Wake and funeral for Louis Fernando Osorio, age 26

It's blurry, but we are scalding, plucking, and cleaning more than 20 chickens to feed people tomorrow.

Inside the kitchen 6-8 neighbor women are patting corn tortillas to cook for everyone to eat tomorrow. Large kettles of corn are boiling to make atol and chilate in the morning. They had over 100 people that they fed rolls and horchata during the wake in the evening. They did another feeding of 100 at about midnight, then more at 5am. They were awake all night.

The next morning we went over and helped cook chicken, roast veggies, clean dishes, and anything else they asked us to do. They fed us chilate.

 Julisse is 4,very cute and contrary at times. Her mouth is full of chilate.

 Eating chicken pinol with the corn tortillas.

They carried the coffin to his house, then to the main catholic church (for a funeral mass), and then to the opposite end of town, where there is another catholic church (the calvario) and the catholic cemetary. One of the elders helped carry the coffin a bit at the beginning. The men were switching out with others quite a bit because it was heavy and they carried it a long way. There was also a brass band playing the whole time. (Sort of like a New Orleans funeral, but no jazz.)

 At the cemetary they lowered the coffin into the ground.

 The men and elders took turns filling in the hole.

 Panarama of the cemetary after most people had left.

All the flowers on top of the grave. In the background you can see a man selling snow cones. Another man was selling oranges cut in half with cinnamon and sugar on top. They are very interprising and know where they can sell their wares.

General Conf and Zone P-day

We watched Saturday conference in Salama on our Ipad so we could hear it in English. Sunday morning we tried to show it to the branch in Rabinal with our modem but it kept stopping. It was hard to keep the train of thought going while you waited for the talk to begin again. Sunday afternoon we went to Salama again and listened to it in English. What a wonderful meeting!

Monday we changed our P-day so we could hike to the chorros, (or pool and waterfalls), with the zone. 10 of the 12 missionaries hiked.

It was very hot, almost 100, and when a local pick-up came by the 10 of us jumped in with about 12 locals. We were packed like sardines but it was fun!

 The pool and waterfalls.

One of the missionaries was on a rock jumping and his name tag fell into the water. They can't swim but Alan and I can. I started in and saw it was over my head so Alan took his shirt off and looked for the tag for about 30 minutes.

 No luck finding it.

We jogged and walked back to our house and I made Philly cheese sandwiches and hamburger stroganoff on rice and pasta. They said it was Tan Rico y bueno, very rich and good.

Zone meeting in Salama

It rained and the frogs/toads came out. We were told they are poisonous and not to touch them, he was bigger than my fist.

We memorize different scriptures and our purpose as missionaries to begin each district and zone meeting. They do it in English, Spanish, and Q'eqchi.

                                 Missionaries at zone meeting.

 2 sisters we love, sister Gomez from DR is the nurse for Coban until she goes home in September. Sister Ball goes home in 2 weeks to Orem. She went to Cherry Hill Elementary.

Walking home at the end of the day. In about a minute the sun was gone completely.

Guatemala City and Zone Conf in Salama

This week we got to go to Guate City to go to the temple. We stayed with the temple President and his wife, The Normans. The next day they took us to a big mall, we got to eat lunch at Panda Express and then go see Beauty and the Beast. Wow, it was just like being at home, the movie was even in English!

On the way to a meeting with the mission president in Salama, we were stuck on the highway for a few hours. A union was striking and they closed the highway until noon. Luckily, the mission president was waiting to come from the other direction, so we made it to the chapel an hour before they did.

We had our zone conference at the Salama chapel and then had lunch on the back lawn. We ate under a mango tree that kept dropping fruit when the wind blew:)

These are the sisters in our zone and sister Faundez. We're a small zone with 5 sisters and 11 elders.

Bugs and food

 This was in the street to gross us out.

 This was in our bedroom in our laundry, we had one crawl under our kitchen door a month ago, yuk!

 In happier news, we have a mango tree growing over our roof and we can't wait until they are ripe.

 We tried a new fruit this week, macheton. It's a piece of fruit around the brown seed, we enjoyed it!

 These young women wanted to make a cake for their school, so I helped them out.

 The young women went to school and the primary kids helped me decorate and we made cupcakes.

Waiting for the cupcakes to get done, then we decorated them and they each took some home to their families.

Youth activities

 Played soccer with the youth yesterday.

 I was goalie most of the time.

 This afternoon we taught 6 youth and 2 missionaries how to make lasagne and then ate it all gone.

Afterwards they started kicking the soccer ball around and broke this water spicket. Luckily, Alan was able to fix it! We had no water for a couple of hours.

 Yesterday we noticed this new 'Chinese' restaurant in town.

We took the elders over and tried it out tonight and it was really good! The big plates were about $6 and the small plates were about $3.50

The first week of March

We had exchanges last week and lost Elder Monsalve. We went without missionaries for almost a week and they were sorely missed by everyone. Now we have a brand new Elder from Honduras, Elder Reconco along with Elder Chavez.

Silvia and her mother-in-law made atol for the old folks home and invited us over in the morning to taste it. It is a gruel drink of corn flour with sugar and cinnamon, not bad!

 We had the youth and primary over saturday to teach them how to make cookies. We made peanutbutter with hersey's kisses on top and chocolate chip cookies. They each took a bag home for their families and the rest we took over to the old folks homes in Rabinal and Cubulco.

 Fed atol and cookies to these sweeties.

Went to Rabinal ancianos and fed them atol and cookies also. They said they can't wait until we come back again.

 Our new favorite thing here in Rabinal, Donuts with a cream filling with a hint of coconut, MMM!

 We bought 40 bread rolls for about $5.50 and filled them with refried black beans. We had a night of fellowship at our house. We had 25 people but 3 had to leave, because of some mental health issues. It was a little scary, but the night turned out well with everyone well fed and happy.

Everyone had 2 or 3 bean-filled rolls and I made carmel popcorn also, all was gone in about 15 minutes, except this much of the beans.