Cancun - Day 5

Today we went into downtown Merida. We went into the Governor’s Mansion and looked at all of the paintings and learned some of the history of the city of Merida and the Yucatan. It was a really old building in the city of Merida, which was founded in the 1500’s. Then we walked around the center of town and went into an old church. The buildings are just incredible. To think that they were built over 400 years ago, it is just amazing.

After that we checked out of our hotel, and drove to the Merida Temple. It was built in 2000 right on the spot where the mission home was when Matt served his mission. The temple was closed for the annual cleaning, so we were just able to walk around the grounds. It is a very pretty temple and it was fun to see.

Then we started to drive around and try to locate a family that Matt taught when he served 10 years ago. It took us awhile of driving and stopping to ask several people directions, but we found it. We got out and tried to get the attention of those in the house, but they wouldn’t respond. We waited outside for a few minutes and no one came. So Matt left them a note and a picture and we said goodbye to Merida.

We drove on the back roads through all of the little villages and drove to Tixcocob. We found a family that Matt baptized and stopped and visited with them for a while. It was neat to see their reactions when they saw him and then it was interesting, sitting and listening to him communicate with them. I speak zero Spanish, so I just sat and marveled at the communication. It was awesome. We enjoyed seeing and visiting with them.

After that we headed down more back roads and drove to Izamal. We located the place we were staying. It was a bed and breakfast in the jungle of Izamal. We stayed in little bungalow type houses and it was kind of cool. We went into the town for dinner and walked around the town. We also went into the Catholic Courtyard, the second largest in the world. The pope visited there 15-20 years ago. So that was neat to see. To get back to our bungalow, we took a horse and carriage ride. On our way we stopped to say hello to the Failmy Ruiz Pech.

We spent a quiet night in the jungle and it was a fun experience.