Happy 4th!!!

     It is the 4th of July weekend.  What did you all do, or are you going to do to celebrate the holiday?  We are going to get together Tuesday on the roof and have a hamburger and hot dog cookout, lemonade, apple pie and a few other things that remind us of the USA.  However, if it rains I guess we will bring the party inside.

     We got at least four new Mission Presidents in Guatemala this last week and two of them and their wives are going to come to our Break the Fast today so we can all meet them.  President and Sister Christensen came to our ward today and we got to meet them. They are from Farmington and his family was originally from Cache Valley.  I will talk to him later to see who he might be related to and if we know them.  We do know his Stake President in Farmington, we found out.  It is Dad's cousin's son from Sacramento, Aaron Hogge.  His dad was Richard who passed away several years ago, but his Mother Penny, I think is still living.  Kind of cool, huh?  We want to look them up when we are back home.

     This is the week that we go to the CCM (MTC) on Thursday.  Three weeks ago, Dr. Harris was ill so Dad checked out all the new missionaries.  There were about 36 of them, the least amount since we have been here.  This week we will see about 74 Latino's.  There will also be about 40+ Norte's or missionaries from the USA.  That is a pretty large number for this CCM, but it is the summer break for the USA kids, that is one reason there are more than usual.   We look forward to seeing the new missionaries, they are always so excited to be there and start learning what they need to know before going out.  What faith they have.  Some of them are new converts themselves and are the only member in their families.  They have been eagerly awaiting their one year mark so that they can serve. 

     The first picture is of 16 future missionaries that drove 5 hours to be at our Clinic at 8:30 in the morning last week.  

     

     We and the Harrises worked on them for about 7 hours and got all but three finished.  Those three had about two hours of work each so we have to reschedule them.  We felt bad, we would have liked to have finished them all.  We had scheduled about 10 of them for that day, but for some reason Brother Perez who is the one that makes appointments for the FM's in his Stake sent 16.  

     Here's a tree I saw this weekend.  Actually, it is hard to see the tree for all the plants that have attached themselves to it.  Just had to share that one with you.

     We went on a little adventure to a place called Rio Dulce this last weekend.  There we went on a boat in the river to a town called Livingston, it is a town only accessible by water, no roads to it.  While on the river a few canoes approached us with things to sell. 

     A water fall was one of our stops.  The water fall is straight from a thermal spring that combines with the river so it is a great place for jumping in the water and swimming.  Several of our group got in the water, you can see Larry in the picture.  I sat on a rock and got wet up to my knees and took some pictures.

    Love to you all. Have a nice holiday Tuesday the 4th!  USA is a great country!  Where else could the gospel have been restored!

  MOM, Grammy