We ran away from home again...

We have been called to serve as missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to labour in the Mexico Mexico City East Mission, primarily as Self Reliance Services missionaries. In our ongoing discussions with church officials over the past few months, the list of other possible duties we may be assigned include delivering humanitarian aid and being the housing coordinators for the 150+  missionaries currently serving in the mission. The reverse image I saw on my phone when I took this selfie of us in the Lethbridge airport (YQL) sums up our willingness to serve wherever we can help - joy, brilliantly glowing joy!  

Leaving home today was a déjà vu experience of sorts. Wendy and I packed up and moved our family to Mexico in December 1994 for me to study at the University of the Americas in Puebla. Leaving seemed logistically simpler then than now even though we had three very active small boys (ages 3 and half, 2 and 8 months), The World-Wide Web (the "www" that URLs now start with) was still in its infancy, there was no electronic banking system connections with Canada (we took a cashier's check with us with funds for the year) and with long distance charges over $3 a minute, in effect, there was no phone either though we had one in our apartment the first year we were there. I finished my contract with the County of Forty Mile as their soils technician and conservation officer, we sold our home and vehicles, picked out 9 suitcases of clothing to take with us, garage-saled and gave away most of what remained of our possessions except for what we expected to need when we returned. We put the latter into a shed we purchased and parked in my parents’ backyard in Bow Island.  We returned in May1998, with four sons - the youngest "hecho en Mexico" and an Honours degree in International Relations.

Leaving home today was emotionally much more difficult in 1994 than it was today. Wendy burst into tears on the way to the airport when Levi (our third son who is living in our home while we are gone) asked her if she was taking the water bottle in the car console with her - it was the perfect size and went everywhere with her but there wasn't room in our luggage to take it.  She quickly got herself together, asked him to wash it and instructed him as to where to store it - tenderly saying goodbye to it akin to a satin blanket. When she read my account she said she was just having fun with us. I’m still not sure. She took her bigger more practical Costco water container with her instead.

Wendy shed many tears before we left in 1994, more while we were there and even more when it came time to return to Mexico after having come back to Bow Island in 1996 for our youngest son Matthew's birth. Before we left in 1994, my father-in-law challenged me to rationally explain why we would leave Canada and take our children to a "country of thieves". My parents didn't verbalize anything, but they too had justifiable concerns that in hindsight I better understand now. The only thing any of us would have known about Mexico in those days was what we saw in Hollywood movies. However, mine was lived experience as I had spent quite a bit of time avoiding Southern Alberta winters and feeding my dad’s cows by backpacking around Mexico for 1-3 months at a time almost annually during the previous decade. 

Since our call to serve, I have been reading La Reforma, one of the major Mexico-City-based national daily newspapers and also following the Government of Mexico's tweets (tuit in Spanish). - now "X".  The following post from July 5 is still stuck in my mind.  The headline reads, "HOMICIDES ARE GOING DOWN" - and to bolster the government's point of view and comfort everyone, on the right just under the date it says, "HALF OF THE STATES DID NOT HAVE A SINGLE HOMICIDE. And at the bottom, "THE POLICY OF ADDRESSING THE CAUSES IS PRODUCING RESULTS”  The policy referred to is, "Abrazos no balasos (hugs not bullets). There are 32 Mexican states. (31+the capital). The state of Guanajuato is said to have accounted for 14 homicides and Mexico City reported only seven that day. Our kids are all grown up.  Wendy's parents and my mom have passed away and my dad is 89 and more focused on perfecting his cribbage game than what is happening in Mexico. I am not sure what our parents would have say about our moving back to Mexico if they followed social media reports.

 

Our mission president has assured us that the danger to missionaries like us remains low. The individual blessings we received when we were set apart yesterday as missionaries by our Stake President reconfirmed there was no need for concern. Family and friends are welcome and encouraged to visit us, we understand church accommodations may even be available during their stay- of course you may not have the prayers of all 17 million members of our church praying for your wellbeing. Best to check with us before you make any plans.   

This time around weekly video calls will help keep us connected with our kids and their families.  Three of my siblings, their spouses and a couple of our uncles weekly play a family favourite card game called "schmear" online with my dad – and he's hard to beat. We will give up our Quebec phone numbers for Mexican numbers but once we have them, we can call or text home as often as we want for only $15 a month with 3G’s of data to boot. Wendy can even still shop at a Costco just north of where we will be living in Mexico City

Where things were trickier this time is that we are keeping our house and car instead of selling them and I needed to find workarounds for two-step verification for online transactions that will work outside Canada – only Canadian and US cell numbers are accepted to receive verification codes and not many service providers accept authenticator apps. Revenue Canada allowed us to generate and print a list of log-in codes to take with us.  Google and banks accept my thumb print on my iPhone as verification if I use their apps but last week I discovered I only have three tries and then its disabled – I was washing vegetables which apparently temporarily changed my thumb print – to turn it on again I had to enter the code sent to my cell phone (email was not an option) or make a call to Toronto. We may need angelic intervention if our phones are ever stolen – our two eldest sons served missions in Argentina and I understand being relieved of their phones at gun and knife point was a common occurrence-no, they didn’t tell us until they got home. They said they could usually buy their phone back at one of the corner stores (kioscos) if someone else didn’t beat them to it. I am not sure us grey haired people would have the same experience-either being robbed or getting our phones back without said intervention.

Credit and bank cards and a driver’s license expiring while we are gone would also be a problem – while my bank’s sales people confidently assured me that a replacement debit and credit card can be sent anywhere in the world – what they couldn’t convince me of is that we would actually receive it. We lived in Mexico for three and half years and during that time I only saw a postman once. It was no surprise that anything anyone sent to us never arrived. We spent January and February in Merida last year. I ordered something from Amazon and it took several calls and delivery attempts to guide them to our address (apartment two in the locked compound behind the car wash – just leave it with the muchachos washing the cars). My bank wouldn’t issue me new cards with expiry dates that coincided with our being back in Canada in 2025 so changing banks was their only solution. It took several months to complete as many things were linked directly to my bank account. I can’t say enough about the great experience I had with my new bank.

My experience travelling internationally is that credit card “A” doesn’t always work, so having several options is a must. For example, I arrived in Kingston, Jamaica one evening only to find the ATM in the airport wouldn’t accept either of my two credit or my bank card, the money changers wouldn’t accept travellers checks of any kind or even US cash. Much to my surprise and thankfully, they accepted Canadian cash. 

It took me over a month to get a second credit card “B”. I started the process online initiating a vicious “call Toronto” and wait on-line circle. On the advice of the local branch in Lethbridge I eventually aborted that channel and started the process over from scratch F2F which took another few weeks to complete – I had to resubmit my three most recent tax returns as part of the application. 

Our house: We downsized when we moved from Gatineau, Quebec, to Lethbridge Alberta. Our home is sufficient for the two of us but doesn’t have a lot of storage space and no garage. We are grateful that Levi will be living there while we are gone – our plan B was to sell it. Instead of a shed, in preparation for our move I built dry storage under our deck but most things just stayed in the house. A family interested in trying gardening out will be harvesting what’s left this season (about 30 different things) and planting what they want in the spring – plan B was to have Levi either keep it in fallow or mow it until we get back. I had my last feed of strawberries last night. In Mexico we would have to soak them in bleach water and then rinse them before we eat them. FYI, that is a serving bowl – not a cereal bowl.

We arrived at the Missionary Training Centre in Provo, Utah at about 4:30PM today, received our missionary identification tags and settled into our accommodations. We later had a meal with about 2600 young missionaries who are here for the same reasons we are– it was a very positive, friendly and energizing experience – we also met two missionaries we know, a young man from our congregation Elder Drew Hall and Sister Olivia Earl from the Lethbridge YSA stake, both from Lethbridge. Our formal training starts tomorrow – we are looking forward to more brilliantly glowing joy!