Quito, Ecuador Temple

Quito, Ecuador Temple
Here is where we will be working until Feb. 2023

Welcome

Dear Readers,

We hope as you read this blog of our mission to the Quito, Ecuador temple you will feel the joy and happiness we are experiencing by being in the service of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We hope you can experience some of what we feel. Christine and I met in Quito, Ecuador 51 years ago while serving as missionaries. We are going home.


John and Christine

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Monday, June 25, 2018

June 18th through June 24th

June 18th through June 24thMonday I started cutting up veggies and getting a lot of the prep work done for a Chinese meal.  I had promised all the secretaries at the temple that I would teach them how to cook some Chinese dishes.  Mom took the missionaries shopping.  Evelyn, Marta, Maggie and Brenda came and we prepared 3 dishes and 2 extra sauces for deep fried chicken.  We also invited the Holmans and the Jensons over to help us eat everything we had cooked.  I had a fun morning teaching about one of the things that I enjoy.  
L to R Maggie, Marta, Evelyn, and Brenda.
Finishing up a batch of orange chicken.
We only had a little left over to send home with the secretaries.
In the afternoon, we did some more sewing on table runners and pillow covers.  Sister George’s brother and sister and their spouses will be staying at Hotel Norman for the week.  

New pillows.  We had to buy some white fabric for the backs.
This is the last of the embroidered panels from Santiago Atitlan.
4 pillows from one huipil from our trip to Nebaj in 2016.
We took one of the table runners that we had not sewn together and made this pillow and the following 3 kind of blue ones.


Here is the back of the flower pillow.
The 3 pillows from the runner we never sewed together.
This runner is reversible and we did not put binding on it.
Here is the other side.
Tuesday we did the morning shift and mom then took Sister Holman and Sister Jenson to the good bye luncheon for Sister Ochoa.  They leave this week.  Elder Ochoa’s new assignment is in the missionary department and he needs to be there for the start of the new mission president’s seminar.  

Luncheon for Sister Ochoa.
Sister Ochoa is second from the left, sitting down.
Wednesday we had presidency meeting and then I talked mom into finishing the sewing on the pillow covers I had cut out.  The Holman’s friends, the Bergstroms, arrived and are also staying with us for a few days.  Thursday we did the morning shift.  Friday morning we got up early and drove to Santiago Sacatepecques and walked through their market.  Mom wants to have an intervention for me.  I bought 5 more huipiles.  I love the fabrics and the hand woven designs.  They are all so vibrant and different.  It looks like this next week we will be making more pillows and table runners.  On our way home we went by Antigua and bought some fabric to use on the backs of some of the pillows we will be making next week.  If you see anything you like, let us know.  We then hurried back for our afternoon shift.  

The market in Santiago Sacatepéquez.  The women can carry anything on their heads.
Mom with her plastic shopping bag.
I am negotiating with Luciana.
I bought 3 huipiles from her.
This one is from San Juan Sacatepéquez,  which is just north of Guatemala City.
This one is from Tactic which is close to Coban.
This one is from Santiago Sacatepequez.  The town where we were.
This huipil and the next one are from San Pedro Sacatepéquez, San Marcos.
We are going to visit this area by Xela during the closure that begins on the 1st of July.
Fabric we will use for the back of some of the pillows.
You can see El Agua today.
Saturday we went to the temple and did an endowment session.  It was nice to be able to relax and not worry about anything.  We did end up doing some training.  Sunday we took the Jensons to the Mariscal stake conference.  This is the stake where President and Sister Flohr live.  They invited us to their house for dinner after the conference.  Before the meeting started, I got with the stake presidency and gave them all a temple tie.  They all immediately took off their ties and put on the temple tie.  It was a great stake conference presided by Elder Pineda, a new area seventy.  I really felt the Spirit and enjoyed bearing my testimony of our new prophet and the temple.  

The choir practicing before the conference.

Click below to listen to the choir.
Choir practicing 
They had 3 of these floral arrangements.
After the conference.
The Stake presidency.  L to R 1st counselor Cortez, President Choy, me, 2nd counselor Ramirez.  I gave them all a temple tie.
The Choir.
Dinner at the Flohrs was great and we enjoyed chatting and laughing with them and their family.  We came home and had a nap and then talked with some of our kids.  It was a great week and we feel so blessed to be here and to be having this opportunity to serve and experience this wonderful country. 

The Flohr's home.  This is their daughter.
Lunch outside under a beautiful trellis of flowers.
The garden behind mom was beautiful.
We ended up with one of the floral arrangements.

Monday, June 18, 2018

June 11th through June 17th


June 11th through June 17th:  Monday we wanted to take the Jensons and the Holmans to breakfast at El Tenador in Antigua.  We had to wait for Sister Holman to get done at the immigration office and then we were off.  We didn’t get there until 10:30am and found out El Tenador is closed on Mondays, so we ended up at La Posada de Don Rodrigo which is a wonderful hotel and restaurant in an old convent.  

This is how you ride shotgun in Guatemala.
Brunch at La Posada de Don Rodrigo.
Looking at the volcano El Agua from the rooftop at La Posada.
The rooftop view at La Posada.
The doors to the guest rooms at La Posada.
The front door to the hotel is awesome.
We then went to Nim P’ot, one of our favorite artisan markets.  I was looking for additional fabric to make table runners.  I found 3 used huipiles from Chichicastenango and a skirt from Solola to use with the 3 huipiles from San Martin that I bought at the market last week.  

One of the huipils from Chichicastenango after I had unpicked the panels.
Each panel is make on a back strap loom and takes a couple of months to make.
On the way home, we stopped in Mixco at Walmart during one of the hardest downpours in this rainy season.  Watch the video.  

The rain storm.

Click below to see the rain storm.             
Rain Storm

Tuesday Sister Jenson came over and gave us a sewing lesson and helped us make a couple of table runners.  They turned out great.  They were patterned after the table runner we have here in the house.  

Sister Jenson does all the mending for the temple and is very talented.
These three huipiles became 6 table runners.
Here are two of the table runners we made.
Here is close up of table runners.  Part huipil from San Martin part huipil from Chichi.
We gave Sister Jenson a table runner for teaching us how to sew table runners.
Wednesday we did the morning shift and had presidency meeting.  Thursday we had the afternoon shift.  Friday we had zone conference for the senior missionaries.  I was asked along with President Shumway from the South Mission to speak.  I received many compliments and thank yous and felt like I had done a good job.  We came home and figured out how to make a pillow cover watching You Tube and made a couple of pillows with some of the fabric we had purchased.  We went to bed at 8:30pm because we had the 4:00am shift on Saturday.  Saturday afternoon, after our shift, we made some more pillows.  

Here are the 10 pillows and a table runner that we made.

The top huipil became a big pillow and the back to a different pillow.  The bottom huipil become 4 pillows.
This is one of the huipils I bought last week.  It is from Santiago Atitlan.  
This was the leftover part of the huipil from Santiago and we made the pillow back to a panel with Mayan figures.
This is the front of the pillow
We made two matching pillows from a huipil we bought in Nebaj two years ago. 
The huipil that I bought last week in San Martin from Comalalpa made 4 pillows.
Mom bought a bunch of panels in Santiago Atitlan with birds about a year ago and we made some of them into pillows.
Some of the backs were plain.
Another bird pillow.
Sunday we were suppose to go to Motagua for their district conference.  During the week, I had called President Christensen to find out if we needed to be there for the Saturday afternoon meetings and found out that they had changed the conference to the previous weekend, but didn’t remember to tell me.  I was quite disappointed because we have not been to that district and we won’t have another opportunity to go.  So Sunday we went to our home ward and after the meetings they had a “Linger Longer“ for Father’s Day and everyone brought pot luck.   Mom made sweet and sour meatballs and they were a hit.  

 
Linger Longer after church.
The Jensons and mom at the Linger Longer.
I got in a nap Sunday afternoon and we talked to our kids.  We had a great week making table runners and pillows, going to zone conference and doing our shifts at the temple.  We are still wondering how we got here, but are thankful for the many wonderful experiences we are having.