Mexico City - February 2010

Here are a couple of aerial views from the plan that Matt took of some of his areas and of Mexico City. The first one is incredible because if you look closely the entire thing is jam packed with city/buildings.

During our visit one of Matt's convert couples (Veronica & Noah) came up to him during church and asked if he would baptise their son (Ivan). Matt had the opportunity to baptise him the day before we left. It was a neat experience.

I thought it was hilarious that they sold toast at the grocery store!!! It made more sense when I saw that most of the people did not have toasters in their homes.

This is Dulce and her three children. They were sooo precious! The two little girls didn't quite understand that I didn't speak Spanish and they persistantly tried to make conversation with me! It was so funny because they adopted me as their friend and were talking to me the whole time while Matt was talking to Dulce. I had to keep on interrupting them because they girls wanted responses and I couldn't give them any! Hahah! It was great! They taught me names of some animals in Spanish from their school books and insisted on me taking gifts that they had for us and the "baby". The youngest girl (the one in the light shirt) wanted us to stay forever. It looked like she was going to cry when were leaving. It broke my heart!

Here is Matt and Paulina (left) and Matt and I on Paulina's balcony. Paulina has been one of Matt's strongest converts. We were excited to hear that she was planning on going to the temple that month. Paulina LOVES Matt!!! So was so nice to give me, and both my mom and Matt's mom some intricate table doilies. We were extremely flattered because she said that the large ones took her about a year to make! I am holding a stack of the small ones in the picture. Those took her a couple of months each!

We stayed at Blanca's house while we were in Mexico. Matt calls Blanca his Mexican mother. She is a really strong member that Matt was able to baptise. Her daughter was already baptized when Matt come into the mission and her two sons were baptized after Matt left. While we were down there the oldest son was on his mission in a two a couple hours away. It was really sweet to hear that he wanted to see if Matt would come back to Mexico and baptize him, but Matt took too long : )

Here we are at their house playing cards on one of our last nights. We taught them hand and foot and they taught us this speed type of game, very intense!

Here is Matt standing on top of a hill looking over one of his areas. We went to the church building that they used to meet at and there was a wedding reception going on. Matt figured out that it was the sister of a man that Matt knew from his first transfer. Surprisingly the man remembered Matt by name!!! They were extremely nice and offered us to eat and join the celebration. The bride and groom came up to us to welcome us! I felt like a celebraty! I don't think I would've noticed a couple of casualy dressed people walk into our reception. We felt really welcomed. This is really how it was wherever we went. The Mexican people are very hospitable. We had to turn down a lot of meals while we were there because there were just too many people to visit!

Matt wanted me to be able to see the Teotihuacan Pyramaids. Mario and Montse, two of Blanca's kids, offered to escort us to the pyramaids. It was really nice of them, because I don't think they had a lot of fun : ) It was really interesting to see all of the village ruins surrounding the pyramaids and imagining what it looked like back when they were whole. We climbed "El Piramida del Sol" This was the tallest pyramaid and it was a good work-out! The next picture is of me at the top looking over at "El Piramida del Luna". It was really cool to see all of the symbolism to the gospel. Matt pointed out that there were 12 little pyramaids surrounding the three larger pyramaids (very interesting!).

This little festive man is dressed us to do an incredible trick with a few of his performers. You can see in this picture that they all start at the top of this 50ish foot pole. They are each tied to these ropes that are coiled around the pole. When they release themselves the weight of their bodies unravels the ropes and the spin around the pole! It was pretty fun to watch.

Here we are with Blanca's family, her husband is sitting on the right. On one of the first nights they took us out to dinner to try the best "Tacos Al Pastor" in town. Since this was a sit down resaurant we flet like it was safe for me to eat. Most of the food people get in town are from stands, which can be sketchy sometimes (we didn't want to possibly disease our unborn child). These tacos were the best tacos I have ever had in my life, Matt agreed! They are spicey pork with pineapple. They had a bunch of salsas and vegetables to put on top, SO GOOD!!! The corn tortillas were made right there near the tables. It was super cheap too! Matt said he thought the bill for all 6 of us came to about $40.

We went for a LONG drive down to the town that Blanca's son was serving his mission. It was near the town Puebla. We had the address but it was really hard to find. I think we were driving for a total of 6 hours that day. Luckily Mexico City is actually a really pretty place once you get outside of the city! This is a picutre I took up in the mountains.

Here are two picture of this huge volcano that we drove around. These are pictures from opposite sides. The picture on the right you can barely see the outline of the volcano in the clouds. We just liked this picture because you can see how large it really is.

Here are some of the locals near Puebla it looked like what I always picture Mexico to look like.

This is one of our favorites. The little boy on the left had a little puppy that hid when we took the piture. These kids just look so picturesque to me!

Here is a picture of one of the LDS church buildings in Mexico. It's was such a breath of fresh air to see in the city. I kind of made me feel at home. I was surpirsed at how many there where just in the area we stayed in.

The most memorable part of the trip was going down to visit Juan Alberto, Blanca's oldest boy, where he was serving his mission. His parents weren't supposed to see him so the just rode with us and we planned on just leaving them the car while we visited. So, what ended up happening was that we couldn't find their house so we asked some of the towns people where the missionaries lived. They pointed us in the right direction and to our surprise while we were driving we saw "los eldres!" walking along the street. Blanca and her husband ducked down in the back seat and Matt waved to Juan Alberto he waved back and when he saw it was Matt he freaked out! He was even more surprised to see his parents sitting in the back seat : ) So we found a place to park and Matt and I went up the hill to meet him and his companion while his parents stayed down the street in the car. We stopped by a little tienda to buy them some drinks and just talked for 15-20 minutes. He was so glad to see Matt it was a really emotional moment for all of us. Matt was so glad to see someone that he taught the discussions to teaching others the same principles. We later heard from Blanca that Juan Alberto wrote in his e-mail that he had been having a hard time on his mission, but seeing Matt and his parent's support just gave him such a great boost! We were really glad to hear that. Definitely worth the long drive.

These pictures are all chronologically backwards... so this is a picture of us at a Mexican cathedral in Puebla. It was really interesting to see the similarity in styles compared to the European cathedrals. The insides were just as immaculate, but the outsides had a definite Spanish style.

Here is some fancy building in Puebla. I don't think we knew what it was, it just looked cool : )

Here is Alberto and Blanca in the back of our car on our trip to visit Juan Alberto. They were fun to travel with. They actually took the whole five days off of work and their duties to make sure the we always had an escort when necessary around Mexico City. That was a really big deal I think because he is a big business man. He works as an accountant. There family is actually very well off for Mexico. I felt like we were in a normal American home when we stayed with them. We actually had our own room with a huge flatscreen TV, bathroom and balcony exit. I wasn't expecting that at all. Matt also noticed that Alberto had an incrdible amount of suites and dress shirts in his enormous closet next to our room : ) I thought that was awesome!

One last random photo. Here is the picture of the Basilica in Mexico City. Matt thinks it is one of the largest cathedrals in Central America, not sure though.