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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Hey, Cindy - I think your new haircut looks pretty cute, especially in the picture of you on Mother's Day!
ReplyDeleteThanks. I'm getting used to it and I'm actually liking it now. But then it has been about a month since she cut it so it isn't nearly as short as right after getting the haircut. Some days it looks cuter than others. I may decide to keep it short like this for awhile.
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