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"