We've been busy and haven't written for over a month.. Jenni had her baby, Hailey Susan, on November 10-- a month early. Hailey liked the hospital so much she stayed in the NICU for 11 days. She went home on oxygen the day before Thanksgiving. She is reportedly doing well now. The area presidency gave us permission to go home to help Jenni, which allowed us to be there for Thanksgiving, so we got to see the whole family including Mark, Jon, Jamie and Ben, who flew in and Halls who drove down from Boise.
Under the UV lights for bilirubin
Our oldest and youngest granddaughters
Proud grandma
Proud daddy
NICU graduation
Ben at Grandma's house
When we left, they had to de-ice the plane which delayed us enough that we missed our connecting flight.
We were on Delta/Aeromexico, which has a nice flight from Guatemala City to SLC with a plane change in Mexico City. Going to Utah we didn't have any problems. On the way back we were 45 minutes late because we had to wait to get de-iced before taking off from Salt Lake. We got in a half hour before our connecting flight. In Mexico, you get off the plane, go through immigration even though we were continuing on to Guatemala, then customs, then back thru security to get to the connecting flight. So we knew we wouldn't make the next flight. When we got off, they already had our boarding passes for a later flight, so all we had to do was retag our suitcases and wait 5.5 hours. So we read and had dinner and read and walked around, and got on the plane and got to Guatemala at midnight and home at 12:30. We arrived totally exhausted.
We have made some baby kit runs to Escuintla, a town just down on the coast from Guatemala City. It is pretty hot there. There is a nice toll road part of the way which is similar to a US freeway. The hospital is a little off the main road. After leaving the parking lot I saw a sign that said "Guatemala" so I took that road. It turns out it was not the toll road and had a million trucks and potholes in it. It took us about an hour extra to get home that way. The next time I was careful to find the toll road. For $5, I saved about two hours driving in heavy traffic.
We had a zone conference where President Jorge Zeballos, a counselor in the area presidency talked. The departing temple and area office missionaries were asked to bear their testimonies, always a tender time. After serving the missionaries and people of Guatemala for a year to a year and a half, none of us will ever be the same. We have 6 months to go, but already realize that we will miss the people, the missionaries and the country.
Diane George and the McLemores are leaving. Diane had a party for the temple missionaries and those associated with the MTC, then later the area office and dental missionaries had a party for all three of them. These involved a lot of good food and memories. One of our senior missionary dentists used to write a song for each couple leaving, but he's gone and no one has picked up his baton.
Us and Diane George
Area auditors and area mental health advisor
Marc and Susann McLemore and Diane George
We had an Area Christmas Devotional where Patsy and a choir of senior missionaries sang silent night in English and Spanish. They were accompanied by senior missionaries on violin and piano and the messages and music were very touching. It was broadcast to the employees all over Central America.
So Hermana Patsy is now an international performing star. If you want autographs, send a stamped self adddressed envelope and your check for $25 to our address. For the comment "to my dear friend" above the autograph send $50.
After the devotional they walked us over to a nice steak restaurant for lunch. It was excellent. I tried to drive back the three blocks to pick up Patsy and another sister from the restaurant. Where I was parked, I had to take a one way street which led to a major boulevard. There was a street up about a half mile that went in the direction I needed. When I got there, it was one way the wrong way, so I embarked in a half hour tour of much of Guatemala City while trying to get three blocks back to pick up my wife who thought I'd abandoned her. Brigham Young would roll over in his grave if he knew what the streets in Guatemla City are like. In the area I started in, there were three consecutive parallel streets all one way in a single direction which was not the one I needed to take. The logic of this escapes me, wouldn't it work to have one of the three go the other direction?
In Guatemala on Christmas eve they shoot off commerical grade fireworks in residential neighborhoods. A few people have already been practicing, so we hear booms and whumps at night. An interesting custom is to get a pinata style figure of the devil, then fill it with all the bad things in your life [I don't know if they write them down and insert them or figuratively tranfer them] then burn the figure. Here is one our neighbors bought. In the true spirit of gender equality, this devil appears to be a woman.
And, Patsy finishes another oil painting, this one of Lake Atitlan, which some think might have been the Waters of Mormon where Alma baptized. She's doing pretty well I'd say.
So that's it for this week in Guatemala.
