Trip to IRTRA

On Thanksgiving day we (and the McGary family) drove to a place called IRTRA and stayed there through Sunday. IRTRA consists of two different amusement parks, one a water park called Xocomil (pronounced Show-Koe-Meal), and the other an amusement park with roller coasters and other rides called Xutulul (pronounced Shew-too-lule). It's about a 4 hour drive from our house and is out in the middle of nowhere. It is an absolutely beautiful place rivaling any amusement park in the United States. We stayed in a gigantic complex of hotels with everything you can imagine. It had 3 large swimming pools with slides and other fun things for the kids. It also had a bowling alley, an athletic club, tennis courts, a spa for the ladies, several restaurants, doctor's office (which of course we had to use), and much, much more. We'll definitely be heading back there again.

On Sunday we found a local church to attend. We did it by simply getting in the car and asking people where the nearest Mormon church was. After talking to a few people we finally got good directions and made it to the church plenty early. The only problem was that when we got there the parking area, which is the outdoor basketball and soccer court, was locked. We parked on the side of the street, a little bit nervous our van would get broken into.
A few minutes into sacrament meeting one of the young men in the ward approached us at our pew and asked me to follow him. He took me out to the basketball court and unlocked the gate for me to drive in and park. I wonder when the last time was that someone actually showed up to that ward with a car?








It was obvious that no one in the ward had a car, so I'm sure it was just on special occasions when someone from the stake presidency visits, etc. Throughout the entire meeting we were stared at constantly. I bet some of these people had never seen a gringo before in their lives. Especially two families of 6 (we did all this with another American family we're friends with). Before sacrament meeting began Michelle went to take our younger kids to the bathroom. After using the bathroom they loaded their hands up with soap only to find out that there was no water working in the bathroom. One of the ladies in the bathroom offered to go fetch some left over water in the baptismal font and bring it to the bathroom so they could rinse their hands. Michelle declined and took the kids out to the car and used some bottled water. When I found out about this I went and looked and the baptismal font, and sure enough there was a couple inches of water left at the bottom of the font. After sacrament meeting we found out that it wasn't just the bathroom that had no water. The water wasn't working in the whole church. That's when it hit us, the water we drank for the sacrament probably came from that same left-over water at the bottom of the baptismal font. Oh well, it was blessed, right?