Heaven and Hell

We had a very interesting week.  It started out with a special meeting for all the ward council leaders and all the missionaries with the area president, Juan A.Uceda, who happens to be a Peruvian and the local members are quite proud of that.

Juan A Uceda, NW South America Area President, Member of First Quorum of Seventies

It was a great meeting.  The spirit was really strong.  I got to be on the stand with Pres. Uceda as I played the piano for the meeting.  The chapel was full and the overflow activity room was full and they even had people sitting on the stage in the back of the activity room.  When we sang, it was powerful.

They started out by announcing that the EFY program was coming to Cusco this year.  That created quite a buzz in the audience.  Five hundred youth will have the opportunity to participate.  It will be the first time something like this has happened in Cusco.

Next, Elder Uceda gave a report on the temples here in Peru, which was of much interest to the members.


The Trujillo temple is scheduled to be dedicated on June 21 and all chapels will broadcast the dedication ceremonies.  There will be 3 of them at 9 am, noon and 3 pm.  They will also do a cultural celebration the day before and they said that would be broadcast as well.  He then gave an update on the Arequipa temple (which will be the closest temple for the members here in Cusco).  They are in the blueprint stage which takes 10-12 months and then the building stage will take 30 months so it is still 4 years out before that will be completed.  Elder Rhoades and I figure we might be able to time our second mission to coincide with the dedication there.  We are pretty sure if we put on our mission application that Carlos Hale has requested us, we would get called to Arequipa.

Then he spoke to them about how to be more effective in their ward councils and how to use the full-time missionaries more to reactivate, and retain new converts.  I know the members in Cusco would really like to have their own temple, but they need to build up the wards and stakes in Cusco and the surrounding cities.  It will take work, but it could happen.  Pres. Uceda was quite blunt and frank with them about needing to change some of the "traditions of their fathers" something we've noticed is holding the members back in prospering and progressing, so it was good to hear it come from one of their own.

Piano lessons are now taking up about 3 hours of Cindy's time on Mondays.  New students show up every week.  It's amazing.  She is now about six weeks into it and can tell which students have more potential then others.  Some pick up the concepts so fast and do a good job practicing between the lessons.  Others really struggle and seem to not practice much at all.  No surprise there.  It's the same the world round.

Monday night we had a fun night at the mission home.  All four senior couples were in town so President and Sister Harbertson hosted a potluck dinner.  The Sandbergs had come in from Abancay to renew their visas so they could stay longer than a year.  It was good to find out it can be done right here in Cusco.  That means we, hopefully, will not have to return to Lima to take care of that (although we will miss a chance of doing some temple work while down there).

Tuesday we had our first institute Book of Mormon in English class.  We had 8 students show up.  Only about 3 are relatively fluent with English and 3 are definitely in over their heads.  But we had a good lesson, the spirit was there and the students are excited and eager to take this class.  During the week we had about 3 more people say they intend to enroll as well.

Thursday we started up our second group for the new Education workshop.  We had the bishop from the Los Alamos ward contact us and volunteer to help while on vacation, so we have him facilitating this group.  We are hoping it will sow some good seeds within the leadership of the stake and he will become a spokesman on behalf of the new programs to the other leaders.

Our member English classes have completed the second level of the Daily Dose program!  We will be holding a celebration on March 12th.  It is exciting to see the ones that have been in the program from the very get-go doing so well with their English.  We had about 15 members qualify to receive a certificate on the second level.  That is more than we had on the first level, if we are remember right.

This weekend, March 6 - 9th we traveled to the jungle area of the Cusco mission, Puerto Maldonado.  We've heard much about how hot and humid that part of Peru is.  We had meetings set up for every night we were there, but we took time on Saturday during the day to take a tour into the jungle.  We like these trips where we can combine work with play.  We talked the Johnsons into coming with us so they came as well as Javier Caseres, who managed to book us some amazing airfare, hotel rates and the tour.

We left Friday about 11 am.  The flight takes only 35 minutes.  It seemed you no sooner reached cruising level and the airplane leveled out, then it was time to begin the descent.  They say by car or bus it is a 10 hour drive, very scenic, but long.  We could definitely feel the heat as we came out of the plane, but it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated.  I had envisioned a duplicate of El Salvador where the heat and humidity is so bad that your make up melts within 20 minutes of being out in the heat and sweat is constantly pouring down your face.  But it didn't come close to that.  We were hot and sticky most of the time, however.  We apparently visited when the temps were down about 10 degrees from normal and the rain was minimal.  It only rained once while we were there on Sunday afternoon.

Initial views of Puerto Maldonado on the drive to our hotel from the airport.

Here are some photos of our hotel, Cabana Quinta.

View from our hotel room.  Yes, that is a coconut tree.

Everyone drives a motorcycle it seems.  We saw men, women, youth and even children driving a motorcycle or scooter.  This is what it looks like at a traffic light.

You will pull up to a restaurant or store and there will just be a line or crowd of motorcycles parked there.  We saw some motorcycles carrying a ridiculous number of people. Even mothers holding small babies as their husband's drove.

We saw this adaptation that would allow a small child to sit in front of the driver.

Our first meal in the jungle was at a restaurant called Burgos. 

The Johnsons and us in front of the restaurant where we ate "Amazon food".

 We sat out on a shaded patio that made you feel you were in the heart of the jungle.  To one side of us we could see bamboo plants growing.

At our table was a centerpiece of an exotic jungle flower.  We saw a lot more of these on our tour the next day.

 And the food was fresh fish.  Look, they even cut the cucumber to look like a jungle plant.

Our walk back to the hotel took us past a very pretty park and near the river and bridge.  We were told this is the largest bridge in Peru.

 The park was in honor of all the Marine heroes Peru has had, in particular, Miguel Grau, who is quite famous throughout Peru.

 This row of busts were of the distinguished marine heroes Peru honors.

We had a few hours to kill before our evening meeting so we headed down to the marketplace as I had forgotten to bring some walking shoes with me.  And guess what I scored?  A very rare find.

I bet none of you have ever owned a pair of sneakers made by both Nike AND Adidas.  Knock-offs are very common down here, courtesy of China.  And these were comfortable and cheap and will probably become a collector piece in the future due to the two name brands.  If only Adidas was spelled correctly!

So of course, we had to take some market photos as we are in the jungle and the fruit and products are different from in Cusco.  Can you see the banana leaves in the foreground of this photo?  They cook food inside the leaves.  The flavor is wonderful and it saves on having to wash dishes!  A win-win situation if you ask me.

 Oh and joy, joy, they had plantains, the frying bananas.  I was able to eat fried bananas every morning for breakfast.  Those were common on my mission to El Salvador but not in Cusco.

 And here are two Peruvian fruits.  Above is carambola and below is the delicious chirimoya.

 And what would a visit to the jungle be without drinking coconut water?

 We were fascinated to learn that this is where brazilian nuts come from.  They are grown in quite a large brown husk, that when cracked open reveals many nuts inside.

Oh and one of our favorite finds were these key chains.  They are actual piranha heads varnished to preserve them.  Pretty cool, huh Rhoades rugrats?

Friday night we held a training meeting with the leaders of the district and the facilitators for the new workshops. We trained a member called Willian who is going to handled the Education Workshop.  He is very gun-ho so I think things will go well.  We found out he is the uncle of one of our English students here in Cusco, Nefi Miranda.  That was cool.

Friday night we also saw Elder Rivera (wearing the green tie) at the chapel.  We had worked with him in Cusco quite a bit before his transfer.  He had been the zone leader of the Inti Raymi zone.  They explained that they are wearing typical attire for Puerto Maldonado during the rainy season - high rubber boots.

Saturday morning we got up and headed out on our tour.

No, this was not our boat, but it was pretty cool as it looks like it was made out of one complete tree trunk.

 Here's our boat we traveled on up the river into the jungle.  Puerto Maldonado is located where two rivers meet up, the Tambopata and the Madre de Dios.

Here's what the river bank looks like.  Trees and vegetation up to the very edge., even into the river sometimes.

We stopped off at Yakiri Eco Lodge.  Some of the passengers were going to spend a few nights in the cabinas there.

This is also where we hooked up with our guide for our jungle jaunt.  As we disembarked our welcome committee was comprised of this peccary, named Lucy.

We were instructed to exchange our walking shoes for rubber boots as the trail would be quite muddy due to all the rain they have been having.  So here we are in our dabber attire.  Javier Caseres is on the left, then Elder & Sister Johnson and then myself, Sister Rhoades.

Dave is busy doing his best Where's Waldo impersonation.  Can you spot him somewhere amongst these massive tree roots.  We found this to be a very common sight on our hike, but as this was our first glimpse of this type of tree we were very fascinated. Wait until you see some samples of trees with this type of root on our hike.

So off in the boats once more for a short drive up river to our starting point.  This is what we saw as we got of the boat.

Ok.  Rubber boots were a lifesaver because this was only the tip of the iceberg.  Here is what we hiked through for 3 kilometers.

I don't think Javier & Dave would be smiling if they had actually fallen into the mud.  One gal in our group did slip and fall into the mud at one point.  The mud was so prevalent that at time we were half way up the boots in mud and you could hear the slurping sucking sound as we tried to pull our foot out of the mud without leaving our boot behind.  It took us 2 hours to hike 3 kilometer.

Here is what we saw along the trail.

 We walked through a very swampy area.  Good thing they had built this boardwalk to cross it.

 Some of the trees were huge!  And then so were the roots.  Look at these we found.

Those are tree roots, believe it or not.

 This lizard actually changed colors in front of our eyes.  And he uses three different colors to blend in.  Very interesting.

One of the more interesting things was this walking tree.  The guide says the tree actually moves as it extends it's roots until it gets too big and then it stays put.

 The roots actually grow out of the truck and down to the ground and extend out in the direction of the sun so that is how it's location can actually move.

At the end of the trail we arrived at a lagoon.  Dave said it reminded him of the Louisiana bayou.  There were some canoes there and we hopped in one and headed out to the Lake.

Dave even took a turn at paddling us around the trees growing out of the swamp.  And then as we came out of the trees this is what we saw.  Gorgeous.  Lake Sandoval.

Our guide paddled us around slowly.  While we sat in the canoe we ate our lunch so we literally had a picnic ON the lake.

 Our lunch was wrapped in these banana leaves.  Insidee was a lot of rice with a piece of chicken, an olive, half a boiled egg, some slices of pepper and tomato.  Quite tasty.

As we glided around the lake we were all silent as we didn't want to scare of the wildlife.  That's what we had hiked in for.  We had hoped to see some river otters, but they were no where to be seen.  But we did see the following...

Bats asleep hanging upside down along this tree trunk.

 Turtles sunning themselves on logs

 A woodpecker and then about a half a dozen of the creatures below.  We have no idea what they are.  I'm amazed I was able to even get a good clear photo of them, they were pretty hidden in the brush.

And what would be a visit to the jungle and swamps without seeing some sort of alligator, crocodile or in this case, cayman

But the highlight of the sights at the lake was this heron below.

 We saw him over and over again, as he would fly away as we approached but just further up the lake coastline in the direction we were traveling so we would approach him again and again.  It was awesome.

And so we headed back.  Here I am almost to the end of the trail.  Just had to get a good photo of my jungle attire.

 Here's the view of Hna. Johnson and myself as we leave the jungle and arrive at the river to take us back to our hotel in Puerto Maldonado.

 And so we traveled back down river just as the sun was setting.  What a great end to a great adventure.

We were hot and tired when we got back but we had to quickly shower and clean up as we had a meeting that night.

Saturday night we held a fireside with the members regarding the Perpetual Education Fund.  We were not told much about what to expect or prepare for that meeting.  As we are sitting in the chapel waiting for the meeting to start, Javier tells us that we are presenting the bulk of the meeting.  He is only going to give an introduction and then turn it over to us.  What???

Good thing we have been working with the PEF a lot here in Cusco.  I was able to talk off the top of my head for 45 minutes, going over the requirements and process to follow.  We also opened it up for questions.  Dave was my scribe and wrote the criteria up on the blackboard as I discussed them.

It turned out to be a productive and good meeting.

The next day on Sunday we made a tour of all 5 branches.  We would stay long enough at one branch to make our announcement about the Mi Camino fireside that night and take the sacrament, then head out to the next branch and make an announcement at the end of the meeting, then skeedaddle out to the next meeting that would just be starting up and do it all over again.

As we visited one of the branches, La Joya, which meets in a rented house, we were told that the area that La Joya branch covers is called infierno, which in Spanish means "hell".  Well, it certainly was plenty hot to qualify for that name.

It must of paid off because we had a full chapel at our fireside that night.  Dave estimates there were about 100 people in attendance.  The biggest group we've had so far.  But we only came prepared with 40 workbooks, so we ended up short and with a group that big it is hard to answer and help everyone individually.

At the end when everyone was signing up for the follow up workshops we ended up with almost 40 signed up for the business workshop and about 23 signed up for the education workshop and only 7/8 for the job search workshop.  That last one never seems to be very popular with the members.

 Members wait in line to sign up for the workshop of their choice.

When the chapel was almost cleared out we noticed a sister with something scampering around on her shoulder.  From a distance it looked like a mouse or rat.  We had to find out what it was.  As we got closer we were surprised to find a monkey!  A very tiny baby monkey.

They said the monkey was only 10 days old.  How and why they had it we don't know.

The next day it was back to Cusco.  We enjoyed our time in Puerto Maldonado and the jungle but we were happy to be back to less humidity and cooler temps.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  David A Bednar  General Conference April 2005

"The Lord's tendermercies are the very personal and individualized blessings, strength, protectin, assurances, guidance, loving kindness, consolation, support,and spiritual gifts which we receive from and because of and throuogh the Lord Jesus Christ.  Truly the Lord suits 'his mercies according to the conditions of the children of men' (D&C 46:15).  One of the ways whereby the Savior comes to each of us is through His abundant and tender mercies."