Always Something Unexpected

Since Cusco is a huge tourist magnet, we are regularly meeting tourists from all over the world that have come to visit Cusco.  Some of them actually are church members.  When they see our tags they will stop to visit with us.    Some even walk into the church building during the week to find out when Sunday meetings are held.  We've met tourists from the US, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, and Brazil. 

It's a small world in the church.  Here is a photo of one of the full-time missionaries, Elder Sanders with one of the tourists who stopped in.  He was from Switzerland.  As they visited they found out that he knew the missionary's dad and had been an employee of his when Elder Sander's dad had worked in Switzerland.

Today at church we met a couple on their honeymoon that are going to spend a month here and they offered to help us, but their Spanish is very limited.  We also met a couple about our age that were here visiting from Brazil.

We also had a call during the week from two former missionaries who served about 10 years ago that have plans to return to Cusco and spend two weeks here, but want to be of service while they are here.  They somehow got the Self-Reliance center's phone number and not only offered to help us but also offered to bring down anything we wanted.  They are from the southern California area so don't get excited about sending down stuff with them, it's not like they are in Utah.  Any suggestions on what we should ask them to bring?  We haven't been down here long enough to truly be missing much from the states yet.  Maybe peanut butter for Dave.

We had a disappointing week with our new volunteers.  After training them last week and setting up a work schedule, they didn't bother to come in once.  We did follow up calls to them but never spoke directly to them although we left messages.  They had indicated they would come in the afternoon so we stayed at the center every day waiting for them but they never showed.  We won't be doing that this next week.  We are on the prowl for additional volunteers who hopefully will be more committed and responsible.

We did get a new volunteer to help teach the Career Workshop.  We are really impressed with him and he did come through and show up to our class on Saturday and helped present part of it.  He is a 33 year old single guy from Puerto Maldonado, the jungle part of the mission.  He has come in to Cusco to further his studies and I think hopefully find a wife.  We have set him up with our PEF recipient in Lima that we met who is also in her early 30's we think and still not married.  It will be a long distance romance if anything comes of it.  His name is Julio Cesar Condori.  We found out he was the Career Workshop instructor four years ago so he is very familiar with the material.  Our class this week was on good interview skills, interview preparation, and writing a good resume.  The resume outline is different here so we didn't feel very capable to discuss that part of the lesson, so we had him teach that and also help us handle some role plays with the class members.  He did a great job.  We are thrilled to have him as an assistant.  We may get to the point where we can turn the full workshop over to him, if he doesn't flake out on us and that is always a possibility here.

We continued our sightseeing during our lunch hours.  We toured the main cathedral at the Plaza de Armas on Monday last week.  Holy smokes was that impressive!!  Not like the famous European cathedrals by no means but for tiny Cusco it was impressive.  No pictures were allowed inside as well.  So don't have too many photos to post on this.  Here are some shots of the outside of the cathedral that we took back in July.

 This shows a shot of the main cathedral.  Construction started in 1559 and was completed in 1654, almost a hundred years in the building.

It really is three churches hooked together.  That is why it is so big.  This one is on the left side and it was the last one built.  It is called El Templo de La Sagrada Familia and was completed in 1735.

 

This is on the right hand side of the Cathedral and it was built first and is called El Templo del Triunfo.  This was built in 1536 just three years after the conquistadores arrived in Cusco.  It was actually in the best shape of the three so I was surprised to hear it was the oldest, but they had to rebuild it after a major earthquake damaged much of it.

There was plenty of gold leaf on the many alterpieces.  One room was full of silver items.  There was also plenty of ornate wood carvings, especially in the choir section of the main cathedral.  Here is a photo of a postcard we got showing one of the altarpieces. 

 

 

Tuesday we had a very good, productive day.  We were busy at the center the whole morning and then we did last minute preparations for a presentation we had in the afternoon to 70 full-time missionaries.  The mission president was holding a tri-zone conference and we again finagled our way onto the agenda.  It was the two zones here in Cusco and then the Valle Sagrada zone.  Just outside of Cusco, about a half hour away by bus is a valley that has a lot of different tourist destinations for Inca ruins and they call it the Sacred Valley.  We haven't made it out there yet, but there is a lot to see there.  There are only 12 missionaries out in that zone so that leaves about 58 missionaries serving in Cusco.  We prepared an abbreviated power point presentation to teach them what we do and how we can work mutually together to bring about Zion here in Cusco. 

 

I had a slide to start off with this painting of William Turner, a famous English artist from the romantic period in the early 1800's.  It's called The Rescue Boat.  

 So I had the missionaries start off singing Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy.  I had only the elders sing the verses and the sisters joined in on the chorus.  There is one elder who is a whiz at the piano and can improvise at will so I asked him to accompany us and he didn't disappoint.  He played a beautiful arrangement for us and it sounded wonderful!  It was a great way to start out with the spirit.

 

The missionaries had a late lunch right after our presentation and Dave took some photos during the break.

 

 

 You can see Sister Harbertson, the mission president's wife, by the stage talking with a couple of the missionaries.  President Harbertson and his wife have been serving since July 2013 and she still struggles and has limited Spanish.

 

Wednesday during our lunch break we went and toured the Archbishop's Museum.  Here are some photos from that.

This is the central patio area.  The museum is in the rooms surrounding this patio.  They only let us take photos outside of the rooms, but we managed to get some glimpses of what is inside.

First of all, though, it was another place where the woodwork was magnificent.  All the doors and door frames were intricately carved work.  Here you can get an idea of what we saw, just times it by about a dozen.

Example of a complete door.  Below, is a close up of one of the lintels and below that a close up of the door itself.

 

 Dave managed to get some shots of the artwork.  The frames were more impressive than the paintings themselves.

And here you can  see a few of the stained glass work that was in this part of the museum.

 

But Dave scored big time when he asked for special permission to take a photo of a very antique organ they had on display.  They said it was the first organ brought to Peru.  It was shipped over from Italy.  I couldn't believe they gave him permission to take a photo.

 

 This week, we made a bit of progress on our phone calling responsibility, but we are still miles away from where we need to be.  We were reading a Self-Reliance newsletter that was sent to us and read about some calls that we had never heard about and some aspects of the PEF program that were new to us.  It occurred to us that we are lacking training in this regard.  We are going to try to find someone we can contact and get better trained.

 

Friday after our English class we had to peek into the Gold and Green Ball that was going on in the cultural hall for the youth.  Can you believe it a Gold and Green Ball?!  That was like stepping back in time to our teenage years.  They haven't done Gold and Green Balls forever up in the states.

 Not sure if you can read the words on the screen but it says Welcome to the Gold and Green Ball 2014 and behind that they had put up the words Come Unto Christ, but in Spanish Venid a Cristo.

Thay had this display of cakes and a centerpiece made up to look like a cake and on top they had put the YM and YW's medallion emblems.

 

There wasn't a lot of dancing going on when we were there so we had to set a good example and go out and dance.  We got a lot of youth watching us.  They probably couldn't believe us old folks could really put on the moves.  Dave was twirling me all over the place.

 

Here's how they were dancing, well, sort of.

 

 Friday night we also met up with some local fireman.  Of course, we had to get a photo.

 

Saturday we went back to San Blas Plaza to pick up a custom made item we had ordered last week. from this little Indian woman who makes her own crafts.

 She wasn't quite finished so we watched her as she worked to finish up the item we had requested..

 

 I also bought Dave a sampona.  Last Saturday he had spent a long time at this vendor's booth and I could tell he really wanted one.  They were good quality and the vendor could play it like a professional.   Here it is.

 

These are the pipes that have the eerie sound to them that you hear all the time particularly with the song, El Condor Pasa or The Condor Passes.  Simon and Garfunkel made it famous back in the 70's.  When we tried to play them we were pretty weak.  Apparently you have to really put your whole diaphragm into it to get a good solid sound.  Good thing we have 15 months to practice and develop our breathing technique!

 

We also finally got us a good warm alpaca blanket to wrap around ourselves when we are just sitting around this chilly apartment of ours.

 

 

Dave went off Saturday afternoon to fly kites with the young men that come to our English class.  I stayed home and cleaned house.  Dave had a blast and I felt better having caught up on household chores and having an apartment that was finally clean.

 

 Most of the time we have to pinch ourselves to make sure we really are living here in Cusco.  When we see so many tourist come and go, we think to ourselves, "We live here, one of the most famous locales in the world.  We are not visitors for a week or two.  We actually live here."  And we are serving the Lord and our brothers and sisters.  We hope we are making a difference.  In small and simple ways, we hope that great things will come to pass.

 

Spiritual Thought for the Week:

 

 With all this amazing Inca stone work around that you can see just about everywhere, this scripture seems appropriate.  Helaman 5:12

 

And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea his shafts in the whirlwind, yea when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.

 

We bear our testimony that Christ is the only sure foundation in this world and He is mighty to save.  There is nothing too great that he can't save us from if we will let him into our lives by being obedient to his teachings.

 

 



 



We're Getting Warmer!

 

We are seeing more rain these days.  We are not into the rainy season yet so we´ve been a bit surprised.  They say it rains every day during the months of December, January & February.  Right now we´re seeing rain about two times a week.  It has also warmed up a bit here.  That does not mean higher temps during the day.  That means it doesn´t get nearly as cold at night.  Rather than 30 to 32 degrees low at night, it is now more like 36 to 40 degrees low at night.  It´s enough that we have noticed a difference in our apartment in the mornings, but it is still chilly.  Here´s a view close to our house right after a rainstorm.

Notice the side of the building is just red brick.  They only finish off the front of the buildings and make them look nice.  The sides and back are always unfinished like that.

This week I continued to try to fully recover from being sick.  I worked the first half of the week, but had a relapse on Thursday where I had to stay in bed the whole day.  Thursday is one of our busiest days, but Dave had to handle it all himself.  I am now fully recovered but it really took me until the 15th to feel completely normal.

Here are a few photos of some of the food we have enjoyed here.

 This is a photo of the granadia fruit that we mentioned previously.  The black seeds are crunchy and sweet at the same time. They are inside a clear sack membrane that makes it look a bit like snot but it tastes good.

We found a bakery that makes these huge croissants.  Cost?  One sol which is about 37 cents.

This same bakery makes these called Donas, which translates to Donuts.  No hole in the middle, but it is fried dough.  They put this filling called manjar in the middle.  It is like frosting and has a caramel flavor, sort of.

Our lunch one day.  You can see the bacon Dave scored sitting on top of the chicken and the size of the avocado is pretty big as well.  You can eat avocado every day here if you want.  It´s awesome.

Speaking of money, here is a shot of some of the most common coinage.

The two sol piece is just like the 5 except smaller.  One sol equals  US 37 cents.  50 centavo is half of that.  20 centavo is about 7 cents.  Five soles would be about $1.83 US dollars.

We continue to visit as many of the wards as we can here in Cusco so they can get to know us and build up awareness of the Self-Reliance center.  We still have not made it to all of them.  But we are seeing parts of the city we haven´t visited before.  The ward building we go to for the Career Workshop presentation to the Pichu ward members is in the Santiago neighborhood and it appears to be a bit poorer section of town.  Here are some views we see as we travel to this chapel.

Not sure if you can make out the person that is washing up there under those coverings.  They are right on the very edge of the hill.

How would you like to have to climb up those stairs every time you came and went from your house?

Our second class of the workshop had significantly fewer number of people in attendance.  We had fourteen and probably 4 were new.  It had been switched to Sunday rather than Saturday due to a stake activity I´m going to talk about later. It didn´t help that a big downpour started about a half hour before the workshop was to start.  I think it hurt our attendance.

We continue with our English classes as well.  Our 7 pm Tues-Thursday class has grown so large that we have to split the group up and both of us teach that hour.  Dave had to teach 14 by himself Thursday night.  It doesn´t work real well with that large of a group.  Dave took some photos of me teaching that class on Tuesday.  You can see how big it is getting.

 

The center is also getting busier.  Our visits to the different wards must be paying off.  Dave took a photo on one of our busy days.  The six laptops they brought for our office are starting to be a necessity and that is a good thing.

Saturday since I was feeling better, we took off on some sightseeing in the city.  We went to the Plaza San Blas and spent most of the morning there.  We bought an entrance ticket for a number of religious sites in the city.  It is valid for 10 days.  We figured we could go on our lunch breaks to a number of the places since they are walking distance from our center.  They didn´t allow you to take any photos inside the church.  But we´ve got some photos of the parts we could take.

This is the outside of the church.  It is not very impressive.  It is not that big of a church but it has the most impressive pulpit in all of South America they say.  It is made of wood and the amount of carving that went into it is amazing.  The best I can do is post a photo of a postcard to give you some idea of what it looks like.





You can see only two of the levels, there is one below the circular part of the pulpit.  It is suppose to represent, hell, earth and heaven.  The funny part is we were told the figures at the bottom represent Calvin, Luther, etc.  those that left the Catholic church and the Catholics believe they are now in hell whereas we see them as forerunners to the restoration of the gospel .  Then at the top is St. Peter up in heaven.  The whole thing is just covered with carvings.

The backdrop to the altar is very impressive as well, all covered in gold leaf.  We were not able to take any photos of that.   We were, however, able to take some photos up on the second floor.

Here is an example of one of the bishop robes that they would wear to perform mass.

There are two bell towers and this is one of the bells.
We took some photos from the tower.  This is looking down on the plaza.

And these are looking off over the city.  You can see the many church spires at the Plaza de Armas.

I took this photo trying to show the two hills that have designs mowed into the side.  We live just below these hills.  The tall white building on the right side is like two buildings down from our place, but it is alot taller than our building so it stands out. 

We also had someone "volunteer" to show us an art gallery of a very famous artist from Cusco, Antonio Olave Palomino.  Volunteer meant we owed him a tip for his guided tour of the gallery.  It cost us 10 soles.  Antonio Palomino's work was pretty impressive but very expensive.  We couldn´t take photos inside the gallery but the patio was very beautiful and they allowed us to take photos there.  Again the woodwork was incredible. 

 

The wood balcony went all around the patio area.  It was gorgeous.

 Kelan, make sure you enlarge these photos so you can get a good view of the wood carvings.  I think you would be impressed.

 

Saturday evening we attended the Inti Raymi dance festival.  We didn´t dance in this one like we did in July with the Cusco stake.  It was fun to just watch.  We were surprised that there was only one dance that was the same as was done at the Cusco stake dance festival.  There must be a lot of folk dances here in Peru.  We took tons of photos.  Here are a few, well, relatively speaking.

 

One of our English students was part of this group.  He was the best dancer of the bunch and he is so timid in our English class.  He is on the right closest to the foreground (above).

                      This was a really fun dance and the men danced with so much energy.

 



These gals are from barrio Picchu where we are giving our workshop.

 

 

 

                   They have such pretty dance costumes.




We got a good shot of the stake president looking back before he headed out onto the dance floor.  Pres. William Carrasco of the Inti Raymi stake.  He is a medical doctor.








Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Out of necessity, most of us are involved in earning money and acquiring some of the world's goods to be able to sustain our families.  It requires a good part of our time and attention.  There is no end to what the world has to offer, so it is critical that we learn to recognize when we have enough.  If we are not careful, we will begin to chase after the temporal more than the spiritual.... I bear testimony that our priorities, tendencies, inclinations, desires, appetites, and passions will have a direct bearing on our next estate.  Let us always remember the words of the Savior:  "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  Elder Michael John U The, April 2014 General Conference  "Where Your Treasure Is"