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.

Temple trip to Guatemala City

We had a temple trip with the youth and young adults this weekend. 

It is a long ways to the temple. We had to plan it all for Friday and Saturday so no one would miss school or work.

 Starting out with 19 people in the van at 10PM Friday.

 We encountered 3 accidents en route to the temple.

 Waiting at one of the accidents. It took us 10 1/2 hours to get to the temple from Fray.

We got to the temple at 8:30AM Saturday, the youth changed into Sunday clothes and then waited an hour to get started with another group of youth to do baptisms. We finished at 12:30 and ate lunch.

We all ate across the street from the temple and then took some pictures. (Two people are missing from the photo.) Then we got back in the van and drove 9 hours back to Fray.

We stopped for a bathroom break in El Rancho. When we pulled in there was a missionary in fromt of the car, eating ice cream. It was Elder Alvarado heading to the capitol to fly home! It was a tender mercy that we saw each other again and that the branch was able to say goodbye to him. Several of the members were in tears to see him again.

Juan's baptism, Soyla's birthday, and Justin's book

 Last Saturday we had the baptism of 27 year old Juan Lopez.

Elder Short, Juan, E. Dixon, E. Moldenhauer, and E. Merida at the baptismal site.

 Elder Dixon baptiszed Juan.

 All done. Sunday elder Dixon confirmed him and Alan ordained him to the office of priest.

Soyla invited all the missionaries to her birthday dinner and party. She's a sweet widow who takes care of 1 year old Adrian, while his parents, Nery and Gabriella work.

We all said something about her, sang happy birthday, and ate tostadas and tres leche cake, mmm!

Our son, Justin, just finished his first of a four book series. It's on to the translators now and should be out next year.

The line will be, Master of Sorrows: Every Master Was Once An Apprentice. We can't wait to read it!

Water, Baptism, and visits with the Garrido family

Our water tank usually looks fairly clear like it is above. Last week we had some problems with getting water for a couple of days and then when we did get it, it was like they were pumping it straight out of a dirty river, as in the picture of our tank below. It smelled as bad as it looked.

We were spitz bathing with our drinking water and washing our hands and dishes with our bottled water. Fortunately, the second day it started coming in clearer and smelling better.

Saturday we had a baptism of 23 year old Ines. She has been taking the discussions since September and would have been baptized in December, but her father doesn't want any of his family leaving the Catholic church. Her 18 year old sister came to be with her, we have hopes that this may open the door for other members of her family to join as well.

 Elder Moldenhauer and Ines.

 Everyone eating after the baptism.

 That evening, Luki invited the missionaries over for fried chicken at Heidy and Carmen's house.

 MMM, it was like KFC, with corn on the cob and garlic mashed potatoes.

After Ines was confirmed Sunday afternoon, we were invited to Esther's house for lunch. Yummy rice with beans, veggie salad, and tepezcuintle or paca.

We didn't know what we were eating until we got home and looked it up, here it is. It is about the size of a large rabbit and supposed to be a delicacy.

We then went to the hospital to visit Jennifer, she needs her gall bladder taken out this week.

Zone conf, Rebeca's birthday, weevils

Multi-zone conference in Coban. It's so nice seeing elders we have worked with before, Elder Chavez was in Rabinal the first 4 months we were there. We talked a lot about the plan of salvation.

 Rebeca turned 14, her mom invited all the missionaries over for meatloaf and cake.

It's tradition that the birthday person take a bite out of the cake, elder Sanchez pushed her face into it, that's a tradition too!

 It was yummy tres leche cake.

I went to make lasagne yesterday and found most of our lasagne noodles had weevils. We killed the weevils and threw away most of the boxes. All the rest of my noodles are in the fridge now.