El Paso City. . . By the Rio GRANDEEEEEEEEEE

Maybe you don't know that song. On Friday we picked up my brother-in-law, Michael and headed to El Paso. Really, we were headed across the Rio Grande a la Ciuidad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico . It was H O T! Pretty, but hot.

This is Jorge with his brother Michael who is holding a picture of their grandfather, Pedro. So, Clay, there WAS a PEDRO PEREZ! (Thanksgiving past)

These are Jorge's relatives and his dad, Jose.

The GENE POOL is VERY STRONG!!! YIKES!!!!! We laughed. This little boy is Jorge's cousin (same grandfather/different grandmother). I think he's cute as a bug!

The real reason that we went to Juarez was to be with Jose and Jorge's grandmother, Dona Lupe when her husband, Pedro died on Thursday. The funeral was Friday. Jose was really glad that we were there. Since we are members of the Church of Christ, we haven't much experience with Catholic funerals. Pedro (Jorge's Grandfather) was Catholic. Dona Lupe (Jorge's Grandmother)is a member of the Iglesia de Cristo como nosotros. So at 11:00 Saturday morning we headed to the chappel to view the body. There was a sheet of glass over the body, odd. Then several ladies came to do the "roseries" .?. They continued to do this for about 45 minutes. After the ladies stopped chanting, the funeral director came to inform us that the Catholic church was ready for us to begin. . . . After that statement. . . . you would've thought that a bomb went off. People scampered and jumped out of their seats, grabbed the banners off of the flower sprays, picked up the flower sprays and headed outside. It looked like a Chinese fire drill. No kiddin'! It was nuts!!

Meanwhile, the funeral home loaded the casket into the hurst and headed a few blocks over to the catholic church. Jorge and Michael helped load the flower sprays into a pick-up.

We got into the car and headed to my personal first. . . a double funeral! NO kiddin'! There were two caskets, two sets of family and friends and one priest who didn't know the deceased names. He had to go over and get his card to read and find our their names. I thought that that was a little funny! After the funeral was over, again. . . folks jumped up and rolled those caskets quickly down the aisle, followed by two groups of families and two groups of friends all mixed together. One of Jorge's uncles had to grab onto the casket so that it didn't hit the pews or smash into the other casket. Whoa! I kept thinkin' where am I?!?!

Outside, Jose thought it would be a good idea to take one car to the gravesite. Since Jorge's grandmother lived closeby we were going to leave the car there. We quickly left my car and jumped into Jose's car and headed toward what we thought was our cemetery. Wrong. We drove all over Juarez. For 2 hours we drove. Not a cell phone in the car worked. The tower was down. So Jose missed the burial. I was really sad for him. He took it well. We went to Dona Lube's house to eat and then we headed to the gravesite to see.

So we headed back to Dona Lupe's house and we laughed and talked and she showed us old pictures and we laughed some more. Here we are with her. She said that she's a free lady now and that she could come and visit. I wouldn't put it past her. . . and I hope she does!