Sunday, June 15, 2014 (earthquake report)

This post will be a blend of thoughts from Spencer and Jeanine since it is too hard to separate them. Last Tuesday morning we were awake and sitting on the couch and chair in the LR when suddenly it felt like a piece of heavy equipment had driven into the side of the apartment building--but in reality at 6:26 AM there was a 5 pt on the Richter Scale earthquake about 30 miles away. The epicenter was in Coatepeque. We have felt the tremors before that cause things to sway, but this one shook all of the furniture, moved the TV and a heavy center piece. Spencer described it as feeling like a power driven hammer on concrete. It was very short and didn't hurt anything, but it was intense! Sorry, no pictures of the earthquake! We will add pictures when we receive them by email to show you some of yesterday's activities. We only knew about one Primary coming at 9:00 AM. Suddenly at 8:30 when I started setting things up, Spencer had to go teach a group of 18 investigators from Barrio Libertal, Malacatan Stake. He was still with them over at the temple when a bus pulled up with a HUGE Primary. The staff had helped me set up lots of extra chairs and they even had a photographer (who says she will email us pictures). Our normal kids joined with them and we had about 75 kids along with many adults. I had to start by myself and was surely happy when Spencer arrived so we could do our normal team-tag teaching. When he left to take them to the temple, I packed everything back to the apartment and prepared the pictures and colored pencils for their coloring activity. The staff informed me that they will be coloring in the dining room from now on--great idea--I like the tables. I asked about putting the chairs away when they said that the Primary from Totonicapan El Centro Barrio was NOT there yet. We had just taught the Primary from Las Rosas Barrio, Bosque Stake! We didn't even know they had planned to come. It was a good thing it took extra long for the bus from Totonicapan. I grabbed one of the staff members and said, "Roberto, quick, help me get everything back out of the apartment!" I was finishing setting up when they arrived on ANOTHER BIG BUS. This time there 30 kids and about 6 adults--including the Bishop. They had an agenda. An 11 year old boy conducted the meeting following an agenda and an 11 year old girl lead the singing. All of the children had on name tags that said "future missionary of..." It was really great. They had their own opening song "I Love to See the Temple". Our prepared lesson was "Heavenly Father and Jesus Love Me." So-o-o-o, I had to start out with material I remembered from a previous lesson about the temple and I segued into our prepared lesson. I had just completed that when Spencer brought the first big group back from the temple. It was really crazy--but everyone seemed to love all of the lessons. I had to make two trips to the temple to make more copies of pictures for kids to color. We were exhausted by the time everyone left about 11:30 or 12. We have only a couple of poor quality photos of the kids conducting in the second group. This morning we left at 6:45 AM, went to a local stake center and dispersed to different wards. We spoke at El Prado Barrio in Bosque Stake. This time we had more than ample time. Jeanine spoke 15 minutes and Spencer spoke 20 minutes. With visited with three different families who needed encouragement in attending church and/or the temple. Two families were endowed. We hope our visits helped animate them. The last family we taught we caught by surprise. There were the two of us and two priesthood leaders. Spencer asked them to share their conversion stories and they responded well. He felt there hints of conflicts with other ward members. Spencer says "I felt like asking how long it had been since they had received priesthood blessings. They responded that they hadn't, so we, the brothers, gave them blessings." It was special to have visits set up for us and to feel the boldness or confidence to speak directly to them about their needs. It was great. Before bringing us back to the temple the brothers asked if we would like to drive to the top of mountain that overlooks the city. It was so amazing and beautiful. We took pictures with the iPad, so we have some to share. On the way home we passed a procession. The women had on their beautiful tipico clothes and the WOMEN were carrying in sort of decorated casket thing. It is representative of carrying the body of Christ and in this manner you can receive forgiveness for your sins. I asked the brothers we were with if that meant the women needed more forgiveness than the men. I couldn't get a good shot of the women carrying the casket. We are definitely into the rainy season. Spencer tried to catch some clouds behind the temple. And just one last thing to share. I thought it was pretty cool this past week when one of the names for temple work was for a woman named Moshumba from South Africa. Pretty cool. I'd say about 75% of our names in this temple are from Hungary. Someone has done a lot of indexing on Hungarian records! We love all of you and enjoy news from home and visits by telephone. Happy Fathers' Day to all of our sons and sons-in-law. We love you all.