First Day

Full moon, Cat Stevens playing Morning has broken on the radio! Wow! What a perfect match! Jose is meeting us to take our car to park it at his place. What a great friend! Last night dinner out with old friends...good times. Today will be a long bus day. Talk to you later.

So, here we go! Friday we start our trip! Mazatlan, Mexico City, Vera Cruz, Merida, Tabasco and then make our way back home! We are very excited about meeting the friends who have been helping us through emails and phone calls.  We will start the trip by visiting with our friend Mark and his family.  Then we will travel to Mexico City to attend an English convention. The current plan is to travel to Vera Cruz with the congregation that we will be checking out. Riding a bus together will give us time to get to know one another a little.  We will visit with the congregation and check out the territory and living possibilities.  Then we will make our way to Merida for another English convention. After the convention we will ride back with the second congregation to Tabasco and stay with them for a while.  We will eventually make our way back to Tucson by the end of September.  I will miss the congregation here in Clifton and I am sad to leave my beautiful family. The last song we sang yesterday at meeting made me all emotional.  The friends here have not been overly connected to us but I have become very found of them and feel very sad about leaving them. I suppose it will make our next meeting on Tuesday not quite so sad.  Robin is very excited about the trip and is looking forward to moving to Mexico as soon as possible. Once we come back we will prayerfully make a choice between the two congregations and then make plans for an extended visit at the end of the year. So for the next three days it is the craziness that comes before you leave on a trip!

September!

Can you believe that September is almost here! Where did the summer go? The service year is ending. September is the start of our big adventure...we will be heading down to Mexico! Finally! Here is our tentative schedule....take a bus from Tucson to Mazatlan, visit with friends, travel by bus to Mexico City to attend an English convention at the assembly hall across from the Mexico Bethel, then travel by bus with the friends from Vera Cruz to Vera Cruz and become acquainted with one of the congregations on our list.  Next we make our way to Tabasco and travel with the friends from the other congregation to Merida to attend another English convention.  We will return to Tabasco and check out the area, territory and congregation.  We will be looking at places to rent at both locations.  Our trip goal is to become familiar with both congregations in order to chose between them.  I am pretty sure that it will be a hard choice to make.  I am hoping that it will be obvious which one may be best suited to us....praying that that is the case otherwise I will agonize over the decision! I am excited and a little anxious on how this will all turn out. I am deciding what to pack for a long trip. I have been trying to earn extra income to help cover the trip expenses by selling on Ebay.  It does take time to list, photograph and the send off each item but it all helps!
On a side note, we have been out of town recently to visit Rob's older brother who found out that he had lung and bone cancer about 5 weeks ago. He died yesterday at the age of 68. Sad.  Rob's other brother has been fighting colon cancer. One of my brothers is battling lymphoma.  We really do long to be in a world where no one will get sick and die.