A Familiar Face

Picking Julie up from the airport! This is the best day of our vacation... JULIE ARRIVED IN GUATEMALA! They won't let you inside, so we waited outside until we saw her. Great day!

This is us at the Relief Map in Downtown... We are up above looking down on it. It was built in the early 1900's by three engineers and it covers 1/2 an acre. It is a 3-D map and it shows all of Guatemala with it's neighboring countries.

Here is the Relief Map... Like a giant diorama. This picture doesn't do it justice to how big and detailed it really is! It shows cities, mountains, lakes, highways, etc. and it was all done by hand! You can walk around the outside of it or look from the platforms above. Look it up on the internet!

This is the view from a hill we hiked up in Antigua. Julie and I toured the ruins of two big earthquakes which destroyed the city and all the beautiful Spanish Cathedrals. This used to be the capital city until the earthquakes came. After that, everyone moved further into Guatemala City. Antigua is about an hour and a half from Guatemala City. It has since been built up again and is a charming little town with cobblestone streets.

This is one of the many little stores along Main Street selling handcrafted items.

This is us above Antigua with another volcano in the background and a religious statue. The Spanish influence is really apparent here. We saw a little puff on the volcano the day we were there.

Here we are taking a good look at the city and the volcano. There were bus loads of college students that day.

This is the other temple in Guatemala. It is in a city called Quetzaltenango. It is the second larges city in Guatemala. The temple in nicknamed the Xela (phonetic shay-la) in the local dialect and has been opened for two years. It is a lot bigger than our little temple, but it isn't very busy yet. It sits high on a hill above the city, which is very poor. Oddly enough, they have a Walmart there. We talked to some missionaries who serve there and they live on the temple compound in a two story housing. We did a session, stayed over night, and went back the next day for sealings. It took about five hours each way to drive there.

Here is the beautiful view from the temple at the top of the hill. Some of the streets are just barely wide enough for one vehicle to drive down.

Here we are in front of the temple before we left. No, I did not wear my flip flops inside, but I did wear them traveling in the van!

Here we are in the main square in Downtown Guatemala City. We were going to go to the government building, but there was a teacher strike, so the guards and police were all over and wouldn't let us in... So instead, we bought mandarin oranges from a street vendor. They were delicious. They Murri's are on the left.