The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning

This is the gorgeous new temple dedicated today in San Salvador, El Salvador (a country whose name means "The Savior"). I attended the broadcast of the dedication at the district center chapel here in San Ignacio and got to see all my friends from both the San Ignacio and Santa Elena branches--most of them, sadly, for the last time.

The dedication was wonderful. Pres. Eyring presided and dedicated the temple--his first ever! Katie, Maren, Sarah, and I attended the 9 AM dedicatory session. This was an extra-advantageous choice since the first session included the sealing of the cornerstone and also had an English dubbed channel which was not present during the later sessions, much to some of our fellow team members' chagrin.

Pres. Eyring talked about how temples should awaken a sense of gratitude within each of us for the things God has given us and the blessings of the ordinances received therein. He noted that the creative beauty of each temple is an expression of our gratitude to our own Creator. All the talks were great and there was much reverence but also great excitement for this, the fourth temple to grace Central America.

After the dedication, I said rounds of goodbyes. Of a few of them I make special note:

This is Sister Sandra Trapp. She is one of the sweetest ladies you'll ever meet and I've really enjoyed getting to know her in the Santa Elena Branch. She has had many trials that have left her mostly paralyzed and her voice is very quiet so you have to lean in close to understand her when she speaks, but she is very wise and has many keen spiritual insights. She has faithfully come to Church every week I've been here and has rarely missed a week for the past decade since she joined the Church. We often talk about the Sunday School lesson and Sacrament talks after Church and she always has phenomenal insights. When I said goodbye today she gave me the most touching goodbye letter including her testimony. How blessed we are to have sisters like Sandra Trapp in the Kingdom to inspire us!

Here's my Belizean Branch Presidents! At left is Pres. Lemos of the San Ignacio Branch. Even though I didn't attend the San Igancio Branch, I had quite a few opportunities to interact with that branch and Pres. Lemos specifically. He is an incredible man and will likely continue to be an important Church leader in Belize for decades to come. At right is Pres. Pinelo, the President of the Santa Elena branch where I've attended. He is soft-spoken, but a great leader also and I've loved helping serve in his branch, even if only temporarily.

Right after the dedication session, I had another goodbye, this time to fellow team mate Katie. She was supposed to leave yesterday, but her flight got cancelled due to the hurricane, so she left today. She had to get back early because she has a race for BYU Track and Field tomorrow in Park City! Best of luck, Katie!

Speaking of the hurricane, Harvey truly was pretty lame, as mentioned yesterday. In fact, as you noticed in the pictures above, especially with Presidents Pinelo and Lemos, the day today has already been completely clear and beautiful. Now, I actually don't mind that at all! In fact, good weather will be a great blessing to be able to get our work done the next few days before leaving. 

Later in the afternoon we watched some "Mormon Messages" videos and now I'm writing my blog post, and that's my day so far. 

Moral of today's post: don't undervalue the blessing of a temple! The saints here in Belize are ecstatic to have a new temple that will only require them to travel a day and a half each way at huge expense to be able to attend. I don't know about you, but for me in Provo, the temple is a fifteen minute WALK from my apartment! Let us not neglect that blessing. Remember: Pres. Eyring taught today that temples should turn our hearts to gratitude, and a great deal of that gratitude should certainly be for temples themselves, especially ones with such close proximity!

Waterfalls and Elections

Yesterday was, once again, our "day off" and we took a trip to do some jungle hiking and playing in some of the gorgeous waterfalls. It was peaceful and fun. Here's some fun pictures taken by myself and others depicting our escapades:

 Pretty landscape

 Pretty small waterfall 

 Pretty isolated pools of water near little waterfall

 Pretty sandy streams flowing to larger river 

Pretty Katie contemplating something on a rock

 Pretty natural garden formations

 Can you find the pretty little brown bird?

 Weird face carved into one of the rocks. Pretty sure this is NOT an ancient Mayan leftover, especially given the dreadlocks depicted.

 The foliage and these unusual purple spiked berries make for a nice nature shot

 Hiking to big rock falls

 Along the way we saw some horses

 Big Rock Falls

Big rock falls and me, wearing lucky hat, lucky shirt, lucky boots, and... jeans. (Sorry, the orange adventure pants were in the wash!)

Look at how intense we are. Yeah, we're totally tough like that.

Yay Team!

 This is my pull-you-in cute face for girls. 

 A lot of the faces in this picture are classic and just downright zany.

 Yay! Waterfall!

I give this waterfall two thumbs up!

So do Siskel and Ebert!

Okay, last shot of me, I promise!

Anyway, I figure the pictures tell the story much better than any words, so that's just about it for my report of yesterday! 

As for today, it was my last Sunday in the Santa Elena branch (very sad). Next week will be my last Sunday in Belize, but there will not be regular church due to the broadcast of the San Salvador El Salvador temple dedication. This will be the temple to service the saints in Belize now. The Guatemala City temple is actually closer, as is the soon to be dedicated Quetzeltenango, Guatemala temple, but Belize and Guatemala have never been on very good terms, and it is easier for Belizeans to make extended stay visits in El Salvador and Honduras (where yet another temple will soon be dedicated in Tegucigalpa). By the end of next year there will be 6 temples in Central America! The Church is very strong across this part of the world, though it is a little behind in Belize where the work started much later (1980) than the rest of Central America. The Belizean saints are still very excited for the temples being built and are confident that one day there will be a stake in Belize and eventually a temple as well. After the 3-hour block today I had my quick interview with Pres. Pinelo to recieve my...

...temple dedication ticket!

It wasn't too much of an interview. He mainly just asked to see my temple recommend and then asked if I was still worthy to have it or if there was anything I needed to clear up. When I showed him my recommend it blew my mind to realize that it is only good through the end of next month!!! Do I have a new item on the top of my priority list for when I get back to the states? Yes. Yes I do.

Church itself was great; a fantastic final week in Santa Elena Branch. The sister missionaries serving here spoke in sacrament and I got to teach the Gospel Principles class for non-members and recent converts. It was the lesson on the Holy Ghost and we had a fantastic discussion; everyone participated really well. One of the recent converts brought her non-member boyfriend Jamir for the first time, and he read along in the scriptures and seemed really interested, so the sisters will hopefully start teaching him this week. It made me miss my mission a lot (as this whole experience in Belize has). I'm just glad the Lord always has work for us to do! :)

On the way to Church we saw an unusual amount of commotion. Nobody usually is doing much of anything on Sunday mornings, but today is the local elections and so all the candidates were setting up booths around the voting stands on the main street in Santa Elena where we walk to get to Church. 

Getting ready for elections

The political system here in Belize is... interesting. I've had ups and downs dealing with some of the political struggles here, but it really isn't too different than the United States. On a positive note, Sis. Medina, one of the members from the Santa Elena Branch with whom we often have FHE is running to be on the Cayo Town Council. She is an amazing lady with strong goals for positive development of Belize. She also has had an amazing campaign. We've seen her posters and banners just about everywhere and we also have heard that she has gone door to door to talk with nearly everyone in her council region to talk about her ideas and goals and hear their point of view! I personally hope she's elected. If so, she'll also stand out as the first female Mormon to hold public office in Belize (to our knowledge)! 

One last cultural picture before I finish this post:

Click to zoom in and look at the sign on the store. The sentence at the bottom is in the Belizean Kriol language. This is a VERY common sign on the stores around here! "Dis da fu we chikin" means, roughly, "This is where we get our chicken", i.e., "Chicken sold here!" Kriol signs are the best, because the spelling has no consistency (some of these signs spell it "Dis du fi wi chiken") and you have to say it out loud to understand what it is saying, even in Kriol.

Some projects you haven't heard much about before!

Skipping days of blogging is dumb. Anyway, sorry for no post last night. I was tired and decided to sleep.

Let's begin with yesterday, then, shall we? The day began with a trip to a semi-distant village called Duck Run Three where we worked on the Soilet project (the one we formerly dug worms for, if you remember). I don't think I've ever given a very full description of the Soilet project (mainly because I haven't worked much on it). A soilet is an alternative to a septic tank which filters waste naturally breaking everything down into non-toxic byproducts including clean water. It first uses vermiculture (worms) to initially break the waste down and then passes it through a series of filters over time. Unfortunately, last year's team started but did not finish some of these units, so we've been not only building a new one, but finishing the job that should have been done last year, finding pieces in disrepair. The unit at Duck Run Three was one such unfinished job. The waste box where the filtration happens was built, but that's about it. The box looks like a Belizean coffin. Nobody in Belize is ever buried underground (I assume because of high water table concerns), so the cemeteries are all full of cement boxes above ground where the bodies are laid. The soilet box looks just like those. Our objective at this spot yesterday was to make needed repairs to the box, build a connecting outhouse, and (first) fill in an irrigation ditch and dig in on an alternative path since it ran through where we needed to build the outhouse. Many of the team members were there all day, but I was only there from 9 to noon and primarily worked on the ditch redirection committee, though I was then able to help start the outhouse construction for a short while before leaving.

 Digging the ditch. 

Lots of pesky roots got in the way and had to be sawed out (or else hacked away by the broad end of the pick by yours truly)

 Opening up the unfinished soilet box to see what condition it was in (it wasn't very good).

Can you find the frog we found inside? Can you find the hole in the wall of the box as well?

 Repairing the hole.

Beginning the outhouse frame. It will be built on stilts (like many buildings in Belize) to not only protect from floodwater but the drain properly to the soilet box.

At noon, Megan and I had to go to get some other project work done. We soon discovered that the return bus wasn't for another half hour, so we ate lunch at one of the restaurants run by the German Mennonites (they make really good food and ice cream!), who heavily populate the Duck Run Three area. In fact, we ate at their new location which had this sign out front:

 This is actually not incorrect in Belize. In America we'd say "Now Open," but in Belize they say "Now Opened." Likewise, I kid you not, the other day I saw a sign for a "Becoming Closed" sale at a store. It's always fun to go to other English-speaking places and still learn completely different ways of saying things. As another example, when you go to a restaurant in the US the cashier will probably ask if you'd like your food "To Stay" or "To Go." In Belize they say "To Have" or "To Take" respectively! This is quite confusing initially until you get the hang of it, because if the lady just asks "is this to have?" then you'll probably say "yes, of course I want to have it" even if you do in fact intend to take it away and eat it elsewhere.

After the relatively long bus ride back to San Ignacio and some quick showers (digging the ditch got us splattered in mud once the water started coming in) Megan and I then headed out on a long round of errands. We first needed to print off reports for yet another project you haven't really heard much about on this blog: the suicide study project. This project was done almost exclusively before I arrived. Basically, everyone around here talks about the crazy unusual spike of suicides among teenagers in the town of Benque Viejo (the town at the border with Guatemala, just 2 miles beyond Succotz) over the last year. Some of the team members in the last wave did an in-depth research project for school and public officials' use investigating the cause of the suicides. If you talk to people around here, almost everyone will tell you that the cause is related to witchcraft. The research project, which not only investigated some specific suicide cases but also interviewed nearly 400 teenagers in Benque Viejo, concluded that the primary root cause seems to be parental neglect among a number of other complex causes. Our task yesterday was to print off several copies of the final draft of the comprehensive report from the data and research and deliver the copies to various officials who work at the schools in Benque, the ministry of education in Santa Elena, and other positions of influence of those who work with teens in the area. Hopefully they will use the research wisely to develop better solutions rather than blaming witchcraft (note: the officials we worked with and delivered these reports are NOT among those blaming witchcraft!).

After dropping off the reports we made a stop in Succotz on the way back to talk with a few officials and business owners about some Succotz Revenue project details. We made it back to San Ignacio again just in time for dinner. As Mama Kay is still out of town, we've been eating out all week and had a wonderful meal of rice and fish with a special sauce at one of our favorite restaurants, Cenaida's. 

Dinner at Cenaida's!

After I ate dinner Katie had to do her running so I went to the park and then we ended the day doing another Karaoke party--very fun! 

Today was another computer day mostly, though we did a little at the orphanage this morning. I am happy to announce that we have finished the bag step of the construction process!

Ta-da!

Top of the dome, viewed looking up from inside.

Can you find the white tree frog? He was just sitting inside, asleep and matching in with the bags!

The next step was to begin preparing for plastering by filling the foundation with dirt and then wrapping the whole building in chicken wire, as shown. Unfortunately, we ran out of chicken wire and will have to get more and finish wrapping it and then plaster it all next week--our last full week in country!

The rest of my day today was full of on-the-computer project work. Some was for Succotz, some was for the Rainforest Haven project, working more on the website doing a lot of underpinning HTML code. Fascinating to me, probably boring to you. Anyway, that's my report for another 2 productive days in Belize!

The Visa Adventure

So, yes, this makes 3 posts in one day. I posted my summary of Thursday and Friday earlier today and just posted my "Meet the Team" post for the day, spotlighting Pete Harris. Now I'm finishing my catch-up work by posting for yesterday and today!

If you remember from the Thurs/Fri post, I was very sick all night between Thurs and Fri and into Friday morning. I was wiped out all day and continued to sleep through the night! Luckily, Saturday morning found me feeling much, much better. The queasiness was all gone and I was just a little worn out still and definitely hungry (since all I'd eaten on Friday was a couple soda crackers)! Encouraged by my good turn of health, I was back on my feet for another Saturday in my orange adventure pants! For those new to the blog, Saturday and Sunday are our "days off" each week. Additionally, throughout our 6 week stay, we get 2 additional "vacation days" which I have not used yet (but a certain commemoration approaches this week that may merit the use of such a day...). We often use our Saturdays for exciting adventures here in Central America! Yesterday was no exception and indeed had another purpose as well. We needed to renew our passport visas. This can be done in two ways: go to the embassy in Belmopan or leave the country for at least a few hours. Since we live ridiculously close to the Guatemalan border anyway, we chose the latter and spent the day in Guatemala!

 Here I am in the "no man's land" between Belize and Guatemala. Click the pic to see the blue "Bienvenidos A Guatemala" sign!

Basic thoughts on Guatemala:

*Much more militarized. Lots more cops with big guns than Belize has. Sorry, didn't think it wise to take pictures of Guatemalan cops with guns.

*The same poverty I see and fight in Belize also exists in Guatemala. Very similar, in fact. However...

*Though they have the same degree of poverty in many areas, they also have much more development. Let me illustrate these two points:

Besides being a sweet (albeit poorly lit) gangsta pic of me, if you look behind me at the river's edge you'll see some crude little huts with rock on little tables. This is where the women come to wash clothes, beating them against the rocks with other smaller rocks and rinsing them in the river. This is just like Belize, where I see the same thing in Succotz every day. In fact, in Succotz I've never actually seen little huts like this--just the big rocks and the women pounding away. However...

Guatemala clearly sets itself apart as more developed than Belize with shopping mall complexes like this one. I have never seen any shopping centers like this at all in Belize or even a building this modern for any purpose! It was actually quite an awakening seeing buildings like this in Guatemala and realizing that I haven't seen a single building in Belize that looks younger than ME, except for the LDS chapel in Succotz. Even other buildings I've seen which I know are relatively new still LOOK very old as they rely on old forms of building and architecture. Many of them are not hurricane proof and many are falling apart. It may seem like a delightful little splurge of romanticism at first to come to Belize and feel like you've traveled back 40 years in time, but as reality sets in it's just downright sad. These are very smart people who want the same opportunities we have and yet are held back by immense lack of resources to get them there. Anyway, this is a weekend post, so I'll get off my soap box now because weekend posts are supposed to be about adventures!

We started our day in the island-city of Flores, Guatemala. This is a major tourist town that is fun because it is its own little island and is filled with lots of little restaurants and gift shops. I felt a lot richer in Guatemala since the Guatemalan Quetzal is worth a lot less than the US dollar. Where the Belizean currency trades at a simple 2:1 with US currency, Quetzales trade at 7.5:1, so a single Quetzal is worth about 13 cents (or about a shilling in Belize money, but not if you trade Belize money straight to Quetzales as they trade at a lower rate than US dollars). So, if you come with $100 US, you will be given Q750 and feel a lot richer! Furthermore, the prices at the little shops are a little better than those in Belize and the people are a little easier to talk down in price. I felt pretty good about some of the price negotiations I managed to pull off when buying some souvenirs for my family members. 

 The mainland from the island of Flores.

 In a photo that is unfortunately victim to poor lighting choices, Maren and Ashley pose with this interesting statue thing.

Guatemalan grub! I actually couldn't eat all of it since my stomach was still somewhat recovering from a day of weirdness. Also, the flip-side to seeming a lot richer because of the exchange rate is that the prices also seem much higher. For example, this burrito is Q44. If you think in dollars, that's outrageous, but in Quetzales it really isn't that bad for a nice meal (especially since it originally had these yummy spicy chips with it that were devoured already before I thought to take a picture). In US money it would be slightly less than a $6 meal altogether and it was from a really nice restaurant, so it was a good price. 

Anyway, from Flores we headed to our primary destination: Tikal! We first did a little zip line adventure in the jungle area just outside Tikal. Most of the pictures from that part of the day are on other cameras I haven't taken the pictures from yet, but I have a few:

 Here I am in full zip-line gear!

These little orange centipedes were everywhere in the jungle!

Can you find the spider monkeys?

After our zip-lining jungle adventure, we entered the Tikal national park, which is also in very thick jungle. This was absolutely indescribable! I took nearly a hundred pictures, so I clearly can't post them all, but I'll put some of my favorites up. Basically, when I visited the ruins at Xunantunich a few weeks ago, it was pretty awesome, but this is a whole new league! Let's just say that Xunantunich is to Tikal as the theme park rides at the county fair are to Disney World! In fact, Tikal is nearly as big as Disney World altogether and you'd have to be there a week to really see everything. We saw most of the major temples and lots of the smaller ones and other ancient city buildings like the acropolises where the royals lived and had their political offices. The entire time the eerie haunting cries of the howler monkeys echoed through the jungle--I must say that they make the most unsettling growls I've ever heard! But now, on to a sampling of pictures:

So, five major temples have been excavated so far at Tikal. They are numbered by order of excavation. This is "Temple 2." Several hundred smaller buildings and temples have been excavated either partially or completely and TONS more are waiting to be excavated. You can see lots of mounds with trees growing out of them and bits of building sticking out all over the place, awaiting future attention from the archaeologists.

 Temple 1, first excavated and shortest of the 5 major temples.

One of the sacrificial altars, against the backdrop of other monuments, perhaps with ritual significance.

Detailed view of one of the monuments.

View of the North Acropolis from the top of Temple 1

We spent a good deal of time exploring the Central Acropolis--a complex of housing and offices for nobles and leaders. In the second picture above, Temple 2 looms in the background. Originally, additional wooden and thatch structures would have been build on top of and around these buildings.

 In one of the rooms of the central acropolis, presumably the bed chamber of some nobleman.

He had a nice jungle view through his window!

Originally, all the buildings were painted red. This is one of the few spots that still retains any traces of that ancient red pigment.

Like I said, there is still lots of excavation going on and tons of mounds that haven't been touched. Here is a project currently underway.

Here is Temple 5, the most recently excavated of the larger temples. Nearby, there was a display documenting the excavation process, including this picture from early on in the process when it was mostly still covered in trees and only the top was dug out:

Many structures there still are completely covered like this. In fact, the right side of temple 5 still is. Let me show you...

Here is the completely excavated right side of the temple, contrasted with...

...this still completely overgrown left side with trees coming out!

This small temple--one of seven right in a row--has been adorned in a thatched overhanging much like those which originally adorned most if not all of these ancient structures.

This is called the "Lost World" pyramid and isn't considered one of the major numbered temples (I don't know why). It's claim to fame is that it is the oldest major structure in Tikal, dating back to 200 AD. The gringo in front with the orange adventure pants is its sacred guardian, looking rather threatening with that palm branch! :-P

From the "Lost World" we got our first glimpse of what would be the climax of our journey--temple 4, the tallest ancient American structure still standing not just in Tikal or Guatemala, but anywhere! We started our journey for this great temple, but on the way...

...we found these holes in the ground! Of course, they begged to be explored, so we climbed in and discovered...

...sets of 5 branching cubby holes in each tunnel. It was actually pitch black, but luckily my phone has a fantastic flashlight that also serves as the flash for the camera which took this picture of one of the cubby holes. Each hole was about 3.5 feet wide and some of the sets of cubby holes were connected. We made a few guesses as to their purpose and one of our theories was later confirmed by one of the park employees, who told us that these were storage cellars for the Mayas and many of them were found with objects inside that have been removed to study and to protect from looters.

Finally, after a few other fun diversions, we made it to the base of temple 4. At first we didn't realize this fact because it just looked like a big grassy hill with a staircase:

What you're seeing is actually not a hill, but the temple itself and the staircase (which makes about 6 switchbacks on the way up) takes you to the top of it. Only the very top portion has ever been excavated of this enormous temple, and you don't realize the fact that you are actually climbing the temple until all of the sudden the top portion suddenly appears as you come around a switchback in the staircase:

So here is the excavated portion, from the side where you enter at top after climbing all along the BACK of the pyramid. Once you come around to the front of the pyramid at top, you immediately gasp as you are met with this arresting view:

You can clearly see temples 1-3 (the really prominent one is #3) and if you click to make it bigger you may catch the top of 5 peeking behind that big mound, which is full of more ruins awaiting excavation. Even further right you can see the "lost world" temple peeking out. Tons of ruins lie between each of these bigger structures, like the small temple and the acropolis shown above. We saw so few of the ruins there in the 3 hours we spent in Tikal. You could easily spend a week and not see everything. By the way, does this view look familiar? You may have seen it before in very popular movie...

Yes, this is Yavin 4 at the end of the original Star Wars film, where the Millenium Falcon is being signalled to fly in at the tallest temple in Tikal, where the interior will be substituted with a Hollywood set at which Princess Leia will smile at Luke, Han, and Chewie and put medals on them. When Star Wars was filmed, the top of temple 4 had just barely been excavated and George Lucas saw it as a fantastic view to serve as an exotic alien background, which his audience fully assumed it was! By the way, when the dude in the helmet turns around...

...he is revealed to actually be me in disguise! :)

I'll let that picture serve as an adequate conclusion to my adventure in Tikal. From there we headed back to Belize, which ironically feels like "Home Sweet Home" even though I'm just as much as foreigner here as in Guatemala! It felt like that moment near the end of The Emperor's New Groove where they're trying all the potions on Kuzco. After changing into a bunch of different animals he is changed to a llama--like he has been most of the film--and says, "Yay! I'm a llama again! Wait..." We were all like, "Yay, we're home to Belize again! Wait..." And yet, Belize becomes part of my home more and more each day that I'm here. As someone who's moved around a lot in my life, I always am unsure what to say when people ask "Where are you from?" Do they mean currently or recently or where I was born or where my family currently lives or where I've lived longest? All those questions have different answers! I think I've come to conclude that throughout my life I've simply acquired multiple "homes." Now, I don't use the word loosely enough to mean anywhere I've ever been, but certainly to describe places my heart is especially attached to. Provo, Orem, Washington, Wisconsin, Florida, Colorado, Belize... they all collectively represent home to me, some more than others. Even specific buildings resonate as "home" to me, like my house here in Belize, or my high school, or my family's house in Longmont, or BYU campus. On the other hand, there are plenty of places I've visited and absolutely loved--such as Guatemala--but they aren't home.

So, that was my Saturday. Sunday, in a nutshell, was relaxing. Church was great and in the afternoon I did a lot of blog catch-up and scripture study. In the evening the team all got together in the lounge/family room and sang hymns. It was great. Also, this week I remembered to take a picture of the the little building which serves as a chapel in Santa Elena:

 The lower half of this house is where the relief society and primary meet. Notice that there is a Spanish sign on the right side of the building and English on the left. The upper half of the building is someone's apartment.

The wooden structure to the right of the building was added on to serve as the chapel and also is used for Sunday School and Elder's Quorum. They are trying very hard to increase attendance so that they can qualify for a real chapel like the ones nearby in San Ignacio and Succotz. The one in San Ignacio was the first real LDS chapel built in Belize back in 1987!

One of the exciting topics discussed Sunday was the upcoming dedication of the San Salvador, El Salvador temple which will occur my last Sunday here. This will be the new temple for saints in Belize. Even though Guatemala City is closer, political relations between Belize and Guatemala are tense so it is easier to make extended temple visits in El Salvador. They will be broadcasting the dedication at the San Ignacio building and I'm going to be talking with President Pinelo (the Branch President in Santa Elena) this week to get the special dedication recommend required to attend. Very exciting!