Week #11 Welcome to Mexico

We received our flight information on Wednesday November 8 and advised that the administrative assignment for our mission had been changed to the Mexico Mexico City West Mission instead of the Mexico Mexico City East Mission. This was why getting our flights took longer than expected. We are working out of the church's area offices on the north west side of Mexico City in a very nice, relatively quiet Jewish neighbourhood called Lomas de Tecamachalco instead of from a "home"-based office in a rough and tumble barrio north of the Mexico City airport. 

Alex and Liz graciously hosted us for dinner the night before our departure from Salt Lake City and Alex drove us to the airport on Friday morning for flight to Mexico City. 

The area office missionaries and staff made us feel very welcome from even before our departure.  Our flight and once we got out of customs was like coming home to a home we hadn't yet been to - they took us out for dinner, provided us with groceries and there were even fresh cut flowers on the table (photo above) in our suite. 

We and some of the other senior missionary couples are living in rented suites in traveller-worn but still very comfortable 3.5 star hotel called Teca Once. We have a couple of hotplate burners, an oven, a microwave oven, hot and cold water with lots of pressure, a full-size fridge and a quality queen-size mattress to sleep. We even have air conditioning and the hotel staff clean our suite and change the towels and bedding once a week. There is also a laundry room and a small gym. We are very grateful for these tender mercies as we didn't expect so many comforts for what we pay monthly for our accommodations.  We were prepared for something much more rudimentary.

On Saturday one of these same kind senior couples walked us to Costco, Chedraui (a department store) and later to a tianguis (an informal market) that allowed us to purchase and carry back the household essentials and a variety of fresh fruit and vegetables. We even stopped at at panadería (bread and pastry shop) on our way back.  

The vegetables and fruit are wonderful but precautions need to be taken - when we get home everything is washed then soaked in bleach water and then rinsed with purified water - a time consuming process. We walked over a broad smelly open sewer on our way to and from the stores we went to yesterday and church this morning - not only does it smell but the diseases it carries find their way into everything. We were at the tianguis just before it closed and I got talked into purchasing some nopales - cactus leaves.  I thought we were getting just one bunch for 20 pesos but we got all four of them - our cacti runneth over.  After the wash and disinfection, I checked that all the spines were gone and then slivered and boiled them. They are pretty slimy raw but are a lot like green beans when cooked just tangier. We also bought some zapote negros.  Sister Rueda in Zavaleta, Puebla introduced us to these - they are not very appetizing to look at but they are very tasty. I asked for ripe ones. You simply scrape out the mushy black ooze, add some orange or lime juice and a bit of honey, chill and serve. 

On Sunday evening the same couple that took us to the tianguis invited us and another missionary couple that were waiting for visas with us in Salt Lake City for dinner. We took the prepared black ooze to our dinner for the others to try out. Not surprisingly it was a hit.  Another sister dropped off a banana walnut loaf for us tonight, it is a shame that Sister Schlachter is still not eating anything with refined white sugar in it - I guess I will have to eat it alone... 

I really enjoyed our church services on Sunday morning. We went to both the Spanish and 
English wards. The Bishop of the Spanish ward was one of the speakers. He spoke about the value of a soul being its agency or the ability to choose to act or to be acted upon and how this God-given gift allows us to make and prioritize what we want in life and the actions we need to take to attain what we desire. He also pointed out that the choices we make determine the pace of our journey towards our goals and how having set and acted upon them is what allows our Heavenly Father to pour out his blessings upon us.

On Thursday morning I was able to say goodbye to Nathan before we left Salt Lake City. I wish it would have been a more positive experience for both of us. I offered a listing of public agencies that could help him in an attempt to get him to see that he needed to do something different than live in a tent and yell at people on that corner if he expected a different result - he told me he just wanted his life back but didn't need anyone's help and then he walked away.  We went to the Bountiful Temple that evening and on the bus ride back to Alex and Liz's place, we met the missionaries assigned to where were living. They committed to continue to reach out to Nathan when we left. I am learning that agency requires a lot of love. 

The blessings we receive may come in the form of miracles like Nathan's smile last week but they may also come as opposition. After all we can do, I have learned that I will receive what I need which isn't always what I thought I wanted for myself or for anyone else in my circle of influence.

I grew up on a farm, and then graduated from Olds College, an agricultural college. With my dad as my co-signer, I borrowed money to purchase two-and-a-half sections of dryland east of a place called Conquerville where I went to school for grades one to three. My parents and my brothers went to the same school. My dad rented me another half quarter and I also rented a quarter of irrigated land. 

Things went well economically for me for about the first 10 years of the 20-year mortgages and I was able to travel to Mexico and other points south for one to three months at a time every year to avoid the cold winter weather. While I was there, I saw and engaged with poverty for the first time in my life which sparked something new within me to try to make a difference, personalizing the statement attributed to Emma Lazarus and to Martin Luther King, "until we are all free none of us is free".  Spark kindled, my plan was to payoff my mortgage and then seek a role in international development. About the same time I discovered and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and met and married my eternal companion, Wendy Larson. 

My farm loans were based on a conservative expectation of $5/bushel wheat and I had ignored my dad's counsel to also purchase cattle as a complementary income stream as he said when grain prices dropped, cattle prices generally rose. In the late 1980's prices of grain dropped in response to subsidized US and EU overproduction with no clear indication of a farm policy change or recovery in the medium term. My last year of farming produced a 40+ bushel/acre bumper crop but at $1.69 a bushel it barely paid for my crop inputs and the loan payments (with 6% and 9% interest rates) - I worked off the farm to make ends meet for us to live. No matter how I crunched the numbers, my operation was no longer commercially viable and with the prospectus as it was, no-one wanted to buy my land either at any price. We "sold" it back to our creditors for $2.00.  

It was a dark and unthinkable exit from not only a business but life as I knew it - I felt like I knew every inch of that ground as if it were an extension of my own hands and it had been abruptly and permanently cut off - a scripture in Alma 36:30 stirred up sober reflection for many years, "But behold, my son, this is not all; for ye ought to know as I do know, that inasmuch as ye shall keep the commandments of God ye shall prosper in the land...".  

1992 was our last official year of farming. We moved to Mexico in 1994 with our three small sons to allow me to get a university degree, learn a language relevant to international development and to demonstrate to would-be employers that our family could live in a developing country - what we understood were the prerequisites for employment as a field officer. When I finished my degree we found that the starting wage in Mexico was considerably less than we were living on while I was a student. Sister Schlachter's assessment was that if we were going to be poor, it would be better to be poor in Canada and I agreed. We came back with four sons in 1998 only to find that my foreign degree wasn't recognized in the labour market, only among academics. To fix that problem I completed a masters' program in Ottawa in International Affairs with a focus on International Development and then subsequently worked at the Canadian International Development Agency on successive contracts for about a year. The work they did was not the hands-on approach I had hoped it would be and as each contract came to an end, I then had to remake myself in the hope of getting another one. This resulted in considerable economic uncertainty for our growing family with a single income. I took a full-time job with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada serving the export interests of Canadian farmers where I stayed for 15 years working all over the world. In the process I gained a whole lot of policy, project management and bilateral relations expertise and experience that I used as a consultant lobbyist up until the end of June of this year. Now with more that 30 years of reflection and having gone through the race of life and raising our four sons, I can see that we have indeed prospered in the land, just not in the way I expected. What's more, we are now serving in international development as self-reliance and humanitarian aid missionaries. We didn't apply for this role, we simply indicated our availability to serve and it was given to us as yet another tender mercy. Let God prevail and think celestial are President Nelson's counsels. We are both more prepared now than ever to serve in this capacity and I am grateful. 

Today we went with another senior missionary couple assigned with delivery of humanitarian aid to participate in a "protocolo" event marking the signature of an partnership agreement in which our church is donating approximately 280 computers to a municipal government program that provides computer training at no cost to the poor among. The computers are going to five public libraries and 13 public schools. We had the privilege of meeting with some of the recipients.  4-8 students came to the event with one of their teachers.  Public education resources in Mexico are scarce. Schools here often have a morning shift and an evening shift to make best use of the school building. The students in each school and each shift have different uniforms - seeing a theatre packed with them sitting in their school groupings had an air of the good in Harry Potter novels. The photo below is of a group of women and girls learning common administrative software packages in one of the beneficiary public libraries to qualify themselves for positions to help their families economically. Separate classes are held for men and young men. The project collaborates with other organizations that provide the training, project administration and computer maintenance. The empty stations seen in the photo will be filled with the new computers being donated. The donation is expected to impact over half a million people.  

We are very much looking forward to learning our specific responsibilities and magnifying our callings like the senior missionaries that we have met. 

On a sad note today the church announced the death of one of the twelve apostles, M. Russell Ballard. He was 95 years of age. I had the privilege of being interviewed by him on two occasions in my life, one in which he gave me specific counsel and instructions that are still blessing one of our sons and our family.