Adventures in Guatemala, Part VII: Day of Dedication

Adventures in Guatemala, Part VII: Day of Dedication

Sunday, December 11, 2011, was the day the Quetzaltenango Guatemala Temple was dedicated, and it was one of the most amazing days of my life.  (Sorry if this episode is a bit long, but it was a long day, so hang in there!)

It all started simply enough with another tasty traditional Guatemalan breakfast of eggs and black beans.  We also made some hot cocoa (made by melting a big block of chocolate in water) and dipped our "pan" (cookies) in it.

Fortunately, we were the last ones in to the bed and breakfast the night before (due to our late-night Pizza Hut run after the cultural celebration), so we were able to be the first ones out.  This was the only night where there was more than one car in the courtyard.

Linette had made friends with the lady who made our breakfast.  Here you can see the lady holding a couple of blankets to give to mothers of newborn babies.  The blanket on top was a crocheted blanket that Aunt Beth had donated to the cause.  Linette has her scriptures, ready for a "day of dedication".

There were dedication sessions at 9 a.m., 12 p.m. and 3 p.m.  We only had tickets to attend at a stake center, so we thought we would see if we could get in on the "cornerstone sealing ceremony" that occurs during the first dedicatory session.  We didn't have any sort of ticket to get into that, so we just parked below the temple and walked up the hill, hoping to be able to get onto the grounds.

It was December, so there was a little manger scene on the hill in front of the temple.

We were a little nervous about whether we were going to be allowed in.  Neal said "Just walk like you know what you're doing."  But our concerns were unfounded, for as we approached the temple, ushers smiled and welcomingly gestured which way to go.  We thought that was so nice!

At the southwest corner of the temple, we found a small group of Saints gathered, including a choir.  Many of the members wore modern church clothes, but quite a few wore their traditional Guatemalan dresses.  In the picture below, Yamilet's mother is the one on the front row with the yellow stripe down the middle.  The lady holding the book (with her back turned) is a member of the "Boj" family, who will come up again in a moment.  ("Boj" is a Quich'e family name, pronounced "bohhh").  

As we approached the group, an American gal (who Neal and Stephanie had met the day before) came up to us and asked if we had tickets to get inside the temple yet.  We told her we didn't, and she said, "Let me go see what I can do."  A moment later she came back with three tickets, and a while after that she found one more, all for the 3 p.m. session, so we were finally going to get to go inside the temple!

Here is a darling girl standing on a wall, watching for president Uchtdorf and the other leaders to come out.

Finally President Uchtdorf and his wife came out, along with Elder Anderson, the temple presidency, and other leaders.  They had begun the first dedicatory session inside, but came out in the middle of it to do the cornerstone sealing ceremony.

Here is President Uchtdorf of the First Presidency of the church, along with his wife, and Elder Anderson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, with his wife.

President Uchtdorf spoke to the people for a while with his excellent translator converting his words into Spanish (and helping me learn at the same time!)  Unlike the solemn dedication ceremonies in the temple itself, he was less formal with this ceremony.  He said, "We like to have a little fun with this."

Sure enough, after putting some grout around the cornerstone, he had several leaders do so as well, and he kept making funny comments the whole time: "It looks like this guy has done this before."  "Let's see how someone from Guatemala does it...oh, very nice!"  "Let's have my wife do some.  The sisters usually do things best."

Sister Uchtdorf said, "Well, it's like frosting a cake."

The crowd wasn't huge, so most people were able to find a way to see what was going on.

Neal provided balcony seating for this little boy.

It touched our hearts to see President Uchtdorf invite several children up to take part in sealing the cornerstone as well, because we knew what it would mean to them and their parents.

We could tell from the smiles that these children would never forget the experience.

The spirit was really strong there, and I cried more that day than any day I can remember.  In fact, I told the rest of my group that this trip had softened me up, and that I'd probably cry more from now on.

After the ceremony was over, Neal talked with a gal who had been 17 years old when Neal was a missionary there (a member of the "Boj" family).

Now she is grown with a husband and several children of her own.  We found out that they lived right around the corner from where we were staying, so they invited us to drop by their house that evening for a visit.

While they were speaking, a man kept circling around, waiting for an opportunity to approach.  When he got the chance, he asked Neal, "What is your name?"

"Neal Summers," he replied.

Then the man teared up and said, "You baptized me!"

Oh, my goodness.  There wasn't a dry eye in the crowd.

The man was there with his whole family.  He had been married in the temple, raised several children, and had a son who had just returned from a mission.  He was currently serving as the stake president in San Pedro.  (Look at the daughter trying to hold back her tears.)

One more interesting thing about this was that when we got home and looked through our pictures, we saw that we had several pictures of the daughter in this family (on the left above), from the cultural celebration the night before.  She had been wearing her mother's dress as her costume.

Here she is on the left before the show.



And here is Linette with her arm around the gal after the show was over.  Who knew?

(When Neal got home, he looked in his missionary journal and found where he had written about the guy.  Apparently he and his companion had been praying to be able to baptize someone before the next transfer.  They had several people they were teaching, but none was quite ready.  Then the Sunday before transfers, this guy walks into the church, said that he had been taught all the discussions, but that he had some questions still.  They met with him, answered his questions, interviewed him, and baptized him that afternoon!)

Once everyone stopped crying, they were able to smile for a picture.

Meanwhile, I had a lot of fun talking to this little girl (who appeared in a picture above).  Her vocabulary was closer to my level than the adults' was.  I saw that she had an Articles of Faith card in her hand, and I was so pleased with myself that I could ask her if those were "Los Articulos de Fe".  She said that she was learning up through number seven, because she was seven.

A little later, her sister came over and said that she had learned all 13 of them, except for number 11.  Then with no prompting she said, "We will say them for you."  With that, the two little girls proceeded to say all of the articles of faith.  The younger one dropped out after number five, smiling and saying "that's all I know."  The other one went through to the end.  Then Linette worked with her for a few minutes to help her learn the one she didn't know.



I thought it was so neat to see the tremendous faith of these people in a land so far away that we rarely tend to think of their existance.  And yet here are these faithful Saints learning the gospel and teaching it to their children.

While they were spiritual giants, they weren't especially tall.  Here Linette towers over the girl and her mother.

What an amazing start to the day.  (The cornerstone says "Erected 2011").

There was rain in the forecast, but instead, it turned out to be an outstandingly beautiful day.

And we had fun talking to random people we met.  This guy had served his mission here and brought his new bride down for the temple dedication.

Here are a couple of shops across the street with names out of the Book of Mormon.

We attended the temple dedication session at a stake center at noon, because we had told Neal's companion we would see them there.  The session was amazing, and President Uchtdorf told a story about how they had dropped by a chapel on the way to Xela, and his wife complimented a guy on his beautiful hand-made shirt.  The guy immediately took it off and gave it to her as a gift.  These people will literally give you the shirt off of their backs.

Then we went back for the temple dedication session at 3 p.m. inside the actual temple.



The temple was beautiful inside, of course.  President Uchtdorf poked his head into the room we were in to wave to us on his way to the main room.  Surprisingly, the talks in this session were almost all different than the earlier ones.  President Uchtdorf spoke about how this temple was like a wonderful Christmas present to these people, and was made possible by their diligence and faithfulness.

After the last dedication session, we walked outside, and I saw a "mob" at the front of the temple.  The members of the church surrounded President Uchtdorf's car, and they were singing "We Thank Thee, Oh God, for a Prophet."

He was so gracious, saying "I love you! God bless you!" and trying to shake as many hands as he could.  Finally, he entered the car and drove away, with Elder Anderson close behind.

The crowd of people stood by, basking in the Spirit that lingered there.

The people eventually started trickling out.

What a powerful experience!

We were leaving for Lake Atitlan the next morning, so Yamilet (Linette's old companion) told us to drop by to say good-bye that afternoon.  I told Linette we were all going to cry some more, but she said she was emotionally exhausted, so we were just going to go in, say good-bye and head out.

That of course wasn't how it went down at all.  First, Yamilet had some beautiful gifts for us.



Then we had a mini testimony meeting with lots of tears and hugs.  Yamilet spoke of how much she was looking forward to serving as a temple worker in the new temple, and Linette told her daughter Kimberly, "You will do great things!"

Finally we left their house, with Linette exclaiming, "Oh, my, gosh!" because we just kept having one overpowering experience after another all day long.  We went back to our bed and breakfast to unwind and finally have some leftover pizza to eat.  We thought we would be home after the noon dedication session and didn't realize we would be gone all day.

Then we visited la familia Boj (the "Boj" family) around the corner from where we were staying.  The old couple in the family were some of the first converts to the church in Quetzaltenango, and had been stalwarts for decades.  Neal said that when he was a missionary here, this family had given them about half of their referrals.



The man is currently on the high council, and he said "Returned missionaries often come here and say, 'Do you remember me?' and I say, 'Of course I do!'...But I don't.  How could I? There are so many!" We all laughed at that.

At first, we had a quiet conversation with the patriarch of the family.  But soon more and more family members showed up.  Apparently, it was like that pretty much every Sunday and most Monday nights.  Soon there was full-blown chaos as we got to know all the people.

We were served a warm drink, and then cake.  This kid came up and scooped a big swipe of frosting off of my cake with his finger, which cracked us all up.

Stephanie asked if we could take a picture of their family, and all 42 of them jumped up and posed like a bunch of Wilsons or Merrills might do.  They would even say "Uno...dos...tres...Wasabeeeeeee!" to generate their smiles.

I had to make a phone call to Oscar Marroquin (the guy we borrowed the Yukon from) to ask about the landslide we had heard about on the road to Atitlan.  But I was a bit nervous about being out alone after dark, so I had Neal come with me to make the call.  We jogged down the street and around the corner, and just then we saw a couple of girls approaching a doorway.  When they heard us coming, they got scared and hurried into the gate and closed it.  We laughed because the reason we were running in the first place was that we were nervous about being out after dark ourselves.

When we got back to the house, one of the middle generation sons pulled out a guitar, and the whole family sang "Xela-ju" (a famous song there about someone who loved a girl who lived in "Xela-ju" or Quetzaltenango).  It reminded me a lot of a zany Wilson sing-along.



Afterwards, I talked to a kid that was playing with the guitar, and they asked if I played the guitar.  I told them I did a little, and then there was no going back.  Nothing would do but that I would play a song for them.  So Linette was a good sport and we sang "Hoy Tomo La Guitarra" for them.  Then they chanted "¡Otro! ¡Otro!" ("Another! Another"!) until we sang one more ("Water From Another Time").

Then they gave us gifts with bows on them (Guatemalan place mats, which you can see below), and we felt like we had been officially adopted into the family! Linette tried saying good-bye to a few people and then waving to the rest on her way out, because she was so overwhelmed from the day.  But the gal we had met at the temple came out and said that she needed to say good-bye to each person individually, which she knew was the expected thing, so she went in and did so.  What a great family!

I love this picture of Linette chatting with the matriarch.

We finally went back to our hotel and played a card game ("Hand and Foot") to unwind from the amazing day.  We had no idea when we went to Guatemala that we would be the recipients of so many outpourings of love and of the Spirit.  It gave me a new appreciation for the phrase "Tender mercies."

I know that was a long episode, but it was a long day, too!

In Episode VIII, we head to Lake Atitlan, which has been called "The most beautiful lake in the world."