From Weeks to Days!

With a week and a day left, we are marking off days, instead of weeks!

Can you guess what we are doing? :)

Last Field Trip with the Pitchers

Here are some pictures from our very last field trip with the Pitchers to a place called Auto Safari. We drove through and looked at all kinds of wild animals very close up and in their natural habitat. It was really fun and beautiful! All the little towns were getting ready to celebrate Guatemalan Independence Day by decorating their little trucks with balloons and streamers. They even had their little families all dressed up. I have said this a million times, but I want you guys to know that the Pitchers saved our lives and our souls here on the mission. We love them so much!

Last Break the Fast

Here we are giving our final remarks at break the fast, last week. We have met many senior couples who are doing all kinds of different jobs on their missions. There was one new couple, and five who will be going home around the time that we leave. Pitchers leave will leave on November 1st, as they have a replacement executive secretary coming in October to take their place.

I did mention there ought to be marathon medals for 1/2, 3/4, and a full "marathon," AKA senior missions! They are not for sissies, but of course, we are not sissies... Okay... Maybe one of us is! ;)

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I wanted to say a little about this amazing family we met here in Guatemala, the McComber family. They were assigned to Guatemala two to three years. He was made the bishop of our ward in May last year. He know he would be bishop for only one year, and he set some wonderful goals to accomplish during that time. They have a married son, a daughter on a mission in Russia, a son attending BYU, and three of their kids are here with them. Yes, they are as happy as the look in this picture! He called me to work in the Young Womens and has been one of the highlights of my mission here, and I worked with their daughter Katie Rae and their son Parker in Young Mens. The youngest, "Peach," (everyone calls her that, her real name is Kirstin) is in the 4th grade, but is an adult in a kid's body! Sister McComber is one of the kindest people I have ever met, and thus, so is her family!

Our youth took a trip to the Xela (Shay-la) which is in Quetzeltenango, about six to seven hours away and it was a highlight for them. Every young person who went bore their testimony when they came home. They also have come once a month to the temple to do baptisms for the dead... Researching many of their own ancestors... Some kids had over 1,400 names! We have had several faith promoting activities, thanks to Bishop McComber. One of them was the walk of faith, which Julie helped us with when she was here. We also did an activity where we pretended to be a missionary living on a tiny budget. They had to shop, cook, and serve a meal on the amount of money assigned. Rachael and Blake helped us with that activity and it was fun! The kids played cello, piano, violin, and electronic sax. They played several musical programs for the ward, including a recital, Sister McComber led the singing. They left in July to come to Orem, California, and then to D.C. for Training... Then, they moved the whole family to Ecuador! They all have learned Spanish. I really admire them, they are loved and missed. They have a home in Orem, so we will possible be able to see them again when they come home for the summer!

Our Last Stake Conference

This was our ward choir singing at our Stake Conference last Sunday. We saw a lot of the temple workers and some patrons there. It was filled clear to the back!

This is a picture we took of people coming out of Stake Conference... We loved that so many people were in attendance!

This is how they transport many of the members and investigators to our Stake Conference... And this isn't even all of the buses! They use reconditioned school buses from the U.S. and I always look for a Davis School bus, but I haven't seen one yet. We talked to several investigators and the missionaries had little information packets in zip-lock bags for them.

Our Last Weeks

The are the Burbidges, who we happened to run into in Antigua. She was called to be the nurse at the CCM and he says he just came along for the mission ride! They are from Utah. He doesn't speak Spanish, and is not a nurse, but he just tries to help out where he can! They have an office at the CCM and she tries to take care of all the medical needs there.

This is typical housing out of the city... Sort of like "The Projects" would be in the U.S. There are hillsides of little cities like this everywhere when you leave Guatemala City.

This is one of the many salespeople here in Antigua. There is a baby in the little bag on her back!

Dad was tired of me getting all of the attention for my red hair! This is at a Guatemalan Wendy's!

We saw this on our walk the other day. If we bought it and drove it home, Debbie Garton and I could drive twinning cars!

This is our last group picture with the temple missionaries! One new couple on the bottom right, the Gardners, are here. There will be two other couples coming in October, but we will be gone by then.

This is President and Sister Burk, the Murri's, and us at a typical Guatemalan restaurant. There was even a marimba band! The dinner was to thank us for our service.

NEWSFLASH!!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog for an important announcement... We have been given our release date!! We will be home to our friends and family on SEPTEMBER 30th!!

More Visiting

We took a detour from the tour bus in Antigua and struck out on our own while the bus load went for lunch. We had heard about a place called "Earthlogde," from a ward member, so here we are hiking to find it (high above the city of Antigua). Blake is in his fashionable scarf and his new friend, who loaned him the bike! We walked through this little city looking for our destination. The boy and two of his brothers worked at Earthlodge, so we know we were on the right track.

We finally found Earthlodge! Hiking down to our destination!

Here it is! Earthlodge! It was a charming little out-of-the-way place. It has a little restaurant, cabins, yoga, an avocado field, and was a little hippy-ish place. The food was really good and we probably would have stayed if we could! There were hammocks all over and it was beautiful and relaxing!

This is a common sight in little villages here. This lady is making her way home with the firewood for the day!

This is seen a lot on the highway. A little family heading for their destination/work. Actually, there is usually more people in the back of the truck! There was a baby under the blanket, too.

This was the Ego Ning of our tour at Tikal where we got cauge in a down pour. In less than five minutes, we were soaking wet and walking in water! Yes, we stayed that way for the remainder of the day and the plane ride home. :/ Not flattering, but fun!

This is the town "Laundromat," where women come and wash their clothes. We were on our way to find Earthlodge!

Trying out the "tuk tuk" for transportation. They said it was pretty fun!

Of all the available hats, this is the one dad wanted to buy! This is at one of the little villages at Lake Atitlan with Rach and Blake.

This is a GIANT old tree in Tikal, which I think is the national tree. It's called the Ceiba, it is over 400 years old!

Love the translation here?! We tried not to seat on the monuments!

If you look closely, you can see Rach and Steph at the top of this Mayan Temple.

This was a religious ceremony being performed by this little family around the fire at Tikal.

Here we are under a little grass hut shelter, waiting for the rain to let up. Notice the running water on the ground at the top left corner of the picture? Yes, we were wading around in that!

This is one of the many beautiful Spanish cathedrals in Antigua, when we all took a little day trip with Sister Viveros as our tour guide.

Totally photo-bombed by Blake above Antigua... Still smiling even after he took a bad fall and majorly scraped his leg on that monument in the background!