These are pictures of the many Pinatas that they make here. I want you to look at all the
devils. The big one comes from Rio Dulce, all the little Red Devil were being sold on the streets here in Guatemala. Dec. 7th is Devils day here. What the people do is go and buy one every year, then they give the devil all their bad thoughts and deeds that they have done through out the year. At midnight they light fire works and burn all the Devils up and gets rid of all their problems so they can have a very Merry Christmas.

Christmas 2011

Feliz Navidad! This is our second Christmas in Guatemala. It has been a joy and a privilege to be able to work with the young missionaries who are serving in the Central American Missions; Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. We have worked with over 1400 missionaries during this year, 2011, teaching them in the MTC and officiating their sessions in the temple every week. This mission will end for us in May of 2012 and we look forward to seeing you all then. May the peace that comes from our Savior during this special time of the year be yours now and throughout the year.

Happy Holidays from the Rogers.

Denton and Kay

Una de las bendiciones que hemos recibido por server esta misión, ha sido la oportunidad de conocer personas como ustedes. Hemos apreciado mucho sus ejemplos y ayuda para que pudiésemos cumplir con nuestras responsabilidades en el bello país de Guatemala. Que el espíritu de esta época les bendiga a ustedes y a sus familias ahora y por el año entrante.

Feliz Navidad y un Prospero Ano Nuevo,

Denton y Kay Rogers

We were invited to go to dinner at the Bethea's home when the Laytons. (one of the past counselors in the Mesa Temple with the Garns) came to visit. They are with his brother, another Laytons. Going from the left to right you have the Perkins who were from Mesa but now live in Utah. Next the Hubers, from Mesa, and Guahardo's from Texas and the Rogers from Mesa. We all work in the Guatemala Temple where the Temple president and wife, (Clate and Carol Mask) are also from Mesa, Az. I would say that Arizona is WELL REPRESENTED in Guatemala. Mary Ann Bethea was taking the picture,

In July, we were able to take a trip to El Salvador and see the soon-to-be-opened San Salvador Temple. We traveled with Clate and Carol Mask and with Paul and Joanne Fillmore. It was a quick, overnight trip for us as we had to return to work in the Guatemala Temple.























It is a beautiful temple and we really enjoyed our day there. The Salvadorean people are so excited to have their own temple and have been preparing for it since we arrived in Guatemala. They have been coming to Guatemala City for at least the last nine months, every week, to be trained as temple workers. They are ready as the temple was dedicated last Sunday and is now open for business.








We were able to meet the new Temple President and his wife, the Petersons. Our tour was very special since we were in the presence of the new President. We saw their new apartment, the apartments for the temple missionaries, all very nice and very new!!!! They also have a Distribution Center in an adjacent building. They also have a new Stake Center on the Temple property. The landscaping was magnificent. All in all, the El Salvador Temple is as nice a temple as I have seen in any part of the world.




At the open house, we saw many of our missionaries that were trained at the Guatemala MTC while we have been there. It was fun for us to see them and to see how they were doing on their missions. I'm happy to say they are all doing well and are happy.



It is great to see the church grow stronger in Central America. Stay tuned, another temple to open in Guatemala in December of this year and another to open in Honduras sometime during 2012.

Back in January 30th 2011 the Temple close for 2 weeks to be cleaned; so I decided to go to Antigua to study Spanish. Two sister from the Temple, Hermana Wright, y Hermana Fletcher, decided they wanted to go with me so I made all the arrangements. Carol Mask told me I should work through a friend of theirs, Manuel because that is what he does for a living. So he arranged for us to stay with a Mormon widow, Hermana Alonzo, and her daughter. She would also cook meals for us. They lived very close to the school we would attend so we would just be able to walk over and it would be GREAT! I don't really know what I expected but it was NOT what we got!!! It became very clear that this was going to be an adventure. Manuel picked us up at the CCM and drove us up to Antigua. When we arrived at the house we walked in the front door right into a table where we would be eating our meals, that was the dinning room. A counter top behind was the kitchen. Our bedroom was up some stairs that had NOT been finished, rough concrete and no railing. Hermana Wright and I shared a room with two twin beds and Hermana Fletcher chose to have the room by herself because she didn't sleep much at night. We took our suit cases up the stairs and then asked where the bathroom was. It was down the stairs, through the kitchen and outside on the back patio!!! A little roon No bigger than a tiny closet!! It had a toilet, a sink right next to the toilet, so close you could was your hands while sitting on the toilet. The shower had ALL KINDS of open wires running overhead. These wires were to help bring in hot water of which there was VERY little. When you turned on the shower the water went EVERYWHERE and soaked the whole bathroom plus the towel you had brought in to dry off with. I just stood there and laughed wondering how I could get back up stairs and get dry. I always have to go to the bathroom at least once a night and it was a REAL trip getting to the bathroom, outside. in the middle of the night. Then it came time to blow dry your hair and Hermana Alonzo did not want you using your blow dryer because it used too much electricity. Are you kidding me!!! We had to find a beauty shop and have our hair washed and dried!!!!!
On the first day after we had unpacked and used the bathroom we went down for our first meal. it was beans, eggs, water and fresh bread. Very typical but not really what I wanted. WE visited with Hermana Alonzo and one of her daughters for a while and then went up to bed.

Got in bed and couldn't sleep because there were FIREWORKS going on all around us, the dogs were barking, for hours!! Hermana's son had come over and was building something on the back patio and hammered until midnight. At 4:40 in the morning a rooster from across the street started waking up the world. It was cold and I wondered how school was going to be!! What had I gotten us all into?

This is the group we work with in the Guatemala Temple. We are the busiest Temple outside of the USA. We service members from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize, and Nicaragua. The Temple in El Salvador will be dedicated in August. Just one more month. We have been busy in our Temple helping to train their worker. Denton and I got to go with Presidente Mask and Carol to the open house of the El Salvador Temple. It is BEAUTIFUL and the members there are so PROUD to have this Temple. The next Temple to be dedicated will be a new Temple, the second Temple in Guatemala, it will be in Quetzaltenango. We are busy even now helping to train the workers for that Temple. It really is a JOY to see all these Temple being built and feeling a part of it by helping to train their workers. In December of 2012 a Temple in Honduras will be dedicated. Yes, the Lords work is moving on.

This is an email I sent out after we first got here explaining the things we do here. I just wanted to remember it all.

Hola amigos mios!!
We are so HAPPY and THANKFUL to know that you arrived safely to your mission. We are now in our 3rd week and have been running since we landed. Sounds like your hours at the Temple are as long as our hours. The Spirit is strong but my body is weak and after about 6 hrs I start to get tired by 9 hours I am really tired. Our Temple has only 2 shifts, one starts at 5:00 and goes until 1:00 and the other starts at 1:00 and goes until 9:00.
We work every Friday and Saturday 2nd shift. Then on Wed. we take different shifts of missionaries over to the Temple all day. We always officiate or are the witness couples. There are only 42 workers. Sometimes it is so crowded that you can't even move. The Bus loads come from Costa Rica, Honduras,Panama,Belize,El Salvador, Nicaragua,and of course Guatemala. What a Glories work! We work at the CCM onSundays, Wed., Thurs. We teach a lot and really enjoy being with the missionaries.

We live kinda in a compound. It is at the CCM with all the missionaries. There is a block wall all around it and wrought Iron Fence to come and go through. We are only 1/2 block from the Temple. When we all walk to the Temple. a guard calls to the guard outside the gate, tells him we are coming and look for us then he calls another guard at the Temple who looks for us and he opens the gate and they protect and look after us. We do NOT feel like it is that dangerous but we do NOT go out at night and never alone.

There are so many WONDERFUL people working here each with their own story. One for example-An Hermana Kapp, she is the Sister-In-Law of Janice Kapp Perry. Hermana Kapp and her husband were called 2 years ago to serve in the Guatemala Temple. When they got here her husband got very sick and they had to go home where he had heart problems and died. At the same time she was nursing her husband; they had a daughter who had cancer and died shortly after her father died. Leaving a husband and children. Her daughters husband became very depressed after his wife died and Sister Kapp had to encourage him to remarry and to be happy. He finally found a wonderful woman to marry and he is happy now. After burying her husband , her daughter, and helping her son in law and grandchildren put their lives back together she decided she needed to go back to Guatemala and finish the mission that she and her husband had started 2 years ago. She came back by herself and lives with a single Latina who has lost her husband too.
Sister Kapp is 76 years young and truly an inspiration to me!!!!

There are always interesting things that happen at the CCM with every group. For instance, in this group, we had a young elder that, on the third day of his being here, developed a bad headache on a Friday night. It developed into physical spasms and a lot of pain the next day. The CCM President got worried enough about him that, with the consent of the Area Medical Advisor, they took him to the hospital. He continued to have episodes while in the hospital that was observed by the doctors and the nurses there. They did all the physical tests that they could on him with no findings that pointed to a physical cause. After four days of testing they released him to come back to the CCM. This was last Tuesday. Wednesday, he went to the temple with us and could hardly walk into the temple and stay on his feet. I suggested that he go back to the CCM and wait until the next week to come to the temple. He insisted on staying and that he would be OK and could make it through the session without a problem and that he really wanted to be where the spirit is strong. Well, needless to say, he was doubled over after about 30 minutes and we actually had to stop the session to take him out and talk to him and get him some water. Well, he made it through. The next days, he continued to convulse, pass out and otherwise be non-functional to the point that it became clear that he could not function as a missionary and couldn't be sent out into the field like he was.
The President made arrangements to have him sent home on a medical release so that he could take care of his problems, have psychiatric help or whatever, and if he could get his problems resolved to everyone's satisfaction, he could be reinstated on his mission. When the President talked to his father, his father could not believe that anything was wrong with his son and that he must have done something wrong at the CCM. After assuring him that he had not done anything wrong, he got them to leave the CCM with some difficulty on Saturday morning. Next day, Sunday evening, the missionary was back at the CCM with his Stake President hoping to convince the CCM President to take him back because he had had no problems in the last two days. The missionary had told his Stk Pres that he had greatly over exaggerated, or he was faking the problem while he had been here. The CCM President knew better because, when he had visited him at the hospital and the boy was out, President took his car key and ran it over the bottom of his foot with absolutely no reaction. He couldn't not react to that stimulus. None of us can figure out what he is trying to do!! But we all know that he would be some mission presidents night mare!
After taking the Stake President through all of the happenings here at the CCM, he understood that maybe there was a problem here with the missionary and the Stk Pres couldn't pull his weight and get him back in. So we are waiting for a second opinion evaluation from a neurologist that there isn't anything wrong with him physically and for an evaluation from a psychiatrist on his condition. We really do hope he can get some help!
Never a dull moment at the CCM.

This is a picture of a missionary, Elder David Nanez, from a small town in Peru who will serve his mission in Guatemala. He asked me one day after a class that I taught if I had any relatives in Peru. I thought that it was an interesting question and it took me a couple of seconds to remember that Christopher, my nephew, was serving his mission in Peru. So I told our missionary that I did and he was so happy. It turned out that Chris had been serving in his home ward before he left for his mission and it was kind of a link with home for him. These are great young people that we have a chance to work with. We took a picture together after church in front of the Guatemala Temple. Sorry, the sun was right in our eyes.







This is a picture of the fruit that a cashew nut grows on top of. The fruit can be used for a type of juice and the nut part is taken off the fruit and roasted in the oven and then the shell can be cracked off and voila, you have a cashew nut. It takes a lot of fruit to get a can of cashew nuts. Hope you all enjoy a little Central American culture.

More pictures

More fun in Guatemala

Denton teaching one of his Sunday classes out in the reception room of the Casa de Heuspedes.
















Denton at Lake Atitlan with Senor Chavez, he and his sons make jewelery and paintings and wood carvings. He is wearing one of their Traditional Costumes that his wife made for him. The hand stitching on his paints is BEAUTIFUL and took many days to complete. This helicopter is landing on a pad at Hotel Atitlan with a volcano right behind it.

Trip to Lake Atitlan with Adam and Chris old missionaries of Presidente Steimle

Phones in the Temple

Today Denton and I were officiating in a session in the Guatemala Temple. All of a sudden we hear a cell phone buzz, A sister reaches down her blouse and pulls out her phone. She turns it off and sticks it back down her blouse' At the next stopping point I ask her to come with me. I tell her she needs to put her phone in her locker. She is a little put out with me and says"I turned it off". I told her that phones do not ever belong in the Celestial Room let alone in the Temple and she needed to put it in her locker. She did and we walked back into the session. Really now! why would you take a phone into a session!?

This is a PLAY BOY BUNNY pillow that one of the Latina Hermanas brought on her mission!!!!
The Sister coordinator came to me and didn't know what to do, she asked me if I would handle it. So, the Hermana came back into the room and I asked her if she knew what this was? She said YES! I told her it didn't really represent things that we as missionaries of the Church would like to represent or stand for. She agreed, I asked her if I could take it and get ride of it for her. She said Yes, so I took it and I'm still not sure if she understood that I was going to throw it away. But she didn't say anything as I took it. Why would someone bring a pillow like that on a mission?! Well it is gone now and I hope she doesn't come back looking for it.

Look and see if you can tell who this Santa might be. Yes it is your Dad! Christmas in the CCM December 2010!!
Santa making sure that Presidente Steimle had been a good Presidente to all those missionaries,