Appendicitis

During sacrament meeting an 11 year old girl, Rosita, was in a lot of pain. She held out until halfway through sunday school and then went to the hospital that is right next door to the church. Her family and friends waiting for her to come out of recovery.

 They had not had any lunch so we brought over brownies, peanuts, cups, and sprite. Her cousin Gabriella finishing off the drink and the last brownies.

Rosita's aunt works at the hospital and went back to the operating room after the surgery and got the appendics and gave it to her mom. They let us all have a look.

The poor sweetie was in a lot of pain, they don't give out much in pain medication here in Guatemala.

Zumba and mutual cooking activity

Rebeca teaching me a zumba dance with the young women in the branch.

Making pork, chicken, salsa, rice, and tortillas with the youth and young women leaders.

Carolina and Exon eating the yummy food.

 More of the crowd.

Elder Dixon and Melanie.

Valentine party for the branch

 For valentine's day we made cinnamon rolls.

 We took them around to some of the members' houses.

 Early Saturday morning we went to the butcher shop to get our beef ground.

 Luci made about 15 meatloafs with 30 pounds of beef.

 I taught Thalia, from Belize, how to make cake, frosting, and brownies. We made 81 cupcakes and 45 brownie squares with cream cheese frosting.

 Her youngest son, Jeson, showed Alan his karate moves. After taking them home we went to the church and put up streamers and balloons.

 In the courtyard of the church house, with a few of the 70 people that came to eat and play.

 Hitting the first pinata.

 The second pinata, made by Heydy, our primary president!

Everyone going crazy over the spilt candy. Then, we had games and cleaned up. We got home about 10pm.

When we got home there was no water again. The 450 gallon tank had filled up this afternoon, but we think that our flow control valve, which is supposed to prevent our water from leaving the property, is faulty. So once the city quit sending water, our tank sent all it's water back to the city. Nothing left for us...

Fortunately it rained again last night, Alan got up at 4am and put a bucket under the drain spout to catch enough water to use to flush our toilet for the next morning. We are hoping to have water running again when we get back from church. :)

New elders and birthday party

Our new elders are: Alvarado-Peru, Dixon-Idaho, and Moldenhauer-Chile, and we still have Elder Sanchez-Mexico.

The elders have been having problems with water, they think the tank is filling but doesn't, and then they don't have water in the morning to shower and wash dishes.

We made a new brownie recipe from Elder Dixon's mom and went to share them with some branch members. The elders were there showing a video and got to eat some too.

We took 2 of our elders to Coban Monday for medical purposes and got to celebrate President Faundez and Florentin Garrido's birthdays. They were both born Feb 13, 1963, they say they are twins. Florentin is Alan's counselor in the Branch Presidency in Fray. His wife is named Sonia, so she and I say we are name sisters.

 President and Florentin sharing the pizza.

All of the office elders, some visiting elders, us, the Garridos, and the Faundez at pizza hut-delicious!

Pizza party, power, and the end of our rope

 Alan is teaching some kids how to play the guitar, Anapaula.

 This lovely lady, Gabby, is now the branch music director.

 Gregorio

 We went to the mercado with a sister of some members. She wanted to show us the best places to shop and the price we should pay.

 We had the youth and primary over and taught them how to make pizza.

 Everyone loved it and it was a great success.

 The elders showed up in time to eat!

Melanie with another slice.
Some of the adult sisters asked if we could come to their house and teach them how to make pizza, so we went over on Tuesday and made 3 and gobbled them all up with their families. Sorry-no pictures!

Sunday our electricity went out while we were at church. We contacted the electric company, the owner called them, and the elders did too. All three of our houses had no electricity, ours for almost 5 days and the elders for 8 days.

Things here are musty and moldy even with our fans on 24/7, but without electricity it got even worse. We hung Alan's pillow in the window to dry it out. We washed a weeks worth of laundry by hand and the sun was out enough to dry all of them.

We cooked-chicken rice soup, and baked all of the meat in our freezer and gave some to the elders and some members who live close by.

The same day we found out that the storage unit that was housing our car in Utah was broken into. The police said homeless people on drugs were staying in the car and unit for quite awhile. All of our quilts, pillows, bath and body lotions, soap, and smellies, coats, shoes, and our favorite winter clothes we planned on using when we got back home had been stored in the car. They had been pulled out and used to the point that they now need to be thrown away. We were told that they might contain diseases.

Our battery was dead but they tried to start the car after breaking the ignition and stole the license plates. Just one more straw Lord!
Thankfully, things are beginning to get better now. And we can count our blessings now that the power is finally back on...
The freezer now has plenty of space due to throwing so much out, Alan's shirt collars are clean, since we had to do the laundry by hand and got the chance to scrub everything really good, we learned that we can charge 2 ipads, 3 phones, and get internet, all at the same time in our car if push comes to shove, and we found that the noise of a strong, all night rainstorm, beating on the tin roof, is enough to drown out the incessant crowing of the roosters when you can't run fans for background noise!