Two Fridays ago, our branch from El Cerinal had a temple day. They were scheduled to leave at 5 am to come up in a rented bus. Wanting to support them, we went over to the temple and dressed for the 7 am session. Only a few branch members were in that session. The fellow that received me thru the veil is a branch member who is maybe five feet tall. We found out that most of the rest of the members did baptisms first, then went to the 8 am session. There is a cafeteria and distribution center across the street from the temple where they can eat lunch and buy needed supplies. The bus didn't leave to go back until about 3 pm, so a lot of work got done. After the session we visited with more branch members, then went to the office.
Patsy continues to help the MTC nurse figure out which incoming missionaries need tuberculosis testing, and she also helps the mental health advisor enter her clinical notes in the electronic medical record. Some of the notes are in English, so she can just enter them, some are in Spanish, so she has to translate them first, then enter them. I generally get 8 or 10 texts, calls or emails about missionary health problems every day. Since I have all the Spanish speaking mission presidents in the area, some will ask me to call the English speaking parents and discuss health issues with them. After I have taken taken care of those requests and entered my notes in the electronic medical record, I often have time to read about the common medical problems and try to familiarize myself more with the medicines that are locally available. Brand names of medicines are often different in each country, so I always recommend the generic version. Even if the pharmacist doesn't have the generic, he'll at least know what I am requesting. Very few medicines, including antibiotics and psychotropic medications, require a physician's prescription, so even though I'm not licensed in any of the countries down here, I can tell the missionaries what to buy, and they just go to the pharmacy and pick it up.
One of the sister missionaries in our branch came down with typhoid fever, despite being immunized for it premission. We visited her and helped coordinate her care. She was having a reaction to the indicated antibiotic that the clinic prescribed for her, so we got her switched to another effective one from a different family. She was extremely weak and I told her mission president she might not be able to work for two weeks, but a week later, she was working full time. Between getting blessings, timely and appropriate medical care and being young and strong, it's great to see how well the missionaries do. This hermana is from Argentina and I love to hear her say her ll sounds, reminds me of the way my dad and sister who served there talk.
Monday evening we went to FHE to welcome some new temple missionaries. The temple president finishes in November, he's done great work down here. He's a gringo and being replaced by a Guatemalan. The temple in Honduras has a Honduranian president. About 50% of our mission presidents in Central America are from somewhere in Latin America. It's not a gringo church anymore.
Wednesday Patsy helped the MTC nurse process the hundred or so new missionaries. She helps screen their health questionaire and immunization record and helps the MTC nurse organize the needed immunizations. Many of the missionaries coming from Central America haven't had any immunizations, so coordinating the administration of the needed ones to a big group is a huge task Patsy started at 8:45 and didn't finish until 7 pm.
We went to the airport at 6:15 one morning to pick up about 200 stuffed dolls and bears sent down from Dolls of Hope with a humanitarian group. The people in the group are physical therapy students from the U of U down to screen people in some of the Indian towns for physical problems and try to educate them on exercises and therapies that would help their conditions. There are many brother's keepers doing humanitarian work down here - willing volunteers coming at their own expense. Some by LDS Church members and some by other good people. There's a lot of cynicism and selfishness in the world, but there's also a lot of good selfless service too.
We celebrated our 44th wedding anniversary Friday and Saturday with a Facebook post and a varied itinerary.
We drove to Antigua, Guatemala--the old colonial capital which was destroyed five times by earthquakes over two hundred years. In 1773, the survivors moved to Guatemala City, but Antigua lives on as a popular tourist destination. We had lunch there, then drove to the hospital San Felipe where we distributed 40 newborn baby kits and 30 stuffed bears generously provided by Dolls of Hope and delivered to us by Humanize Expeditions.
We then returned to Antigua where we had booked a room in the Hotel Casa Santo Domingo, a ruined Dominican monastery. It's now a 5-star luxury hotel with museums on site. The brick and stone walls of the monastery and church are 2.5 to 4 feet thick. The earthquakes that tumbled some of them down must have been incredibly powerful. We had a nice dinner. Pricey, but not exorbitant. The waiter asked what country we were originally from and brought a US flag and placed it on our table. It was a nice touch. The room had a big bathtub, a rarity down here. I took my first hot bath in 8 months. It's hard to chill out in a shower, no matter how warm.
In the morning we had their nice, but not spectacular breakfast, which we thought was included with the room rental. Oops, the waiter presented us our bill, $32 each. Ouch. After feeling burned by that experience, we drove back down past Alotenango to the police check point and on to the devastation of one of the branches of the Fuego eruption.
It was quite interesting. The ash/steam/gas material covered a lot of the east side of the upper part of the volcano, then came down creek beds. It hit the road to the coast and covered it with what looked like at least three feet of ash. The trees way up on the side of the gully were scorched and killed by the heat. There were monuments to people killed in the eruption. The highway crew was scraping the ash off the roadway with bull dozers and the biggest steam shovel I've ever seen. I cannot imagine the panic and suffering of those in the villages that were buried by the eruption. The ash is fine grained gray pumice.
Ash flow in small stream bed
Original road in at the left front, ash covered the road to a depth of three or four feet
Looking up the gully, notice the dead trees on the sides. The rains have carved out a little stream bed in the center of the picture.
Monument to one of the victims. Many bodies have not yet, and may never be recovered.
Shot from the road looking up the gully, notice where the ash layer has been dug away to clear the road. The round rocks were swept down the gully and onto the road and have been piled out of the way. Note that the volcano is smoking.
There haven't been any recent eruptions, but the cone was smoking. Notice the contrast between the gray ash on part of the mountain and the trees on the rest. The inactive volcanoes are completely covered with green trees. Haziness is normal here, I'm not sure if it's from the humidity, wood smoke from cooking fires, soot from diesel buses and trucks who haven't had their injectors adjusted; or ash from the volcano, or all of the above.
In a somber mood we started back toward Antigua, but were cheered up when we saw a hay wagon, or what passes for one down here.
We went back and drove to a lookout above Antigua, Cerro de la Cruz. Hill of the Cross. Antigua is laid out on a gridiron pattern, probably the only one in Guatemala. Most town's planners apparently didn't understand what a right angle is. Blocks in most towns are random shapes and sizes and streets run at all kinds of angles to each other. As we were driving back up a dirt access road that we'd taken down to the lookout point, we saw a rather feeble grandmother being helped up the hill to the main parking lot by her two middle aged daughters. We asked if we could give her a ride. Her two daughters struggled to try to help her into the car, and a passing man quickly came over and helped them. Guatemalans have a sweet spirit of community and helping. It's a lot different than many parts of the world.
When we were driving up, they thanked us warmly, but I told them that we were kidnapping them and holding them for ransom. They thought the idea of being kidnapped by the gringos was hilarious and laughed until we dropped them off at their bus.
View from Cerro de la Cruz. Dormant Agua Volcano in back ground with trees covering the slopes
We drove back home and Patsy started working on her primary singing practice lesson. We are teaching them "A Child's Prayer". We invited another of the senior missionaries, Hermana Diane George to go to church and she and Patsy sang the two verses of the song to them simultaneously. It's probably the only primary song that has two verses sung simultaneously. After we finished, all the little kids came up and gave Patsy and Diane a hug.
Some future missionaries chilling after the block
Apparently when we said "say cheese", they thought we said "blink now"
We saw some movement thru the window in the back door of the bus ahead of us. This photo gives literal meaning to the name "chicken bus!"
View from our window, the sunset of another week in the mission.
