We love Cusco

Despite getting off on the wrong foot the first few days in Cusco, we love it here.  The sun shines every day, with temperatures in the high 60's, low 70's.  It is not real crowded, not like Lima anyway and it is such a historical place.  No wonder Cusco is such a popular tourist destination.

There is so much to see here in Cusco.  Sometimes I've just had to pinch myself that I get to live here for 18 months.  We are going to post a few photos of Cusco each blog post rather than inundate you all at once.

They have many beautiful plazas here with statues or fountains.  Here is a photo of our landmark.  It helps us know we are close to our neighborhood.

It is a statue of the Inca emperor, Pachucatec.

Here are photos of the plaza near the church building that houses our Self-Reliance Center.  We walk past this everyday.

 This is one side of the fountain.  And below is the back side of it with a huge colorful mural.  There are a lot of colorful murals around town as well.  Emily, you would love it here.  We hope you can come visit us before we go.  We hope many of our family and friends can come visit.

 

 

Just up the street from the Self-Reliance Center is an area called Qurikancha.  Quiri means gold in Quecha and Kancha means enclosure.  Here are some photos.

 

 

Can you tell which part was built by the Incas and which part by the Spanairds?

 

Here is a clip from Wikipedia about this site.  "Qurikancha was the most important temple in the Inca Empire, dedicated primarily to Inti, the Sun God. It was one of the most revered temples of the capital city of Cusco.

The walls and floors were once covered in sheets of solid gold, and its adjacent courtyard was filled with golden statues. Spanish reports tell of its opulence that was "fabulous beyond belief". When the Spanish required the Inca to raise a ransom in gold for the life of the leader Atahualpa, most of the gold was collected from Qurikancha.

The Spanish colonists built the Church of Santo Domingo on the site, demolishing the temple and using its foundations for the cathedral."

 

Here it is from a distance.  There is a large green field below.  At night it is lit up and quite pretty.



 

We reported to the Self-Reliance Center every day this past week.  It is only open from 10 am to 1 pm.  We met the volunteers that work there and received a bit of training.  Unfortunately, our priesthood leader, Carlos Hale, is on vacation in Idaho, visiting a daughter that just had a baby and won't be back until July 16th.  The other brother who is supposed to be filling in while Bro. Hale is gone was sick this past week so he was not in much either.  We tried to study what we could and watched how they are running the office.  Dave used some of the time to study his Spanish.  The emphasis seems to be on helping people find jobs and that is only one small slice of the program.  We can see where there is much we can help with, but we feel it has to be done diplomatically and with the leadership's blessing.

 

The mission president was also out of town, visiting other parts of the mission when we got here.  We just met with him today, July 6th.  We also met his wife.  He doesn't have much input in our duties, despite being our mission president.  He would like to have us work with a small family group, he called it, if we can, to help strengthen and train them, more under the auspices of membership/leader support.  It is about 45 minutes to an hour outside of Cusco.

 

We've attended the two wards that meet in the chapel that pertains to our area so we can become familiar with the leadership and the members.  We participated in two activities this week to help us become familiar with them and they with us.

 

There are two stakes in Cusco.  They are hosting a dance program on July 19th where each ward presents a regional folk dance and a national folk dance.  Since both Dave & I like to dance we decided to participate.  This dancing is very different from anything in the states.  We learned a regional dance this week call Llameritos.  The men dance representing llamas and the women dance representing herders of the llamas.  It is quite entertaining.  The men have the harder part.  I will see if I can post a video of it in a future post. 

 

We also participated in a missionary invasion is what they called it.  Saturday afternoon, all the full-time missionaries serving in the stake met at our ward building and the members as well and they did splits.  Each set received a list of less active or non-active members and they went out and visited them, inviting them to attend and finding out what they needed to encourage them to come back to activitiy.  It helped us meet a lot of the full-time missionaries that we will be working with as well as some of the members.  Most of the full-time missionaries are Latin American.  Of the 22 missionaries in attendance, only 4 were from the states.  We had a good time there and it allowed us to do some actual missionary work, which both Dave & I enjoyed.

 

If you thought 9 am was early to meet, you can no longer complain.  Here the ward meets at 8 am!  With no heat in the building, you have to wear your coat and this week I brought a throw blanket to try to keep warm.  Today we both shared our testimony during fast and testimony meeting.  And we had a family invite us over for dinner after church.  We had a good time with them.  We ate a typical Peruvian dish of rice, chicken, onions, orange colored peppers, potatoes, sweet potatoes and hard boiled egg.  They work with the youth 18-30 in the ward, so they are a good resource for us to find the return missionaries.

 

We spent a lot of time this week shopping for items for our apartment.  Without our own transportation, we can't go and get everything all at once.  We are limited to a few bags a piece that we can fit into a taxi cab with us.  Most taxis are quite small.  Taxi drivers are a dime a dozen.  You just flag them down and let them know where you need to go.  Cost is about $1-2 a ride.  Traffic isn't as crazy as in Lima, but still risky.  I like to try to walk whenever I can.  It gives us some exercise besides keeping us safe, although crossing streets can be risky as well.  Here the pedestrian does not have the right of away so you have to keep your eyes open and often we run across the street just to play it safe.  Cars often come zooming out of nowhere. 

 

Here are additional photos of our apartment that I didn't have last time.

 

 Can you believe how big this kitchen is?  This is not normal for South America.  Also all new Bosch appliances, even a microwave.  We feel really spoiled.

 

 And look!  A king size bed, something we did not expect either.  We have four bathrooms, one off the master bedroom and three more.  Two people with four bathrooms.  Crazy!

 

We've visited a couple of outdoor markets, one is just behind our place every Saturday morning.  We were excited to buy some dried fruit (raisins & apricots) and some nuts.  They have the biggest pecans we've ever seen here.  See what I mean.  That is a teaspoon for comparison.

 

 

 

We mostly looked around at the markets this time to get an idea, but we ought to be able to eat pretty healthy here with all this fresh fruit and vegetable available.  Here are some of the photos we took of the market.  Of course they tended to be things we found unusual, like these live frogs you can buy to eat fresh frog legs.

 

 

 Or this altiplano lady selling her dried up corn, which they said they use to make popcorn.

 And of course the live guinea pigs.  They eat them here and rave about how lean the meat is.  We haven't tried them yet, but I'm sure we will.

 This was the most bizarre, however.  Those piles of black things are butterfly pupae.  They are very expensive relatively speaking because they are considered a delicacy.

 We could not believe the size of these loaves of bread.  But you see them being sold in all the markets.

 And here is a photo we took to try to show how large the carrots get.  That is Dave's hand holding the carrot, and he has pretty large hands.  You can buy smaller ones, but the larger size seemed to be more common.  We'll have to take some more photos showing how large some of the other vegetables are.

 Here are chickens for sale.  They also had baby ducks there as well.

 

Cocoa beans grow just down in the jungle east of here, as well as coca leaves grown here in the mountains.  They say the coca leaves are just fine to use to ward off stomach aches and headaches and is not the same thing as the drug manufactured from the leaves.  Anyways, we have access to two major addiction groups if we wanted to take advantage of that.  Instead, Dave has just gotten addicted to a chocolate bar they have down here called Sublime, which costs 1 sol, which comes to a whooping 37 cents (U.S. currency).  Delicious!!

 

Here is a youtube link that Marlene, the gal we met down in Lima, who was a PEF recipient, sent us. She is one of the five recipients featured in this 10 year anniversary of the PEF program in Peru documentary.  It is very powerful and moving.  We thought you would enjoy watching.  It is a bit long, however, but well worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASteMXNHN-8&feature=player_embedded

Spiritual thought of the week:  We must be sure to sincerely love those we want to help in righteousness so they can begin to develop confidence in God's love.  For so many in the world, the first challenge in accepting the gospel is to develop faith in a Father in Heaven, who loves them perfectly.  It is easier to develop that faith when they have friends or family members who love them in a similar way.  Giving them confidence in your love can help them develop faith in God's love. 
-Richard C Scott  April 2014 Conference  "I Have Given You An Example".