Feeling our age

I got a new responsibility today in our Guatemalan ward to work with the young men.  With teaching institute, working in the temple, and my day job in the Legal Office, I feel the load.  The past couple of weeks at the end of a long week of service, Mary Ann and I have been pretty worn out.  I guess we are showing our age a little.  We love the work we are doing here and being a part of building God's kingdom on this earth.  We pray for the energy to keep pressing forward with faith.  Four new members in a family were confirmed again today in Church--really cute kids.  Spanish is getting better and Mary Ann is learning more each day.  The Lord cares for his missionaries and we are receiving His blessings here in spades.  We love you all and miss you all so much.  Every day we pray for you that the Spirit will be with you and you will have the faith to keep your covenants and be true and faithful in this day of sifting.

The Work of the Lord is a Marvelous Work and a Wonder

Last night we attended a baby shower for a beautiful young woman of our ward here who is soon to have her first child, a girl. There must have been 100 people at the shower and piles of gifts.  There were games, food, and celebration for this faithful couple.

Later we attended a baptismal service in the ward where four new converts, a family, entered the waters of baptism and made eternal covenants with God.

This morning the fine young Elder who taught these new converts gave his final testimony and farewell to the ward as he prepares to depart for his home in Peru on Tuesday morning, but not before having three more baptisms on Monday evening, another family.

As I contemplate the events of this weekend and reflect on the wonderful young saints in our own family, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for being part of the miracle that is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  This work truly is a marvelous work and a wonder!

Follow the Prophets and Apostles

This week I had a disturbing esperience.  A fine young man, a Latino, in Barrio Lucero in Salt Lake City, who was at the time we were there, the Elders Quorum President, has become disaffected with the Church.  He was having difficulty reconciling the long delay in providing Blacks the priesthood and the current Church doctrine and policy toward Gays and Lesbians with His view of a loving God. He thought it unthinkable that God would give a detailed revelation to Joseph Smith with respect to the Nauvoo House, which he saw as in Joseph´s personal interest, and yet be silent on such important topics as these.

As I communicated with this young man, it became apparent that he had become critical of the
Lord´s annointed prophets, finding fault with them, and even speaking evil of them.  This is the first and almost universal step on the road to apostasy.  It has caused me grief to contemplate the choices this young man is making.  I pray for him, that he may humble himself before the Lord and find his way back into the light.

I have been praying this week for my children and grandchildren, pleading that they will not be overcome in this day of tribulation with the sophistries of the adversary and his cunning, but false doctrines.  Whenever we cut ourselves off from the Lords annointed servants who hold the keys of the Holy Priesthood, we cut ourselves off from God.  If we will follow the prophet and receive his words as if from the Lord´s own mouth, and if we will humble ourselves before God and not trust in our own wisdom or in the arm of flesh, He will teach us His ways, and we will not be overcome by the false doctrines of our day.

"And the arm of the Lord shall be revealed; and the day cometh that they who will not hear the voice of the Lord, neither the voice of his servants, neither give heed to the words of the prophets and apostles, shall be cut off from among the people.  For they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant; they seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world . . . . What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same."  D&C 1:14-16, 38.

The Dentists Remote Site Trip

Time has been racing by, and we haven´t been doing as well as we had hoped at keeping this blog up to date.  We have a million pictures to post, but have had difficulty posting them (not tech savvy enough).

Anyway, just wanted to share some comments about our trip to the Petén with the Dentists.  We left here on Wednesday, March 3, 2016 in a big and very nice Nissan van carrying 8 adults and all of our luggage plus the dental equipment to do screenings in San Benito.  We drove down the road to the Atlantic as they call it, and stopped to see the ruins at Quiriguá.  That was an important Mayan city on the Montagua River that was a hub of commerce in Jade and Obsidian.  The interesting thing about the site to me was the tall stelai with Mayan images and inscriptions telling about their kings. Amazingly these stones were found still standing upright in the jungle after 1,000 years!  That is just incredible to me.  We travelled as far as Rio Dulce that day and stayed in the Catamaran Hotel on the Rio Dulce, a hotel comprised of separate huts, some on stilts over the water.  The next morning we drove through the Petén to Tikal, the famous ruins that Mary Ann and I visited last November.  We stayed in the park in the Jungle Inn.  We toured the ruins and enjoyed our time together.  The hotel was very nice, but they turn all the electricity in the park off at night, and it was a total blackout, like being in a cave!  I had to creep through the hotel room with my hands out in front of me to feel my way to the bathroom--it was a hoot.

The next morning the ladies did some shopping buying handy crafts from the Mayans, and then we drove into Flores, the island city on Lago Petén Itza where we had stayed in November.  On Saturday, they did dental screenings for future and serving missionaries at the stake center in San Benito.  I helped set up and translate.  It was fun getting to visit with the missionaries and with the young people heading out on missions, many of them young women.  It is wonderful to see these faithful young people willing to go and serve the Lord as missionaries.  They are bright and clean and such just plain inspiring to me.

Later that afternoon, the Sanfords, a couple who has a home in Pine Valley, Utah, and we drove over next to the Belizean border to visit the archaeological site of Yaxha.  It was a very interesting place to visit, a beautiful lakeside Mayan city with three sisters cities in the area and more than 200 settlements surrounding them.  It was a busy place in its heyday.  The highlight is sitting atop the highest temple above the jungle canopy at sunset and watching the sun set over the beautiful lake below.  There were very few people in the park, and it was a very peaceful, spiritual place.  As always it made me wish I could have walked those streets and plazas in the day of their glory and known the people who built such impressive cities.

Sunday morning we attended Church with the Santa Elena ward and then started the long drive back.  We drove to Rio Dulce and again stayed in the Catamaran hotel.  On Monday morning before we headed back to Guate, we took a four hour river tour down the Rio Dulce River to Livingston on the Caribbean coast and back.  We saw many interesting sights, like Castillo de San Felipe where the early settlers defended the entrance to Lago Izabal from the pirates, the mangrove forests, natural hot springs, and the gorge through which the river carves its way to the ocean.  There were homes and sailboats and yachts all along the river, the properties of retired foreigners getting away from it all. But all along the river were also little Mayan villages where the native people live in their houses on stilts and fish the river in their dugout canoes, speaking only their native Mayan tongue.  It was another world!

The Gadianton Robbers

One of the very saddest parts of our service here in Guatemala is reading about the murders and robberies in the newspaper every morning.  Violence in these Central American countries is widespread, and most of it comes form organized crime, gangs who extort money from shopkeepers, bus drivers, and merchants of all types.  It is a scourge in this country, and it reminds me so much of the accounts of the Gadianton Robbers in the Book of Mormon who destroyed the Nephite society.  I read about a criminal gang a little south of here in Esquintla who would kidnap people and keep them bound in pits in the wilderness on the Volcán de Fuego while making ransom demands.  It is very sad that the government is unable to get control of these criminal gangs.  Part of the problem is the people won´t report them for fear of retribution.  Any opposition to them often leads to death.  The other day a man and his son were taking a pickup load of goods to a market in another city to sell their goods, when a gang induced them to stop their truck, telling them their load was falling.  Once they stopped, the gang attempted to steal their truck with all of their goods, and when they resisted, both were shot dead in the street. When I see all the opposition to law enforcement back home, I wonder if we are not on a road to more lawlessness and violence as well.  Living in a well ordered society where the rule of law is respected and enforced is a great blessing.  That is not the case for many of our brothers and sisters here.

Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day weekend we took a little trip down to San Salvador in El Salvador.  We stayed in the Intercontinental Hotel in San Salvador which was very nice.  San Salvador is a beautiful city with a good network of freeways, something we don't see here in Guatemala City.  Saturday we drove down to the Costa del Sol to go to the beach.  It was such a beautiful wide flat beach with nice tan sand and very gentle rolling waves in the warm Pacific waters.  We walked along the beach and amazingly had the whole beach to ourselves!  We found hundreds of sand dollars burying themselves in the sand as the water receded from each wave.  We had never seen sand dollars alive before. There are private estates all along the Costa del Sol, which I guess explains in part why we were the only ones on the beach.  It was such a nice day and we enjoyed the beautiful beach so much.  Sunday we attended Church with the Campestre Ward, a very large and vibrant ward that meets in the Stake Center next to the San Salvador temple.  We got to see the beautiful temple and its grounds--just a serene and beautiful place to be.  That afternoon we drove home along the Pacific coast, kind of the El Salvador version of Highway 1 in California.  We stopped along the way to see the beaches which got progressively darker colors of chocolate as we went.  The last beach we stopped to see was Dorada Beach, another wide beautiful beach with gentle waves and milk chocolate colored sand.  It was an interesting and enjoyable get away for Valentine's Day.  I am going to try to add some photos of our trip to the mission pictures page if I can.

Serving in the House of the Lord

For the past three weeks on Thursday afternoons, I have been leaving my office at the Area Legal Office and going with Hermana Smith to serve at the Guatemala City Temple.  It has been a baptism by fire there, learning the ordinances in Spanish, and the coordinator has thrown me into the thick of things so quickly, because they are always short of male workers.  I have enjoyed the wonderful Spirit of the Lord's House and learned so much about the work we do there.  I am deeply grateful for the restoration of these sacred ordinances, and it is a wonderful blessing being able to help administer them to the Guatemalan Saints.  My trainer is Elder Allred, a wonderful man, who has worked in five temples now.  He is a temple missionary here and serves in the temple five days a week.  He has shared many wonderful insights into the meaning of what we do in the temple.  It is my great hope that all my children and grandchildren will live their lives so as to always be worthy of a temple recommend.  It is there that we learn how to prepare to meet God.  

Hermana Smith's Moving Testimony

I'm not sure Mary Ann will write about her experience yesterday sharing her testimony in Spanish for the very first time, so I will tell you about it from my perspective.  It has been very difficult for her not being able to communicate with the members of our ward or share her testimony.  She has worked with her Spanish tutor from the Provo MTC for a couple of months now, writing her testimony down in English and having him translate it for her into Spanish.  Then she practiced for many hours reading it in Spanish so that she would be able to share it with the members of the ward.  She has worked so hard and been so diligent in preparing to do that.  Then yesterday, a surprise to me, she went to the pulpit and shared her testimony.  It was difficult for her and she was terrified, but she did so well!  The members of the ward were deeply touched by her testimony and almost all of them came up to her or me to express how wonderful her testimony was.  They felt her sure witness of the truth and her great love for them.  I was so proud of her and her great efforts to let them know what she knows in her heart.  You inspire me, Hermana Smith!

Kaminaljuyu

Yesterday we visited the archeological park of Kaminaljuyu and the Miraflores Museum here in the city. Kaminaljuyu was an ancient Mayan city over the ruins of which the modern City of Guatemala is built. When we walk the streets of Gustemala City beneath our feet lie the buried buildings and bones of these ancient Mayans. The archelogical park and museum were most interesting, and the museum has many well preserved ancient Mayan artifacts. Kaminaljuyu was built around a beautiful lake called Miraflores that no longer exists. In its time the city must have been a beautiful and vibrant city, crossroads of that ancient empire. It was also a city of eternal spring.

Not to charge into the controversies surrounding Book of Mormon geography or take a position on the competing theories, it is nonetheless interesting to contemplate what life was like here back then. If Dr. John Sorenson is correct, this ancient city was the City of Nephi, the city Nephi founded and in which his descendants lived for hundreds of years until the time of King Mosiah. Interesting to imagine. It would have been a land of incredible bounty, rich in the production of foods of all kinds, a paradise in the Land of Promise. Thus it remained until modern man covered the whole high plain with concrete. Not far to the south was the land of Shilom according to Dr. Sorenson. I have wondered how the tower in Shilom could really help you see your enemies coming from "all the land round about." We read in Mosiah Chapter 11:

"And it came to pass that he built a tower near the temple; yea, a very high tower, even so high that he could stand upon the top thereof and overlook the land of Shilom, and also the land of Shemlon, which was possessed by the Lamanites; and he could even look over all the land round about. And it came to pass that he caused many buildings to be built in the land Shilom; and he caused a great tower to be built on the hill north of the land Shilom, which had been a resort for the children of Nephi at the time they fled out of the land; and thus he did do with the riches which he obtained by the taxation of his people." (Mosiah 11:12-13)

What is interesting is that from a tower on a hill south of Guatemala City you could see all the way to the Pacific Coast where, according to Dr. Sorenson, the Nephites landed and built their first settlement, the City of Lehi. From that tower you could see an army of Lamanites approaching the land of Shilom from a very long way away indeed.

The Adversary at Work

"And many shall be converted, insomuch that ye shall obtain power to organize yourselves according to the laws of man; That your enemies may not have power over you; that you may be preserved in all things; that you may be enabled to keep my laws; that every bond may be broken wherewith the enemy seeketh to destroy my people." (D&C 44:4-5)

These two versus are in effect the mission statement of OGC (Office of the General Counsel). This week among a host of other things, I have been working on writing a request for First Presidency approval to bring a lawsuit against an individual in Nicaragua who is seeking to extort money from the Church using false deeds and other falsified documents. The whole experience of researching this case has once again brought to my attention just how hard the adversary works to thwart the work of the Lord. This special site in Nicaragua was purchased by the Church as a future temple site in Nicaragua when the Church decides to build a temple in that country. But the property has been embroiled in litigation for years against several unscrupulous people trying to profit by fraudulent means. Our cause has been further complicated by widespread corruption in the government of Nicaragua, even in the judiciary. The adversary always opposes the construction of temples, even before they are announced!