Mission President's Seminar

This past week we had the opportunity to spend five days in Villahermosa, Mexico, at a Mission President's Seminar for all Mission Presidents in Mexico. President Johnson, President DeHoyos and President Tenorio, the area presidency, and their wives were there and they trained and instructed us, in addition to Elder Duncan, our visiting general authority.

This is a picture of the inside courtyard of the hotel we stayed at.
It was beautiful and the weather was perfect while we were there.

the view from our room window

This was the dining room where we ate all of our meals. Elder Duncan is on the left, President and Sister Hicken, President of the Mexico, Mexico City East Mission, are next to us, Daisy, (President Johnson's assistant) and President Tervort of the Mexico, Mexico City Northwest Mission is on the right. We thoroughly enjoyed visiting with the Hickens and also getting to know all of the other Mission Presidents. Those of us who aren't quite able to understand Spanish yet, were supplied with earphones and Daisy would translate for us. It was wonderful. We were also able to renew our friendships with the Presidents who were at the Mission President's Seminar in July at the Provo MTC. On Tuesday we flew to Villahermosa, then on Wednesday and Thursday we had training.

On Friday right before we left for Palenque... they handed out hats and bug repellant!

We all loaded onto two buses to visit some Mayan ruins.

A couple of cute little stores we passed on the way... I love seeing the tiendas, as they call them, here. They are on just about every street and you can buy just about anything to eat.


We also had the opportunity to buy some souvenirs, which was interesting!
They are very persuasive and the deals are so good, it makes it hard to say no!
(notice the baby wrapped up on the mom's back in the first photo...)

a map of the area we visited...


It was so interesting and reminded us a lot of the ruins we have seen in Cancun and Tikal.

The palace


Inside the palace



In the courtyard of the palace.
























These are original carvings from around 600 a.d.

I spent some time talking with President Johnson, who knows a lot about the ruins and the history of the Mayan people. He was able to answer some of my questions.
It was wonderful to get to know his wife also, who is on the left.

Some of our group at the top of one of the buildings

in front of the river and heading down the trail back to the buses.


The river that was winding through the site ended up turning into this beautiful waterfall.

When we arrived back in Villahermosa, we stopped at Rodizio Grill for dinner. It was really good! How did we end up in the same group for dinner? I promise, we did eat with other people during the week. On Saturday morning we had a presentation on security in the mission. Then we loaded up the buses and headed back to the airport for Mexico City.

A shot of the hotel as we left on the bus

In the airport, waiting for our flight. Elder Duncan, President Johnson and President Call, Mission President in Mexico, Tampico Mission. It was a wonderful week full of insights, principles, doctrine, practice and testimony.