Holidays Guatemala style

Thoughts of the AMA -  A busy couple of weeks.
     Our friend, the mental health counselor Hermana Diane George left and was replaced by Elder Kinghorn.  He and his wife have just come from a mission in Samoa.  He's been a professor at BYU Hawaii, Idaho and Provo.  He will work out of his apartment by phone and email, but we took them in to the area office and helped get them a phone, computer, car and ID cards.  The first week in the mission is pretty hectic. 
    The senior missionaries are allowed an overnight trip once a quarter.  December 21st and 22nd we went to the old Quiche capital, Quetzaltenango or Xela in the north west part of Guatemala.  I served there for a total of 5.5 months.  We went to the temple there, visited the craft market, then dropped 7200 feet down to the coast and went to a theme park Xetulul near Retalhuleu.  It has buildings in the styles of various countries that have influenced Guatemala, including a Mayan section with caged jaguars.  Unfortunately on the way back to the capital we got behind a string of three sugar cane trailers which are gigantic and are pulled along at about 15 miles an hour.  The bus couldn't pass them, so we had to follow them for about 45 minutes until they turned off.  It was fun to see the sugar cane fields that were being burned at night.
     At church the 23rd, they only had sacrament meeting.  We passed out little gifts to the primary kids, a treat plus a coloring book of Jesus' birth and crayons.  Candy canes for the mutual kids.
     A member family invited us to lunch.  It was very good.  They have 4 generations living in the house, great grandma, grandma, mom and ten year old Silas.  Patsy had some gifts for Silas and he surprised her with a beautiful beaded necklace that he'd made for her.  Mom was really touched.
     Our son Mark came to visit us over the Christmas holidays arriving the night of the 23rd. Some humanitarian groups and also Mark brought down a total of 7 duffel bags of baby kits, around 400.  We're excited to have the challenge of being able to distribute them. 
     Because my work is mostly done by phone and over the internet, I have considerable flexibility where I do it.  So on the senior trip and our travels with Mark, I took my phone and laptop.  All the hotels have WiFi, although some were a little slow.
     On Christmas eve day Mark and I climbed the slightly active volcano Pacaya.  Mark did ok, but the only stamina producing exercise I do is climb 5 flights of stairs once or twice a day.  I was pretty slow going up the hill. 

 One of the novelties of the Pacaya hike is roasting marshmallows in one of the fumaroles.  

 

Some liquid lava [the red areas] coming out of the side of the volcano.  

     Christmas eve we met at 10 pm with the other senior missionaries and played games until 11:45 when we went up on the roof of their  5 story apartment building.  At midnight the people set off fireworks, most of them commercial grade right in residential areas or off the roofs of buildings. The entire sky all around the building was lit up.

 It was pretty wild and still pictures don't do it justice. 

Christmas day we got up and exchanged a few gifts.

   Then drove to the always beautiful Lake Atitlan.  Being Christmas day, there was very little traffic going up.  By the highway there were lots of groups of people, some families, some just groups of kids.  Some were picnicing.  All waved at us as we passed, so we waved back, we haven't ever experienced anything quite like it. We stayed at the pricey, but beautiful Hotel Atitlán.  We weren't so lucky with the traffic on the way back the next day.

Pool and gardens at the hotel

 Mark and I went on a series of zip lines on the side of the hill above the lake.  The longest was a half mile long.  Unfortunately the videos I took of Mark on the zip line and a panorama of Lake Atitlan won't play on this blog.

    The next day we took a boat to some of the villages around the lake and stimulated the local enconomy.  At San Juan we went to a local textile establishment where they demonstated spinning thread out of cotton, which grows on trees that are about 25 feet tall here.  It comes in white, tan and brown.  They also dye the thread with various natural plant compounds. 

     We went to a chocolate factory where they show how chocolate is made from the cacao beans to the finished product.  Cacao pods from the Peten region of Guatemala have been found as far away as New Mexico and south eastern Utah.  

     At Santiago de la Laguna we found a couple of churches, one a little older than the other.  We met a couple of missionaries who were only able to teach those who understand Spanish.  About half the town speaks as a first language a dialect Tz’utujil that is distintive to the south shore region of the lake.  There are 23 recognized indigenous languages in Guatemala.  

     That same night we drove to Antigua, the original conquistador capital of Guatemala.  Earthquakes destroyed the cathedral and many other buildings five times in 200 years.  They finally moved to the capital to the present location of Guatemala City.    Mark, being a civil engineer who did his thesis on preventing seismic damage to buildings  spent a lot of time examining the wrecked buildings.  We drove around the town [streets nearly all bone jarring cobblestones] and up to Cerro de la Cruz, a lookout point on a hill overlooking the city and the volcano Agua on the other side of the city.  

    The next day we went to Monterrico on the Pacific Coast. Our hotel was right on the water.  The beaches on the Pacific side all have gray sand from the lava.   The water was warm.  Every year at this time a sanctuary hatches baby sea turtles.  For a small fee, we bought cute little turtles and released them into the ocean along with about 200 other conservationists..  

Lining up to release the turtles

Some of the turtles were a little confused as to which way the water was.

Crocodiles at the Tortugaria reserve where we got our turtles

     On Saturday we went to the central market and stimulated the economy some more.  Then to lunch at a local restaurant.

     Sunday the 30th we did our usual singing time in Primary with Mark's help.  Here he is with some of our primary kids. They loved him!     

After church on Sunday we visited the hospital at Cuilapa and distributed baby kits to the new mothers and stuffed bears in the pediatric wing.

This little boy had lost his fingers on his right hand

     On New Year's eve we went on a one day trip to the fabulous Mayan ruins in Tikal. We flew there early in the morning and came back in the evening.  Even though the images of the pyramids are commonly seen in photos, the scale of the ruins is breath taking.  The combination of the numerous and massive ruins, the dense jungle, the loud roaring howler monkeys, and all the other exotic animals in the park give you the feeling of being in strange lost world. Some of the scenes from Star Wars were filmed in Tikal.

                                                            A pyramid poking out of the jungle

Coati

Wild turkey that survived Thanksgiving

     After flying back from Tikal, we were going to take Mark to dinner at a restaurant near the apartment.  At 7:30 on New Year's eve, it was closed.  Instead of worrying about making a lot of money, they let the employees have the evening off with their families.

     We were beat from having to get up at 3:30 am to fly to Tikal, so we went to bed early.  In the morning we reluctantly took Mark to the airport, then came back home and went back to bed.  I had been thinking about going in to the office, but realized that being New Year's day, it was closed.  So we napped and I answered emails and calls from home.  

     Now back to work.