Spencer wrote a letter!

January 24, 2009

Hi everybody,
We just returned this evening from Guatemala City where we attended two temple sessions and I was a witness to the sealing of a couple and then the sealing of their three teenage daughts to them. They are a family who has struggled a long time to make this happen. It was special. Both Jeanine and I are trying to master the words at the veil. This was Jeanine's first time to do her part in Spanish at the veil. We are getting close to knowing all the responses.

It was very moving to see the bus loads of people there from El Salvador. There were also many from northern Guatemala too. We saw lots of women in their native dress (pictures on the blog). We stayed at the housing designed for long those making long trips to come to the temple. We visited with some of them there at the "Casa de Huespedes."

It is about a 3 hour trip at best (traffic permitting) for us and then about an hour through that huge city with all its traffic problems, something like Phoenix without freeways.

We are about to get into some long teaching days at the medical school at CUNORI (Centro Universitario de Oriente), or the eastern campus of Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. When we add in the English classes at the church it will be teaching six hours of classes with several different preparations on Tuesday-Thursday. Jeanine has her's and I have mine. We have lots of prosyliting in progress. We hope we can keep it going on Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays with some time to take care of ourselves and do our lesson preparations. We have had some great missionary discussions and exceptional reactivation experiences. Day by day it is a struggle, but looking back it is a wonderful experience. Sometimes the lessons are "moving experiences."

We pray for you always. As we serve people it is plain to see what the "keeping of commandments" does for people. We hope that everything is going well in all your homes.

We are happy here and hope you are in happy in your station of life.

Love,
Dad/Spencer