Matthews Mission in Guatemala: The road to Huehuetenango, Quiché Indian word for Way Way out there...Thoughts of an AMA

This week was pretty interesting. We were invited to Quetzaltenango to teach in a couple of multizone conferences. It a city surrounded by mountains in the north west corner of Guatemala at an altitude of 7600 feet. I served there for 5.5 months on my previous mission. We drove past Lake Atitlan on the way. It’s a large bright blue lake surrounded by volcanos. The main road to Quetzaltenango is pretty well maintained, but the side road was full of chuck holes and washed out sections. Our mission RAV4 doesn’t have very good shocks, and wasn’t fun to drive over these roads even slowly. The narrow twisty road wound over a couple of mountains and through a couple of deep canyons. When we arrived at a viewpoint over the lake, we were disappointed that it was so hazy we couldn’t see the volcanoes on the other side. Before they harvest sugar cane down on the coast, they burn the fields. The smoke rolls up into the mountains and the air can get pretty hazy. The photos were maybe a little better than the visual, a surprise.

After the lake, we went across a couple more mountains on chuckholed windy roads. It was nice to get back to the main highway. We GPS’d our way to the hotel and found it was very nice. It even had a view of the temple out of our window. We called President Díaz and he tried to explain where the first zone conference was, but we couldn’t find it on our maps, so he sent a couple of missionaries to pick us up. When I was here, the town was considerably smaller and we walked everywhere. The multizone conference went very well. President Díaz had asked me to give a health presentation and then talk about how the mission had changed since I’d worked here. The stats are impressive. The entire history of the church in Guatemala [in this dispensation] has happened in my life time: the first baptism was in 1948, the year I was born. I used some of the same statistics as I used in my farewell talk, so I won’t repeat them here except to say that it’s grown from 15,000 members and one stake in Guatemala and El Salvador when I was here to 392,000, seventy stakes and three temples. I believe that the increase in the rate of growth began when they started calling missionaries from Central America who served, then came back and strengthened their local wards and branches and were role models for the next generation of missionaries. After the zone conference we visited the new mission doctor and an elder who had broken his collar bone doing a bicycle kick in a soccer game. Thus violating the first principle of missionary health: don’t do stupid stuff.

The next day we went to a multizone conference in Huehuetenango, even farther north and again in the middle of the mountains. President Diaz picked us up at 5 am. It was 30 degrees F while we were driving up over the mountains and I could see my breath. The elevation there is only 6,200 feet though, The conference was similar to the one in Quetzaltenango. I did have a couple of elders who had been having back and shoulder trouble, so I taught them some exercises.

We came back and went to the temple that evening. My mom wanted to attend the dedication a few years ago, even saying she’d go alone, and was only dissuaded when she couldn’t get a ticket. I tried to be sensitive and felt the Spirit strongly at times during the session, but didn’t feel her presence. Getting through the veil in Spanish is still an adventure for me.

The next day we trained the two mission nurses. Well, one is a CNA and the other took a couple of years of sports medicine in high school so not really nurses, but they’re all we have and they have been doing a great job. One went to the high school Jenni is teaching at in Saratoga Springs and the other was from Meridian, Idaho.

When we were through with the official stuff, we found a a member I knew from before. He was a great support when I was here. I had an address from a nephew, but the street it was on is about 4 miles long. I asked one of the office elders if he knew which end to start on. He called the bishop of that ward who happened to be the member’s father. He was working and gave us another brother’s name who could go with us to the house. We found him, he’s 79 and his health is failing. We had a nice visit and a prayer then took some pictures. We felt like we were channeling President Monson by seeking out the one in need.

We went to gas up and go home. I went in to prepay and left the keys in the Toyota, which automatically locked up after about two minutes. Fortunately there was a lock smith close and he was able to get the car unlocked after about 45 minutes of trying. He looked like he was about 15, and wasn’t tall enough to see in very well and the side windows are tinted, so we gave him a challenge. I admit after about twenty minutes of him trying, I started praying that he would be able to do it. My prayers were answered, but as is common, not immediately.

The drive home wasn’t bad until we got to the outskirts of Guatemala City where they diverted us off the main highway. Apparently a semi had jackknifed and blocked the road and killed five people. We had to get the GPS going to find out how to get home. Then we hit the dreaded Friday evening rush hour. We got home, had a snack, then went to the airport to pick up some kits for Patsy’s newborn baby kit project. Patsy has been working with a lady in Utah who has been organizing groups to make the baby kits. She arranged for 50 kits to be brought down by a lady who is the Utah director of Choice Humanitarian. We went to the airport and while standing there with a sign waiting, we met the Guatemalan couple who are the local directors of the Choice Humanitarian organization. Friday was pretty uneventful. Saturday we cleaned the apartment, did a little shopping, then I got about 20 emails and calls about people needing care, including our first case of Zika virus. It’s dangerous if you are pregnant, not something we’re very worried about with our missionaries. Otherwise it’s mostly like a mild cold and you can only get it once.