Today was the most exciting day in this trip. But before we get to it, a little background.
Before we started dating, Bonnie went on a trip to Mexico with her maternal grandparents, when she was 16. They showed her all over Guadalajara, and they ended up visiting her grandfathers home town, Zepotlenejo. Zepotenajo is a small town in the state of Jalisco, it is adjacent to the state we are living in. They visited a church her grandfather went to with his family, and they also went to a shop that sold leather goods, that was owned by her grandfathers mothers side of his family. This is how Bonnie was able to confirm the church we went to yesterday was the same church her grandfather went to as a child, he confirmed it with her when she visited this town 24 years prior.
This past Thursday, on a whim we rented a car and drove to Zepotlenejo. You can read the jist of that story in the last post. Toward the end of the day, Bonnie was able to get a copy of her grandfathers birth certificate, and was able to decipher that he was born near a place called Asoleadera. We were given vague directions on where it was, but it was only a 20 minute drive outside of Zepotlenejo, so we took off around twighlight. We ended up at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, and asked the attendant about Asoleadera. We thought it was a large ranch, but later on that night during my insomnia, I found out it was an abandoned township on the outskirts of Zepotlenejo.
The gas attendant called his friend who lived close, and was also a police officer, who he said would know where to find Asoleadera. I was a little skeptical since it was dark, and I don’t know who was coming to show us where to go, and there are no street lights, so we end up following this guy in his truck. He eventually pulls off the road, and tells us to keep driving up a dirt road a ways, and that would end up being Asoleadera.
We drove up for at least another 15-20 minutes and now it is pitch dark. We being married, had a “discussion” about whether or not we should pull into any drive ways with homes that have lights on, if you know me, you know where I stand. If you know Bonnie, you know she wanted to pull in and knock on peoples doors. We ended up not doing that, and one of us went home not happy. 😀
The next morning (this morning), we got the kids out of the hotel by 7am and drove back to Asoleadera in the hopes we might run into someone who might know Bonnie’s Grandfather’s family, there is his maternal side and paternal side. We drove for a while and did not find anyone, so Bonnie turned the car around and started driving back down the hill, when we end up seeing a man standing on the side of the road. She spoke to him for a while, and found out that (and I apologize if this sounds confusing) Bonnie’s great grandmother’s family name still exists in the very spot we were looking for them. For the sake of anonymity, I’m not going to use either family name. But we located them about 20 minutes later.
They run a small back country store out of their home, and the older woman who helps run the store pointed to a home in the distance that was most likely Bonnie’s great great grandparents home. We stayed there a while and took ALOT of photos. On our way out, the woman who ran the store pointed to a small house across the field, and said that was the house Bonnie’s grandfather was born in, we would have gotten up close photos of it, but it is located on church property and it was gated.
I still can’t believe we found basically her ancestor’s home(s), today was amazing.
On another note, thank you for reading these blogs so far. A secondary purpose for writing these blog entries is to let our family see what we are doing and make sure we are safe. Being that our children are so young, I’m sure they won’t remember many details of this trip years from now, so I hope to collect these posts and put them into a self published book for them later on in life, the primary reason I write this…
Below are photos from Asoleadera, Zepotlenejo. *
Our Family Adventure 