Relief Society- feeding 24 at the elderly home

 Plucking the chickens at Hermana Silvia's house.

 Taking them to clean and cut.

 Cleaning and cutting the 4 chickens.

 Preparing vegetables

 Cooking the chicken and stiring with a wooden stick.

 The rice is done.

 Riding over in the back of an old truck.

 Singing carols to the abuelitos, as they call them.

 Passing out the plates of food.

 It was very good, we loved the sauce, tortillas, and rice.

Here are some of the folks there at the home.

 We passed out sweaters for the cool nights afterwards.

They were very happy and appreciated getting them and the food.

Multi-zone conference and Christmas eve

Alan got his shoes shined for .50 in the plaza or town center.

 He wanted them shined for our conference the next morning.

We got up early Friday and drove to Coban for a Christmas conference. Each of the 3 areas had a choir and Alan and I sang Oh Estrella. We had 63 missionaries and we all bore our testimonies. It started at 9:30 and ended just before 2.

 After our meeting we had a wonderful turkey, mashed potato, and salad lunch.

 After it was over we went shopping for kitchen ware and items I can cook with. After 5 weeks in Guatemala I made our first hot meal of rice and chili!

 That night, Christmas eve, our neighbor and landlady Hermana Ophelia, gave us traditional Guatemalan tamales. A piece of boned chicken wrapped in mashed potato and sauce and cooked in a banana leaf. It was great!

We went to the town square and looked at the lights and all the people celebrating and buying food and things at the stalls. At midnight until 1am they all shot off fireworks that riveled the 4th of July.

Our Apartment in Rabinal and the branch/group Christmas party in Culbulco

 I'm on the roof where I hang our laundry to dry, looking down on the patio area.

 The patio area where we park our car, the Elder's apartment is the door in the far right corner.

 The unfinished fountain where you can do laundry if you fill the basin with water.

 Where I do laundry and wash our dishes. I don't use the dryer because it uses too much electricity.

 Our outdoor kitchen; I'm excited to go to Coban and Guatemala City to find pots, pans, and all the other items we need for it.

 Our outdoor dining table and tree stump seats that the owner let us use. The door on the right is our bedroom and the door on the left is our kitchen.

 We had these 3 guys make us a custom kitchen cabinet in about 25 minutes that cost $17.50.

 Our kitchen, living, and dining room.

 Our bedroom.

 Making a cake for our branch Christmas party tonight. It sliced into 55 pieces and I used the left-over icing on about 50 graham crakers. We planned on 90 people but had 120 come.

 Cubulco choir singing, Rabinal had a choir also, but I couldn't take a picture because we were singing!

 The youth and children did a re-enactment of the nativity.

They really got into it and loved dressing up and acting their parts.

Dishing up plates of beef, refried beans, rice, and home-made corn tortillas. We ran out of plates, cups, forks, and tortillas after 100 plates and went out to buy more tortillas and plates and the last 20 people used their hands to eat. We had a traditional warm fruit punch. It was all very good and I think everyone had a great time.

From Coban to Rabinal

 Rabinal members after our leadership meeting and 2 Elders from Cubulco.

 We stayed the night in a hotel in Rabinal and the next morning walked all over town getting to know it a little. We met a teenage girl and her 2 cousins; she said she was a member of the church and we went to see where they lived. It was outside of town, over the river, and going up into the hills.

 It was like stepping into another time with loads carried on the head.

 Doing laundry in the river.

Meanwhile, back in Coban we started packing for our move to Rabinal. Our shoes were under the bed and when I pulled these out they were molding. The leather on Alan's scriptures was starting to mold also. We will be in a much drier place in Rabinal but after the heat there this summer I think we'll miss the cooler moist weather of Coban!

Getting into the Christmas Spirit

We helped the other office missionaries decorate the Mission office in Coban, With Elder Vargas, Paris, and Reyes.

 Elder Recios and Vargas.

With the weather between 75-50 degrees, it doesn't feel much like Christmas.

The decorations, music, and people makes it nice! Alan got himself a guitar for his birthday present.

Watching the Christmas Devotional with Alan at our chapel in Coban while everyone else was at the Stake center. It was in Spanish but we understood most of it!

Almost 2 weeks in Coban

 This is our room in Coban, we have a bathroom that we wash our clothes in and hang up to dry. After 3 days they are still damp, but dry enough to put on. Our night stand is our kitchen!

 I'm trying to get warm on our couch.

 Our closet and food pantry.

 Our one and only Christmas decoration.

 We went to the temple last week and they had a group of about 100 Quechi, (natives), from the north hills driven down. They have a woman in Utah that pays for them to go to the temple once a year. They spend the night in dormatories and the men find places to sleep all over. They are very humble, happy, and colorful people.

 This picture was at the Temple President's house, Alan and I loved it! The waters of Mormon that are thought to be here in Guatemala.

 The hillsides here in Coban are very wet and green.

 These are the hills outside of Rabinal. They are more dry and have less trees than Coban.

 The chapel in Rabinal. It has 2 rooms for the youth and primary children, an office, women's bathroom inside and a men's bathroom outside. After we got here we were told we would not be working in the mission office in Coban, but Alan would be the Branch President in Rabinal. They have 25-35 people who come and he wants us to make it a ward of over 150 people.

This doesn't begin to show the road to Rabinal, to say the least it is windy and carsick worthy.