Week 10 now waiting for flights to CDMX
It has been another full week! Our 9AM "interview" at the Mexican consulate on October 31 didn't get off to the start we expected. After greeting us and inviting us into her office, the Mexican official asked if we had brought the "missing paperwork" for ourselves and the other couples that had interviews that morning. I had brought copies of the documents we sent in but she was looking for "anuencias" (approval from the Mexican Immigration Authority) and an additional check to cover the visa fees for one of us. Thankfully, she wasn't fussed and made a call to the church visa office ... and left a voice message because they didn't pick up the phone. Eeek! I sometimes don't get to my voice mail for a day or two. While she waited for a response, she had us check the accuracy of the information she had for us and then took our photos and electronic fingerprints and sent us back into the waiting room.
I was envisioning at least another week's wait while this got sorted out but Julie, the gal in the church visa office returned the call and then appeared in about 30 minutes with the missing documents and the missing US $51 check. By this time the other two missionary couples also waiting for visas had arrived and had been in and out of the same official's office. Julie explained that the "anuencias" were expected to arrive from Mexico on the Thursday prior but they didn't come. She had worked from home the following day and simply forgot that these documents still needed to be brought to the consulate. Visas finally in hand and unlike how the photos appear on them, we are so very happy - our next step is travel.
We waited for our visas for just under three hours in a spacious waiting room in which a Day of the Dead offering was set up. I recognized all of the elements of the offering from when we lived in Cholula, Mexico. You, too, may recognize them from the 2017 Pixar film, "Coco" - great movie! They are the things their loved ones (the people in the photos of the display) liked to eat when they were alive. I remember seeing long trails of marigold petals on the sidewalks in Cholula intended to lead the dead to the offering displays. When I got up close I was surprised that some of the offerings in the display in the waiting room (the mole, marigolds, sugar cane, cobs of corn and fruit) were made of plastic. Very practical. As the link above indicates, celebration of the Day of the Dead predates colonization of Mexico and not only remembers but honours, invites, and welcomes the believers' kindred dead back into their homes and lives. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints we too seek to remember, honour, welcome and invite our kindred dead into our lives as members of our families which we too believe can last beyond the grave and are eternal.
I have been writing about a fellow named Nathan. On our way to the Library on Wednesday, the security people had him handcuffed sitting on a bench near the bus stop (a citizen's arrest - the security fellow in the Library said he took a swing at one of the burly fellows). The police showed up a while later. Others in our group that saw him that morning said he was yelling, "All of you should die!" True to form, he was back on the same corner the next day. I was able to chat with him briefly on Thursday afternoon - he had crossed the street to stand on the corner opposite of where he had been the day before. We learned from some of the sister missionaries that the building he was now standing in front of was the Relief Society Building and the mission home for the Salt Lake Temple Square Mission. Understandably, he again had two "suited" burley friends with him.
Like before, the moment I said, "Nathan", he quit yelling. I explained that we received our visas and would be leaving soon and that I wanted to say goodbye before we left. We exchanged contact information. He told me that he had contact information from a number of people tucked into his Bible and could add mine to his collection. He said to himself that he should maybe talk to some of them - it warmed my heart to know others had reached out to him too. As we parted and I was crossing the street, he started yelling again as if the switch of who he was had been reset to the default again (the Apostle Paul).
We came across Nathan again on Sunday afternoon on our way back from Church. He said he went to church services in another one of our congregations downtown. I told him that I had sent him an email to ensure I had the right address for him. In our conversation, he told us he didn't have access to the libraries anymore to check it. Explaining, he said he was talking with some children in the library about the evils of idolatry when a librarian approached to stop him because it was NOT appropriate to speak to children about religion in the library. He confided to us that in hindsight he wasn't 'behaving' but then thought a bit and rephrased what happened as being "like an act of God" - he said he threw the book he was reading at her - Homer's "The Iliad" and "it went over her head", meaning the book he threw at her, but the unintended pun which Sister Schlachter pointed out made all of us chuckle and I saw him genuinely smile for the first time.
I was elated to see Nathan smile and told him so. He seemed bashfully pleased but looked at the ground and said that he's not very good at "that". His response triggered a painful memory of myself as a teenager, standing in front of the bathroom mirror on the farm practicing and perfecting smiling (perfecting in at least in my own mind's eye) in an effort to hide my emotional pain and numbness - I had observed that my peers were uncomfortable being around anyone that appeared to be sad - being alone was something I worked hard to avoid, in hindsight and regrettably, at all costs. There is a children's song that includes the line, "no-one likes a frow-ny face, change it for a smile - make the world a bet-ter place by smi-ling all the while". It's good counsel but I needed some help.
That self-learned smile is still my unconscious/reflex/go to but now its sincere. I have been richly blessed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ to know that as a child of God it's okay to be sad. I have also been privileged with the means to seek out and receive the help I needed to understand, accept and begin to work my way through the little box of horrors where I had been keeping my emotions. Like the catalogue items at the Church History Library where we are serving, they were being carefully and intentionally preserved at -20C and locked down until I was ready to check them out to learn from them. So far, with help of a therapist and a dear friend, I have looked at and am working on accepting sadness, regret, anger and shame as ok. Where I want to be is to be able to experience more joy. Like Nathan, I am not good at that ... at least not yet.
This past week was one of the last times I expect to train at Combat Arts in Salt Lake City. I sat out on the last roll to take a video clip to give you a glimpse into our Gi BJJ class on Thursday. I hope I can find somewhere to train in Mexico City without a long and/or dangerous commute or class. The first gym I trained at in Lethbridge for the first two years is categorized by some as a fight gym - a common thread of many of its clients is preparation to step into an MMA cage and win, and there were times when I felt like I was the focus of that calculus. Upon finding out that I was Canadian, the owner of the gym I have been going to here observed that all the Canadians he has ever met are just so nice. He then quipped that part of his job was to teach me how to be nasty. Much to my surprise, during the last couple of weeks after class while walking the mile or so back to our apartment in the dark through some not-so-nice areas, behind my smile, I am feeling confident about drawing from my little box of horrors and training to be nasty if and when required.
On Friday our zone went to the Orem Utah Temple open house. The general public is invited to see the inside of the temple before it is dedicated for its sacred purpose. Temples provide the ordinances necessary for all God's children help them return to dwell with Him and to be sealed together there as families for eternity.
To keep the floors clean during the open house, youth volunteers cheerfully helped guests, including us, don and doff "booties" over their footwear. The photo is of our zone at the Orem Utah Temple open house.
Sister Schlachter and I have been double checking the reference information for the Mexico self-reliance programming implementation timeline we were assigned and have completed. As I have said in previous posts our task has strengthened my testimony that the Prophets and the Church are guided by revelation. We are happy to be able to contribute.
On Friday night we went with Alex and Liz (and approximately 15,000 others) to Luz de las Naciones at the Conference Center. It's an annual event produced by the Church that celebrates Latin American culture. The importance of the event was marked by President Dallin H. Oaks who gave part of his opening remarks in Spanish - impressive because the Spanish portion was more than "Hola" or "Bienvenidos" as would often have been the case in a "bilingual" Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada event at any level. With a prominent focus in the news here being the politics of securing the southern US border to control immigration, something I really enjoyed about the evening was celebrating the significance and magnitude of the contribution of Latin American church members to inviting all to come unto Christ and to their contributions to this country's prosperity and well-being. When the mariachis and the Jalisco dancers came on stage, the crowd went absolutely wild! As a spectacle, the different accents, music, movement and colours were at times overwhelming. I took the photo below during the standing ovation the performers received.
On Saturday's preparation day, we went for a 5.5 km power walk for Sister Schlachter to send a filled-up personal journal home to Lethbridge. We took public transit back to our apartment and en route stopped at Rancho Market - the Latin supermarket. Sister Schlachter is standing in front a pile of jicama. Nowhere in Canada have I ever seen a pile of jicama - if you can find them at all, there will be only a few sad stringy ones and never a pile. We bought just enough food to make it until Monday, pending our receiving more information about our flights to Mexico.
Rancho market has a bakery - I am a fan. Not sure what the top pastry is called but the outside is puff pastry filled with vanilla cake - delicious! The other one was also pretty good, braided bread with walnuts and coconut filling - also delicious! I am hoping there is a panadería close to where we live in Mexico City so that I can indulge regularly. Sister Schlachter is still avoiding eating anything with refined white sugar so I will be enjoying these on my own.
We were looking for a whole roasted chicken to take home but they didn't have one so we settled for something frozen, labelled in Spanish and English as boneless, skinless chicken breast that I thought looked more like fish and when we got it home it was - tilapia. There were two other packages marked the same way in the store which added to my confusion.
On Monday the Elijah choir sang two pieces during our evening devotional. Elder and Sister Hugo Martinez were our speakers - Sister Martinez spoke about enduring in our faith in Jesus Christ throughout our lives, citing a line from a talk by Elder Wirthlin, "Come what may and love it" - a guide to finding joy even during adversity. Elder Martinez quipped that he was preaching to the choir as we were seated directly in front of him. He shared his experience of going to church the first time at the invitation of missionaries and how that experience changed their lives forever. He also shared some of President Nelson's counsel including the fact that finding joy has everything to do with the focus of our lives being accessing the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I am grateful that we had one more practice just before the devotional because I was not sure about a few lines in one of the pieces and where I stand, I usually cannot hear any of the others that sing bass. My hearing loss in my left ear doesn't help. I try to point my good ear towards the piano.
Another key part of singing is breathing. In mid-February of this year Sister Schlachter and I both contracted Covid. In addition to a dry cough that seemed to last forever, according to my Fitbit, after the breathing spikes in the screen shot below, a long lasting effect was that I needed at least one breath more per minute to fuel this body of mine (15 instead of 14 breaths per minute). For the first time since then, this week I was consistently back to 14 breaths per minute. My Dad contracted Covid this past week - I hope there are no complications.
We are very much looking forward to travelling to Mexico.
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