April 10, 2010

Hello Family,
Just a Mom said in her blog, this is a late one, but we didn't want to get mixed up and forget any weeks.
We left at 1:00 pm Monday, March 28 for Monterrey. The trip was interesting. We decided to stop in San Antonio for the night. It was an "interesting" place to stop. The breakfast buffet consisted of bagels on a very strict diet and water (which was supposed to be orange juice or apple juice. You could choose which ever you wanted, since the only thing that came out was warm water.
We drove to a little town outside San Antonio Tuesday. By the time we made it there, we were ready for sleep.
Our next stop was Laredo, Mexico. Acutally, I mean texas. It was like going to Mexico. We didn't see too many anglos on the streets. It was a great time. We had prayed that there would be no problem crossing the border. Our problem was in Laredo. It was hard to get our dollars changed into pesos. The banker actually cheated us out of $1,000 pesos, but we didn't realize it until we had crossed the border.
We had pesos hidden everywhere. We found places robbers would never think of, like in my shoe, the sunglass holder, Mom's..., some in our wallet and purse. Oh but we were sneaky.
Crossing and getting the car taken care of was easy. We did it in an hour and were on our way by 2:00 pm.
Most of the drive was not exciting. With about 50 miles to go, we started climbing into some pretty tall moountains. From then on we climbed until we actually arrived in Monterrey. It is a beautiful city surrounded by tall, unique mountains.
Our map to the mission office lacked quite a bit. We spent at least 2 hours finding our new home. With the help of a couple of very friendly people and 2 police officers who gave us a motorcycle escort to an area close to our new residence, we finally made it.
There was a sign on our gate from a senior couple who live just down the street inviting us to supper. Our landlady, Gloria, was very accomodating. Sister Spencer, the senior who had left the note for us visited with us and helped take the luggage in. We met her husband for supper and learned he is the doctor for 11 northern Mexican missions.
We stayed up until midnight unpacking, but finally finsihed. We spent the next day driving around with Sister Spencer trying to find some important places like HEB(a supermarket chain). The next day we visited the mission office and were told we had a dinner date with the President and his wife that night at 7:00. We spent that day shopping at Costco and Walmart.
I haven't spent so mich time shopping in my life. However, we were filling a house whose cupboards were bare.
Saturday we spent the day going back and forth to conference at stake center. The Temple is on the same lot. It is beautiful.
I was proud of Linda. She listened to all sessions in Spanish.
I know I have dragged on, but we are here, safe, loving the work, and promise not to write as much next time.