as I served as the assistant to the president responsible for all 'temporal' stuff, paying rent, paying electrical bills. Our mission only had 2 vehicles, one a VW van (combi) and another GMC Suburban. I was the only guy with a driver's license that knew how to drive a manual transmission, so I drove all over the mission paying all the the rent, bills in cash (as Mexico at the time did not have a functioning wire transfer system). I served as assistant way too long... 8+ months? and had to run 2 full circuits of the mission every month. Driving the horrible highways from Puerto Vallarta on the Northwest to Tecomán in the Southwest to Zamora in the East back through La Piedad, Chapala, and everywhere in between where missionaries were living. I spent A LOT of time on Mexican highways.

The scary part, I had a strong box welded into the floorboords of that volkswagen combi which when I had it fully stuffed with cash held close to US$250,000. Every time I got stopped, my stomach would clench wondering if someone would know about the vault with all the cash in that van.

I'm old... so it's been 35+ years since I served, but I have worked and lived in Mexico in that time. I would say that I've averaged about 5 run-ins with the police a year, so there's 150+ incidents?

Yeah, 200+ is a good representative sample.