To end the blog posts for the month of May, 2010, just one more baptismal photo from Santiago Tuxtlas, place of rivers and many fountains of water. This place is called Tres Chorros, and means three spurts or fountains. Looks like they miscounted. The missionaries are Elder Luna from Mexicali and Elder Gutierrez from Los Alamos, New Mexico.

We asked every missionary to email into the office a fun or funny picture of himself. We wanted to put together a fun video for our all-mission conference. The video was set to some traditional Mexican songs such as "La Cucaracha," "La Bamba," "Allá en el Rancho Grande," and others, as well as a Hawaiian hit by IZ to honor our three Polynesian elders. Three sister missionaries work together in trio. They posed as "Charlie's Angels" with their blow dryers and brushes held as handguns, poised for action. They called themselves "Las Angelitas del Presidente Hansen." The fotos raised the image of sister missionaries to a new level. They were the next to last slides in the video. The final one was of one of the assistants gazing longingly at a computer monitor where Las Angelitas were displayed. ¡It was hilarious!


That final photo was a setup for the slide show and was taken with all the office elders watching. Fear not. It was a setup. The missionary, Elder Yebra who is one of the assistants, created the video.

The problem in Mexico is that the building standards are, well, aren't. So, they put in an electrical outlet wherever they want and usually only one in a room. So, like the elders in Arrocera, the missionaries load them up so that they can run their little refrigerator, their two oscillating fans, the one-element hot plate and an electric razor.


That was not the problem for Elder Deal (from Texas) in Ciudad Isla. Nope. Sometimes, because of weird science and lulls of electrical power in the lines followed by unpredictable bursts of energy, things get a little hot. Good thing our missioanries all live in 100% cement houses.

Elder Carter from Bakersfield is a baseball junkie. I like him. He is also a zone leader and a great missionary. He found a batting cage with pitching machines. He and Elder Villalobos, the district leader, took their district there on a preparation day. The missionaries are Sisters Frausto and Flores from Mexico City, Elder Samayoa from Chiapas, Sister Pech from the Yucatan, Elder Carter, Elder Villalobos from Quintana Roo, and Elder Bullock from Virginia.

After the baptism in Jesus Carranza, we drove the elders to Nuevo Morelos where they had an appointment. Walking down the dirt road they contacted a man. I wish you could see the condition of the shoes of the missionaries, especially the American. It would make you weep.

On a Saturday afternoon we went to El Paraíso for a baptismal service. We sent missionaries there at the same time we sent elders to La Venta. This was the second baptismal service in this very small branch. It was unique because again, we are talking about a family and a historic location.

We have previously mentioned that Paraíso is a long way from nowhere. It is the little branch where there have been no missionaries for 8 or 9 years. Attendance was 15-18 people. 25 kilometers away is the town, Jesus Carranza. There the elders found a family of 6. The mom and dad are ready to get baptized after he gets divorced from someone else and they get married. This story continues to be a rerun, doesn't it with some slight variations in the theme. But, they are really solid! They have a son, 18, who is training for an Olympic tryout. He is a sprinter. He does not live with them and is attending school elsewhere, but he does come home weekends, has received the lessons, and desires baptism. There is another boy who prefers alcoholic beverages over the gospel. The two daughters are in high school. They were set for baptism.

We arrived, picked up the elders on the highway on the way in, went to the house of the investigators, and loaded them into the minivan. Now we were 10 live people in a 6 or 7-seater. Very Mexican of us. Only one of the girls was dressed in white. Turns out that the younger of the two was teased at school. Her friends told her that the only reason the Mormon elders wanted to baptize her was so that they could take her away Utah and marry her. That would be tricky to pull off. Two of the elders are Mexicans and the other lives in northern California. He is a BYU student, though, so maybe that would be the child-bride connection. Anyway, she chickened out based on that rumor. Her sister was not hustled off to Utah, so she got over it was baptized a week later.

We drove our overweight vehicle to the river. This river is called the Coatzacoalcos and runs along the edge of the town, Jesus Carranza. (You longtime subscribers may recall the story about an 84 year old man who killed a guy who was going to kill his father. That happened in this same little town, Jesus Carranza.) About 17 or 18 members of the branch loaded up in the back of a Nissan pickup with wooden cattle racks, all standing, and came over from Paraíso to witness the baptism. Remember, when the missionaries started there they had 15-18 in church on Sundays. (They set a record high last Sunday at 36. They have doubled attendance in 8 weeks.) I talked with the former branch president. He and his wife are the very first members of the Church there. He told me that every baptism that has ever happened in the branch has been in a little stream outside of Paraíso. This was the first ever in Carranza. It was an historical day.


As we were about to walk down to the river, a local fellow drove slowly past, totally nonplussed.

The riverside service was short and sweet. We sang and prayed, there were two short talks, and the ordinance was performed. We sang and prayed again. Then, everyone stood up in the back of the truck and went home. It was perfect.


This picture is the opening song at the first ever LDS baptismal service in Jesus Carranza. The song was not "Now We Gather at the River," but was "Families Can Be Together Forever." The two men are the current branch president and the former branch president. The sister on the right is the second member of the Church in El Paraíso. Her husband on her right was the first. Their daughter is leading the music.


Here is the larger portion of the El Paraíso Branch. They are stood in the back of a Nissan pickup and came over the 25 kilometers from Paraíso to Jesus Carranza. The fourth man from the right is that sweet fellow who was the first convert baptism of these missionaries in that area. There are others of the family of the girl who was baptized, Guadalupe Terán Blanco.


The missionaries are Elders Gonzales Ureti, Rodriguez Salinas and Taylor who is from Weed, California.



The baptism of Guadalupe Terán Blanco. (You can click on any of these fotos to enlarge them. This one is worth the minimal effort.)

This was the temperature in Minatitlán that afternoon, May 29th--normal.






This is the ice delivery method. The really big blocks had just been off-loaded from a semi. Why do they put the cold ice under hot, black visquine? We don't know either.


The young man chipped off a chunk for the man with the red cap. The man with the red cap put it in his wheelbarrow and is probably delivering it to his little snow cone business. He got his hat for free at a political stuff hand out and he theoretically supported the guy with the red 17-story long banner on the building you saw in an earlier post. He probably won thanks to Snow Cone Man. The election was actually so close they did a recount before declaring a winner.