San Xavier del Bac Mission

Well, hard as I try to avoid life by reading books, I still seem to be around. My mind has been on a roller coaster ride of panic over Jessie and whether or not I made the right decision. To avoid all the 'what if's' I have been reading books. I have finished 9 books since last Tuesday. I haven't accomplished much else and today I told myself I needed to start acting like a responsible adult again.

In addition, Gary called a couple of hours ago and said he is headed to Dubai tomorrow until Saturday - so I will be alone and need to be able to do that (be alone) and still function ...

So - I thought that I would finish off my Arizona Adventure with my photos the San Xavier Mission.

The San Xavier Mission was founded as a Catholic mission by Father Eusebio Kino in 1692. Construction of the current church began in 1783 and was completed in 1797.

It is beautiful and they had scaffolding up to clean ... well my dad said clean, but the web site says they have been removing the earlier coating of cement plaster, repairing the historic brickwork beneath and re-finishing the exterior surface with a traditional lime plaster - so more than cleaning.

Anyhooo ... they ran out of funding and the left tower is complete - and sparkly white whereas the right tower is not. I am just happy there was no scaffolding mucking up my photos ... but I wish them well in getting more funding ...

We arrived on a Sunday afternoon. Services were over, but it was crowded with sightseers. You have NO IDEA how long I stood waiting for a shot of the church without anyone in it.

I got two:

Interior:

Ceiling:

More waiting, but got my shot:

Beautiful tree, bench, artwork combo ... yes? (Too bad I removed a water faucet and an entire drinking fountain to get this ...):

It was a beautiful place and called 'The White Dove of the Desert' which makes my ginormous angel I bought here all the more meaningful - she is holding a bird:

So ... that's it for my Arizona photos ... unless I go through them and find random ones I would like to share ...

Here's to hoping that a week without Gary and no blog fodder doesn't send me over the edge ...