July 6, 2014 Sunday

   This has been a very interesting week. Monday was a National Holiday, so the Area Office was closed. We had decided to take a road trip along with our friends, the Barlow's. While we were still serving in the Temple and living in Temple housing, we befriended a gardener/caretaker named Felipe. He had allowed us to look around the yard and even tour the home. It was vacant and had been for some time. It was for sale if you are interested. We found out that he lived in a pueblo called San Pedro Yepocapa. He works for 2 weeks and then goes home for a visit. He had showed us some pictures of his town, which look pretty awesome. We left at 6:30am and headed out on our adventure. Part of the road was fairly rough. It was almost like 4 wheeling. We finally arrived at about 10:00. We had Felipe's phone number. Trying to call was a problem, we had no service in that area. We had driven around just looking at the town. We stopped at a gas station to ask if we could have them call Felipe's number to see if he was home and where he lived. No answer unfortunately. So the dilemma was described to the gas station attendant. He thought he knew Felipe and where he lived. He proceeded to give us directions to Felipe's house. He could see that we were not really following the directions so he said , why don't you take my son and he will guide you there. So, this 15 year old young man gets in the car with 4 old Gringos that he had never seen before in his life and off we went. Sure enough, we found Felipe's home. His wife and daughter were there. She was shocked to say the least. We asked her to call her husband so we could talk to him. Felipe was pretty amazed we had found his pueblo and his family. The picture below is the entrance to the nursery that Felipe and his wife own. The lady talking on the telephone is Felipe's wife.

Then the young man took us to an area in the town where there were several pools and a beautiful soccer stadium. (View of the soccer stadium.)

The picture below is the water entering one of the pools.

 

This cute family had a set of three year old twins. So cute!

 

  

                                   

We had a wonderful Fourth of July! It started at 8:00 AM. We had a Zone Conference where Elder Amado spoke to us. We sang The Star-Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful. Elder Amado's remarks were so amazing. This was the last time Elder Amado will address us while he is still a General Authority. We will miss him so much. It has really been a blessing in our lives to have known this great man. After the meeting we were treated to a delicious, catered breakfast. The man in charge of all of this, who is not American, had the tables decorated  with flags and also had a slide show of American landmarks and patriotic music playing.

Our patriotic celebration continued on into Saturday morning. The Sr. Missionaries that live here in Victoria Suites met at the Stake Camp( Las Colinas) about an hour out of Guatemala City. It is an amazingly beautiful place. We grilled hamburgers and chicken. It was basically a 4th of July picnic.

 

 Pictured are: Olsen's, Cragun's, Hermana Pitcher, and Province's. Background is the beautiful area of Las Colinas. Below is the inside of one of the boweries.

 

It was a great week. We miss everyone back home.