September 1st through September 7th

September 1^st through September 7^th:  Monday, I got up early and made some bacon and black bean soup.  At 9:00am one of the secretaries, Laura Perez, and her friend, Abdulia, came over and I taught them how to make Helen’s cinnamon rolls.  Helen your rolls are famous here in Oaxaca. 

Before baking, me and Laura Perez.

After baking.  She wanted to learn how to make these for her missionary son who will be home in Jan.

We then went grocery shopping to Walmart.  I think you all know our work week now and I don’t want to tell the same thing over and over each week, so I will just tell you the exceptions or the things that were different from last week’s post.  We got a notice from the guard house at the temple that we had a package at the post office and we needed to go pick it up.  So after we finished at the temple on Wednesday, the President let us take the car downtown to the post office.  We were told that the package was at a different post office by the intersection of Cinco Senores.  The postal worker tried to explain how to go to the other post office, but we couldn’t understand the directions because we didn’t know the landmarks she was using.  So I called Leon and she tried to explain to him where it was so he could then explain it to me.  Finally, the woman at the post office asked if we had a car and I said, “yes”. She said that if we would wait 5 minutes, she would be off work and she lived near the other post office and she would show us where it was.  It is a good thing she came with us because we would never have found it. We let her out about a block from where she said it was.  We parked the car and asked some young men on the street where the post office was.  They said there was no post office anywhere near.  We saw a police station and asked an officer and he showed us where it was.  It wasn’t 100 meters from where the group of men on the street had been sitting.  We got our package and went home to see what awaited us inside the box.  It was from an old friend who used to work for me and who now lives in Florida with his family, Garrick Infanger.  He had sent us a care package.  It is too hard to list everything but the picture will give you the idea.  Thank you, Garrick, you made not only our day, but we will be enjoying your treats for months to come. 

Mon surveying the treasures from Garrick.

I made a new Chinese dish this week, Mongolian beef.  It did not turn out as good as I had hoped, but with a few changes I think I will have another keeper.   (The internet said I could substitute maple syrup for molasses.  I’m not sure it gave it the right flavor.)  Sunday we attended a ward we had never been to before and we got 2 speaking assignments for the next two weeks with the ward we visited and the other ward that was just getting out as we arrived.  After church, the president and I went over to the temple to prepare for a meeting with the high councilors from the 4 stakes here in Oaxaca who are over the temple and family history work.  Then we had the meeting.  I got home about 7:00pm and got to talk to a couple of our kids and of course their kidlets.  The week went really fast and I spent a good part of the week making email lists of all the bishops in the 44 stakes that are assigned to this temple.  Next week we will start sending out emails to all of them letting them know that they can schedule trips in addition to their already scheduled stake temple days.  We hope to increase the number of buses that come each Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  It is much more fun to have too many buses than not enough, it always works out.