On Thursday, December 8, we drove over to the home of Yamilet, Linette's former missionary companion, so that we could pick her up and take her with us to San Marcos, where she and Linette had served together 20 years ago. There were two houses with the same address (one with an "A"), so Linette randomly picked one and it turned out to be the home of Yamilet's mother. She told us that Yamilet was next door, so we knocked there, too.
When Yamilet came out, her mother said "Sister Bradley remembered where I lived!" Linette just smiled, not wanting to burst her bubble. We dropped off the suitcase full of baby blankets we had brought, said good-bye to Yamilet's mom, and then drove to San Marcos.
While Linette drove, I took lots of pictures out the window, a few of which even turned out. Here are some ladies with very cool shawls.
Where to begin on this next photo?
- First of all, "Holy corn stalks, Batman!"
- Secondly, "Seatbelts? We don't need no stinkin' seatbelts!"
- And, finally, "We want to make darn sure you know this is a Mercedes, baby!"
And these next two photos demonstrate that babies go on the back, and everything else goes on the head.
I was very impressed with how effortlessly the women can balance everything on their heads.
We dropped Neal and Stephanie off in San Pedro, which is right next to San Marcos, and is where Neal served. They didn't know of anyone to visit, so they checked out the market while we looked for the house where Linette and Yamilet had lived 20 years before. Amazingly, they found it.
Here is a picture in front of the door, which has a lion head door knocker. They weren't sure if the lady would still be there after all these years.
But, sure enough, the lady was indeed there and even remembered them. She invited us in and we talked for an hour. She was very nice, and I was just tickled to see Linette reconnecting with people. The lady was a member of the church, and had a Children's Song Book on her piano.
The lady's daughter had just started having children back when Linette lived there. The daughter is now divorced but still lives with her mom, along with her two sons.
The older boy was a cool kid and told us about how he is attending a university right now. While we were there, we picked some pears from their tree. Here is me attempting (mostly unsuccessfully) to catch pears before they hit the ground after being knocked out of the tree.
Eventually, the college kid climbed up in the tree and picked a few more.
After a nice visit, we joined Neal & Stephanie in San Pedro to check out the big market there. The thing that was neat to me about it was that it was targeted at the Guatemalans themselves, not at tourists, so it was the real deal. I bought firecrackers for 1 Quetzal (about 15 cents), and we had fun seeing the wild colors everywhere.
(I'll take some veggies, but, er, you can keep the chicken...)
I loved the colors this lady was sporting.
(Take your baby to work day!)
(This guy was trying to catch his cow)
Here is everybody getting the police to let us illegally park while we had dinner.
I love the exotic soda flavors in Latin America.
And here is me and Linette at an overlook on the way back to Xela.
This cow kept stumbling around in the back of this pickup every time they turned a corner.
The sunset made the sky look like it was on fire.
When we got back to Xela, we drove up to the temple. It took a while to talk our way past the guards, but they finally let us in. It was cool to walk around the grounds.
The night before we had told Yamilet that we were tired from our all-night flight and all-day adventure. While we were walking around the temple she finally told us that her brother had offered to take us on a tour through the temple the night before, but she told him we were too tired. "Nooooo!" we thought. "We were tired, not dead!" Our dedication tickets were for a stake center rather than the temple itself, so at that point we didn't think we were going to get to see the inside.
After visiting the temple grounds, we went to Yamilet's house and met her husband Reyes. He was a great guy, and though their home is humble, you could tell they were a powerfully righteous couple.
One of the things on my "list" of things I wanted to do in Guatemala was to play a game of "Pit!" with a Guatemalan family and hear them yelling "Dos! Dos! Dos!" or "Tres! Tres!" So we pulled out the cards, taught them how to play, and played several rounds.
Our friend Neal won the first three rounds, and every time he did, he got so excited that he yelled "¡Oy!" instead of "Pit!" So I joked that "Oy" was the Spanish word for "Pit".
And here is our bed & breakfast at night. (It isn't really on a hill--that's just the hood of the SUV, which was about to get pulled into the skinny black garage door).
That night we were finally successful in calling home. We had bought Erika an iPod Touch for Christmas, but we took it with us to Guatemala so we could attempt to do "FaceTime" video conference calls home. We had Internet access at the hotel, so while I couldn't find a way of calling home for free, video conferencing was fine!
I called Sharon, had her call my kids and get them to open the laptop, and then I contacted my laptop. You should have seen the look of delight on the kids' faces when we connected! We had a great chat with them and told them of our adventures so far. We got disconnected a time or two, but mostly it was just great. We told them that we "borrowed something" to call them with. We didn't tell them that we were borrowing it from Erika!
Look for Part IV, in which we visit the ruins of Huehuetenango.
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