It's Begnning to Seem Like Christmas, Finally

One thing we´ve noticed here is the holiday decorations don´t come out months in advance, like in the states.  Little by little things have been getting put up and finally this week it seems the city is in full holiday mode.  Look what we ran across in our walk abouts, a store in my honor and one of my co-workers from Craig Swapp.

Our apartment has been dreadfully bare in its decor, let alone Christmas decorations.  I´ve been wanting to get a nativity set that exudes the Peruvian culture and this week settled on the one below.  The hats worn are particularly Peruvian (even baby Jesus has a typical hat on), the items held and the fact that you have a llama instead of a camel just says Peru.

We also found a street vendor selling the cutest little nativity scene made out of a gourd.  Open it looks like this below.

But closed you see two owls.  So very cool and very detailed in the depicting of the owls.

We had to deliver one of our Christmas present early, to Natan.  We found the little Santa hat in the market the other day and had to get it for him.  Doesn´t he look cute?  With his Christmas sweater and everything.

We've been busy in the center with PEF inquiries.  We have had some good classes with those looking to apply.  Next month is when we will probably seen many people come in as the university semester starts in March.

This week we met with all of our families we are working with.  We spoke with Sister Cuadros finally.  She is not using the sales book we had taught her to use, but has continued using her old method that is minimally adequate, but not nearly as detailled or helpful to her.  But I knew it would be a challenge for her and when I got sick and we weren´t able to follow up with her, I was pretty certain the switch wasn´t happening.  Plus she is not always the one at the shop.  Her husband and daughter help do sales and we never gave them the training on this new bookkeeping method.

The Ponce family continues attending our pilot group on self-employment.  Hopefully they will find it useful.  We taught our second class and we learned that they don't always look at things in the way we do.  We were talking about competition and how when coming up with a business idea you need to consider how many other business identical to theirs is in their area.  If there is a lot, we would see that as detrimental.  In the class, Brother Ponce said he finds it useful to have competitors nearby as it helps him see what they are doing and know how he can improve his business.  He also said it makes him work harder.  I wonder how many other concepts we will teach that they will not agree with.

When we visited Nilda we were thrilled to see that her laundry shop had a number of suitcoats hanging up waiting for pick up along with other bundles of clothing neatly folded.  She was just finishing up with a customer when we walked up.  We mentioned this to her and congratulated her on improving the work load.  We asked her if any hotels had called from the flyers we had passed out.  She told us one had.  Score!  We were excited.  We encouraged her to continue handing out flyers and to follow up with the ones she had already visited so they didn't forget about her.  She asked us to help her make a few signs for her business showing pricing etc.  We told her to write something up and come see us in the center and we would definitely help her out with that.

Our English classes finished up for the year.  We did a lesson on Christmas vocabulary and talking about Christmas traditions.  We did a lot of singing of Christmas carols.  Our member classes will be taking a two week break.  But we will continue with the missionaries as it is business as usual for them.

Most of the week I was sneakily planning a birthday party for David.  Something a bit tough to do as we are together a lot these days, but Dave helped by doing some errands on his own so I was then able to sneak out and make arrangements for a special cake to be made by the Ponces, and a fire truck pinata

First I offered to take Dave out to the lunch of his choice (lunch is the main meal here).  However, Javier invited us to lunch at his favorite polleria, so we took him up on his offer.  Below you will see what Dave chose for his dinner option.

Burger King has been running a 2 for 1 deal on Whopper combo meals and for about $5.50 we could both eat a combo meal.  And the hamburgers actually taste like hamburgers.

We then headed over to our English class at Inti Raymi and we experienced deja vu.  Remember last week at the end of the lesson we had a rain storm that turned the main street into a river and left snow laying around?  Well another storm hit and the street was a river once again.  This time I got photos.

You can see the gutter system just couldn't handle as much rain as was coming down and the Cusquenos told us it really wasn't that big of a rain storm.

Water flooding the sidewalks even.  There were no taxis or buses to be found.  Dave wanted to stay at the chapel and wait it out but I knew there was a party waiting for him at the Tullumayu chapel, so I insisted we walk up the block to see if we could find some kind of transportation but all we found was water everywhere!

Try crossing this intersection.

After getting pretty well soaked and having plenty of taxis pass us up, we finally got over to the chapel, probably about 45 minutes after I thought we would.  I guess we are now acclimatized, because that is how punctual most Peruvians are.  There were only a few members who stuck it out and waited for us.  I'm sure the rains put a damper on things.  We are learning that people just stay home when it rains really hard.

I had asked Brother & Sister Ponce to make a special cake for Elder Rhoades.  That is the business they would like to open and be successful at.  I told her I wanted it to have a llama theme as Dave had gotten such a kick out of being a llama in the folk dance we did back in July.  Here is what she came up with.  The cake looked like ruins.  Dave said Sacsayhuaman, I said Machupicchu, but it was very realistic looking as you can see in the close up below.

That is not Sister Ponce holding the cake, however, that is Sister Garcia, wife of the stake president and a faithful English class attendee.  She is a lot of fun.

Below is a photo showing all the people who stuck it out, except for Javier who is taking the photo.  Left back is Olga Espejo, wife of our ward bishop, Marcia Garcia, and her two sons are on the right.  Brigham just got back from his mission recently and Alan her oldest son.  Then in front are the Ponces, Atitlano and Nidia, the aspiring cake artists.  

The cake was fabulous, but pretty pricey by Peru's standards so they are going to have to cater to the upper crust of Cusco society I think to be successful.

Here is the birthday boy and the birthday wish they had written on the board.  They wrote it in English and did pretty good, all except for one word.  Can you spot the error?

And here we are with the cake and pinata.  As it was raining cats and dogs outside we had to do the pinata inside so we had to improvise.  Dave had to be careful not to hit one of the lights while swinging his broomstick.

When the pinata finally broke and the candy came down, you would not have know everyone in attendance were adults.  They all acted just like little kids.  We laughed a lot and had a good time.

So look below to see what I came across on one of our shopping trips.  It is a kilo (2.2 lbs) of a solid semisweet chocolate bar.  What?  That means chocolate chip cookies or even better with Christmas near, fudge!

Saturday I tried it out and it turned out perfectly the first time I tried it.  The altitude didn't seem to make a difference with this recipe.

Dave didn't want to stick around the house while I experimented with some cooking so he took off to his favorite market, Barrattio.  I made him swear not to spend too much money.  He was gone for 4 hours and I was sure he had broken his promise, but nope.  The reason for his delay?  He was doing missionary work.

One of the old book dealers saw his name plaque and asked him if he was a Mormon missionary.  He told him yes and then proceeded to talk to him for more than an hour.  Dave learned that he had only one child, a son, that had died at the age of 10 of lukemia.  It had broken his and his wife's heart.  He had been so traumatized by it, he had left his profession in the tourism industry and had struggled to deal with his grief.  About two years ago, he walked into one of our Mormon chapels and asked to speak to the bishop.  The ward members befriended him and he begun to attend the meetings and take the missionary discussions.  He said he had been invited to be baptized and then had a job transfer out into the countryside and lost track of the church.  His wife had never been interested in changing her Catholic religion, but now that he is back in Cusco, he had been looking for the missionaries as he has an interest in finding that peace and comfort he had felt while attending the church two years ago.   Dave got his name and number and is anxious to find out which set of missionaries he can refer this man to.

Saturday night we attended the Cusco stake Christmas Recital.  It was a pretty big deal.  They had this Christmas tree decorated in the cultural hall.

The choir members all wore matching outfits.  The women in red blouses and black skirts and the men all had dark suits and matching red ties.

I snuck into the practice room and took a few shots as they were preparing themselves to perform.

(l to r)  Calif Munoz, Jeremiah Reyes, Jaime Reyes, Paola's brother who has been attending the PEF classes, Alan Garcia

And of course, Elder Munoz, the full time missionary who is a genius when it comes to piano playing.  He can sit down and play almost any song and vary the accompaniment so that it sounds professional.  They used him to accompany a lot of the ward primary groups.

Here is the full choir performing.  They sounded much better than we expected.  Hispanics are not well known for their singing abilities, but they had worked hard and you could tell.  As I looked at the choir as they performed, I couldn't help but notice how many of them we now know.  Of all the men, there was only one that we didn't know and many of the women we were familiar with.  What a difference six months can make.  I can still remember the first Sunday here and how awkward it felt to not know anyone.

The Primary groups were so darling.  They mostly sang Primary Christmas songs but they dressed up in either red capes, red hats, or at least their Sunday best.

This group has Javier's little girl smack dab in the middle, she is the smallest one.  Javier's wife is the Primary president in his ward.  She is only three and yet she acted like she was reading those words just like the big kids.

It was a very nice evening and helped fill a void I was feeling.  Now that I am older, one of the things I looked forward to the most about Christmas is not the presents, but the special programs you can attended that help bring the Christmas spirit and help you focus on the true meaning of Christmas

Spiritual Thought of the Week:  Jeffrey R Holland - "You can't separate Bethlehem from Gethsemane or the hasty flight into Egypt from the slow journey to the summit of Calvary.  It's of one piece.  It is a single plan.  It considers 'the fall and rising again of many in Israel' [Luke 2:34], but always in that order.  Christmas is joyful not because it is a season or decade or lifetime without pain and privation, but precisely because life does hold those moments for us." "Shepherds, Why This Jubilee?"  2000

Six Months, How Can It Be?

Life is back to normal here in Cusco.  We are back to focusing on missionary work and English classes.  But we shake our heads and wonder how we can be at the six month mark already.

With the recent transfers we now have a more lively group of missionaries in the Inti Raymi zone and the English lessons are getting more fun.  Elder Black is now in the Inti Raymi zone and has been coming on his P-day to the center to send his emails to his family and we have enjoyed getting to know him.

The Inti Raymi zone leaders allowed Dave to take one of the missionaries from Picchu out of their area to go visit a less active return missionary who served in Ecuador.  One of the Elders is from Ecuador so Dave thought it might spark something in the less active missionary.  Dave met him at a motorcycle shop where he had gone as he was trying to help Nilda, our laundry lady, repair a motorcycle she has so she can use it to pick up and deliver laundry.  Dave promised the zone leader cookies as a thank you and Elder Brown requested peanut butter cookies, which happens to be Dave's favorite as well.

Baking anything here at this altitude is a challenge but I'm learning what adjustments need to be made and I was very excited when the cookies came out so very close to normal.  Not totally flat at least.

Peanut Butter Cookies in Cusco?  Woohoo!!

We have a couple of non-members coming to some of our English classes so we hope it may lead to some conversions down the road and even more non-members joining our classes as they talk to their friends about their experience.

Cindy went out with Nilda one afternoon and helped her pass out flyers for her laundry business.  She was pretty intimidated and scared, but Cindy coached her on what to say before going out and emphasized to her that she needs to be the one that does the work.  At first she was very hesitate, but by the end she was really getting into it and didn't want to stop visiting the nearby hotels.  We ended up giving out 10 flyers.  Many of the hotels already have laundry services they are working with.  We also talked to a few laundry businesses to try to learn from them.  She hadn't done any of that homework before opening her door for business.  She found out that she is pricing her services on the high side.  She had put 3 soles per kilo on her flyers but found out that 2 or 2.50 is what all the other laundry services are charging.  She quickly dropped her price to 2.50 as we talked to the different hotels.  Out of the 10 flyers we left, one place was promising.

 Here are some photos taken from Nilda's neighborhood, which is new to us.  She lives above San Pedro market which is fairly close to the tourist section of town.  As you can see the area is poorer and not as modern.  Not sure if you can really tell how steep that road is behind Dave.  Nilda and I ended up at the top of that street and had a great view of the city, but I didn't have my camera with me.

We experienced our first really major downpour this week.  Friday night after our English class we went to leave the Inti Raymi chapel and it was pouring.  We decided to wait it out.  When the rain let up a bit we headed out.  We were amazed to find the street in front of the chapel had turned into a raging river.  This street is a main thoroughfare, Avenida de la Cultura.  There is a slight downhill grade to it and the water was running down the street (and not just the gutters).  The water level was practically up to the running boards of the buses.  So if you were walking along the sidewalk you had to be careful not to get splashed or you would be sopping.  Yet, traffic went on as normal.

As we got to the top of the incline, closer to our neighborhood, we started to see snow on the sidewalks.  The people here call it hail, but it was snow.  When we got off at our bus stop, here is what we saw.

And as we walked to our apartment this is what we walked past.

Now is that hail or is that snow?  So here we are in the southern hemisphere, and we´re coming up to the summer solstice on Dec. 22nd and yet we are walking through what appears to be snow.  Gotta be the altitude.  Of course, it was all gone the next morning.

We spent a lot of our time this week preparing for two activities on Saturday.  One was a training meeting for the new workshops.  Carlos Hale had put us in charge of the luncheon after the training and wanted another BBQ.  We had to shop and prepare much of the food ahead of time.  We had hot dogs and hamburgers, baked beans, jello, watermelon & pineapple and chocolate cake and Dave fixed root beer floats as well.

The training started at 8:30 am and went all morning.  The BBQ was at our house in the patio area behind the apartment.  We got rained on for part of the time, but there is an overhang that allowed us to not get too wet.

No sooner had we cleaned up from that then it was time to go to our afternoon activity which was the first meeting of a pilot group for the self-employment workshop.  There is such an interest in that particular workshop and the Spanish materials have been delayed and delayed but we now have a PDF of the workshop so we decided to get started with a small group of selected individuals for a dry run through the 12 lessons so we can be better prepared when we begin to offer it to all the members.

The format is so different from what has been used in the past and it requires more involvement and commitments from the participants.  It will be interesting to see how things go.  We had invited 11 people to participate and we had 6 show up.  We had Nilda, our laundry lady, who can really use the help, both Brother & Sister Ponce who we are working with, one of our volunteers, Julio Condori who wants to start his own business, Juan Carlos Pompilla, who owns a business and Bishop Reyes, who also has his own business.

The first class had good discussions and involvement by those in attendance.  We'll see if they follow through with their assignments for the week when we meet next Saturday.

Our volunteer, Julio, has been out of work for some time.  He has tried a few jobs, but they didn't last more than a day or two for various reasons.  He is 33 years old so it is a bit difficult for him, as 30-35 years old is when they start to age discriminate here.  He finally started a job this past week and kept it for the whole week so hopefully this is going to stick for him.

Another one of our volunteer, Brother Oswaldo Alvardo, has been teaching the Planning for Success workshop for years.  This is the workshop the PEF applicants are required to take.  He turned 72 in November and was always very responsible and dependable.  He really enjoyed teaching the classes and working with the center.  He and his wife, even came to our English classes pretty regularly.  He passed away on Sunday.  It was such a shock to hear and it was a shock to his wife and family and it was unexpected.  They say he was in church and during priesthood, after bearing his testimony, sat down and slumped over and told his son who was sitting next to him, that he wasn't feeling well and couldn't breathe.  They rushed him to the hospital but within a half hour he was dead.  Wow.  They held the viewing that night at the chapel.  His wife was really struggling emotionally.  I think she was a bit in shock.  I would be.  We all feel so bad and will miss him.

This is the only photo we have of him.  We cropped this from a photo of one of our English classes.

Spiritual Thought of the Week: My favorite conference talk from October 2014 is now "Approaching the Throne of God with Confidence" by  Elder Jorg Klebingat.   It didn't leave a huge impression when I heard it in October but this past week as I read it, it was very powerful.  I recommend you read the whole thing but here is a part I highlighted.

"Whenever the adversary cannot persuade imperfect yet striving Saints such as you to abandon your belief in a personal and loving God, he employs a vicious campaign to put as much distance as possible between you and God.  The adversary knows that faith in Christ - the kind of faith that produces a steady stream of tender mercies and even mighty miracles - goes hand in hand with a personal confidence that you are striving to choose the right.  For that reason he will seek access to your heart to tell you lies - lies that Heavenly Father is disappointed in you, that the Atonement is beyond your reach, that there is no point in trying, that everyone else is better than you, that you are unworthy, and a thousand other variations of that same evil theme.

As long as you allow these voices to chisel away at your soul, you can't approach the throne of God with real confidence.  Whatever you do, whatever you pray for,  whatever hopes for a miracle you may have, there will always be just enough self-doubt chipping away at your faith - not only your faith in God but also your confidence in yourself.  Living the gospel in this manner is no fun, nor is it very healthy.  Above all, it is completely unnecessary!  The decision to change is yours - and yours alone"

Machu Picchu continued...

After a long day hiking and having our first views of Machu Picchu, we spent the night in Aguas Calientes.  We showered, had dinner and then pretty much went to bed as we had an early start the next day as well.

The following day we left for the ruins at 6 am and spent 7 hours exploring the entire Machupicchu site.  Our guide gave us a tour for a few hours first thing and then we had time on our own to continue exploring. Here is our experience in a nutshell.  A very big nutshell as we took A LOT of photos.  

Oh, hey, look what is happening up at Machupicchu?  Seems appropriate with all the stones around.

Here is one of my favorite photos.  We arrived very early and so some of the photos had great lighting with the early morning sun.  This is one of them.  This shows the lower half of the ruins.  The photo was taken close to the first part of the ruins after you enter.

As you enter you can either go to the upper part of the ruins or down to the lower part of the ruins.  I'll post the photos in a circular manner heading up and around, ending back at the beginning by the lower part.

In the forefront is the housing section for the upper class citizens, past that is the "temple square".  That is what I call it since it had multiple temples together and at the far back set on a hill is the temple of the sun dial.

This is looking back up at the upper part from the lower part.  All I can say is that is a lot of rocks!

This house is one of the highest structures.  The roof is a reconstruction of what they believe the roofs were like back in 1450-1550 AD when they believe Machupicchu was constructed.

Here you can see the solitary house sitting at the top of the argricultural terraces.

The top photo shows "temple square"  You have two temples near each other.  The building in the forefront is not a temple as it isn't built using the smooth stone and near perfect fit without mortar.  Our guide told us they reserved that building standard for temples or palaces but they did not use it for every day buildings.

Above you can see the hill behind "temple square" where the temple with the granite rock being used as a sun dial is located.

Below you can see some close up photos of these temples

 This temple sustained some damage from the last really big major earthquake they had here in Peru back in 1950.  In both photos you can just barely make out a chinchilla sunning himself in the top opening second from the right.  I got some close up photos as well that I will post later in the blog.

This temple is famous for it's windows.  They are cut in a rectangular shape and yet the shadows they cast are square.  We were not there during the time of day when you could see this however.

   

Here is a close up of the granite rock the guide said the Incas used as a sun dial.

From here you walk down into the big green space and you can get a good view of the high mountain on the western side of Machupicchu called Huaynapicchu and the "face" they say the mountain peaks form.

Overlooking the green area that runs down the middle of Machu Picchu

 Hopefully you can see some of the terraces and ruins upon Huaynapicchu, probably in the photo below.  You can pay extra and hike up to the top of this mountain.  It is a very steep and dangerous climb.  We decided to forego that experience.

The photo below shows the "face" formed by the mountains, but you really have to look sideways at it.  Imagine the photo turned counter clockwise and you can make out the large nose (the tallest mt.) and the jutting chin (the mt. farthest to the left) and the small mountains in the middle form the mouth.  It's a stretch but you can see it when you are there in person.

From the sun dial temple we walked across the green area over to where the two house are showing in the picture above.  There they show you what is called "roca sagrada" or sacred rock.  It is a large granite rock that apparently held some sort of significance to the Incas due to the fact that it mirrored the shape of the mountain range behind it.

 Hopefully in these photos you can see how these two rocks have the same outlines as the mountains behind them.  Apparently, according to our guide, the Incas put a lot of stock in the natural formation of these rocks reflecting the shape of the mountains behind them.  The photo below has Huaynapicchu behind this granite rock.

As we headed back the other was to view the lower section of the ruins, we could look back across the valley and see the Sun Gate (Intipunku) high up on the mountain where we had been the day before.  I tried to zoom in and get a good view and this was the best I could get.  You couldn't see any of this with the naked eye.  I could barely make out the two columns that formed the sun gate from where we were at in Machupicchu.

I was quite surprised to see the terraces below.  We didn't catch a glimpse of those when we were on top.  Now, on to the lower half of the ruins...

This is a good photo showing the upper level of the lower half.  Here are some close up shots.

We didn't explore this section much.  So can't tell you much about it.  

There were a number of temples and altars in this section.  The Sun Temple probably is right in the middle of everything.  This is the temple that the sun rays enter the window perfectly from the Sun Gate as it rises over Intipunku on the summer solstice, Dec. 21 or 22.

You can see that they built it on top of a natural granite slab.  You can see how smooth the stone is and how perfect the fit is.  This makes it clear that this building is very important.

 Above is a photo of the Temple to the Condor.  They used two granite slabs that looked like the bird's wings and then a granite slab on the ground in the middle of the wings that represents the head of the condor so it forms a condor in flight.  Below is a close up of the stone representing the condor head.

Below is another granite slab that was used as an altar.  The Incas seemed to really prize the natural granite slab that formed part of the mountain.  It was viewed as sacred, and they seemed to try to incorporate this stone into their temples, either as altars or as part of the actual temple.

 Below is something very interesting, water mirrors.  Our guide told us the Incas would use it to observe the heavens, the constellations and other astronomical events.

After awhile, I'll have to admit that I began to feel I was surrounded by stone and rocks.  So much everywhere!

In this section we were able to get a good idea of three construction techniques of the Incas that were very impressive.  One was how they would carve stairs directly into the granite stone.

Another was their earthquake prevention techniques.  The guide told us they would purposefully leave gaps between the rocks so there would be some give during the shaking that an earthquake would cause.  Here is one place where you could see that type of construction.

Throughout the ruins you constantly see stones sticking out from the buildings.  We found out those were used to tie the roof coverings to.  Here are some photos demonstrating this.

How the ruins are now and below how they believe the Incas constructed their roofs.

Their canal system for managing the water was very impressive.  Dave was quite fascinated by that and took many photos.  Here are the best ones.

From the bottom half we could look up and get a different perspective of the ruins we had already seen.  Below is the temple of the three rectangular windows from below.  You can see they used some pretty big blocks of stone and that it is fairly smooth rock that is well fitted.  This temple's rock really stands out from the other buildings at the site for those reasons

Below is a different viewpoint of the Temple of the Sun

 Below is the view looking back to the very beginning where a lot of the agricultural terraces are located.

In the lower part is a section of ruins that have not been restored yet.  We saw many workers in different parts of the ruins working on restoring and maintaining what is there.

Since we spent 7 hours exploring the ruins the second day, we had packed a lunch and took a break, sat and enjoyed the spectacular view while we ate.  Don't want to make anyone too jealous, but here is what we got to enjoy.

Speaking of spectacular views, Darci & Eric, how would you have liked one of these scenarios?

 A reception at the Machupicchu Lodge?  Or maybe on top of Huaynapicchu Mt.?

Since that didn't happen, you could always celebrate your two year anniversary down here!

Here are photos of some of the animal life we saw at the ruins.

 The llamas are there more for photo ops than anything else.

 But this little critter is in his natural habitat.  We saw a couple of these guys, but only caught this one as he peeked out between the rocks.

 And this is the chinchilla. He was sunning himself right on the temple walls of "temple square".  He didn't seem too impressed that he was on sacred ground to the Incas.

We feel like Machupicchu lived up to its billing.  It truly is a spectacular natural wonder.  The scientists estimate it was built between 1450 - 1550 AD, so not much before the Spanish invaded the Americas.  However, the Spanairds never reached Machupicchu so it was left relatively intact and not destroyed by the conquistadores.  Hiram Bingham, a Utahan, is credited with discovering the ruins in 1911.

On our way back to Aguas Calientes, we got off the bus and visited a museum.  After visiting there we had the impression that it has really only been since the 1970´s & 80´s that Machupicchu has become a celebrated tourist destination.  In fact, Wikipedia says that in 1976 only 30% had been restored.  It also says that in 2007 it was voted one of the new seven wonders of the world.

When we got our mission call and saw that we were assigned to Cusco, Peru, we realized we would have the opportunity to visit this amazing part of the world.  It is no wonder that people from all over the world are drawn to visit Machupicchu.  Since the Spaniards never reached this Inca location it has helped to keep it preserved so well.  It truly is the crown jewel of the Inca sites.  Come visit us!  We will be your tour guides.  Our English is a lot better than the English our native tour guide had.  Oh, here is our guide, just so we can remember.

Our walk back to Aguas Calientes gave us a chance to admire the river, the granite mountains and the flora of the semi-tropical climate.  

Bridge we crossed after seeing the museum.

 See why we feel like Peru reminds us of Utah?  Granite mountains and towering peaks, although, to me, they seem to tower much higher than any peak in Utah and they are greener.

We don't see a lot of flowers in Cusco, maybe because we've been here during the dry season, but whenever we go to lower elevations, all of a sudden we see a lot more flowering plants.  Here is a sampling.  Since we don't see many flowers, our appreciation and admiration of their beauty has increased.

Hydrangeas!!  I love those flowers.

A strange version of the Bird of Paradise flower

 Above and below are samples of the flowers we saw during our hike.  The top one is a type of orchid.  Our guide told us the name, but I have already forgotten it, except that the translation of the name means screaming mouth as the flower when open has that appearance.

Below is a view of Aguas Calientes as we walked back towards it the second day.

The river runs right through town and makes it a very picturesque place

Below is a fountain with an Inca and two of the three Inca diety symbols, the condor, and the puma.  The other is a snake and maybe it is there in the statue and I just missed it.

Upon our return we still had a number of hours before our train left so we visited the hot springs in town.  It was another hike just to get to that!

Dave in front of the entrance to the hot springs.  From there it was still a good hike up the hill before we reached the hot springs.

Ever see a banana tree?  Here the photo shows they grow upside down

Avocados or paltas as they call them here

Dave being attacked by the killer plants.  Down here a very popular kids video game is Plants vs. Zombies we´ve learned.

How´s that for a backdrop while sitting in a hot tub?

We returned to Cusco very late, 10:30 pm and very tired.  Two long days, but oh, what an adventure!

It was back to serious missionary work after that.  I was finally feeling better and able to put in a full day's work so I was anxious to be busy.

Monday we hosted our fourth group of returning missionaries and this was just as big as the last time - 24 missionaries all together.  We didn't have much time to prepare, so it's a good thing we have some experience under our belt now.  We were on our own for the whole morning as Carlos & Javier had traveled to Puno to take care of some self-reliance business and were traveling back that morning so they could do their presentation during the afternoon.  Here is the latest group we taught.

We still don't know a lot of them, but this group had a few that we've worked with quite a bit.  Sister Ostler, from Oregon is in the back in the green dress.  She was the sister leader here in Cusco and was here when we arrived in June so we've known her for about six months.  Also in the front row is Elder Bazan (first on the left).  He attended our English class in Inti Raymi zone.  He is part Chinese.  Two over from him is Elder Harrison, who worked in the mission office for awhile and that is how we know him.  Also behind Elder Bazan (first on the left in the second row) is Elder Haderlie, who was serving as the zone leader of the Cusco zone this last little bit.  Elder Cardozo who served in Izcuchaca for his last area is standing next to Hermana Ostler.  He was a hard working missionary from Paraguay, who had a booming singing voice that he wasn't afraid to use.  Our first contact with him was out in Izcuchaca where he and his companion sang a special musical number for the little family group there.  They sang a hymn in Spanish, English and Guarani, the indian dialect from Paraguay.  He also came to our English class for the Cusco zone missionaries.  We really liked his spirit.

We also lost our help at the center with this transfer.  Both of our crippled sister missionaries have improved enough that they are back to full-time proselyting and both were transferred to new areas, Sister Camacho to Sicuani, two and a half hours away and Sister Sanchez to our home ward, Tullumayo, so we will still see her.  They were such a great help to us at the center.  We just need to find some permanent volunteers to do what these sister missionaries did for us.

We finally made it to visit a sister in the Picchu ward whom the elders had told us about before I had gotten sick.  Her name is Nilda and she has started a laundry service but is struggling to make it work.  When we visited her, we found out that she really doesn't know what she is doing.  Here, it is very common that people will see a friend with a business that is succeeding and say to themselves, "I can do that" and without much forethought or planning, make a sign and open their doors and think that somehow things will work out.  That is about what she has done.  She is a single mom with four kids and needs to bring in some income.  We have a lot we need to teach her.  After getting a better idea of where she is at, we told her we would think about things and pray for inspiration and get back to her.  One of the first impressions that came to me was how she needed to make flyers and take around to the hotels in her neighborhood in a marketing effort.

We also went by to see our other two families.  The Ponces are making good progress and doing the recommended things we've talked to them about.  The Cuadros are not.  We have not been able to get anywhere with them.  We can't even seem to find them when we go by their shop.  We have talked with their teenage daughter mostly.

For the first time in weeks, I was able to go to the center every day and to all English classes, even the evening classes.  We are now teaching Christmas songs to our class members and they are enjoying it.

We are so happy to be in this new apartment.  And I am happy this week as we finally got curtains on our windows.  We'd shopped around but really didn't want to pay a lot since we will only use them for about a year.  Well, we visited barrattio mercado on Saturday again and found these curtains for a price way below what we had been quoted by the curtain shops.

 Top photo is our study curtains and below is our living room curtains.  Same design just different colors.

We found a few more souvenirs at the market as well, and got sunburned in the process.  Life as a missionary in a third world country is never dull or boring.  

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  We must not compromise or dilute our commitment to the truths we understand.  We must not surrender our positions or our values.  The gospel of Jesus Christ and the covenants we have made inevitably cast us as combatants in the eternal contest between truth and error.  There is no middle ground in that contest.  Loving kindness is required, but a follower of Christ - just like the Master - will be firm in the truth.  Dallin H Oaks, "Loving Others and Living with Differences" October 2014 General Conference.