So, the Swine Flu scare continued. All schools were ordered closed by the government. All public gathering places were closed--museums, libraries, tourist stops, government offices, most other office buildings and businesses. Cathedrals were closed. They even closed the bars and pool halls there, and those guys are all sterilized by alcohol! Our friends in Mexico City said that it was a ghost town. It was not taken so seriously in Veracruz, but still the Church, Mexico-wide, respected the law of the land. This is the oldest chapel in the State of Veracruz. It sits across the street from the mission offices. The sign says, "In attention to the bulletin emitted by the Presidency of the Republic the chapel remains closed until May 6th and there will not be any type of activity." So, no one went to church in all of Mexico on May 6th.

This handsome couple stopped by the office. That would be the couple on the left. Pres. Don Hunter was mission president in 1993-1996. He and his wife lived in the same mission home we do. They had one live-in maid and another who came in daily as well. No thanks! The first words out of his mouth were, "Are you still the number one baptizing mission in the world?" I answered that we are far from it. He responded, "Good." Apparently before he began his term of service, there was a lot of goofy stuff going on which he stopped. Our focus is to baptize what we call "true converts." He had 105 missionaries, 36 of them sisters. The sisters all served in Veracruz. He averaged 25 Americans. The mission has surely changed. We have 192 missionaries, 20 sisters serving all over the mission, 66 non-Latin Americans, and a housekeeper who comes in 20 hours a week when we are not here. Perfect.

So, we decided to have a little fun with it. Not much hair here. My grooming cost 50 pesos. Whose looks better???

We have 5 Peruvians in the mission. Four of them were together in a meeting for the first time during their entire mission, so we snapped this moment in Aztec history. They are Elders Huaman, Reyes, Chacacanta, and Bada. Elder Reyes got his haircut a couple of days before but the job was so horrible that he decided to buzz it (which is against the rules). The first haircut cost 20 pesos, about $1.50. The second one he did himself for free. You get what you pay for. These are all excellent missionaries. You can tell that by their happy spirits which show in their eyes and smiles.

The icon of the Misión México Veracruz is the lighthouse, faro. It sits just off the shoreline of the City of Veracruz about 1/2 a mile into the Gulf of Mexico on the Island of Sacrifice. The shoreline is built up with a seawall and levee called the malecon. This foto is taken from the malecon at about 6:30 one morning and looks into the east. The faro is symbolic in the mission tradition because we sometimes refer to ourselves and what we do as "The Lighthouse of the Lord." Our mission hymn is Brillan Rayos de Clemencia, "Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy," which is sung powerfully and oftimes emotionally at all zone conferences, at all the new missionary training sessions, and of course, at the final gathering of missonaries as they leave to return to their loved ones at the end of their missionary service. El Faro.

Baxcaxbaltepec, which translated means Cerro de las Iguanas, which translated means Iguana Hill is a town of a couple of hundred people. The legend is that ten years ago missionaries went in and baptized the nearly whole town. Then, a beautiful chapel was built. The missionaries left at some point in time. The members got mad at the Church because promises were allegedly made by the missionaries which were not kept. Perhaps some financial and employment-related promises were made. The district president wanted to donate the chapel to the community because only 12 or 15 people ever show up for services. I did not see things that way and we sent Elders Villalobos and Eduardo to the Cerro to reactivate the town, to reclaim the people. This is a photo of their first Sunday there and of the chapel. Good things will certainly happen there.

Did you know that some genius decided that the influenza porcina, swine flu, actually started in the State of Veracruz about 3 or 4 hours away from nowhere? If so, it did not happen like this. The missionary is Elder Bada from Peru at a meat market in Minatitlán. They make tacos of that which he is paying close attention to. The child is likely someone's grandchild, but not ours.