Wonderful Weekend in Tepic and Vallarta!!

We left early Friday morning to make the two hour drive to Tepic for zone conference #8. When we visited this town two months ago, there seemed to be a lot of discouragement on the part of the missionaries due to some big challenges in the stake, but this time they seemed much happier. There are so many great missionaries in this area and we loved being with them.

Here are a few of the elders visiting after the conference

 

And they all LOVE to get packages and letters. Emails are good, but they all still want real letters!

Here is one of the new missionaries with his companion. He is still alive Mom!

(And no, the elders did not decorate the ceiling:-)

 And some more pictures of great men. 

 Two of the more mature missionaries, leading the way for the newer ones. 

 These two shared the scripture chase championship. I would have had a tie breaker question, but they were both so good that I thought they should both be rewarded. 

 Another of the newer missionaries with his companion. 

 And the sweet sisters! Love these girls!

Also the one on the left is from Peru and the one on the right is from Honduras. The two in the middle are both from Mexico. 

And all are great. 

 After the conference we loaded up the car and headed to Puerto Vallarta. We arrived around 9 at night, went grocery shopping to buy the food for the next day and then did a quick run by McDonalds. Not exactly health food, but late at night it had to do.

Vallarta is such an interesting place to visit. The road to there is narrow and winding and made me a bit sick to my stomach.

But I loved passing all the fruit stands and had to get a picture of the jack fruit in front. It is the large fruit hanging from the rafter that looks like a giant kiwi. I haven't had a chance to try them yet, but I am hoping to soon. We always are in a hurry when we drive by, or it is on Sunday and so we don't stop. But next month we will be back on a Saturday so I am looking forward to hitting the fruit stands then.

This was the road to the stake center. It had rained the night before and turned the road completely into mud, with a LOT of holes. 

 Here is a little quirky thing about some of the towns in Mexico.

If you want to make a left hand turn, you have to go to the FAR RIGHT lane.

(The one that is separated by the grass median in front of the OXXO)

Then, with a green arrow, you go across all the lanes of traffic to make your turn.
This threw us off a bit the first time!

Here are some pictures of the missionaries there.

For details on what we did at the conference you can scroll down to the older posts. 

 Practice, practice, practice!

The entire zone

Don't they look like a great group of missionaries!

We stayed over on Sunday to attend the Vallarta Stake Conference.

We loved this! The building was packed and all the people we met were wonderful. 

Here is a picture of the front of the building, proudly displaying the Book of Mormon. 

 The missionaries were in the lobby to greet the visitors and provide information to investigators. 

 One of my favorite parts of the conference was this choir. They sang beautifully!

And they sang two of my favorite hymns, "If You Could Hie To Kolob" and "Come Thou Fount"

Next week we are looking forward to a mission tour with Elder De Hoyos, a counselor in the Area Presidency.