Celebrating Thirty-Two Years

Since we live in such a beautiful country, we don't have to travel far to find great places to celebrate special occasions. On the afternoon of our anniversary on August 6, we left Chimaltenango at an altitude of over 6,000 feet and drove down the mountain for dinner and a night in the old city of Antigua at the base of Volcano Agua. Formerly the capital of this part of Central America, Antigua shows the scars of conquests, earthquakes, and volcano eruptions. Antigua is a visual story of Central American history and is a favorite stop for tourists.


The next day, we continued our decent down the mountain. The road carried us between the volcano Agua and the volcanoes Acotenango and Fuego .


After a couple of hours, we reached sea level where we enjoyed the weekend on the Pacific Ocean with its black sand beaches. We have been known to have some fun times in the past battling ocean waves. However, since these waves were dangerously intense, we kept ourselves at about ankle deep!


Take a look at the video to get an idea.



Our trip home on Sunday was also interesting. We decided to explore some new territory down the coast toward El Salvador. We had something that was called a "map" that almost gave us some direction. We were doing good until the road ended at the river.

We were in a little town and didn't know which way to go. We stopped and asked a fellow for directions. He told us to go straight down the road, that we would have to use the ferry, but the road was good. We have had to use a ferry a time or two to cross a river where there was no bridge. No problemo!

We went a little ways and got to the river. The "ferry" was a wooded boat (looked homemade) about 20 feet long and about 8 feet wide with boards propped up on its end to drive up on the back side of the boat and more boards to drive over the back and onto the floor of the boat. The man told David to drive our little truck up close to the front because a car was getting on with us too. That little car must have had 8 Guatemalans in it. The boat had a little outboard motor on it. We looked across the river and all we saw was jungle. No other road was in sight. We finally launched off and started our journey down the river in that little boat. We floated for several miles and finally came to a little town. He backed up to a concrete ramp, put out his boards, and told David to back off. David forgot that he had pulled up the emergency brake on Clyde (our little truck is named Clyde). Clyde didn't much want to back off the boat until David finally remembered to release the brake.



The ride up the river was really pretty - lots of vegetation. We would not have wanted to go for a swim. It probably had more than vegetation in the water. We found our road on the other side and continued our journey home.

What a blessing to celebrate thirty-two years of marriage! We know that we are the recipients of the grace and blessings of the Lord. We share not only a deep love for each other but also a wonderful friendship. We are blessed with the treasures of Miriam and Mike, Stephen, Rebecca and David, Deborah and Chris. And what a blessing to spend these years together serving hand-in-hand as missionaries in Guatemala. Our life is good!



And so are the beautiful sunsets on the Pacific!

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.