We've hit the four month mark!

We made up for the slow week we had last week, by being very busy this week.  We´ve picked up one more English class.  On Monday last, we attended a zone meeting for the Cusco missionaries.  Part of the discussion was how they were doing with learning English and it wasn´t going well.  That led to a discussion on what they could do to change that.  We mentioned we teach English classes and we were more than happy to do a class with them.  It was decided that Wednesday and Friday mornings at 10 am they would come to the center and we would do the Daily Dose classes with them just like we are doing with the members.  There are 24 missionaries in the zone so we have to split them into two groups and we each teach one group.  There is a lot of energy with them and enthusiasm.  After each class they continue to practice with each other the vocabulary and phrases taught.  It is pretty fun. 

 

We also finally settled and committed to a new apartment.  It is the one I originally wanted all along.  Dave did find a very nice apartment closer to the chapel (about a 10 minute walk) and we almost got into that one.  It would have been really small, but it was new and clean.  We lost it due to the church rep down here dragging his feet (actually he was just doing the Peruvian thing).  We should have known better and contacted the landlady back sooner, but since she didn't hear from us right away she took a deposit from someone else.  That was disappointing.  But her husband was pushing for a higher rent so it may have been a good thing not to get it.

 

It looks like we will be into this other apartment by November 1.  It still has 3 bedrooms, but they are smaller, but still decent sized.  It only has 1 bathroom.  That will be a switched from having 4 and the kitchen is going to be much smaller as well.  There is no separate laundry room.  The washer dryer will be in the kitchen, which is small to begin with.  It will be an adjustment after this big apartment we've been in, but it has three really good things going for it.

 

1- It is on the 3rd floor so it is going to be sooooo much warmer and brighter.  Yeah!!

2- It will save us about $200 a month in rent. 

3- It is centrally located between the two chapels we spend most of our time at.  It is not as close to our office as Dave would have liked but it is close to the chapel where we teach our late English class so it will be quick to get home those evenings.

 

One other advantage is we will be next door to the other senior missionary couple here in Cusco, the Haslers.  We are going to have to learn how to pronounce the name of the street though.  It is a challenge. - Mateo Pumacaua

 

Here are some photos showing the place we are moving to.  We'll have to post some once we have our furniture moved in. 

This is going to be our front room.  It is big enough, but long and narrow.  Where I am standing will be the living room furniture and the other photo is looking toward the front door, which that area will be the dining room.

 

This is looking into our kitchen.  You can see there is not going to be much counter space or cupboard space.  We will probably have to invest in a hutch to go just outside the kitchen.  To the left of the sink will be the washer/dryer stacked and at the end of the counter space goes our stove/oven.  It should be interesting to see how we bring all our furniture and appliances up 3 flights of stairs.

 

Thursday while at the center, we could hear a lot of noise going on outside.  Dave decided to check it out.  He found out that around the corner and a bit up the main road above the center a celebration was going on with a marching band and everything.  The interesting thing was it involved the fire station.  It appeared as if it was some sort of Catholic ritual blessing the station and asking for protection for the firemen.  Here are some photos Dave took.  He found it very interesting of course as it involved the fire department.

 Dave captured these ladies in the crowd.  Below, it looks like Dave managed to include some sort of army official in his photo.

 

I didn't go see this event as we had two major training presentations to prepare for and I was busy trying to finish things up.

 

The first training was on Saturday for the stake specialists from Cusco, Sicuani & Valle Sagrado and all of our office volunteers.  It was an all day event and we held it out in Pisaq, a city in Valle Sagrado that is only about a 30 minute drive to get there and it was an enchanting place.  We didn't have time to do any site seeing, but we are definitely going to have to head out there for a P-day activity one of these days.

 

Our view coming in to Pisaq, Peru, part of the Valle Sagrado area.

The mountains are really high there and they have these terraces going all up the side of the mountain.  At the top there is an Inca temple you can visit. 

 

We held it at a really nice hotel. 

 Our conference room was where the second floor windows are in this shot.  Doesn't the background remind you of Southern Utah?

 Photos of the courtyard you pass through as you enter the hotel.

 

The lobby was very nice and very interesting.  We took tons of photos.  They had a map painted on one wall of the Valle Sagrado (which means Sacred Valley, so named by the Incas).

They had a display of awesome fossils and swords which Dave thought were fascinating.

 



 

 

The fireplaces there were very inventive and creative.  Here is a photo of the one in the main lobby and then the one in the restaurant area.

Pretty cool huh?  How would you like something like that in your family room? 

 

 The training was for the new workshop programs that were scheduled to be out in Spanish by the end of September but now we've been told we won't have them until the first of the year.  Dave & I had an hour and a half presentation in the morning to introduce the new programs and then a 2 hour time frame in the afternoon to walk them through a simulated workshop presentation.  The new program is set up more as a support group so the presenter does not teach like a teacher, rather is suppose to work as a facilitator and that is going to require a major change in the approach these specialists take.  It turned out to be very instructive and I believe helpful to them.

 

For lunch we had an outdoor BBQ that we had been put in charge of so Thursday we were shopping and Friday afternoon and evening we were cooking and baking getting everything ready.  The locals loved our potato salad and boston baked beans.  They weren't too keen on the Texas sheet cake.  It was apparently too sweet for them.  We were loving it.  We bbq'd salchichas (small sausages) which they love down here and a big chunk of beef which is called lomo fino.  Not sure what part of the cow it is but it is very tender and delicious.

 

The weather was deliciously warm and sunny as well and we finished up and headed out just before it got dark.  It was a very delightful day of work.

 

Then it was on to preparing for our second training for the returning missionaries.  This was our third group and by far the biggest group.  There were 23 RMs, 11 sister missionaries and 12 elders.  We were pretty nervous, not just because of the size.  We had two senior couples visiting from Lima, that work out of the area office.  The Kendalls, who oversee the English study program for the 5 countries in the S.A.N.W. area.  We had met them when we first arrived.  We were not nervous about their visit.  But we also were told another senior couple, the Clarks, were coming and they oversee the returning missionary trainings for the SANW area as well.  They made us nervous.  They sent us an email with their expectations and a suggested agenda.  Most of the things we were already doing, but there were some additional expectations. 

 

After church on Sunday I worked on revamping a few things with our presentation.  I had Dave give his new talk that he used in the Saturday training and I prepared a Power Point presentation to keep me on track.  Before the mission I didn't use Power Point much, but I am beginning to get really good at throwing together a simple but effective PP presentation.  At the last minute Monday morning, we decided to do a few small things to make it fun for the missionaries.

 

You can see how large a group it was from the photos below. 

 

One of the latino elders, Elder Prieto, was presented an English certificate.  He took the exam and scored on the Intermediate High level (something not many missionaries achieve).  The group went wild, applauding and cheering when it was announced.  Sister Harbertson, the mission president's wife, was very pleased because she has really been pushing the missionaries to take studying English seriously.

Elder Prieto with his certificate and Sister Harbertson who presented it to him.

 

I loved what he shared with the group when he was asked to tell us his story.  He told us that when he left for his mission, his father told him he would be wasting his time serving a mission.  How sweet it will be for him to show his father this English certificate and tell him because of this accomplishment he will now be able to study college classes at BYU-Idaho over the internet for a very small price.

 

And of course, Dave had to get the group photo with them holding one shoe up.

Elder Gallegos is in the front on the left side with the light blue tie.  Elder Albert (who had been the assistant to the president) is right behind Elder Gallegos and Sister Tamariz is to the left of Elder Albert.  Those are the missionaries we had worked with personally since we've been here.  Sister Allred, friend to the Garretts, is to the left of Sister Tamariz.

 

 

Spiritual Thought for the Week: 

 

"Properly understood and practiced, self-reliance is a desirable saintly virtue; when it leaves the Lord out of the picture, however, it becomes a vice that leads men from the paths of righteousness. The saints, for instance, should have confidence in their own abilities, efforts, and judgments to make a living, to increase in faith and the attributes of godliness, to work out their salvation, to pass all the tests of this mortal probation. They should know that the Lord has not placed his children in positions beyond their capacities to cope with, that the normal trials and tribulations of life are part of the eternal system. Ordinarily members of the Church should make their own personal decisions, using the agency the Almighty has given them, without running to their bishops or others for direction."

“But with it all, man of himself is not wholly self-sufficient. He is not to trust solely in his own strength, nor in the arm of flesh. The Lord is his Counselor and Deliverer, upon whom he must rely for guidance, direction, and inspiration. If the great Creator had not stepped forward to redeem the creatures of his creating, the whole plan of salvation would be void and the most perfect manifestations of self-reliance would have no worth” (Bruce R McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed. [1966], 701–2).







It's the People

Not a  lot to report this week.  It was a pretty slow week at the Self-Reliance center.  This allowed us to get a good jump on our calls this month, with 10 already completed.  

We do have one success story to report.  Below is Silvia.  She is in her 40's but wanted to find a part-time job she could do while her son was in school.  She has a lot of abilities.  She knows how to cook, sew and is good with numbers.  She came to the center and I worked through the Career Workshop with her individually over a period of weeks.  At one point, we were contacted by an employer that was looking for someone with sewing skills.  We sent Silvia to interview and she got the job.  She is very excited because it is a business that makes children's party dresses and she is going to learn some additional skills with this job.  She says it is exactly the type of job she was looking for.  Congratulations to Silvia!

Wednesday was a national holiday so the center was closed.  The holiday was in honor of General Miguel Grua Seminario.  His death was on October 8, 1879 and they have declared it a national holiday.  I had to look him up to learn what was so special about him.  He is one of Peru's national heroes, who died during the Battle of the Pacific against Chile.  He was the Admiral of their Navy and has the nickname, the Gentleman of the Seas. He was from Piura, which is up north so they may have made a bigger deal up there, but here it was just a day off of work and we made the mistake of going to the mall and it was packed.  I have never see such a long line to get into a movie theater.  I should have taken a photo but didn't think about it.

We spent the holiday at Gladys Machado's house in the early afternoon.  Gladys is one of our volunteers at the center and she is mostly responsible for us getting the graduation surveys done. She lives up on one of the hills overlooking Cusco.  Her view from her kitchen window was magnificent. 

 View from Glady's kitchen overlooking Cusco. Can you make out the snow on the peaks in the top left of the photo?

Renzo, Glady's 11 year old son

 She has a good view of the entire airport so she can see the planes come in and go out, but she doesn't have the sound effects to go with it.  She also has a good view of the mountains outside of Cusco.  The night before we had had a major rainstorm and there was actually snow on the peaks of the mountains to the east of Cusco.  Gladys spent two hours preparing us lunch.  I helped a little, but she did most of the work.  She fixed us the Peruvian version of spaghetti, which included chicken and everything was from scratch (except the pasta).  We brought a cake in honor of the holiday (which I did not make from scratch but bought).

Our English classes this week were really fun.  The lesson was on the supermarket and so it involved a lot of food vocabulary.  We decided we needed to bring some visual aids and snacks so we brought them peanut butter and jam sandwiches and peanut butter and honey sandwiches which were a hit.  We have a couple more weeks to go and we will have completed the first level of the course.  We've decided we need to have a party to celebrate.

We are finding out about other families that are struggling financially.  I am working on translating the church's Family Finance Workshop, which I have in English so we can hold a workshop.  The target date is October 26th and we will be working with the members from the Ttio ward.  Our family, the Cuadros, worked with our visitors from the US this past week so we didn't have any contact with them.

Here is photo of Dave with Kent Smith, our visitor from California, a former missionary in Chile.  He brought down brown paper shopping sacks that will be such a help to us for making our carmel corn.  He also brought a big container of Jelly Bellies from Costco which we have been sharing with our English class students and those that come in to the center.

The two seemed to hit it off pretty well.  Kent Smith helped Dave with the roof project and him and his friend helped the Cuadros family.  They talked to them about keeping records for their business and bought them some ledgers to start using.  We will have to provide follow up or that will not bear fruit.

Kent Smith also brought down supplies for making bubbles.  Here Renzo is playing with one of the toys Kent brought.  Renzo thought it was pretty fun so I think the bubbles are going to be a big hit.

The newlywed couple, Austin & Rachel, finished up their stay in Cusco so we invited them over for a Sunday dinner.  They were so kind to help us out with our English class at 7 pm while they've been here.  It has gotten quite large and often I am still involved with the Planning for Success workshop that starts at 6 pm so Dave many times is on his own with this class.  It was such a big help to have them there.  We were able to provide more individual attention to the students and do more role playing.  We will miss them.  Their plan is to travel around the world for 8 months, combining study and a work project along with an extended honeymoon.  What a romantic way to start off married life!

Probably the funniest part of our week was Saturday when we went to a new Saturday market we had heard about, Bariotio.  Apparently, a lot of the vendors sell used products from the United States, along with artesanian vendors that sell in bulk to the street vendors so you can get souvenir items at a much cheaper price.  Our purpose for going there was to hopefully find Dave a pair of boots he can use during the up coming rainy season.  His feet are much larger than these tiny Peruvian, Inca descendants and none of the regular shoe vendors have anything in his size, which down here is a 46.  We had to look long and hard but we finally found him a pair that was his size and hopefully will function well in the rain.

But after that was when the fun began.  We then walked down street after street filled with vendors selling anything and everything.  That is where we found these cute dolls dressed in typical costumes.  We think Kent Smith will be able to bring them back with him so Sadie, Sierra and Cosette can have them for Christmas. 

We saw a lot of other souvenir items, but we can't buy everything all at once!  Dave was going ga-ga over all the old antique items being sold.  He managed to not buy anything until he made a discovery that he could not pass up.  These silver coins below.  They are pure silver (we believe) and one is dated 1706.  Dave looked it up on the internet and he believes they are worth a lot more than what we paid for them.

We've learned that October is the best month to visit Cusco as far as weather goes and amount of tourists around.  So here, Kayla, is my plug for visitors, just so you won't be disappointed.  Plan on October, anyone who wants to visit, and let us know in advance so we can plan some free time in our schedule to visit with you.

Spiritural Thought of the Week:  "It is God's will that we be free men and women enabled to rise to our full potential both temporally and spiritually, that we be free from the humiliating limitations of poverty and the bondage of sin, that we enjoy self-respect and independence, that we be prepared in all things to join Him in His celestial kingdom."  Todd C Christofferson  "Free Frever, to Act for Themselves"  Oct. 2014 General Conference

Technology is Great!

Wow, October already.  We had a good week that was capped off by being able to listen to all sessions of conference via the internet.  We were so grateful to be able to hear conference as if we were sitting in our family room in Utah.  Well, not quite as good since the internet here is slow and at times the download was delayed but for the most part it was good.  I couldn't help but be reminded of what conference was like when I served in El Salvador 35 years ago.  Oh, that's right.  There was no general conference available.  We had to wait until the Ensign arrived with the conference talks in them and then we would read and study them.  That was it.  Next week, they broadcast the conference to the members so we will hear it twice, but this next time will have Spanish voice overs for all but the two talks that were given in Spanish.

Sunday was election day down here.  They do not hold church meetings on election days.  It is against the law to have anything conflict with being able to vote, so the church members here had no church.  We learned that in Peru you get fined if you don't vote so people do everything they can to vote.  Sometimes they have to travel back to their home town to vote and if the fine is less than the cost of travel, they just pay the fine.

But political ads were everywhere.  They don't have a two party system here.  Each candidate is identified by a symbol so those who are illiterate can still vote.  We must have seen somewhere between 6-10 different symbols.  Here are some photos just to give you an idea of what we were seeing. 

Guys driving around in trucks with flags and signs were pretty common.  Sometimes there would even be people cheering for their candidate in the back of the pick up.

The candidate above, for example,  his symbol is the vicuna and the candidates below used the wheat symbol.

 Here are two more.  The ones above use the shovel.  We figure they represent the labor party and below the symbol is the typical inca cap.

During the week there was a lot of loudspeakers blaring out of candidates' headquarters and caravans of vehicles with balloons and signs and people piled in the back of pick-ups cheering for their candidate.  We tried to learn what the political candidates stood for, but no one was able to give us a real good idea. 

We spent Sunday at the other missionary couple's apartment watching conference and having lunch with them.  She fixed the best roast (lomo fino is what the cut is called here) and Dave prepared a potato salad that was delicious (nothing to compete with Cyndee's salad however).  For dessert she had baked a chocolate Texas sheet cake with chocolate pecan frosting that was amazing.  We ate a big piece of that and were on a sugar high the rest of the day.

There is an empty apartment right next to theirs that we looked at and I am convinced we need to move there.  It seems to address most of our complaints with our current apartment.  Dave is holding out to find something even closer to the chapel.  So far everything we've seen closer to the self-reliance office is not adequate or very pricey. We're seeing more and more rain, and some of the storms come with pretty heavy rainfall.  It just makes Dave more determined to find something closer to the office.

Saturday was the hottest day we've had here.  It got all the way up to 74 (which is 23 centigrade) and it felt downright hot!  Dave was involved in a service project helping a member build a new roof on his house.  Apparently, the rains had caused his roof to cave in.  It was made of logs and straw and tin pans.  Dave said there wasn't a single nail used in the construction.  They had tied everything together with leather straps.  Here are some photos of the work.  He recruited the four missionaries serving in that ward to help.

You can see them hauling away old bamboo that was used for the old roof.  You can also see the adobe bricks they've made being dried in the sun.  Below is a sample of their bamboo construction.

Below is where the roof caved in and they are working on fixing.

We ate at Chili's twice this past week as we treated these four missionaries to lunch and their schedules didn't allow them to go at the same time.  These four missionaries - Elder Talavera (from Lima, who is an awesome missionary) and his companion who is new to the mission, Elder Webb went on Monday and Elder Gallegos, who is set to finish up his mission this month and Elder Bird - were a big help to us with the Career Workshop we had just finished so we wanted to thank them.   Dave didn't much care for Chili's in the states but he is learning to really appreciate the daily specials they have here.

We had some wonderful experiences this week with the spirit guiding us and providing revelation on behalf of some of the members we are trying to help.  It has been gratifying to see the scripture "ask and you shall receive" apply to us here on our mission as well as the scripture "For it shall be given you in the very hour, yea, in the very moment, what ye shall say."

 On Wednesday we met with Jose, the head of household for this family in financial distress, and his bishop.  We were truly guided by the spirit in what we said and how we handled working with the father.   That morning while at the center, I came across some articles on self-reliance and finances that were exactly what we needed for that meeting.  I was also led to D & C 104:78-80 that fit perfectly with his situation, but it wasn't until we were in the meeting that it was clearly given to me how to teach from this scripture and the invitation that needed to be given to him and his family to pray in faith for deliverance from their financial bondage.  Dave as well was inspired to share a personal experience he had had as a young father with his down syndrome daughter, Danielle, that could apply to this situation.  We truly felt the spirit in this meeting.

The second experience came Saturday night and Sunday when we were approached by a leader from the Picchu ward we've been working with.  On behalf of the bishop he shared with us some of their concerns for 2-3 families in their ward that are struggling financially and how they hope we can help solve the problem.  It was very disconcerting as their solution is not in harmony with the counsel we received during our training.  We set up a time to meet personally with the bishop in this regard.  We went home and earnestly prayed for help in dealing with this challenge and then went to bed.  The next morning both Dave & I during our scripture study had strong impressions as to what counsel we needed to give this bishop and how we need to approach this problem.  We don't meet with the bishop until next Sunday but it was such a relief to get a clear answer to our prayers so quickly.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Your life is carefully watched over, as was mine.  The Lord knows both what He will need you to do and what you will need to know to do it.  You can with confidence expect that He has prepared opportunities for you to learn.  You will not recognize those opportunities perfectly, as I did not.  But when you put the spiritual things first in your life, you will be blessed to feel directed toward certain learning, and you will be motivated to work harder.  --Henry B Eyring

Welcome Spring!

We forget that we are on the other half of the world but when the members talk about it being spring here, then we are reminded that Cusco is in the southern hemisphere.  It still gets dark about the same time each night but the grass is getting greener, we are starting to see more flowers (see below for examples)

and the best part of all is that the overnight lows stay in the 40´s, low 40´s, but we are out of the 30 degree overnight low temperatures, hopefully for many months to come.

We had a pretty routine week.  Dave had his turn with digestive problems due to something he ate that I didn´t so we kept things low- keyed this week.  There were a couple of days when he stayed home while I went to the center on my own.  We hope our stomachs will toughen up enough at some point that we won´t have to worry about how the food will affect us. 

We finished up the Career Workshop with the Picchu Ward.  We had only two members attend all 4 classes.  There are a number of members that missed just one class.  We´ve offered to teach a make up class this coming Saturday.  We are waiting to hear from the ward leaders if there is enough interest in that.  We let our new volunteer, Julio Condori, teach most of this class.  Along with having a better grasp of the language here, he is very confident talking to a group and enjoys it as well.

We spent quite a bit of time having them practice interviewing and then critiquing how it went.  We also found some good videos to show to supplement the concepts from the class.  The best one was a five minute clip about Chris Gardner, a black man who sacrificed to get the job of his dreams, a stockbroker on Wall Street, back in the 80´s.  The movie Pursuit of Happyness is based on his true to life story and the video used clips from this movie.

Here is a link.  It´s in Spanish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Oh80PgfPo

Here is a segment of that video in English that I was able to find on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n482Jm2iGG8&list=PLV4JDA4wjWxBRh4Zd0o7ZWPa2KS8TJQ_d

We really appreciated the invite from the ward leaders to offer this workshop to their members.  We think this is just a beginning, however.  We now need to do follow up and most likely one on one mentoring with the members to help them put into practice the concepts we taught.  The full-time missionaries were a big help and instrumental in getting this off the ground so on their P-day Monday we took them out to lunch at Chili´s.

We are anxious to begin to offer a financial workshop that teaches how to manage your money, which we hear is a problem for many people (not a problem exclusive to Peru, however) and we anticipate receiving the new workshop materials in Spanish that we were trained on back in June.  We were told to expect them the end of September, but still haven´t seen or heard anything regarding that.

It is the end of September and my goal had been to complete all our Graduation Surveys to the PEF recipients in our system.  That was 50.  Well...that didn´t happen.  The lack of help from the new volunteers impeded our proress on that.  We are sitting at 35.  That´s a lot more than the 2 we did in August.  In the next month or two we should get that caught up.  But then there are all sorts of other types of surveys and calls that need to be done.  We are just chipping away at the tip of the iceberg.

We had written off both of our new volunteers and surprisingly, one of them came in last week and has started to work with us.  She has been in two times and I´ve been able to train her on the calls and have her listen in to some calls I made.  She says she is ready to start doing the calls with my help.  Yeah!!

Dave´s conversation group has sort of petered out, but our English classes are going strong.  We are two thirds through the first level and our students are really starting to know how to say quite a few things.  We had a fun time with this week´s lesson on going to the Post Office.  We role played using Dave as the postmaster.  We brought in stamps, envelopes, boxes to represent packages and had them buy something and send something.  It was a lot of fun.

We also had one of our class members, Jhonathon, have a birthday, Sept. 25th.  One of our lessons has them learn how to say how old they are and when their birthday is.  To our surprise a sister in the class had taken note and brought a small birthday cake so we had a little celebration.  The cakes here are nothing to brag about, but it was so sweet of her to do that as she is not that well off financially.  Jhonathon was so touched he was fighting back tears as we sang Happy Birthday in English.

 Jhonathon holding his birthday cake, Emperatriz Dolmo who brought the cake and myself.

Here is a photo of the group that attended that night.  From left to right are myself, Jaime Reyes, Nefi, Jeremiah Reyes, Jhonathon, Emperatriz and her two children, Victor & Caroline.


We realized that we haven´t posted a photo of the outside of the chapel we are working out of, so here it is, our home away from home away from home.

We are feeling like we need to find an apartment closer to this chapel.  With the rainy season coming up we´d really like to be able to get quickly home.  We also would like to be able to return to our apartment during the 2 to 3 hour lunch breaks that they take.  When we have to walk 20-25 minutes one way, we figure that´s too much time to get soaked and with no heat in the buildings we are concerned for our health.  We´ve been looking around and hope to find something suitable next month.  We do know of one apartment that is on the third floor and would heat up a lot more than our first floor apartment, but it only is about a quarter of a mile closer to this chapel.

We had yet another earthquake this past week.  It happened Saturday evening about 9:30 pm.  We were watching a movie.  This earthquake wasn´t as strong as the last one, it came in at 4.9 or 5.1 (I´ve seen both figures).  But this one was A LOT closer to Cusco.  The epicenter was near a small rural town that is near Urcos, a town that is about 20 minutes by bus from Cusco.  Here is a link to a news story on the quake.  There are some pretty good photos of the damage.  Most of the small town was demolished and 8 people died due to the adobe construction of the houses.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-29406622

This last Friday was the Single Young Adult ball, which they call  Gala de Clavel (Carnation) y Rosa (Rose), held at the Inti Raymi building where we do our Friday night English class.  So we peeked in.  This was a formal dance and so the YA all looked really sharp.  They did a better job of actually dancing instead of just standing around.  We took a few minutes to do a little bit of dancing as well.

One of the members of our English class, started staying after class so we could help her look for a part-time job.  She had good skills, but is in her 40´s which puts her in the "unhirable" status here.  We went over the Career Workshop individually with her, helped her write up a Curriculum Vitae and when we got an inquiry from an employer looking for someone with her skills we sent her over and she got hired!  And it is for a job sewing party dresses for children, which is a good match for what she was looking for.  Our first success story where we were directly involved from start to finish.

We also visited a family in our home ward, Ttio, that is a hard-core case of financial trouble.  The local members have worked with them for years but to no avail.  They run a business selling flowers, vases, candles and incense, but really have no working knowledge of how to run a business or how to live within their means.  Here's a view of their stall in the market.

They are in debt out the wazoo according to the bishop.  We are going to start working one on one with them to see if we can make a difference.  This is probably going to take a miracle, so we hope you will remember us in your prayers.

Here are some random photos we´ve taken in the past but haven´t posted.

Here's a photo for Kent - come visit us and use your travel points to stay here.

 Here's one for Alyssa.  This reminded me of your winter guard competitions as these dance teams were lined up like each school would line up to await the results of the judging.

And Elder Rhoades is not keeping arms length away from the women.  He better hope our mission president doesn't see a copy of this!

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Provident living means avoiding excessive debt and being content with what we have.  Many believe they should have all that others have - right now.  Unable to delay gratification, they go into debt to buy what they cannot afford.  The results always affect both their temporal and spiritual welfare.

When we go into debt, we give away some of our precious, priceless agency and place ourselves in self-imposed servitude.  We obligate our time, energy, and means to repay what we have borrowed - resources that could have been used to help ourselves, our families , and others.

As our freedom is diminished by debt, increasing hopelessness depletes us physically, depresses us mentally, and burdens us spiritually.  Our self-image is affected, as well as our relationships with our spouse and children, and ultimately with the Lord.

I testify that happy is the man who lives within his means and is able to save a little for future needs.

It is important to understand that self-reliance is a means to an end.  Our ultimate goal is to become like the Savior, and that goal is enhanced by our unselfish service to others.  Our ability to serve is increased or diminished by the level of our self-reliance.   --Elder Robert D Hales, "A Gospel Vision of Welfare:  Faith in Action"