Adios Guatemala - Howdy Kansas

                        

We loved the opportunity to serve the Lord in the Quetzaltenango, Guatemala temple but unfortunately after four months we had to return to the US to get some badly needed medical care for Brannick.  These pictures above are our last day there in front of our beautiful temple saying goodbye to our temple president, President Galvez and his wife.  Also a sad farewell to our dear friends, Ken and Chrys Meadows, who were instrumental in our going to Quetzaltenango and were the ones we enjoyed so many adventures with.

On the day we left Quetzaltenango to drive to the capital, Guatemala City, the airport was closed because one of the volcanos had decided to get active.  This was taken on the way into the city.  Fortunately, the airport was open the next day when we flew out headed for the states.

It took us six months to get things straightened out with the doctors and to make sure everything was working all right. When we got the 'all clear' from the doctors, we requested  a reassignment to finish our mission and received a call to go to the Kansas Wichita Mission to teach religion classes to young single adults and college age kids.  We were delighted!

We left on Monday, August 3 to make the two day trip to Garden City, Kansas. Here is our 'Welcome to Kansas' sign.

This is one stop we made to wave goodbye to the mountains as we had heard we would no longer be seeing them on the flat plains.

And sure enough, here we see where the flat land meets the sky with no mountains in sight to hold it up!

These beautiful wild sunflowers are all along the roadsides and remind me so much of my childhood.  My mother would always put our sunflower bouquets we brought her in her prettiest vase.  These grew all along the lane in Lehi so we picked them for her often.
 

Traveling back from one of the small cities we will be teaching in, we came across fields of huge sunflowers so I couldn't resist a picture.

I thought Arizona held the award for the most beautiful sunsets and I would miss them but as we were returning from Dodge City last week, I snapped this one.  It was a beautiful sky for a long time.  We will miss some things from our home in the desert with mountains surrounding Tucson but we are finding lots of things to love here in Kansas.  So check back and you will find more as we learn about the culture in the Heartland.