said that if we had any trouble in Mexico City to let him know.

When we landed, we found out that we had been booked on a flight for the next day (Sunday afternoon), so the Salinas family graciously offered to come pick us up and put us up for the night. Here we are at the airport waiting for them, kind of excited that our adventure had begun.

Rubén and his dad picked us up in their van and drove us to their house, which was a bodega, sort of like a cement storage unit with metal doors in front. We worried that we were putting them out of their beds, but I think there were enough couches and mattresses that nobody had to sleep on the floor.

We chatted and Rubén played the guitar for us for a while, and then the family had us pile in the car and van and took us to a ward party that was going on. There was some sort of pageant happening when we arrived.

And then suddenly we were at a table being fed an entire meal of meat, bread and "ponche" (a hot drink that's like wassail with chunks of fruit in it).

Wilsons and the Salinas family. Mexico City. Saturday, 12/26/15.

When the pageant and dinner were over, the tables were cleared, the music broke out, and the dancing ensued. Soon Kelsi was dancing the salsa with Rubén. I had been keeping Bob updated on our trip, so I texted this picture to him, with the message, "Things turned out ok in Mexico City."

He wrote back, "Wow! Wasted no time in getting into a party frame of mind! ¡Olé!"



Kelsi also saw another guy from her mission there.



Back at the house, we took turns playing guitar songs before turning in.



The next morning we went to church with them. It was funny to be sitting in the chapel that less than 12 hours before had been used for dancing the salsa.



Brother Salinas' van said "Prensa" on the back, which means "Press." He runs a vegetable stand and used to get robbed on the way to buy the vegetables (including by the police). But ever since he put "Prensa" on the back of his van, nobody has bothered him.

After church the family served us a wonderful traditional meal with meat, beans, rice, tortillas, salsa, limes, soup, maybe some cactus or something. It was perfect.

I just thought these were some of the best people in the world.

We still had a few hours before our flight, so we all piled into the van (seatbelts, shmeatbelts) to go visit the Mexico City Temple.

We had a nice visit in the visitor's center. (Sorry the random photographer cut off Jesus' head. He forgives them.)

This hallway tells the history of the church in Mexico.

I thought this was pretty, so I had the flowers stand by her for a picture.

The Mexico City Temple was just recently rededicated in September 2015.

At that, we flew out of Mexico City. Given that we weren't originally on this flight, our seats weren't together (That's Kelsi and Erika way back there). But I was glad we had seats at all.

I thought it was amazing to see how the houses had sprawled their way up this volcano in Mexico City.

It was night by the time we arrived in Tuxtla Gutierrez.

The rental car place was out of the car we had reserved, so they gave us a free upgrade to a min-van. When this hatchback pulled around, we thought, "Gee, they sure know how to put the 'mini' into 'mini-van'!" :)

But really, we got a Dodge Grand Caravan, which had loads of room for our luggage and ended up coming in very handy for hauling friends around with us.

I was originally nervous about driving in Mexico, but then I turned into a driving madman and it was really exhilarating! The highway from Tuxtla Gutierrez to San Cristóbal de las Casas was new and nice, so we were able to make good time. There was officially only one lane in each direction, but most people drove on the shoulder so that you could pass even when there was a double yellow line and even when there was oncoming traffic (and even someone passing in the other direction!). Yikes.

Finally we arrived in "San", and by then it was late enough that we made just one visit on our way to where we were staying. We dropped by the home of Mari-Ester, a recent convert, and had a wonderful visit. She is thinking of going on a mission.

Her mom isn't a member of the LDS church, and was worried about her daughter going on a mission, but Linette told her how great of an experience it is, and the mom seemed to respond to that.

Finally we arrived at the home of "Papa and Mama Lowe". He was the ward mission leader there and was an American whose father had been a BYU archeology guy. His wife was a local. They were unfortunately up in Utah at this time, but had offered to have us stay in their home anyway. The wife's sister and her family were there. So we did, and it was lovely.

We were pretty hungry when we got there, not having wanted to shop on Sunday, so Kelsi asked if the family had any fruit or anything, and they gave us four cold plain corn-on-the-cobs. Which were surprisingly delicious, and hit the spot perfectly.

In the next episode, we "Visit like there's no yesterday" (since, you know, we missed out on a whole Sunday to visit on).