June 4th through June 10th

June 4^th through June 10^th:  Monday I took the missionaries shopping.  Mom was fighting a cold that I had so graciously shared with her.  Tuesday we had the morning shift.  Wednesday we had presidency meeting and then the afternoon shift.  Thursday we took a little trip to San Martin Jilotepecque.  Ginny and Sam said that it was one of their favorite towns to visit when they lived here 9 years ago.  It is about 30 minutes north of Chimaltenango.  We found a website that lists all the towns and their market days and saw that San Martin’s market day is Thursday.  It surprised us a little.  The town was bigger than we expected and the market was also larger than we thought it would be.  We had fun walking around the market.  I bought 5 huipiles, 4 used and 1 new and I paid a total of $33.00 dollars.  That was a real score as most huipiles cost at least $30.00 each.  Mom bought 2 dozen white roses for $3.00 and some onions and tomatoes.  

Welcome to San Martin Jilotepeque, the land of the Zompopo--which is a winged leaf cutter ant.

  A Zompopo

The women are always dressed so colorfully.

Mom loves to take pictures of the women selling vegetables. 

They just spread out on the ground and wait for someone to ask about their items.

The vegetables are really beautiful.

Mom taking pictures of vegetables vendors.

The market was right in front of the church on the plaza.

Chris enjoying a respite in the church.

We are standing in front of the church and behind us is the market on the main square.

I looked for women that had used huipiles for sale.  Juanita was selling vegetables, but she also had a huipil from Comalapa for sale.

The top one is from Santiago Atitlan and I paid $4.00, but it is quite small.  The other one is from Comalapa.

These three are from San Martin and I paid $10.00 for all three.  I have unstitched them and we are going to make table runners out of them.

Mom's roses.

Friday we worked the morning shift and Saturday the afternoon shift.  Sunday we drove to Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa for their district conference.  I gave temple ties to the district presidency, the mission president and Elder Jose Marravilla who presided.  It was a nice conference and we had an opportunity to talk about the temple.  

Mom working the crowd, handing out temple pictures to the kids and schedules to the adults.  She does this before every conference.

District Conference in Santa Lucia.

L to R Mission President Cluff, District President Giron, me and Elder Marravilla wearing their temple ties.  Elder Marravilla is from Nicaragua and the Church has pulled out the mission presidents and all the missionaries from there because of civil unrest.  I asked him how it was going in Nicaragua and he said it is "feo" (ugly).

The Choir was great.

Click below to listen to the choir.                     Choir singing

We drove right by the volcano Fuego that erupted last week.  She was still belching smoke and ash.  I have included some pictures of the devastation.  There are still hundreds of people missing.  They will probably never find them all.  It is so sad.  Some extended families have more than 30 family members missing.  They all lived in one of the towns that were completely covered by the flow of hot ash, earth and debris.  A lot of donations are coming in to help the people that have lost everything.  We will continue to pray for all those affected by this tragedy.  

This was the nicest golf resort in Guatemala.

Some streets have 4 to 5 feet of ash and debris in them.

This entire town was wiped out.  I don't know if anyone survived.

Still spouting off.

Sunday afternoon and evening we got to talk to some of our kids and grandkids.  We can’t believe that school is out and they are all in swimming classes and other activities.  We feel so blessed to be here and be able to serve the good people of Guatemala.  It is a great day to be a missionary.