We are almost ready to head back to Wyoming. We are finishing up our mission. It's been an incredible experience, and we will really miss the beautiful days here. We used to tell people that we didn't mind living in Wyoming because the summers were beautiful. Well, in Camarillo, the summers are beautiful, too. But, the difference is that the winters in Camarillo are beautiful. So why live in Wyoming when you could live in California? Ah, the interesting questions of life. . . . .
We have been so busy and quite exhausted. As housing coordinators, we have opened and signed leases for 5 new apartments, we have closed 3 apartments, with the cleaning and moving of furniture. We have made sure that rents, utility companies, refrigerator rentals, and other aspects of apartment living are taken care of. We have had the opportunity to drive all around the mission, and we have seen flowers, trees, historical buildings, ocean, and hills. It has been really beautiful. We stayed at the historic Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo.
We have a new mission president. He and his wife both grew up in Mexico, and they bring a great understanding of language and culture to the mission. We love them already. There will be another couple working from our apartment when we leave so we are spending these last few days cleaning as thoroughly as we can and finishing up details of our housing work. We've been hoping to see the new crop planted behind our house, and it has sprouted. We now have some variety of squash or pumpkin growing behind the house. There are huge fields of small strawberries everywhere. Because of all the flooding, strawberries were not good in the spring, and so now there aren't enough jobs for our friends. The fields are just now being planted with new strawberries. But the blackberries had a great season. That's what we eat every morning.
Because we are leaving, our ward held a surprise party for us. They told us that we needed to have a missionary meeting at 5:00 PM to talk about a new mission plan. So we showed up to this meeting and our leader talked for an hour about missionary work. After the meeting, the leader said we should take the "shortcut" to our car through the gym. It was pitch dark, but as we entered, the whole ward yelled "Surprise!" and turned on the lights. They made mole, tacos, enchiladas, soup, tamales, and more for dinner. We ate and hugged everyone there.
The next day, our other ward had a little party with "Mexican hot dogs" which were hot dogs covered in pico de gallo and a bunch of picante chilis. Ha ha! Several people gave us gifts, like books, Mexican clothes, and pictures. The two families who I taught piano for had us over for dinner and served amazing Mexican food, also. In short, we were treated like royalty, and we really loved it. What an experience!
During this last month, we took our friend Evarardo to the temple for his endowment. He loved being there with us, and it was a beautiful day. When we got home at around 5:00 PM, Dad and I both sat on the couch and immediately fell asleep. We're not as young as we used to be. Also during the month, our car battery died, but we didn't know that was the problem. So we had it towed out of a slightly-scary neighborhood, and the dealer checked it very carefully. We think it is ready for the trip home.
When Dad and I were up in San Luis Obispo, we attended institute class with students at Cal Poly. We really enjoyed getting to know these kind and very modern students. The ward mission leader has both his ears pierced and some cool tattoos. When the teacher asked why we attend church, he said, "To find a wife," and two of the females in the class groaned. It was fun!
At the ward party, our friend Rogelio said his girlfriend made some tortillas for us, and he slipped them into Dad's pocket. When we got home, Dad opened them and found two $100 dollar bills. Rogelio paid us for working to finalize his divorce so that he could marry his girlfriend. But we can't keep the money and we are plotting a way to get it back to him. The great thing is that his divorce seems to be going through.
We're both sad and happy to be coming home. A quick postscript...upon telling Rogelio he shouldn't have paid us for helping him, that we're happy to serve him, plus he had already paid us with strawberries, smiles and his sweet love...he replied "I'm not paying you for anything. It was just a little gift from us because we love you so much!"
We just can't get over the generosity and kindness and love of our friends here in southern California. We added pictures (from Facebook) of our bishopric, who we grew to love dearly, Bishop Mario Corona, Jovani Ambriz, and Marlon Gonzales.
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