Week Five

Time is flying by.  We are only a week away from our first maintenance closure.  We're excited about our travel plans during the closure. 

On Monday we hosted family home evening.  We did a presentation of our Book of Mormon Tour from last October.  We had a Power Point presentation already on the computer, so it didn't take much work to get it ready.  We served brownies, a fruit plate, and chips and salsa for refreshments.  It was fun for us.  Here are shots of the missionaries who attended.  We have two home evenings each week, one in English and one in Spanish.  We usually have some Spanish speaking missionaries in the English group and the Murries, an English speaking couple, always attend the Spanish group.

 

 Top picture, left to right, Hna and Hno Barlow, Hno and Hna Thompson, Hna Tanner, Hna and Hno Olsen.
Bottom picture, left to right:  Hna Paniaqua, Hna and Preisdent Galvez, Hna Guzman, and Hno Wilson.  Hna Wilson was sick that night and didn't attend.  (Hno and Hna are the abbreviations for Hermano (brother) and Hermana (sister).

President Galvez is the first counselor in the temple presidency, but he and and Hermana Galvez have been called as the next president and matron of the Quetzaltenango Temple so are leaving us after the maintenance break.  Hermana Guzman is the dear sister Gary calls the "Temple Angel."  She comes into the office as she has time and helps with recording as well as translating for us when patrons need help that we can't understand.  She grew up in Chile but moved to Australia 30 years ago with her husband, so she speaks English and Spanish fluently and also has served in the Sydney Temple Office, so she is an invaluable help to us.  She is now a widow and is lovely person inside and out.

Today the young sisters serving as  proselyting missionaries in our area came to dinner. 

The sister on the left is Hermana Garcia from Bolivia, and the Sister on the right is Hermana Brown from Page, Arizona.  Hermana Brown is a Navajo, so we couldn't resist inviting her over for Navajo tacos.  She was so excited!  She couldn't wait to tell her grandma that she got real Navajo tacos in Guatemala!  They were delightful dinner guests.

Earlier this week we walked down to the nursery and bought another hanging plant for our patio.  This beautiful fern adds a lot to the hanging garden.

We still aren't sure if we have tomato plants, and they aren't growing very fast, but here is an updated photo of our vegetable garden pot.  We also planted some pepper seeds, but they aren't big enough to take a picture yet.

One Month!!

Is it really possible that a whole month has passed since we flew into Guatemala City?  It doesn't seem possible, but it is.  This week we had a great adventure on Monday.  President and Sister Burke drove us, the Wilsons and the Olsens to the Relief Map which is a mostly to scale map of Guatemala including parts of other countries that border on it.  The scale is supposed to be pretty accurate horizontally, but the vertical scale is about two times higher than in reality, so the mountains look much steeper and higher than they actually are.  It was pouring down rain all the time we were there, so the rivers and oceans were pretty realistic!

The sign in he lower right corner shows the Usumacinto River which is the one we boated down on our tour last fall.  It divides part of Mexico from Guatemala and is where we crossed the border.  The blue part is Guatemala and the white is Mexico.

Here we are in the highlands.  About the center of this shot is Quetzaltenango where Gary and Dena served their first mission in Guatemala and where we are going to travel in the first week of the temple closure in early July.  This is the location of the second temple in Guatemala, and we will be able to attend it when we visit!

Guatemala City is somewhere in the center of this shot.  You can see that it is in the highlands.  That is why the weather is so beautiful here.  It tends to stay right around 70 degrees all the time, even when it rains.  They call it the land of eternal spring.  The structure in the back of the picture is one of the two towers we climbed to get a better view of the map.

This is the area where we are going during the second week of the temple closure.  It is Rio Dulce which runs down to the Caribbean.  You can see a piece of the Caribbean on the far right just a little above center and the river running into it.

In the center of this shot is a blue lake.  That is Lake Atitlan, said to be the most beautiful place in Guatemala and thought to be a candidate for the Waters of Mormon.  We were also there last fall.  You can also see the line of volcanoes running down the left side of the picture.

The green tent is where workers are redoing some of the map.  It is pretty old and needs new paint occasionally.  It is in the general area of Polachic where the sweet indigenous Kecchi live who we have told about coming to the temple.  The yellow building in the background is a museum, but all it has are pictures of  the areas of Guatemala, so we didn't take any photos.

These beautiful hydrangeas were outside the museum.  Reminded Dorine of her backyard in Pacific!

From there we went to Mercado Centro where we did some fun shopping.  There are three levels of merchandise.  All of it is in booths where people bring their wares to sell.  The first floor was textiles, paintings, clothing, etc.  The middle floor was food like the picture shown here, the flowers shown below and places to eat.

The bottom level had more clothing and lots of novelties as well as T-shirts.  We found some fun items that we bought. 

Outside the rain had stopped, and the pigeons came in force to enjoy the nice day.

Back home we took pictures of us with our bounty. 

Since you can't see the words on Gary's T-shirt, we took another shot.

For those who don't speak Spanish, it translates: "Handsome in danger of extinction."

That afternoon Gary had a "Big Mac Attack", so we had to walk down and have a visit with Ronald.

Week Three

We didn't get many pictures this week, so this blog will be short.  We've been busy in the temple, so we decided to take pictures of the chapel where we attend church.  It is on the temple property but is fenced off from the street.

This is the building we enter from the temple parking lot, go downstairs, and come out at this point to walk down to the chapel.  The chapel is small.  There is no Relief Society room, and the chapel has limited pews, but it is always full, and we have to use the overflow.

We planted some tomato seeds from a fresh tomato two weeks ago.  Here is all that has come up.  What do you think?  Are these tomatoes or weeds?

Next week's blog will be longer.  We have a fun outing planned for tomorrow.  Will take lots of pics!

We Survived Week Two!

This has been a really busy week for us.  On our P-Day, Monday, all the temple missionaries reported in the parking lot of the temple to learn how to put out fires.  Here are some photos.

 Here we are just standing around watching the demonstration from the temple maintenance people.   Pictured (l to r) are Elder Murri, Hermana Guzman, Elder Wilson, Hermana Cordon, Hermana Olson, President Burke, Elder Olsen, Hermana Thompson.

 Here is Hermana Cabellero putting out a fire. 

Hermana Guzman and Hermana Olson together putting out a fire.

On Tuesday we started a really big week in the temple.  We had a large group of people from Polochic.  They are indigenous Mayans and most of them speak no Spanish.  They speak one of the 20 some odd indigenous languages in Guatemala, Kekchi.  We have a few workers in the temple who speak some Kekchi, so it isn't easy to work with these people, but they are beautiful.  They wear the typica that is different in each village.  We had 23 own endowments done on Tuesday and several couples sealed with 20 some odd children sealed to parents.  The youth center was packed, and the children couldn't understand the workers, so we heard there was a lot of crying going on.  The sealings were going on until late in the evening, but it was a wonderful day.  The people stayed overnight and came back to do baptisms and other ordinances for family names they brought with them.  The rest of the week was equally busy and rewarding.  We were exhausted by Saturday night!

One night this week Dorine got up in the night and looked out the kitchen window, through the patio, and up at an angle and discovered that we have a view of Moroni from the window!

It's not easy to see in the daytime, but if you look closely, you can see him about in the middle of the center bottom square of the grate.  He's partly behind the grate, so he's hard to see, but below is a picture from the temple parking lot.

 We walked to the little nursery up the street and bought another begonia for our patio.  It makes it so pretty!

Tonight, Sunday, we went in two vans to the area offices where we attended our first "break the fast" with all the senior missionaries in the area.  It was a pot luck and was very good.  We were asked to introduce ourselves along with the Wilsons.

And here is Elder Eberhard enjoying the good food --yum, chocolate cake!