Jamie's visit to Pacaya, Antigua, and Rabinal

 We hiked Pacaya volcano on Friday, it was fun, Princesa and Wendy helped us make it up.

They wouldn't let us hike beyond this point because the volcano was very active, spewing rocks and booming.

 This is volcan agua behind us.

 A little rest with the city in the background.

 Walking around Antigua.

Found the store, Nim Pot and looked around, we also went into the chocolate museum and Alan bought a $7 candy bar.

After walking around Antigua we went to Oakland mall and ate Panda Express, a crepe, and watched the movie, A quiet place. It had good actors, was intense, but weird, hardly any talking.

We loved the crepes.

 Saturday morning we got up at 5:45 and went to Rabinal and visited Auggie and Carmen.

 We got to drink chocolate chilate, yummy! Jamie wasn't sure when we told her it was a corn drink the day before, but after trying it, she really liked it.

 We visited Juan Ruiz' family, they are so sweet.

 We visited Juan Reyes and Maria Tomasa.

 Maricruz and her family.

 We went to Palamonix and Jamie got to try and make tortillas.

 We ate paches, a traditional dish made of mashed potato, tomato gravy, and a piece of chicken.

 We danced with the kids. They all loved Jamie.

 4 year old Julisse, she warmed up to me again!

Ofelia, Yuly, Silvia, Danilo, Juana (the abuelita), Jamie, Alan, Cristofer, Tina, Kristal, Me, Juana, Jackeline, Dailyn, and Andrea.

 They walked us over the suspension bridge, they call it the hammock bridge.

The new Rabinal sign going out of town on our way to Fray.

P-day and birthday BBQ

 There are so many wonderful looking birds here, with many different colors and songs. We caught this one sitting on the fence in front of the church building.

 We took our P day to see how the road to Semuc Champey was from Fray. 15 kilometers of pavemant and then 3 hours of gravel, rocks, and boulders. We felt like we were in a washing machine for two hours, most of the time just barely crawling along in 4 wheel drive. When we finally got to the turnoff and final leg of the trip, rather than spend the last hour on roads that were probably worse, we chickened out and took a paved road, which continued on to Coban. The scenery was beautiful though!

 One of the little towns we went through. The kids would see us and shout gringos. We gave a piece of candy to a few walking on the road that smiled and waved at us and a man carrying wood on his back with a strap on his forehead.

 Hills upon hills. So beautiful. But we probably won't try driving it again :(
 Along the way, we hit a road block. A man was out in the middle of the road with a pick axe, and had placed some big rocks across the road so we couldn't pass. We asked the price for passing and were told 100 Quetzales. Alan asked if that was the gringo price or the "chapin" (native guatemalan) price. He said everyone pays it. :) So we said we weren't going to pay it, and started turning around to go back. He came down to Q25, very quick, and then finally just opened it up for us to pass. We gave him Q20 and went through. It is common that people pretend to be fixing roads (some actually do real repairs to potholes, but some appear to be creating potholes instead) in order to get money. It is a kind of panhandling with a twist.

We got home and I made cupcakes to celebrate Cristina and Esdras' birthdays and we went over and helped build a fire to grill the chicken.

 Esdras dipped the tortillas in the chicken drippings and grilled them as well.

 Angel, Melaney, and Cristopher ran around in their hero capes and played soccer until time to eat.

 11 adults and 3 kids, with grilled chicken, spaghetti, and salad. Delicious!

The kids knocked themselves out with all their energy gone and full stomachs.

Cookies, lizards, and trip to Guatemala City

 Florentin, Alan's counselor in the branch, gave us a bottle of molasses made on his property and we used it in making cookies to take around to some of the members. They were very good cookies!

 One day we caught this gecko on our front door trying to get inside.

 The next day this lizard was getting some shade from our car. There are a lot of lizards here. When they run, they pull them selves up onto their two hind legs and take off. they are very fast.

 We drove 8 hours to the capitol and stayed with John and Chris Norman, the temple president and matron (his wife). They had all the temple missionaries, along with the nurses from the MTC, come to his house for FHE. One nurse was leaving for home the next morning and her replacement was there. Everyone told of something that touched them from general conference. It was a touching and spiritual evening.

 The next afternoon, after we did a session at the temple, the Normans took us to Antigua. We saw the church, Capuchinas, built in 1736 for Franciscan nuns.

 I love the arches, fountains, and wooden doors.

 This is where the nuns did their laundry.

 2nd floor looking down on the courtyard. My camera battery died, but there was so much more to see.

We went to the bus station, they had hundreds of buses of all different colors, going all over the country.

 We ate at Pollo Campero and then headed to the market shops. They are very colorful and we ended up buying a wool poncho for Alan, and a purse that I can use for my temple clothes.

The next day we did another session at the temple, did our food shopping, and headed home. Between El Rancho and La Cubre the road is falling down the mountainside. These workers are building the road up underneath. Sometimes there are landslides onto the road, called "derrumbes" and sometimes the dirt under the road itself caves in (like in this picture), and slides down the mountain. These are called "hundimientos".  Both are fairly common here. In this area they're both within a few hundred yards of each other.  We made it home in 8 hours. Along the way, we had a small miracle.

   
We had planned on getting gas in Coban, but didn't watch our gauge. 1 1/2 hours later, we noticed our gas light was on. We were traveling through little villages, but there were no gas stations until the next big town, called Chisec. We watched and prayed as the gas gauge hit the "E" for empty, and we still had several kilometers to go. We were constantly going up and down hills, so we were using quite a bit of gas. I felt like we could stall at any moment. Then something happened. The needle for the gas gauge slowly started rising. After a few kilometers it showed almost 1/8 of a tank, and the light went off. It sat that way for a few minutes, as we passed through two more villages, then started going back down normally again. Within  another 15 minutes, we had arrived at Chisec and stopped at a gas station. The gauge light was on and the needle was back on "E" again. We had just made it! We are certain that we received help from the other side to get there.

Pre-Easter and Easter Conference

 Rosita, love these youth and children!

 Traditional Easter salad with beets, pacaya, carrots, green beans, etc, with vinager and olive oil.

In between conference we had an activity with Christ's last days in plastic eggs, reading scriptures that go with little items inside the egg.

 We decorated and colored hardboiled eggs.

 We had plastic eggs filled with candy that they hunted afterward.

 Sunday conference we had 39 people.

Had egg salad sandwiches for Easter lunch.