So Many Gone

We started the week off with piano lessons, of course, as Monday is piano lesson day.  I'm amazed at how well they come on time, which is so non-Peruvian! and how consistent they are at coming, again not your typical Peruvian behavior.  They progress slowly as some don't have pianos at home and have to practice at the chapel.  I have a few of the more advanced students starting to play some simple songs with both hands.

As we were walking to the church to start the piano lessons, we were flagged down by a tourist couple.  Lo and behold, they had been senior missionaries in Guatemala Quetzaltenango (where Cindy served as a young missionary) and had been home only 3 months before coming down to visit Peru.  So of course we had to have lunch with them.

Ramona & Ivan Jones, from Portland, OR. having lunch with us at our favorite Chinese restaurant near the chapel.

We had quite a bit in common.  Ramona is a fantastic piano player and also taught piano lessons in Guatemala.  She gifted me a two CD set of her playing church hymns that she had arranged herself and they are gorgeous.  Ivan also had served in El Salvador & Guatemala in his younger days.  Quetzaltenango was their second senior mission.  Their first mission was serving in the area offices in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.  He was the executive secretary to the area presidency and she was an office secretary.  In Guatemala they were working as member & leadership support.  

Tuesday was our Returning Missionary Self-Reliance training. This group of returning missionary was one of our biggest - 23, 6 of them sister missionaries.  And it was also the group where we know and have worked with most of them.  There were only about 5 missionaries that this was the first time we had met them.  So it was difficult to see a lot of them go, as some of them we have worked with for many months. One of them, Elder Nichols, had been in the Cusco area the whole time we have been here, first in the office and then as the Cusco zone leader.

Just to give you an idea of how diverse the groups can be, here are photos showing the boards we have them fill out to give us some idea of what their plans are upon returning and where they are returning to. (you'll probably have to enlarge to read)

 I do most of the presentation at these meetings.  Dave is my wingman and makes things go smoothly for me.  This was the first time we had plenty of time to cover all our material as the other presenters cut their parts short due to other commitments.  It was nice not to have to rush through everything.

Below is our group photo at the end with the traditional shoe salute.

Back row (L-R) Elder Medina, Saunders, the next two didn't know, Elder Brown (a great missionary, zone leader for Inti Raymi zone with a good work ethic and a very fun personality) from Sandy, UT, Elder Nichols, from Tri-City, WA area, Elder Taipe, Vasquez, Becerra, and Elder Matekel, from Pullayup, WA.
Middle row (L-R)  Hna. Rhoades, Elder Flores, Elder Niera & Elder Chiriguaya (we didn't know these two before the mtg), Elder Richman, who had served as an AP, Elder Castro
Front row (L-R)  Hnas. Liza, Chipunavi, Giron (who was from El Salvador), Gonzalez, Hna. Jesperson (from Cedar Hills, UT), Hna. Valverde, Elder Vasquez & Elder Calle

Wednesday we started the first group taking the workshop My Job Search!  FINALLY.  We've been wanting to offer this workshop forever but we haven't had the time to facilitate and we've lacked volunteers, but we've recruited two older gentleman, Guido & Victor to team facilitate it under our supervision.  It is going to be Wednesday mornings at 10:30 to 12:30 during the office hours.  Dave will oversee the class while I hold down the fort in the office.  Except this time is not how it happened, I was the one overseeing the class and Dave held down the office.  The class had good attendance (about 7 people) and it had it's good moments, but it was also a bit challenging.  Guido did a good job facilitating and sticking to the manual on his part of the class, but Victor was a rogue and went way off course.  A number of times I had to step in and bring things back in line with the manual.  I hope Victor didn't get offended.  I haven't been able to talk to him about it since he hasn't come into the office at all since Wednesday, so I'm worried his feelings may have gotten hurt.  We also had a member of the class that I don't think is completely all there mentally and she kept asking off the wall questions and making weird comments that were hard to handle.  But there were a few times where good comments and participation was had by the other group members and it felt good to  be having this course.  I think (and hope) they will come back next week.

Wednesday afternoon we had the treat of meeting personally with the author, John Lund.  Dave loves his books on relationships, particularly "How to Hug a Porcupine", and we had also had the opportunity to read his book "Is This the Place", supporting his view that the Book of Mormon took place in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and parts of Honduras & El Salvador.  He had brought a tour group down and one of our volunteers knows him and his wife personally so she invited us to come with her to say hello.

They were gracious enough to visit with us for almost an hour.  Dave talked John Lund's ear off and they discussed many things about the Book of Mormon geography, etc.  He was even nice enough to let us get a photo with them

Author, John Lund with his wife and us in the lobby of the Palacio Inka Hotel in Cusco, Peru.

Wednesday night, we split up and I handled the English class at the Inti Raymi stake and Dave met with the stake counselor over self-reliance in the Cusco stake to give him some orientation about what his duties are and how things should be organized and handled.  I told Dave he needed to be the one to talk directly to the priesthood leaders as the Spanish culture is such that the men will listen and put more stock in advice coming from a man than a woman.  Dave's Spanish is much better now so that he can handle something like that.  He said it went really well and that it was an eye opening experience for the counselor.  He realized they are not doing any of the recommended procedures for implementing self-reliance in their stake and he left the meeting all fired up to change that.  Dave referred him to the church's website so he can review the training videos again at his convenience.

All week I worked on translating the Leader Guide for self-reliance so we can hand this out to the leaders as we meet with them.  This guide has not been translated into Spanish yet, but will be soon.  However, we are starting to meet with leaders now and want to have something to leave with them that they can study and refer to, so we should have that available soon.

Thursday & Friday we had an influx of new missionaries at each of our zone English classes due to transfers.  Both zones had good attendance (between 20-28 missionaries).  Cindy was starting to feel a cold coming on so she dialed down her activities to try to keep that at bay since she was scheduled to give a talk in the Tullumayo ward this Sunday.

However, Saturday was the first free day we have had in ages.  We managed to recruit Gladys to facilitate the Business workshop that was scheduled for Saturday evening.  We really want to have the members step up and take over that commitment.  We saw the Joneses again on Friday and they invited us to tag along with them to see some of the sights we recommended to them.  We were more than happy to as it was a good chance to preview some of these sites before Dave's siblings come down in September so we can be good tour guides for them.

We hired Henry Guerra to be our chauffeur for the day as he is now in the tourism business and bought a van just for that very purpose.  It was nice to have a private vehicle that was at our beck and call and not the other way around.  It was also a way for us to support him as he tries to get this business off the ground.  He provided wonderful service and his English is so easily understood.

We took them first out to Pisaq, a ruin site we've visited before that is one of our favorite places.
Going at this time of year, was very pretty.  So much greener than when we saw it last in October.

Take a look at this photo showing the Sacred Valley below.  As well as some of these views of the valley looking down from Pisaq in the photos below.

 The photo below shows the fields harvested.  We are in the fall, heading into the winter months and throughout the Sacred Valley we could see the people out working in their fields harvesting.

 

 Isn't that a gorgeous view of the valley?

You are pretty high at Pisaq.  See what I mean.  3348 meters equals 10,984 feet.

This time we took our time seeing it.  We stayed way too long probably (about 2.5 hours) so we were a bit rushed after that and didn't take time to have a lunch but just snacked along the way.

We've posted photos of Pisaq before so I am only going to post a few that show a different side of Pisaq from the earlier ones.

 The Incas built right into the side of the mountain.  If you didn't know there was a site up there you wouldn't be able to see it or pick it out as the stones blend into the mountain so well.

 This shows a good stretch of the hike.  It's a pretty fun hike to take, even goes through a tunnel at one point and sometimes up and down some pretty steep steps.

This time we took time to climb up to the lookout on the other side of the temple.  The photos below show the temple ruins from a different angle.

You can see that the temple was built in the tops of the mountains.

Once we finished at Pisaq we headed out to the southern tip of the valley.  We drove through fields and fields of quinoa that was ready to be harvested.  The quinoa stalks turn orange when they are ready to harvest and have this red plume on them once they dry out.

We tried to get some good photos but the glare from the car glass made it tough.  Here are a few but they really don't do justice to the colors of the quinoa stalks.

We stopped to see something we had noticed every time we have traveled to Sicuani & Puno.  I've been wondering what it is and hoping to stop some day to check it out.

 I found out that it is the remains of a huge structure that functioned as a wall to keep out non-Inca people from entering the valley and as an aquaduct for water that would be transported along the top.

In the photos below you can perhaps make out the channel at the top that would have carried the water.  It looks like the Rhoades and Stones are at it again.  This reception just seems to go on and on!

The rocks sticking out in a diagonal fashion were meant to be used as stairs for climbing to the top of the wall.

We headed over to Pikillacta next.   It is ruins of a pre-Inca walled city that existed sometime during 600-900 AD.   The stone construction is pretty rudimentary compared to the Incas, but it was impressive just for it's size.  Here are some photos to give you an idea.

 This shows a portion of the walls around the city and what a great view you have.

 Not sure if the photo can truly show how large this place was.  Below you can see the wall construction and how it is not as impressive as the Incas.

 The photo below was taken looking down on the huge field area that is enclosed within the walls.  You may be able to barely make out the walls just before the mountains.

Lastly we stopped at Tipon, just as the light of day was starting to dim.   We've heard so many times how interesting Tipon is in regards to water hydraulics so it was fun to finally be able to visit the site even if we did have to hurry.

It was a pretty big terrace complex for raising crops as well, but the interesting part was how the Incas had channeled the water from a natural spring at the top and controlled the flow down the mountainside.

 These terraces were in the shape of a U and started at the bottom and continued to climb up the mountain and back into the valley for quite a ways.  Both photos are looking back down the terraces.  The one Dave's in may help to give some perspective of how big the fields were.

 Above and below show the channels for the water.  The Incas tried a variety of ways to control the flow of the water down the mountain.  The bottom photos shows one of the ways to slow the flow was to not just have straight channels, but to zig-zag the canals periodically.  The photos don't show it, but also they had small steps integrated into the channels as a way to slow down the water as well.

Another method for slowing the flow was to divide the flow into two channels.  Here shows a section like that.  It was currently not being used when we visited.  

Below shows the source of the flow of water, a natural spring coming up out of the ground.  Here you couldn't see any movement of water.

But below is a photo of one of the channels near the bottom of the site.  You can see how quickly the water is flowing now.

The set up of the flow of water also had a symbolic meaning with the one original spring source referring to the god, Wirococha, the creator of the universe.

The Incas then divided the flow into two channels at the next level down.  The Incas believed heavily in duality as represented in the sun & the moon, man & woman and the conflict of good versus evil for example.

The next level down had the channels divide into three.  The number three was an important number to the Incas.  They divided the universe into three levels.  They also had three animal gods - the condor, the puma (or cougar) and the snake.

And lastly the water flowed down from four separate channels as you can see behind us.   Representing the four political sectors of the Inca empire.

This photo of the men, Ivan Jones & Elder Rhoades includes a good view looking down from the spring at the dividing water channels.

It was dark by the time we left Tipon.  We headed back to Cusco, which is only about a 20-25 minute drive from Tipon.  We were all very hungry so we finished up our trip eating a SALAD at Chili's!  We don't get to eat salads much here as lettuce is on the "do not eat" list, but at Chili's it is safe to do so.

We finished up the evening saying good bye to the Jones.  We did exchange emails and we will probably try to hook up with them once we are back in the states.  Portland is near to Seattle and we love the Oregon coast, so I'm sure we will get up their way at some point.

We stopped by the chapel to peek at the youth's dance festival.  It is that time of year again, apparently, and I think we will start to see more dance festivals for other age groups as well.  We caught the tail end of the program and saw three of the wards perform.

 Barrio Villa Union did this amazing jungle dance.

 Barrio Tullumayo did a dance from the northern part of Peru

 And Barrio Ttio did a cowboy dance

Oh, wait, I think Elder Rhoades is saying he would have liked to have seen this kind of entertainment at the Rhoades-Stone reception.  Maybe at the next Rhoades wedding?? Hmm, Emily?

Spiritual Thought for the Week: When talking to the member about self-reliance we try to emphasize the spiritual laws that must be obeyed that relate to self-reliance.  One of them is the Law of the Fast.  Here is what God has said about fasting through Isaiah who often writes very poetically.

"Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdesn, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?  Is it not to deal they bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?  Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward.  Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am.  If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity and thy darkness be as the nooday.  And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not."  Isaiah 58:6-11

Moving Forward

This week we adjusted back into our normal routine here in Cusco.  The weather has been cold and wet.  We should be heading out of the rainy season, but we are heading into the colder part of the year.  It has definitely been colder at nights.

We got good news as soon as we returned to Cusco from our Arequipa trip.  The Inti Raymi stake had been proactive and scheduled a Mi Camino fireside with the JAS (which stands for jovenes adultos solteros or in other words YSA).  We quickly got ourselves ready for that and headed over.

After that the High Councilor group that finished the business workshop held a celebratory dinner at Ivan Salazar's house.  We ate some great Chinese food and the entertainment was Ivan and Dave singing and playing guitar.

Dave playing the Peruvian version of a mandolin.   Ivan Salazar strumming the guitar and singing.

It turned out to not be a true Mi Camino, but an introductory, invitation to participate in the self-reliance program.  I did speak to the group briefly.  It was a small group of about 7-8.  They plan to start the first group meeting on May 23rd.  We are pleased to see the stake leaders taking action to move this program forward.  It isn't the way we would approach it, but it is moving in the right direction.

Sunday we had two big tourist groups attending the Tullumayo chapel, one from BYU and the other from UVU.  You can tell we are starting into the tourist season here.  With the UVU group was a professor that knew Bryan.  She over sees the education program at UVU.  Small world.

Wish we could remember her name, but our memories are terribe as we are now SENIOR missionaries.  That's our excuse anyways.

It was also Mother's Day.  Turns out to not be too big a deal in Peru.  No talks in Sacrament Mtg. about mothers.  No special gift handed out to mothers, but a lot of well wishes from everyone.  Here is what Dave gave me.

Roses and chocolate, American chocolate even, a Twix bar.  Man did it taste good!

And I had some nice visits through Skype with some of my family and nice posts on facebook from them as well.

Piano lessons continue, English lessons continue, Self-Reliance lessons continue, Institute class continues.

As it was the week before transfers, we took some group photos of our missionary English classes.  We also had a great time with the job interview lesson.  We had the gringos pose as local employers and the latino missionaries had to go around and interview with them for jobs.  It turned out to be a successful exercise where they got a lot of practice.

Back row L-R:  Elder Salas, Elder Flores, Elder Zorillo, Elder Gonzalez, Elder    , Elder Sanabria, Elder Bird, Elder

Middle row L-R:  Elder Quispe, Elder Kotter, Elder Calle, Elder Largent, Elder Nichols, Elder Matekel, Elder Vasquez, Elder Falsev, Elder Blancarte

Front row:  L-R:  Hnas. Borja, Hoskins,(the green blouse was just visiting from another sector)   Paez, Miceli, Hollingshead, Valenzuela, Gonzalez, Hill

Our two missionary English class groups.  Above, Cusco zone and below Inti Raymi zone.

Back row L-R:  Elders Brown, Bryant, Tapia, Martinez, Jofre, Murillo, Black, Nielsen

Middle row L-R:  Hnas. Rasmussen,(one bending over can't remember her name) Gonzalez, Valverde, Wight, Sanchez,(can't remember the last one either)

Front row L-R:  Hnas. Jesperson & Esplin

Below you can see our set up for the English activity of interviewing for a job.

 Elder Nichos, the zone leader, acts as an interviewer for Mac Salud a health clinic here in Cusco.

 Elder Largent greets Elder Gonzalez as he walks into his "office" for an interview.

 Above you can see how we had the cultural hall set up with various employer spots.  In the middle is where they would come after each interview to be assigned a new one to practice with.

Hna. Valenzuela, who is from Lima, acted as the secretary to send them off to their interviews.  She studied with Pathways before the mission and has quite good English.  We often group her with the gringos for the activities.

We had to cover for Javier at a Ministerio de Produccion meeting that was held at our chapel on Tuesday.  We didn't know much about it, but we made sure the cultural hall was set up for the meeting and it turned out we had to give the welcome to those who came, which were almost all non-members.  It turns out the gathering was mostly for wood workers to discuss their concerns regarding their trade.

We also attended a send off for Jaime Reyes, the son of Bishop Reyes of the Ttio ward.  This is his second son to go out since we've been on our mission.  His older son left in August shortly after we got here.  We didn't have the chance to get to know him much, but Jaime has attended our English classes.  He has been one of our more faithful attendees so we've gotten to know him pretty well, although he is an extremely quiet guy.  Should be interesting to see how he changes serving a mission.

Jaime Reyes in suit in the center.  Reports to Columbia MTC May 19th.  His father, Bishop Reyes is to his left and then his mother is to the left of Bishop Reyes.

We felt like we were holding our breathe all week long.  We learned some news about changes coming to the Self-Reliance program while we were down in Arequipa, but we were not allowed or able to say anything or do anything about it until the announcement was made on Saturday to all the stake presidents during a visit from Elder Costa, the area seventy assigned to Cusco.

Area Seventy, Claudio Costa

Our manager, Carlos Hale was in attendance at the meeting.  He was the one that had told us about the changes about to take place.  He had indicated that the church's stance on Model Self-Reliance centers had changed and they were going to be closing down all Model centers.  It left us wondering what our role would be and how we would spend the last 6 months of our mission, as the change is supposed to take place in June.

This change would impact us greatly, as a model center has to be under the direction of a senior missionary couple, which is why our center is considered a model center.  By closing the model centers, each stake would then become responsible for the self-reliance needs of their members and would need to open up their own stake self-reliance centers, which they take responsibility for.

The reason for the change and closure of model centers is just that.  Each stake is expected to become self-reliant.  Under the Model Center approach, stakes were supposed to have their own self-reliance centers that offered the needed programs for their stake, but wouldn't offer a full spectrum of services.  This approach started in November 2013 and in the interim 18 months the church leaders have found that having a model center enables the stakes.  The stake leaders are not stepping up and providing a self-reliance center for their stake members, they send everyone to the model center.  This is not how the church leaders envisioned things going.

There are pros and cons to this change and it will be interesting to see how things shake out, but apparently it is not going to happen so soon.  Carlos reported that in the meeting, Elder Costa made no mention of shutting down the model centers but only emphasized the need for each stake to implement the new self-reliance programs with their members.  So we are to continue the status quo until word comes down from the priesthood line of authority regarding any restructuring of the centers.

This let the air out of our sails a bit as we had spent all week contemplating the changes and formulating what our emphasis would be and how we would go about doing the work.  We do think we need to move forward with our plans despite the lack of announcement as we feel strongly that we need to train the leaders better so when we are gone, they understand what they are doing well enough to keep the ball rolling.  This means we will probably be doing some steady traveling each month as we reach out to all the stake and district leaders in this regard.

We did do a facilitator training Saturday morning here in Cusco.  We had 8 people come, from both stakes, and receive the same training we had presented in Ilo & Tacna.  It was a two hour training.

 Afterwards we hosted a barbeque lunch with chicken, baked noodles, fruit salad, drink and dessert.  The lunch was crucial as that is when a lot of discussion and sharing of ideas takes place between the facilitators.  We were occupied from 9 am to 2 pm but it was well worth the time.  We feel we have assembled a good team of facilitators and they are ready to take action.

It felt like a very productive week in moving our work forward.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  "And now behold, I say unto you that the right way is to believe in Christ, and deny him not; and Christ is the Holy One of Israel; wherefore ye must bow down before hi, and worship him with all your might, mind, and strength, and your whole soul; and if ye do this ye shall in nowise be cast out."  2 Nephi 25:29