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!

Temple wedding and a baptism

 A sister from Cubulco, Lidia, got married to a return missionary, Aaron Barraro. She asked Alan to be a witness at their sealing and I got to be her escort. What a beautiful, sweet spiritual experience!

 Man and wife for eternity in the house of the Lord.

 Guatemala City temple

 The beautiful bride

 We raced back to Fray for a baptism Saturday morning of 17 year old Juan.

 It's been raining all week and the river is very high and full of dirt, but that didn't stop him,

 Elder Sanchez baptized him.

The group then ate chocolate rice drink and cake.

family home evening and multi-zone conference

 We had FHE in the church to talk about planning ahead and how the families need to pray, read scriptures, and have FHE in their homes. Alan did an object lesson with balancing a can on knives suspended from other cans and how you need to have a plan to be successful.

 After our lesson we made play dough and ate chocolate chip cookies and pop.

 We took our 4 elders with us to Coban for a multi-zone conference to hear an area 70 speak. Elder Zeballos and his wife spoke about having the spirit and learning another language. President Faundez spoke on keeping the rules and helping your companion keep them as well. Sister Faundez spoke on teaching with the spirit to convert people and not just baptizing for numbers.

 We had a wonderful lunch afterwards and then we drove to Guatemala City.

We watched The Greatest Showman at Oakland mall, we enjoyed the singing and dancing very much.

Birthday party, tarantulas, and birds

 We were at the birthday party for 7 year old Christopher and they found this little one in the grass.

 Fun photos with Dalia, Anapaula, and Rosita.

 My turn.

 2 pinatas, this is the birthday boy getting ready to hit the mark.

The mission president and his assistants came through town and they took the broken washer and dryer we couldn't use back to Coban. When they moved the dryer there were 2 tarantulas living under neither. Thank goodness Alan killed them.

 We always get a bunch of brids were we live. These are vultures, but we get a ton of other pretty birds that have great songs.

Close up.