The field is white...

I have had the sense for a couple of weeks now that the work here is a ticking time bomb just waiting to explode.  Or another way to put it, to quote scripture, "the field is white, all ready to harvest"  We are seeing more and more signs of the truth of that statement.

Our English program, Daily Dose, is now being taught not only by us here in Cusco, but also by the missionaries in Puno, & Puerto Maldonado and we have left materials in a few other locations hoping to get it up and going there as well.  This week we learned that some of the missionaries that are coming to our classes are going to start their own classes in their sectors using the materials we have been giving them.  Wow.

My piano lessons have been an example of the mushrooming effect as well.  This week because we were traveling back from Quillabamba I had Sister Hasler, another senior missionary here, substitute for me so I could keep the ball rolling.  I have two to three groups of beginning students and a couple of intermediate level students.  They are so grateful and excited to be able to take lessons.

Anywhere we go to talk about the new self-reliance workshops and programs we see so much interest  and excitement from the members.  Sunday, Feb. 22nd, we were invited by the bishop & leaders of the Chaski ward to give a 30 minute presentation.  We lucked out and also spoke with the Tihuantinsuyo ward as well as they were meeting with the Chaski ward due to the chapel they meet in was holding the Cusco stake conference during their meeting hours.  It was a combined RS & Priesthood meeting and we had a full large chapel that we got to address, which is great since it helps us get the word out to many people at one shot.  Afterwards, I had many inquires and members saying they will come see us at the center.  Dave had many come up to him as well.

We can see how down the road there will be so many self-reliance groups going that all we will have time to do is supervise the work.  We will need to have many other members doing the facilitating of the groups.  That 30 minute Sunday presentation got us two offers for volunteers.

Dave´s idea of teaching a sheet rocking class or how to install drywall is taking off like wildfire.  We have noticed in the last month that drywall is now making an appearance here in Cusco.  We read that a sheet rock factory opened up recently in Peru making it more affordable to purchase and the Peru version of Home Depot and Lowe´s is now stocking a lot of those materials.

Dave has also found insulation now in stock at this home improvement stores.

  Dave came up with the idea of teaching a class after he talked with the supervisor at ProMart and found out that no one there had any idea how to use the stuff.  They begged him to come teach them.  Instead, he spoke to the area manager of facilities for the church to see if they needed any small storage sheds built at any of the chapels.  He told them if they would provide the material, he would supply free labor.  They were all for it.  In fact, he wants Dave to teach his employees in Puno who need to know NOW how to work with it.  He is even willing to bring them all in to Cusco for a number of days for Dave to teach them. Dave envisions teaching a group of members a series of classes on the techniques of working and installing drywall and building the storage sheds will be their practical application.  But even better, we are going to couple it with attending the business workshop.  They will have to attend and complete the first four lessons in order to participate in the first class and then every few classes, Dave will do another drywall class.  Since this is a new product, Dave is hoping to help the members be able to develop construction businesses that will prosper as they take advantage of this new wave in construction.  Hard to believe that sheet rock is only now coming to Cusco, Peru.

We´ve had some great weather and a break from constant rain lately.  It has actually felt like summer.

Photo from Quillabamba, but sunflowers make me think of summer.

On a different note, I am excited because I have gotten my hands on a cookbook called "Pie in the Sky" that has recipes for high altitude baking, something that has been extremely challenging at 11,200 feet.  I tried my first recipe out of it this week, cornbread, and was SO excited when it turned out beautifully the very first time.

I tried biscuits today and they came out ok, but not as good as the cornbread.  We scarfed both down pretty quickly.

We also tried a new fruit recently.  For a number of weeks as we´ve walked the streets we have seen vendors with wheelbarrows full of fruit from cactus called "tuna".  They come in different colors, red, orange, yellow, green.  They have been everywhere.  We finally decided we needed to try it.  It was unique.  It had a good flavor, but you eat the seeds and all so it was crunchy at the same time.

This isn't the best photo as you can't see the fruit much, but it shows how they just fill a wheelbarrow up, use a bucket for a seat and hope that people as they pass by will want to purchase from them.  Below is a better photo showing the fruit.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  From Carlos A Godoy's October 2014 talk "The Lord Has a Plan for Us"  We are constantly telling the members this phrase and encouraging them to pray and receive inspiration as to what the Lord wants them to do in their lives.  Here are some great excerpts from his talk.

"Understanding who we are, why we are here, and what the Lord expects from us in this life will help give us the broader vision we need."
"The best paths in life are rarely the easiest.  Often, it is exactly the opposite."  "Are we willing to pay the price for our decisions?  Are we prepared to leave our comfort zones to reach a better place?"

"We are children of Almighty God.  He is our Father, He loves us, and He has a plan for us.  We are not here in this life just to waste our time, grow old, and die.  God wants us to grow and achieve our potential."
"I know that the Lord has a plan for us in this life.  He knows us.  He knows what is best for us.  Just because things are going well does not mean that we should not from time to time consider whether there might be something better.  If we continue to live as we are living, will the promised blessings be fulfilled?"

Finally! We visit Quillabamba

We continue to be busy, busy, busy.  Last week started out with piano lessons.  Once again, more people showed up for lessons.  This time I think I ended up with 10, so double the five from last week.  I only anticipated 1 of the additional 5 people as I had told a 16 year old girl to come at the end of the other groups lesson and I would teach her separately.  Luckily, I was teaching rhythm and reading the notes, something I could do the bulk of away from the keyboard.  We also had managed to borrow an additional keyboard from one of the wards in the building so I had two keyboards to work with and one of the mothers is keenly interested herself and was able to help the kids on the second keyboard.  But at the end of the lesson, I told them we needed to divide into groups and I put the new ones in a group and they are going to come a half hour later.  So now I am committed to teaching piano, not just 30 minutes once a week, but 1 hour and a half once a week.  I don't think I can take on any more students.  The thing I anticipate is once school picks up at the end of the month, a bunch will drop out.  It always happens with our workshop attendance so I'm pretty sure it will happen here as well.

We continued with the Cuadros inventory, completing it after about 6 hours of work.  We will compile all the data and then meet with her to discuss and teach her some business concepts that hopefully will help her business.

Our commitment to teaching the youth during their summer break finished up this week so that takes something off our plate.  They held a closing recognition program and each class had to present something they learned.  We had our class sing two primary songs in English, Happy Family and The Wise Man and the Foolish Man.

They had a canning class where they canned mostly fruit and they also had a cooking class where they learned to prepare a number of things.  You can see the chocolate cake and some sandwiches they prepared.

 Also look at all the canned bottles of fruit.  They canned some interesting fruit, like mangos and pineapple.

They also had a crocheting/knitting class where they did hats and ponchos but what was crazy was they announced that they had made them without needles.  They used only their fingers!  What?  I didn't know you could do that.

Here the students are modeling their work.  Below Gabriel Ponce is proud of his blue poncho & hat.

Our English class in Inti Raymi on Wednesday and Friday nights had an interesting week.  Our non-member taxi cab driver invited a bunch of his taxi driver friends to start coming to the classes.  We went from 2 people in the class to 10 people in the class!  All non-members.  Hopefully, we can get a few referrals for the missionaries out of this

We had also taught them the week before a lesson on FHE and all the vocabulary was related to that.  It talked about games and cookies so we decided to have cookies and games with them this week.  I tried to make Magic Cookie Bars and for the most part was successful.  We then taught them how to play Yahtzee as that allows them to practice the numbers in English.  It took both nights to finish one game.  They seemed to like it.

We continue to be busy at the center.  Without many volunteers and Dave's limited Spanish and computer skills, most of the time I am trying to juggling helping multiple people.  We open the center Tuesday and Thursday evenings and we usually will have people drop in.  We know if we could get more volunteers we could have it open every week night and help a lot more people.

I woke up Saturday morning to find this waiting for me.  The yellow doughnut says "Te Amo", which means I love you in Spanish.  That is a first for me.  I don't think I have ever gotten a doughnut telling me I love you for Valentine's Day before.

Saturday we had to cancel our workshops due to stake conference meetings.  The Inti Raymi stake was holding their stake conference this weekend.  The bad news is next week Cusco stake holds their conference and will have Saturday meetings as well.  As we have members from both stakes attending this workshop, we will go two weeks without holding the class.  I hope it doesn't mean we will lose traction with the group.

It helped us not to hold the meetings as we had been asked by the Inti Raymi stake presidency to speak in the Saturday evening session.  They gave us 20 minutes between the two of us.  Dave kindly offered to give me 15 minutes to speak and he would only take 5 minutes.  It took more time than I imagined to get a talk ready.  After praying for inspiration, we both agreed that I needed to speak about the experience of the children of Israel leaving Egypt and how God had a spiritual and a temporal plan of salvation for them and show how because of lack of faith and obedience the Israelites lost the blessings that could have been theirs and it was totally unnecessary.  I then compared their situation to our lives today and testified that God has a spiritual and temporal plan of salvation for them as well, except we are blessed to have the fullness of the gospel, something the Israelites lost out on.  I told them God wants to give them their own land of milk and honey but they need to exercise faith, obey the principles and commandments to receive those blessings and trust that God will bless them.  Dave then spoke and related a funny story about two lumbar jacks trying to improve their business by buying a chainsaw to use instead of axes.  After two days they complain that the chainsaw has made their business worse.  When Dave takes a look at their chainsaw, everything seems to be in order.  He starts up the motor and the two men, startled ask, "What is that noise?"  They never bothered to read the instructions and thus were not using the chainsaw correctly.  He related that to our workshops teaching them the instructions for self-reliance.  We invited them to visit us and see miracles occur in their lives.

After the evening session we invited the Ponces to go to Chili's with us to have a dinner.  They are really struggling in their marriage and I think it helped on Valentine's Day to do something special with them.  I know Nidia, the wife, told me this was going to go into her journal.  I really don't think they ever are able to go out somewhere nice to eat as they have so many economic challenges.

Sunday morning we attended sacrament meeting in our home ward and the bishop asked us to check our schedule and let him know when we could speak in sacrament meeting.  We are so busy and traveling more on Sundays that it will probably be a month before we can schedule that in.

After sacrament meeting we headed out to Quillabamba for our fireside that evening.  We had heard so much about Quillabamba.  We have been anxious to visit there.  So many Peruvians rave about how beautiful it is in Quillabamba and many of the missionaries talk about serving there as their favorite place to serve so our expectations were high.  Quillabamba has only a district with three branches of church members.

Javier Caseros, Hna. Rhoades & Carlos Hale on our way to give our fireside presentation.

We had a group of 30-40 people in attendance as we did the My Pathway presentation.  It didn't go quite as well as out in Urubamba even though we followed the same presentation format.  We had benches/pews in the chapel and it seemed harder to get them to converse in groups.  In Urubamba they just use folding chairs and that allowed us to form actual circles for the group activities.  Many members signed up for the business and education workshops.  No one signed up for the job search workshop.  That seems to be the least popular of the three, but it is such a valuable course!

The drive out is up and over a number of mountain ranges so they had warned us to prepare for car sickness.  It was a pretty windy drive, but neither of us got sick.  Going out we had rain and lots of fog so we didn't see too much of the countryside.

 We had lunch in a small bamboo hut.  It was pouring rain and yet we stayed nice and dry.  I ate fresh trout!  Yum.

It was "carnival" the day we drove out, Peru's version of Mardi Gras as far as we could tell.  We saw a number of these unusually decorated trees.  They hang balloons, ribbons, plastic items, shirts on the branches.  They told us later that day they would do a dance around the tree and as part of the dance they chop the tree down and people grab for the items.  It is like a giant version of a pinata, only using a tree.  Sure enough on the drive home, we saw the trees chopped, lying on the ground and only a few deflated balloons and ribbons remaining on the tree.

As it was carnival it also meant a lot of water balloons and hoses being sprayed at our car as we drove by.  As it is warm there, we had our windows down from time to time.  Only once were we caught unaware by the tricksters and sure enough, Dave got soaked with water.  Luckily, he dried off quickly.

Here is our first sight of Quillabamba.

We had time to relax a bit before giving the fireside.  Our hotel was next to the main market and plaza so Dave and I went out to explore a bit.  It was a very delightful place.

 This was the upper fountain.  The canoe actually rocks a bit from the water movement.  It cascades over the wall and goes down below in front of the mural.

 A beautiful mural that went three times this length.

 Why the cheetah statues, we have no idea.  It is jungle so maybe you can find them in that part of Peru.

It was funny to find a statue honoring a marine so far inland, but I'm sure this national hero is originally from Quillabamba.

There were all sorts of different tropical plants.  Here is a sampling.

Look Liz Woofinden!  Below is a poinsetta, but it is more like a bush than a plant.  We couldn't believe the size of it.

Besides tropical flowers and plants, it's a pretty good place to find tropical fruit.  Bananas were everywhere, including the kind you fry.  It made me think of my first mission in El Salvador where we ate them every day.  Looking out our hotel window we look right down on banana alley.

 Look at the size of those papayas above!  Not sure if the photo does them justice but they were huge!

One of the interesting fruits here in Peru, but larger than normal.  We think it is the guanaba.  What do you think Morgan?

Here are some other views from our hotel.

Here is why the drive out is considered one of the worst drives.

1-  There were constant landslides where the rocks or mud/dirt had encroached on the roadway.  Many places had water running down the mountain, across the road and over the edge to continue down the mountain.  And in some places we are not talking a little bit of water.  Here is what we were seeing as we drove along.

2- The route goes up and over a number of mountain ranges and so there are plenty of switchbacks and curvy roadways.  Take a look.

3- We were pretty high up.  When we reached the top the sign said  4,316 meters, which is 14,160 feet.  Cusco sits at 11,200 feet.

But this provided for some spectacular scenery.  The drive back on Monday was sunny and clear.  The views were spectacular and incredible.  Dave took a ton of photos so I am posting quite a few, which is only the tip of the iceberg of what he took

 The isolated dwellings made quite a picturesque view.  We were amazed that crops could be grown so high up.

I love Yosemite National Park, but I have to say, Yosemite has nothing on Peru and the Andes Mts.  If that bottom photo doesn't make you think of El Capitan in Yosemite Park, you're crazy.

We rounded one curve and gasped in amazement when we came upon the scene below.  We had to stop and get out and soak in the majesty of the mountain peak which they call Mt. Veronica (which just happens to be the name of Carlos Hale's wife).  I'm not sure the photos are going to do justice to the inspiring vista we saw.  We couldn't stop admiring the gorgeous sight.

We are of the opinion that the Swiss Alps can't be any more spectacular and beautiful than this.

Since we are smack dab in the middle of the rainy season, water was everywhere.  

 Multiple streams were cascading down the sides of the mountains everywhere we looked.

But we also had views of jungle landscape before heading up into the mountainous terrain.  Here are some of those photos.

 River was high.  It was solid green everywhere.

 Wild banana plants were everywhere, right up to the side of the road.

As we headed up the mountain, we could look back down and see the jungle and the river below us.

The world is a beautiful place.  God is a creator of beauty.  We are grateful to be having these experiences.

Spiritual Thought of the Week: Scripture used in our talk to the Inti Raymi stake conference.

And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land; and he never doth vary from that which he hath said; therefore, if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless and prosper you.  Mosiah 2:22