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.