Semana Santa this week

     Hope everyone is having or has had a nice, refreshing Sabbath Day.  I was asked to help Hermana Fox from St. George give a lesson in RS today on the creation.  She is a young sister who has only been here for a week and a half and we had only five minutes last week to find out our topic and decide what to give in the lesson.  Not much planning time, but amazingly it worked out just fine.  She prepared some ideas and so did I and we put them together the best we could.  Everyone helped and it was so nice to get everyone’s comments in the lesson like that. I have really enjoyed these lessons and devotional I have been asked to help with. It gets me studying specific topics and I feel like I am learning again.  This Earth is pretty amazing and everywhere you look you can see God's love for us. There are three things the creation testifies to me. God exists, God has power, God loves us. 

     Several days ago we got an email from the Keiskers, a couple we know from our Stake back home. They were also patients of Dad's.  They said they were coming to Guatemala and did we have time to meet up with them.  We compared our schedules and met them Thursday afternoon in Antiqua.  They were just vacationing here with another couple they had known when serving in the Dominican Republic.  We had dinner and then they showed us the house they were staying in.  A cute little place and much nicer than staying in a hotel for a week, actually they are here two weeks. We will have to keep it in mind if we decide to come back at another time.  It was great to see them and do a little catch up.

     While we were in Antiqua we walked past a church that we have walked by several times and it was open this time!  This old structure was majorly destroyed in an earthquake years ago and was never reconstructed. They have just fenced it off.  Because it is Semana Santa this week they opened the old structure and are setting up tiendas inside to sell things to the public. We got a few pictures and am sharing a couple with you.  I was so intrigued by an old archway that looked like it had fallen over many years ago during an earlier earthquake and then they built around it when the building was reconstructed.  Then several years ago when this area was hit by another earthquake it was just left as is.  Antiqua has several buildings like this.  

Do you like the cute little bus we saw there that day?

 

    Friday Dad and I decided to go to San Juan Sacatepeques, a little town an hour away where we like to buy flowers. We bought a bunch of Gerber daisies to share and some really nice, good sized sunflowers.  We also bought some strawberries, as usual, and some other things.  The sunflowers looked a little sad when I got them, but have really perked up since I got them home and into some water. 

I also saw this truck full of green beans there. My sister Connie wouldn't have been impressed, she did not like green beans at all!

    I am really looking forward to General Conference next week, we will probably watch it with the missionaries at the CCM. When Elder Cook was here he told us to listen for the urgency in the messages during this conference because the First Presidency and the Twelve are feeling an urgency about the work.  I like it when Conference is on the same day as Easter, and it is this year.  

    The Church is true!  How blessed we are to live on the Earth at this time when we have the gospel.

Love you all!!     MOM/Grammy