You might want to take a seat to read this post.

I will start with the less-than-great news.
"...both my companion and I contracted Zika. He had the worst of it Tuesday and I had the worst of it Thursday-Friday-ish. It´s kind of interesting what happens, I had a burning fever, and still have a little bit of it, your eyes hurt pretty bad, and all the bones in your body, and also there are tiny red bumps that appear. From what I hear there are usually more than what I had, but I don´t really know. The virus stays in your system for about 1 year and can reappear during this period."

Any parent who sends a child into a tropical climate worries about this. We pray that the year it is supposed to be in his body will go as well as possible.

Now for pictures with background info...

First, we see Seth helping to make a drink that is quite popular in the Tabasco province. (Ciudad del Carmen used to be part of that province.)

It is called Pozol.  His recipe is a little different than the one I found on line but the main ingredients are ground corn, cocoa, sugar and water or milk.. He mentioned peanuts but the on-line recipe called for cinnamon. I guess you stir it in the blender or by hand. The ground corn sounds more interesting than appetizing to me.

Seth's 19th birthday was on Friday and, evidently, he had plenty of opportunities to celebrate.

Here is the first of three birthday cakes provided for Seth. This was provided by the Arregoita family. It is a tradition in that area to take a bite of cake before it is cut and without the benefit of utensils.

Here he is with his companion upon being presented with a birthday cake in the second celebration. This celebration was with the de la Cruz Jimenez but the cake was provided by the Sister Missionaries.

I guess they use high-impact candles down there.

 Again, we have the mordida (i.e. the unorthodox biting of the cake).

Here we are introduced to the tradition of pushing the birthday person's face into the cake when he/she is taking the bite. As you can see, this one is posed and Seth was allowed to remove his glasses.

The third party was with Sister Geni, Brother Carlos Tello, Sister  Marlene, Brother Marcos, and the young men from the ward.

Here we see that Seth's companion was successful in pushing his face into the cake more aggressively than in the previous posed version.

Here is the picture that made me jealous.

I loved the empenadas in Argentina and this one looks similar to those. Ours were all made with beef but this one was made with seafood.  It looks great.

Here is summary of the birthday celebration.

"The people here were very, very generous for my birthday. We had a celebration with cake 2 times Thursday and 1 time Friday night. It was a little hard to show my excitement because it hurt to even move my eyes but I was truly impressed and grateful how much the people were thinking of me and sacrificed a lot just to have a happy celebration. Here the gifts they give are less material wise, but with great sacrifice and work, because almost all of them struggle to buy food day to day, but they always provide enough for us to leave the house more than satisfied. I have seen that the people here are really relying on the Lord, because even though they have less, they give more."

Here is a portion of his testimony. "He aprendido en los últimos días la importancia de misericordia en nuestras vidas. Cada uno de nosotros tenemos que tener misericordia para cada uno de nuestros hermanos, y para nosotros mismos si queremos vivir bajo la influencia del Espíritu y tener la misericordia de Jesucristo en nuestras vidas. " (I have learned in the recent days the importance of mercy in our lives. Each one of us must have mercy for each of our brothers and for ourselves if we want to live under the influence of the Spirit and have the mercy of Jesus Christ in our lives."