Photos from the road

On July 4th, Jo Ellen and I hit the road for the Mission Staff Retreat.

Driving through Mexico is beautiful!

I forgot it was the Forth of July until we saw these flags as we entered Puebla. I was very excited, hence the picture, and I did a little "Yay 4th of July!" in my mind :).

In Puebla, we met up with short term missionaries, Bruce and Katy Dockter, and went to visit this pyramid in Cholula. Though it looks like it's just a hill, they say this pyramid is actually bigger than the ones in Egypt. I've never been to Egypt, so I'll just take them at their word :).***

The outside hasn't been fully excavated, but you can go through tunnels deep inside. Always lovely walking underneath tons of massive stone :).

I'm curious as to what's up there, but definitely not curious enough to go up by myself :).

Bruce and I hiked up to the top of the hill (or pyramid, I guess) where the Spanish built a Catholic church (um... power play? ;-). Although the hill didn't look that tall, I began to believe it was bigger than the Egypt pyramids when I was struggling halfway up those steps. In my opinion, anyone who attends that church regularly is crazy :).

The sight from the top almost made it worth the climb :).

I'll put this one in my advertisement for Cholula :). Pretty!

The next day, after 7-ish more hours of driving, we arrived at the hotel in Tequisquiapan, Queretaro for meetings and retreat. Mexico missionaries from Monterrey and Mexico City joined us there.

Two families are leaving shortly for home assignment, so we were able to take time to commission them as they return to the U.S. for a year.

For one exercise, we grouped up into districts to find out how who we are affects how we interact with our team. The Oaxaca team is obviously on top of things ;-).

Throughout the week, everyone was able to share and be prayed for. Here we pray for the childcare workers who were wonderful to come and help us!

Short termers were in charge of Fun Night. I kept saying maybe we should change it to "Game Night," so that it wouldn't be so much to live up to :).

But, thankfully, people seemed to have plenty of fun. I was so surprised how intensely people got into this particular game - "germ warfare."

It took a lot out of some people :).

Mandatory group picture at any large missions event. Very nice.

And then home again, home again. At the end of the week, people kept falling ill. One of the four effected was riding in our van - hence the lovely face masks :).

On our drive, we went past the famous Teotihuacan Pyrmids of the Sun and Moon.

I don't think this one needs explanation...

Ah, road trips in Mexico.

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***UPDATE 7/30/09: Here's some info I found on Cholula. It was from a website called "Blurt It" dot com, so I'm assuming it's legit ;-)

The name of the largest pyramid is the Great Pyramid of Cholula., which is considered to be the largest by volume and situated in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico. It had been built throughout generations, spanning over 2nd century BC to the early 16th century. The Guinness World Records affirms that this is the world's largest monument with an estimated volume over 4.45 million m3. This is about one-third larger in size compared to the Great Pyramid of Giza located in Egypt.