July 16th through July 22nd

July 16^th through July 22^nd:  Monday after shopping, Elder Holman asked if we could pull into a restaurant parking lot to take a picture of Guatemala City.  The resulting picture was awesome.  

Beautiful Guatemala City--home to about 4 million!

The rest of the day we finished sewing some of the pillows we have been making.  On Tuesday, we again worked on pillows and when we laid them out, we were a little surprised at the quantity--about 88!  We only have about 20% of the different colors and designs from the various towns and areas represented.  The Mayan people are amazing and their weavings are incredible.  

The panorama view of our pillow project.

These pictures give you a view of the different patterns and colors, but there are many more we don't have.

More pillows.

And even more.

We loved the embroidery on this huipil and so we made a huge floor pillow.

We then took President and Sister Funes with us to a viewing of the wife of one of the temple employees who died of cancer.  We missed seeing Brother Alvarado, who had left to go and get the paper work done at the cemetery.  She died yesterday and she will be buried tomorrow.  

The viewing for Sister Alvarado.  They normally don't embalm, so they are buried very quickly.

Thursday we took the Holmans and left early to go and see the market in San Raymundo.  It is about an hour drive north of the city.  It is only 25 miles, but to get across the city takes time, the traffic is bad.  The market was in a building and not just in the streets.  I like the street markets better.  We did not find anything interesting and headed home for our shift at the temple.  

The markets are always so colorful.

Leaving San Raymundo we went down this street.  The photo doesn't do it justice--it was almost a 65% decline.

A view looking over the valley towards Guatemala City from San Raymundo.

Our family celebrating Pioneer Day at the Handcart parade in Bountiful.

Saturday after our shift, we drove to Esquipulas, which is about 4 hours southeast of the city.  We got there at 5:00pm and we were to meet President and Sister Christensen for dinner at 6:00pm.  That gave us a few minutes to walk around the Basilica of Esquipulas, the largest Catholic Church in Central America.  It is a beautiful Baroque building with four bell towers and was finished in 1759.  It was built to house a carving of The Black Christ.  This was a carving commissioned by conquistadors in 1595.  Over the years, the smoke from burning candles has turned it black.  It is really an incredible building.  

A view of the valley and the Basilica from the hill as we came down off the mountain.

There were throngs of people all around the Basilica.  One of the sister missionaries told us that it was a "feria" day.  It certainly had a fiesta vibe.

Tourists, traffic and goats!  We love Guatemala.

We are not sure what these hats represented, but this whole family was decked out.  They were very colorful..

The Basilica was finished in 1759 and is enormous

We had a nice dinner with the President and Sister Christensen from the Guatemala East Mission.  Since we had been up at 3:00 am to be at the temple by 4:00 am, we went to bed early.  

An interesting mural in our hotel.

Sunday I got up and went to the car. Our Honda is in the repair shop to fix some minor bumper problems and to fix a cracked windshield.  They gave us a Rav4 to use.  It does not have as much acceleration as the Honda and made passing more of a challenge.  I discovered that we had an almost flat tire.  I drove across the street and put some air in the tire, but I knew that it had a leak because it was fine when we left the city.  So I had to find a tire repair shop and get the tire fixed.  After getting the leak fixed I went back to the hotel and got Chris and we made it to the branch conference on time.  

We feel so blessed that this was discovered before we were on the road and far away from any services.

All patched and ready for the trip home.

It was a nice meeting and we had an opportunity to share a message with the saints.  The branch president who conducted said that our visit was the first time in the history of the branch (it was organized in 1989) that a temple president had visited their branch.  Last week and this week we visited two independent branches. Because they don’t belong to a district, they never attend a district conference and so have never had a visit by a temple president.  We felt honored to be the first and we only hope they got something out of our visit, because we certainly enjoyed it.  

Chapel in Esquipulas--rather modest by comparison to the Basilica.

Waiting to start the Esquipulas Branch conference.  There were about 80 people in attendance.

When we got home I took a nap and then we called our kids.  Another great week is now in the books and we continue to marvel at our many blessings.  Remember it is a great day to be a missionary.