Matthews Mission in Guatemala: Voyage to the volcano's eruption. Or at least to San Juan Alotenango

Thoughts of the AMA - Last week I had to consult with a number of mission presidents about whether several missionaries should go home for medical or emotional reasons. This is one of the most difficult aspects of the calling. Knowing that it may affect the missionary’s future considerably, it is done with thought, prayer and consultation with the president and the missionary department staff in Salt Lake. Some decisions are easy: the elder in a mountainous mission with no driving areas who has persistent knee pain. We sent him home for further diagnostic tests and a recommendation that he go to a mission where he won’t have to walk ten miles a day on cobblestone streets. Other cases are considerably more difficult. A sister had repeated bouts of nausea and diarrhea in the MTC then fainted and was unresponsive for a half hour. On getting to her mission, she mentioned visual problems, had stomach pain, then complained of severe knee and neck pain. In four months, she was seen by medical people on 20 occasions. It is difficult to know whether these diverse physical problems are all real, or are symptoms of an underlying psychological cause. Do we keep her in the mission and pursue solutions, knowing that her companion won’t be working either as they wait in doctor’s offices or while the sister talks to the mental health counselor? Since the Church self insures with the young missionaries, how much of my 86 year old mother in law's tithing do we spend? Tough decisions, but always made with medical and ecclesiastical consultation, thought and prayer.

Monday we are having the second half of a Book of Mormon geography family home evening. Elder Mask served in Central America as a youth missionary, then was an area president in the Caribbean and temple president in Guatemala City. He’s developed a schematic map drawn from geographical references from the Book of Mormon. It’s fascinating. Geography isn’t anything to build a testimony on, but can be interesting.

Spoiler alert! Many people believe that most of it occurred in Guatemala, the Yucatan and Southern Mexico and postulate two Cumorahs. One where the last Nephite battle took place, the other where Moroni hid the plates. There is big time gap between 400 AD when Moroni pretty much said he was through writing and 421 when he really finished. What went on during those 21 years? “ Brigham Young announced the [Manti] temple site 25 June 1875 and dedicated the site on 25 April 1877. Earlier that...morning, he had taken Warren S. Snow with him to the southeast corner of the temple site and told him, “Here is the spot where the Prophet Moroni stood and dedicated this piece of land for a Temple site, and that is the reason why the location is made here, and we can’t move it from this spot.”“ [1978 Ensign from lds.org]

Did Moroni dedicate the temple site while packing 40 pounds of golden plates up from Southern Mexico to Upstate New York? Patriarch William McBride speaking at a prayer meeting in St. George in 1881 recalled many experiences of the Nauvoo period and conversations with Joseph Smith and talked of “Moroni dedicating the Temple sites of what we now call St. George, Nauvoo, Jackson County, Kirtland, and others we know not of as yet.” [Diary of Charles Lowell Walker] Quoted in an interesting chapter in a study manual: “Moroni, the Last of the Nephite prophets” by H. Donl Peterson emeritus professor of ancient scripture at BYU. A couple of crude maps drawn by McBride and Andrew M. Hamilton are included showing the route Moroni took starting in “Sentral” America and ending in New York. rsc.byu.edu/archived/book-mormon-fourth-nephi-through-moroni-zion-destruction/18-last-nephite-prophets

So people in the pioneer times thought that Moroni was pretty busy. I assume that sometime in the next life Moroni will give a fireside talk and tell us the whole story of his life. I’m looking forward to that. Then Abinidai, Mormon, Samuel the Lamanite and ... Maybe the after life won’t be a place of peace and rest. There’ll be missionary work to do too. I’m getting tired just thinking about it, maybe I better grab a nap here!

Friday the dental clinic is closed. We went with three of the dental couples to try and see the places where the pyroclastic material from the Fuego Volcano came down. We were stopped by police at a road block and informed we had to go back to Alotenango, where the disaster response team was headquartered, to get permission. After much driving down narrow, sometimes steep cobblestone streets, we found the headquarters and were told that they only allowed visitors to a certain point, and only until 11 am. It was 11:30 then and the municipal official wouldn’t budge even though we told him that Jay Harris was a famous dentist who’d been fixing up Guatemalans for a year and half on his own dime and was going back to the US on Tuesday. The fellow did say we could get permission to go Saturday. I said “sure”, knowing we probably wouldn’t make the 2 hour drive the next day. He asked for my ID. Immigration here made a copy of my passport info, and that’s my official ID for here. I showed it to him, then went to the cars to get everyone else’s ID, and no one else had one, so I got an official permission for myself [see below], but couldn’t get permission for anyone else. So this was my souvenir:

The ride up and back though, was incredibly scenic and worth it. If you want to see the path of the eruption, go on Google maps and search for Volcan de Fuego and zoom in on the gray streaks coming down from the top. You can see where the pyroclastic eruptions went. One went to the edge of a clearly visible golf course, which was our intended destination. The road we were on went between the volcanoes Agua and Fuego. They rose over seven thousand feet above us, and the base of Agua is right at the edge of the town.

Saturday night the senior missionaries had a farewell dinner for the Harrises and Jergensens who have served here in the dental clinic. They have given free dental care for 18 months to incoming missionaries, orphans and other low income Guatemalans. We had soup and salads. There are some really good cooks down here.

We worked on some hygiene kits to distribute with our new born baby kits. Many of the moms come in to the hospital without tooth brushes or shampoo, so Patsy in her quest to mother pretty much every disadvantaged person in Guatemala got me buying supplies for them. We put soap, lotion, shampoo and conditioner, a comb, a tooth brush and tooth paste and tissues in the kits. Sharon and Terry Smith, the other AMAs went to Utah for a family event and are bringing a couple of hundred more newborn baby kits down, so we won’t be idle. We've distributed over 800 so far. We are constantly astounded and grateful for the unselfish efforts of people taking time to make kits to comfort new mothers whom they will never meet. Thanks to all of you who have supported that project.

Photo 1, a pickup full of pigs, one started annoying the others

Photo 2. So the pig wrangler grabbed the offending pig by the ears, lifted him up

and moved him over!

For good health and domestic tranquility, remember to wash your hands before lunch

and clean your boots before going into the house.

Fields on a hill outside Alotenango. Almost everything is planted by hand here.

Lively 18 month old twins during Sunday School. We do have a problem with a certain

grandmother who whips out her phone and takes photos even during sacrament meeting

A little blurry, couldn't get them to hold still

The girl is the most adventuresome, sometimes during sacrament meeting she'll go up on

the stand and walk all the way across and down the other side.

Shot of Agua Volcano from Antigua, the original capital of Guatemala. Antigua is 5,000 feet high, the volcano 12,200 feet high. There is a tiny plume of smoke part way up in the middle.

That's someone burning either garbage or their field prior to replanting.

The white cloud at the top is just that, this volcano is inactive.