Greetings! I think it’s time that Craig took a stab at
writing the first draft for a blog post, so here I go! Last week was Easter
week and that is called “Semana Santa” all over Latin America -- Holy Week. It
is a time when the many people are involved in special things related to the
last week of the Savior’s life. A lot of the Catholic churches carry out
reenactments of His death and crucifixion. We did not see any of these because
most often this is done in areas that are more rural in nature than we are here
in the west portion of greater Mexico City. And, in addition, Saturday and
Sunday were, for us LDS, is our semi-annual General Conference. Bonnie and I
pretty much stayed right here in our apartment both days and watched conference
over the internet. What made it nice is that I hooked up my laptop to our new
TV via an HDMI cable and so we put the TV up on a table and pulled the chairs
in front of it. It made for great viewing, and in Saturday, we watched all the
World Report and such that is offered in the two hours between the morning and
afternoon sessions. I had set up the TV similarly the Saturday before, for all
the sister missionaries to be able to come to our apartment and watch the
Women’s Session, which they did.
We also were able to view quite a few of the new Bible
Videos on the TV screen. If you have not seen any them, we invite you to do so.
They are wonderfully done. Everything about them is superb, from the acting to
the settings to the costumes, music, and videography. The dialog is all
straight from the King James version of the New Testament, not made-up. They
have been made to reflect the teaching of the Savior as found in the Bible, and
not to represent any religious stance, other than pure Christianity. I have been viewing these videos since they
first started to come out and I truthfully tell you all that they have
strengthened by testimony of Jesus Christ and his life. They make me feel as if
I am right there, witnessing the events first-hand. Take the time to see them
and I believe they will do the same for you. I am putting the link to them here
to make it easy for any of you who would like to open and enjoy something truly
uplifting. https://www.lds.org/bible-videos?lang=eng
This past work week was exciting for Bonnie and me. We have
spent considerable time this week in activities that support and share some of
the many successes of the Self-Reliance Initiative in Mexico. Let me explain two of them. . While we were
in the few days of training about the initiative before we departed for Mexico,
we were gently asked by the leaders of the effort to write to them
periodically, to tell them how we were doing, including our reflections and
feelings about the work. So, shortly after we arrived, and seeing some of the
real results that were being reflected in the monthly bulletins (reports)
coming to us from the stake Self-Reliance Centers (CAS is the acronym in
Spanish) I decided that I would write about some of them and include them once
in a while in a nice email to the office in Salt Lake City, as they had
requested. I call them “Success Vignettes” because as see them as little
glimpses, not full success stories, per se. For me, this has turned out to be a
very exciting activity and it has grown to take a fair amount of my time every
week, because I have begun to write about more and more of them. Oftentimes I
need to get a bit more information in order to flesh out the ‘story’ because
the monthly reports are quite short, a total of one page and they have to
reflect some data, a picture, and other things beside a ‘success’ of some type
for that month.
I think we have also indicated before in this blog that we
started a FaceBook page for “Self-Reliance Mexico”, and it has become quite
popular, actually. Bonnie primarily handles putting up new postings, but I feed
things to her sometimes and also make sure things are in correct Spanish. We
also use other things that people send to us and so it has come to now be a
real joint effort as we to 2-3 updates every week, with pictures, and also monitor the ‘likes’ and comments and
such by others. The Self-Reliance Manager for the Area is really thrilled with
how well the page is doing and being viewed by people around the country.
Anyway, these are the two things that we spent a good share of time with this
past week. Yu can go see the Mexico Self-Reliance page (it’s all in Spanish, of
course, but go, see it, and like it!) at the following:
Saturday afternnon lunch at Sanborns
Craig during recent outing with fellow missionaries.
Unique plant for our apartment
Angry face on plant flowers
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