John and Christine's Adventures: March 30th through April 5th:

March 30^th through April 5^th: Monday we went shopping for treats for the road trip, candy for the kids at EFY, markers, and rocks (I’ll explain later). We then loaded up and headed for Puebla. We arrived about 5:00pm. We checked into our hotel and had a nice dinner and worked on the class we would be giving 4 times on Tuesday. Tuesday we got up early and layered on clothes. We had been told that it would be really cold at the church owned camp in the mountains. It only took us about an hour to get to “El Rancho Guarda”. It was cold, but not horrible. We could see our breath and there had been a little frost on the car windows that had been there overnight.

Mom trying to stay warm before breakfast.

Early morning, the shadows are long and the sun warm.

Mom and Sarai one of our secretaries who was a counselor.

Mom and Lucero, Laura and Luis' daughter.

We had breakfast with over 800, 14 to 17 year old youth, and about 200 support staff.

Breakfast

Big groups of kids everywhere waiting for the classes to start.

We then had an orientation meeting with all the teachers. One teacher had not showed up and so I said that if they wanted, mom could teach a class and I could teach another class. They said that would be great. As we got our rooms set up and it was time to start the classes, the other teacher showed up. So I moved my stuff down to Chris’ class and we taught together like we had planned all along. We taught 2, 50 minute classes in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. Mom taught on the family and family history, I taught on goals and decisions and ended the lesson by offering a white rock to everyone who would make a commitment to do one of three things: do 4 hours of family history a month for a year or 4 hours of Indexing or attend the temple 2 times a month for a year. The rock was to help them remember their commitment and it represented purity and the temple. This was something I learned from Pres. Crayk in Bolivia. Thanks Lee. We had lunch with everyone between classes and at the end we had a feedback session and then they took pictures of all the teachers. It was a fun day and so enjoyable to be with the youth of the church. The logistics of a weeklong camp with so many kids is amazing. We were very impressed with the organization and the beautiful camp.

Mom teaching.

One of our classes. Each class was about 120 kids.

This is for John and Charlotte who live in Bountiful.

They have about 10 dormitories. They can sleep about 60 kids per building.

But the overflow is sleeping in tents inside a big tent.

The teachers.

This says EFY is the future of the church in Mexico.

We drove back to Puebla and stayed the night there. Wednesday we got up early and drove to Cholula, the oldest city in the Americas. We got lost and had to have a taxi show us how to get there. Cholula is the home of the largest pyramid in the world by volumn.

The church on top of the pyramid.

Mom on top of the pyramid.

The church on top of the pyramid.

Cortés had arrived in Cholula after the Spanish victory of the Tlaxcalans, and he was supposed to meet Moctezuma II here. Since Cholula was allied with the Aztecs, the Spanish and their new Tlaxcalan allies were suspicious of this arrangement. There are two accounts of what happened next. Spanish accounts tell of Cortés being warned through La Malinche, his native translator, of a plot to attack the Spanish. Cortés called the leaders of the city to the central square of the city where the Spanish were with their weapons. On signal, the Spanish charged and killed as many as six thousand Chololtecs. However, the Aztec record states that the Spanish attack was unprovoked and there was no plot against them. The event is called the Cholula Massacre, and it resulted in many deaths and the destruction of much of the city. Cortez was mad at the city and said he would build 365 churches there, one for each day of the year. But alas, only 37 churches were built in the city. We were able to visit the church on top of the ancient pyramid and go through some tunnels in the pyramid.

The largest church we could see from the top of the pyramid.

We could see most of the churches but I only took pictures of a few.

Another church,

A pre Hispanic head.

One of the courts near the pyramid.

One of the tunnels in the pyramid.

The tunnels were not all that big.

More tunnel fun.

Cut away of the different temples that were built on top of each other.

There was a museum that explained a lot about the pyramid.

A woman setting up to sell her wares.

We then drove back to Oaxaca, arriving late afternoon. Thursday we had one bus scheduled and we ended up with 4. 2 arrived with different wedding parties that we did not know were coming and the other unexpected one was from the same stake as the one we had scheduled. It made for an interesting morning. We had 7 people that received their endowment and 4 sealings. I got to do two of them. Mine were related. A father and mother and 3 children and then one of the children was also sealed to his wife and his one son. It is a real treat to seal multiple generations at the same time.

The son and his wife, me and the parents of the young man. These are the two couples I sealed.

Friday we had 4 buses scheduled and we had 5 arrive. This is getting to be the norm. It was a busy day and we did almost 3000 ordinances. I made a pot of cream of cauliflower soup for lunch between sessions for Saturday. Saturday, we had everyone come to our apartment for conference. We projected conference onto a wall and had a great picture. Conference is always a treat.

New seating arraignment for conference.

Conference on the wall.

We had a delicious lunch and then between the afternoon session and the Priesthood session I made cinnamon rolls for a Sunday brunch. Sunday, we had a sunrise service at the temple where we talked about Easter and the temple.

Sunrise service before the sun came up.

After the sun was up.

Sunday Brunch

We then had brunch. We went on daylight savings or standard time, I don’t know which, so conference didn’t start until 11:00am here. We all enjoyed conference and the messages were so inspirational. I can’t wait to start studying them. Be good to each other.