Mexico Mission 2023

A fellow named Jesús was baptised and confirmed a member of our church on Saturday afternoon in Palmas Ward, one of the two wards (congregations) we are associated with here. It was a bitter sweet experience for him, sweet with the respect to the happiness he has found within himself in striving to become like Jesus Christ and to prepare himself to claim the blessings of and eternal family. He is a soldier in Mexico's army and described himself as hardened and hard-hearted prior to learning about the Doctrine of Christ and prior to his baptism. Without the rule of law, the army is not a place where kindness and love are nurtured and flourish. His wife and their two daughters joined the church prior to him. Bitter, in that he expects his father to disown him and his family for taking this step of faith.  I shared my experience with him of joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints over 35 years ago. I was almost 28 years old when I shared my decision with my parents and...

Kind of a dark week this time. On our way back from grocery shopping in a cab on Saturday I snapped the photo below after asking the driver if he thought it would be o.k. My interest was the truck load of soldiers with assault rifles with one of them scrolling on his phone, the others had their fingers on the triggers of their guns. We live close to a Mexican army base so soldiers are a common sight but similarly armed security guards, also usually with their fingers on the triggers of their weapons are a common sight. "12 dead after armed attack in Guanajuato", was one of the headlines in the news Sunday morning. The article references another attack in the same city the night before that left 4 dead. The news says there is a mass murder (3 or more people) in Mexico every 19 hours. Rarely is anyone charged for these crimes, let alone aprehended. Unfortunately, the rule of law here is not a given. Yes, it's pretty here but if you look just a bit closer, the terror is pret...

On Monday the mission office Elders accompanied us to the Mexican Migration Institute to get an appointment to apply for temporary resident status to allow us to stay for another 11 months. At that point we had only five days left on our visa before we were at risk of being deported. After an hour and a half of waiting in line we got an appointment for the next day at 9:30am. The office elders also gave us an overview of the process to expect including what could possibly go wrong and how to handle it.  Things went more or less the way the office Elder described except that we didn't have any of the problems they said might arise. We met a woman from the US who had been there five times and like us, she only had a few days left to complete the process or be deported. Each time she returned there was something new wrong with her paperwork. She was in tears as she waited at the counter while they reviewed her application for the sixth time. Thankfully she made it through this time an...

This week we participated in protocolario events that marked the completion of two more humanitarian aid projects here in Mexico. APAC is a non-profit organization in Mexico City that works with a network of medical and health professionals to assess, diagnose and help children with cerebral palsy. They offer officially recognized school classes allowing the beneficiaries to complete elementary and high school as well as qualify for and complete degree programs virtually with partner universities. The health officials offer their time and expertise on a volunteer basis. Our donation was an exoskeleton made for children. We helped purchase a third Atlas 2030, the first of its kind for children as previously they only existed for adults. The exoskeleton is a robotic therapeutic device that with the assistance of a therapist, allows a child to stand upright and to move their growing body which helps to rehabilitate muscles and muscle endurance for better mobility and to also improve their...

A sad highlight last week was the discussion we had at a protocolario event with the United Nations' refugee agency's (UNHCR) Mexico office to mark our church's contributions to their programming to assist refugees and internally displaced persons in Mexico. Media focus is often on the immigration pressure on the southern US border without delving into the magnitude of the challenges in Mexico. Mexico is among the top five countries worldwide in terms of asylum-seekers with people from110 nationalities requesting international protection this year. Mexico isn't only a country of origin and transit for refugees and asylum-seekers en route to the US, is has also become to a refugee destination. As context, Canada has had 26,585 refugee applications this year (January to September) while Mexico has had 127,796 (January to October). The US has indicated it will accept up to 125,000 refugees annually for resettlement but those rejected entry into the US add to the homelessn...

It has been a relatively quiet week. A highlight was our being given a number of tasks to work on. Sister Schlachter is tracking down information from vendors that is needed to close the remaining 2023 projects.  She is doing a great job and all in Spanish. I put together a simple Excel template for a directory of vendors and a presentation to help guide implementing organizations to submit projects proposals aligned with our objectives and priorities - both are for team discussion this coming week. Our 2024 humanitarian aid project budget is about 60% larger than it was for 2023 and we understand that we may be joined by two additional missionary couples early this coming year to help us confirm and implement projects.  We worked from home this week as office space for us isn't ready yet. Our internet connection is reminiscent of dial-up, painfully slow or non-existent which added to our challenge this week. On Friday a tech fellow worked most of the day to install a high-spe...

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 groceri...