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"