Sunday, July 13, 2014 Dear loved ones, Last evening was noteworthy. It was the last night the temple was open before the two week closure for cleaning and maintenance. The last session scheduled on Saturday starts at 4 PM. I had been baptizing and had changed clothes, when just before 4 PM a bus came from out of town. While the youth were changing into baptismal clothes I went up and helped move 18 additional chairs into two endowment rooms. Jeanine was serving in the session. There were 42 women and 17 men. Then I dressed again to perform baptisms. I performed baptisms for about 25 people (10 names for each of them, so about 250 baptisms). There were three elderly people (usually they are converts of less than a year) who also came for baptisms. I helped one sweet, very old lady down each step into the font. She did five temple names before being baptized for a family name. She was getting pretty panicky and it was all I could do to reassure her. It was hard by the time we got to her family name. Then I helped her step by step to the edge of the font, where she sat in chair with a towel around her shoulders to be confirmed for her family name. After the confirmation, she was visibly moved to tears with what she had accomplished. I wonder if the family name was her mother or a daughter or someone very close to her. My back was tired and I was hoping there were enough other brothers for the receivers at the final veil—but, nope, I had to help there as well. After the patrons had dressed and left, all of the missionaries (men and women) stayed to help remove all of the veils in the temple for cleaning. It seemed really strange to have things so wide open in the initiatory and new name area. We also opened all of the lockers, placed keys in envelopes for the different locker rooms, emptied things out that had been left behind. They have to be empty and open for fumigating. When we left the temple we noticed a beautiful moon shining over the city. There were clouds in front of it. I took some pictures, but we are having trouble with the blog posting pictures tonight. There’s a national song (very popular) about the moon over Xelaju (the full Mayan name used for Quetzaltenango. I think it is “La Luna de Xelaju”. I heard later that the moon was unusually close to the earth last night. Hope you get to see the pictures. Love, Spencer (Dad, Grandpa or whatever I am to you)