Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Keep Hoping

Hello Everyone!

I hope you all had an absolutely wonderful Christmas, and I hope you haven´t stopped celebrating it. My Christmas was really nice. After a few problems with skype, I got to talk to my family yesterday. It was great to see them, and to know that I still speak English, almost. 

My companion and I also made our own little Christmas tree out of broomsticks, clothes hangers, a lot of duct tape, and some Liahona magazines. I tried to send some pictures, but this computer doesn´t seem to want to accept them, so maybe next week.

We also had a nice mission Christmas devotional last Thursday. It was the first chance we got to meet our newest mission president, President Urrea. So, after President and Hermana Titensor went back to Utah for cancer treatments, President and Hermana Garcia came to look after us for about a month and a half. During that time, the church was calling new mission presidents, most of whom will start next July. Well, President Urrea was called to be president of the Mexico City North mission, and he was informed that he would be starting as soon as possible, not in July. So they got as much as their life in order as they could in less than a month and arrived here about a week and a half ago. President and Hermana Urrea seem really really nice, and much more relaxed than President Garcia was. They are from Monterey.

One of the best parts of the Christmas devotional was when our three assistants to the President came out dressed as the three wise men and delivered to us our Christmas packages. They were impressive costumes. Again, hopefully I´ll be able to send pictures next week.

I was also glad to see that the assistants were ok, because right now their area is Tultepec. Tultepec is right next to my area. I could walk there in about 10 minutes. Some of you may have already heard what happened there this past Tuesday, my family already did. Hermana Morillón and I were eating some pambazos when we heard a number of loud bangs. Everyone started going outside to see what was going on and so we did too, and we saw a huge cloud rising just to the east of us. I honestly thought a bomb had gone off, and I wasn´t that far off. The core of the Tultepec economy is fireworks. One member told me that 80% of the fireworks in Mexico come out of Tultepec, and 40% of the fireworks in the world. I don´t know if that´s true, but the point is, they are crazy about fireworks here. There is a big marketplace that sells 100% fireworks. And somehow, on Tuesday, it all exploded. All of it. Literally tons of explosives. It was really really bad. And it was really scary too. I personally don´t know anyone who was there, but I have heard that well over 30 people are already dead, and a lot more are seriously injured. 

So please keep Tultepec in your prayers right now. 

It was really inspiring for me to see the care with which the people of Mexico responded. And the hope with which they were still able to celebrate this special Christmas season. Because that is really what Christmas is about: hope. 

So keep hoping. And keep believing. 
I love and miss you all!
Hermana Herron

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