Filmmaking, Futbol & Fun

April has just flown by and with what we have scheduled for May, we anticipate May flying by as well.

We spent most of our week getting ready for the next week as we are traveling and will be gone from Cusco for 8 days.  As we have all kinds of classes we are giving, we had to find many substitutes to help us out during our absence.  For our member English classes we asked a few of our young students who do quite well with the lessons to fill in for us.  It was a lesson on talking about the weather.  For the missionary English classes we asked some of the gringo missionaries to fill in and for our English Book of Mormon Institute class we arranged for the other senior missionaries, the Haslers to fill in for us.  That lesson was part of 2 Nephi that quotes Isaiah and Elder Hasler loves Isaiah so that was a win-win situation for everyone.  We didn't have to and he did and the students probably got a better presentation.

We had to find substitutes for our workshop classes as well.  Those were a bit harder to find and required quite a bit of prepping by us to have them prepared.  Each classes is 2 hours long and even though you just have to follow the manuals, it's a bit tricky the first time you present.

Cindy wanted to get her haircut before we traveled so she decided to go to a member's salon this time rather than her usual place.  The sister comes to our English class so she was pleased that Cindy came to see her.  Cindy told her to cut so that her hair touched her shoulders and warned her that she has curly hair to give her a heads up.  Cindy is pretty sure she made herself clear, but apparently wires got crossed because this is what she walked out of the salon looking like.

Good news is it will grow back.  It also means most of her hair is now her natural color, so there is always a bright side to everything.

We also needed to prepare for a Single Adult (which is called JAS in Spanish) presentation that we had been invited to speak at.  Since it was during the week of our travels, we videotaped our presentation.

We wanted to make it fun and interesting for them and not just us standing there talking for 10 minutes so we decided to include the parable of the talents and recruit the full-time missionaries to help us act it out.  They had a lot of fun, perhaps too much fun because they wanted to inject humor into it, which was fine with us as we figured it would keep the attention of the young adults.  Hopefully it wasn't too much.  We had planned to just use a couple of missionaries from our Inti Raymi zone English classes, but word got out and everyone wanted to be included.

We didn´t have any luck downloading any of the videos we shot, so you´ll just have to enjoy some of the photos we managed to get inbetween filming.

We selected the zone leader, Elder Brown, to be the Lord that gives out the talents.  He's the one wearing the sweater as a headscarf.  Elder Black we used him as a dumb gringo tourist to buy gorras from Elder Murillo, who was cast as the servant to receive 5 talents.  He is below wearing a sample of the hats he sold in order to double his talents.

The Elder on the left is Elder Taipe, who was cast as the unfaithful servant who hid his one talent in the ground.  The Elder in the middle is Elder Jofre, from Argentina who we hadn´t planned on using so we let him introduce us at the beginning of the video.

Hna. Valverde was cast as the servent who received two talents and she doubled her talent by making a cake and selling slices of it to passerbys (which is very common here.  It is also very common for the latinos to use glasses with very large lenses).  We made the cake ahead of time and let the whole cast eat it once we were done filming.  Actually, I think that may have been the reason all of the missionaries wanted to be included in the filming.

 Elder Nielsen's arm and hand were cast to bring the faithful servants into "the joy of the Lord" when the accounting is made at the end.  We didn´t want t just post his arm and hand so we took a photo of his head sticking out from behind the curtain.  And the sister missionaries, Wight on the left and Jeppson on the right, helped out with some prop signs

We had a pretty fun time making the video.  It just took longer than we anticipated, which cut into the time we had to join the members at the May 1st activities.

May 1 is a holiday in Peru, Worker's Day.  I think it is probably equivalent with our Labor Day celebration.  The Cusco stake held an all day outing to Oropesa, a village just on the outskirts of Cusco, but a good half hour bus ride to get there.  All the members were asking us if we were coming, so we decided it might be important for goodwill to be sure to go.  We managed to make it out there by late afternoon, which turned out to be only about an hour before they ended the festivities, but we were able to say hello to a lot of the members and play a bit with the kids.

We brought a couple of our Nauvoo games.  Here the kids are trying to get the hang of the ring toss.

Some of them really got pretty good at it.  The kid in the red hat in particular.

And it just wouldn´t be a Peruvian celebration without some soccer, in fact a lot of soccer.  There were like 3 different games going on at the same time, the primary aged kids, the youth and the young adults, I think.

Bishop Reyes, above, directs some sort of activity with the members.

President Garcia & his wife Marcia.  He serves as the stake president of the Cusco stake.  Normally he looks a bit more formal in suit and tie.

Bishop Espejo of the Tullumayo ward and his wife, Olga.  Both wives come to our English classes.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Every person comes to earth as a unique individual. Similar threads may run in families, but each of us has a tapestry all our own.  The Lord made it clear that it is not good enough for us simply to return to Him the talents He has given us. We are to improve upon and add to our talents. He has promised that if we multiply our talents we will receive eternal joy.  “But with some I am not well pleased, for … they hide the talent which I have given unto them, because of the fear of man. … Thou shalt not idle away thy time, neither shalt thou bury thy talent that it may not be known” (D&C 60:2, 13).  Ronald A Rasband,  Liahona Aug. 2003