April 20, 2014 Hola, Saludos a todos! This has been "Holy week" or "Semana santa". The Catholic church and its people find great importance in the week. The schools are out, many businesses close and government offices are all closed down. People come and go from everywhere. The traffic is so dangerous. Even public transportation shuts down on Good Friday (the day Jesus was crucified). Can you imagine celebrating in a riotous way to commemorate the Savior's crucifixion? [There is a lot of drinking that goes on here. In fact our Temple president told us to do our shopping early and to not go downtown at all on Thursday or Friday.] We should have a special day to celebrate his resurrection because he broke the bands of death in addition to suffering for our sins. I'm glad the week is over. Now we have the excitement of anticipating our trip next Sunday to Huehuetenango (two hours away) to give our Sunday talks in the various wards of one of the two stakes. We will be staying overnight in a hotel and seeing the sights as well as a little shopping in their market for "tipico" merchandise. I think that is going to be a beautiful place. I feel like you see the real Guatemala when you go out and talk in the wards of the Guatemalan families. Huehuetenango is in the mountains. I'm glad it's in our temple district. Our temple was especially built for the mountain people who often have to have special treatment to accommodate their special needs of the people. Last Monday we had a meal at President and Sister Perez' lovely home (to celebrate his birthday. He related the story of his experience of selecting the temple site. He told us that he had never been to this particular spot. He'd been searching and searching. One Sunday during Sacrament meeting he had a vision of the spot the Lord wanted. He went out and started driving around until he found the spot he had seen in vision. He showed pictures of what it looked like before. He told about the privacy he had to maintain when Elder Nelson came to examine the location. He said they have envisioned three temples in Guatemala--the third one being in Coban, but that is for another day and time. He showed pictures of the buses that came to the Open House. They had anticipated 75,000 visitors and they had 137,000 come. There are only 200,000 people living in Quetzaltenango. But people came from all through northern Guatemala. There were official government guests. The dedication was telecast throughout the country. It is the most beautiful building in this part of the country--with many beautiful gardens.