And you think you're busy now?....

Monday, January 12, 2015 we taught our sixth returning missionary training.  This group was small after the last two times with only 13 missionaries and it was weird to have only one sister, Sister Ponce!  She was going home to Trujillo, Peru one transfer early due to university study requirements she has.

This was a quiet group and difficult to get them fully engaged.  We did our presentation during the second half this time so that may have made a difference. This training starts at 9 am and goes until 2 pm with a break for lunch.  We have done our presentation both first and last and I think I prefer the early slot.

 Trying to concentrate and not think about home.

Below, our group photo.  We are missing one elder who was in doing his exit interview with the mission president.  We had only two North American missionaries in this group.

Sister Ponce has been attending our English classes in the Cusco zone.  We also had our former Cusco zone leaders in this group, Elder Garcia (2nd from right in back row) from Mexico, and Elder Lehman (tall blonde in the center front) from Minnesota.  To the left of Elder Lehman is Elder Bejar, he had attended our English classes in the Inti Raymi zone  for a little bit as well.

We were asked to help teach English to the youth during their summer vacation break, which started right after the Christmas holidays.  The kids are now out until February 25th and apparently the Inti Raymi stake sponsors activities during the day to occupy the kids.  They asked us to teach from 9 am to 10 am Monday, Wednesday and Fridays.  Since we are over at this stake building on Wed. & Fri already teaching the full-time missionaries at 10 am we told them we could do it those two days only.

What a big challenge that is!  We are using Daily Dose and started at the beginning, but you really have many levels of competency and attention spans that are much shorter and we have double the amount of time and a large group of students.  We did the first lesson on introducing yourself and the second lesson on the family.  It takes a lot more preparation than the adult conversation classes.  Luckily, only five more weeks to deal with it.

We've been joined by another pair of senior missionaries!!  This week Elder & Sister Johnson arrived to serve a one year mission in member services.  They are friends of President & Sister Harbertsen, the mission president.  They also do not speak Spanish.  They studied for about a year before coming, but study and real life usage are worlds apart.  We met them Wednesday night and learned that they are going to work out of Cusco and help with family history but working directly with the full-time missionaries as they give discussions to recent converts and less active members related to family history.  President Harbertsen said that retention goes way up when the members get involved in family history.  They will also work out of the family history center located in the Tullumayu ward building (which is just down the hall and around the corner from our Self-Reliance Center).

I also had a sister come talk to me about teaching piano.  She is the stake primary president for the Cusco stake.  I was sunk as soon as she used the argument that there is a big need for the youth to learn as every building has a piano, yet most wards have to sing accapella as no one knows how to play.  I couldn't argue with her on that.  I gave her the same deal I offered earlier to another member.  I told her if they want to come to the Tullumayu ward building at 9:30 on Monday mornings, I will teach.  She asked about group lessons, but I do not have any experience teaching in a group setting, so not sure how to go about doing that.  I did go online and immediately order the church's teaching music kit to help me.  Piano lessons will start Jan 26th, as we were traveling on the 19th.

We've also been recruited by the Institute administrator to teach a Book of Mormon class in English once institute starts up again the first of March.  They tried to have us teach this course last semester but we wouldn't commit.  Now we are even busier, but we have added that to our to-do list.  We scheduled it in during our hour for English conversation as that has gone by the wayside.  So it looks like Tuesdays at 6 pm we'll be Institute instructors.

So last Saturday morning we attended training for all institute and seminary instructors from 7 am to 9 am.  It looks like we will be doing this for the next three Saturdays as well.  I have never taught seminary or institute so I learned a lot from the training.  Thank goodness the youth English class ends before Institute starts or we would need a lot of prep time for these two lessons.

We met with both the Ponce family and Nilda this past week.  The Ponce family has not progressed much lately.  We talked to the Ponces about seeking inspiration as to how to solve their problem, even fasting if necessary.  Often they see only the obstacles to success.  We felt like we needed to build up their faith.  Nilda's laundry business is continuing to improve.  We did up her signs for her and I gave her some dry cleaning business as one of my suit jackets needed cleaning.  Both of them continue to come to our self-employment workshop.

We had our fifth lesson on Saturday for that workshop, teaching them to separate their business income from their personal or family income.  It teaches that they may be the business owner but they are also an employee and need to pay themselves a salary. It is so common that they don't designate what monies belong to the business and what monies go to them.  This creates many financial challenges if they don't take care and often they set themselves up for business failure.  The church has developed some great videos that go along with this lesson called "Don't Kill the Chickens".

Our new workshop for the Perpetual Education Fund didn't get started this week as anticipated as no one showed up to take it.

Saturday we managed to squeeze in a fun activity, visiting the Tupac Amaru Saturday market.  This is held at the plaza Tupac Amaru which is not too far from our apartment.  This market is different from the Huancaro market as it is not a produce/grocery market.  This market had vendors  selling plants for inside and outside.  We saw fruit trees, bushes, and flower (especially hydrangeas) starts.  There were furniture vendors, toy vendors, dessert stalls, and a section for meals, sort of like the Peruvian version of a food court.  

 Trout is very popular here.  Below is a big tray of oven baked noodles, that also seems to be well liked.

 Above, trout frying in tons of oil.  Below kebobs of all types, which are also popular.  There is chicken, beef, hot dogs and very popular, anticuchos (which are beef hearts).

Above - cebiche (or ceviche) is a very famous, popular Peruvian dish.  It is raw fish preserved in citric juices so the flavor is very acidic.  Takes some getting used to.  Below - a serving of fried trout, choclo (their version of corn on the cob) french fries.

 Here you can see these food vendors are very popular.  Most tables were full of people eating lunch.

 There were also a lot of baby clothes vendors.  We found a very pretty outfit to give to the Guerra's daughter who is due to have a baby girl in February.  Crocheted outfits were plentiful and very pretty.

For the future baby Guerra

Dave did a service project with one of our non-member English students.  His name is Edgar and he works part-time as a taxi driver on the side from his wood working business. He gave us a ride home one night and Dave noticed some body damage to his front driver side near the headlight.  He offered to help him fix that.  So Saturday afternoon, Dave worked with him on that.  While he had him as a captive audience, Dave also managed to bear his testimony to him about God, Jesus Christ, and our accountability to them some day.  Dave says the spirit was there.  We will see if the seed bears fruit.

Saturday night we had Elder Black (a distant relative to Dave) and his companion Elder Guevara over for dinner.  Saturday was Elder Guevara's birthday and the next day, Sunday, was Elder Black's birthday.  The plan had been to make tacos as Elder Guevara is from Mexico and mentioned that he misses eating tacos.  But at the last minute we were told not to do tacos so we switched to spagetti, which we had not eaten in a long time.  It tasted delicious.  I even made garlic bread, which you can't find down here.  But I managed to improvise and made something pretty darn close to what we know as garlic bread.

Apparently adding to our schedule a youth English class, an institute class and piano lessons wasn't enough.  We learned that our area manager,Carlos Hale, has been asked to now manage two areas, Cusco & Arequipa.  The Arequipa manager has been given a new assignment for the church and has left a vacancy for that position.  Carlos is from Arequipa originally and is very familiar with members and influential people in Arequipa.  He is of the opinion that he will eventually be permanently assigned to Arequipa and someone new will come in to handle the Cusco area.  Until then he has to juggle both jobs.  He will probably spend much of his time down in Arequipa, because as he put it, "there is a very capable, seasoned senior couple serving in Cusco in Self-Reliance that can hold down the fort and help fill in his shoes" during this time. We wonder who he is talking about??

Spiritual Thought for the Week: comes from a most excellent article in the January Ensign, a talk by Elder Russell M Nelson given at BYU-Hawaii on Sept. 6, 2013.

"As youth of the noble birthright, you are literally sons and daughters of God, born at this particular time in the world's history for a most sacred purpose.  Youth of this Church are to be standard bearers of the Lord and beacons of light to attract others to Him.  You are also "children of the promised day".  Each of you young men and young women was commissioned by your Heavenly Father to build up the kingdom of God on earth right now and to prepare a people to receive the savior when he will rule and reign as the Millenial Messiah.

But neither your birthright nor your premortal ordinations and commissions can save or exalt you.  You will do that through your individual decisions and as you choose to access the power of the Lord's Atonement in your lives.  

This whole talk was AMAZING!!  There is a section where he talks about the importance of education,which may be my next week's inspiration thought if I don't come across something else equally spectacular!