December 1st through December 7th

December 1^st through December 7^th:  Monday, we decided with the Rays and the Penas to go and visit another small town 30 minutes east of Oaxaca, called Santa Ana del Valle.  The Penas drove their car.  The town is close to Teotitlan, where we saw all the wool rugs being made.  This little town looks like it is dying.  The streets were deserted, but we did find someone to let us look through the museum.  It was small, but had a few interesting artifacts.  There was only one women selling rugs in the market.  The church was closed. 

Some of the locals in Santa Ana Del Valle.

The church in Santa Ana del Valle.

The three ladies on the plaza in front of the church.

There are some ruins close to Santa Ana del Valle, but they are not open to the public.   These are from the ruins.

This is a picture from the museum.  The bottom half is of children dressed up to represent the Spanish and the upper half is young men dressed for the feather dance.  In the dance, they tell the story of the conquest. 

One of the feather dancers.

This is a very old loom.

More artifacts from the ruins.

We next went to the market in Tlacolula.  We bought some bread and cheese. 

Yes, we bought bread and ate it while it was still warm.

A flower shop at the market in Tlacolula.  An arraignment would be about 3 dollars.

We then decided to try and go to see the movie, “Interstellar”, but first we went to lunch. 

Lunch with the Rays and Penas.

When we got to the movie theater, we realized that the whole mall was shut down by protesters.  There are a lot of protests going on all over Mexico in response to the disappearance of the 43 students from Guerrero.  They are all peaceful and they are protesting against the corruption in the government.   It is never directed toward America or Americans, so we feel safe, even if we find ourselves near the protesters.  We always try to avoid large groups. One day last week, we went downtown with the Rays and the Zocolo was really crowded.  Sister Ray got her I-phone stolen right out of her purse.  Tuesday, we went to the Ward Council meeting of the Reforma ward.  We taught them about the blessings of temple attendance and then we challenged each member of the council to come to the temple once a week for 3 months. This week in the temple was busy.  We had 5 different groups come on Friday (6 buses) and on Saturday we had 5 buses from one stake in the morning and 3 from another stake in the afternoon.  Mom worked over 12 hours on two different days.  She is getting really good at helping people with Family Search.  She often helps people who want to be sealed to their deceased parents or spouse and so she has to gather information to print the documents.  Her biggest challenge is helping people who cannot read or write to print out ordinance cards for deceased ancestors.  She often has to call the helpline in Salt Lake, but when she sees their joy to have a connection with their family it is very rewarding.   We had more than 10 people on both Friday and Saturday that came to receive their endowment and then many to be sealed.  I had the opportunity to seal a couple and then seal their two boys to them.  It is always a payday to get to do these sealings.  The Spirit is strong and the families are so touched by the power and love of our Father in Heaven.

This is the couple I sealed. 

Later, when I came out, the bride had made her husband change clothes.

Saturday, Mom put the finishing touches on our Christmas decorations.  We bought a nativity scene in the Barro Negro and a little tree from Walmart.  Mom had fun stringing a garland and a string of lights.  With our Noche Buena (poinsettia) we are quite festive. night we played pinochle with the Rays. 

Our Christmas tree.

Notice the reindeer.  Mom bought this in Santa Ana del Valle.  It was made by a man that can't walk and his nephew sells them on the street.

  The nativity that we got in San Bartolo a few weeks ago.

Sunday, we attended church in the Fortin ward.  The bishop had a combined meeting during Priesthood and Relief Society.  He spoke about the need for Mexico to become self sufficient with regards to the money needed to run the church here.  He said that the growth of the church is requiring a lot of money to build chapels in Africa and other places and that it was time that Mexico paid their own way and started helping other nations the way they had been helped.   For many years the Church members in America have been sending surplus of funds to maintain the church here in Mexico, and now it is important for the members here to send funds to church headquarters for distribution to other nations.  We have been without internet in the apartment for weeks now and we are getting really tired of going to the Church or somewhere else to get internet.  Sunday night we walked over to the church next to the temple and asked the guard open it up so we could go inside and use the internet to call our kids and cheek up on how things were going on at home.  Without internet each day, we don’t know what is going on at home nor in the world.  It is kind of depressing. I will have to take my laptop over to the church to upload this blog.