Red Letter Week

Monday was a red letter day.  The printed manuals for the new workshops finally arrived.  7 boxes!    It felt like Christmas.

Piano lessons are keeping Cindy busy on Mondays.  The kids are pretty dependable in coming, which is nice.  Not many have dropped out like she anticipated would happen once school got started.  She teaches 4 students in the morning and then we tend to the self-reliance center until 1:00 pm and then she starts up again at 3 pm and does lessons until 6 pm.  She has 9 students coming during the afternoon.  They range in age from 7 to 16 and she has one parent learning along with her kids.

Here the Aimochoque sisters have their lessons together.  The oldest, Sherlene is 16, the youngest, Lynn is 9 and Brittany is 14.



Most of them make slow progress because they don't have pianos or keyboards at home to practice on. They try to go down to the church to practice when they can.  Dave found a few used keyboards for sale at a music store for a good price but when I went to check them out, I wasn't too impressed.  You can get a Chinese-made keyboard with 4 octaves for 200 soles which is about $60 US dollars.  We are considering buying a few and then letting the families make 20 soles a month payments to us

Our English classes just keep going.  The students really enjoy Dave's style of teaching.  He is just goofy enough that it helps them relax and not feel so nervous about trying to get their tongues around those strange English words.  Dave came up with new game for the missionaries to play and practice English at the same time.  Here are a few photos catching the action.  They have to say the English word before they can toss the beanbag.  The distance between the two buckets was pretty challenging.

 Hna. Wight had a unique style of lifting her back leg when she tossed.  It must have helped as the sisters made more buckets than the elders.

 Elder Rhoades celebrates a bucket made by the sisters.

Elder Nielsen decides to imitate Hna. Wight's technique.  He finally makes a bucket.

Wednesday was a red letter day for our volunteer, Gladys Machado.  Her daughter returned from her mission in Argentina.  We got invited to the celebration lunch at El Paisa, a seafood restaurant close to our office.

left to right:  Sister Rhoades, Quispe Machado, Marcia Garcia Pinto, President Mario Garcia, Glady's husband, Gladys, Stephanie, Glady's older son, Wilbur Quispe.

What is strange is that she was serving in the Argentine mission, Comodoro Rivadavia, where Cindy's podiatrist had been called to serve as the first mission president there as it was one of the new missions formed to accommodate the influx of so many missionaries with the age change.  She was seeing him for some foot treatments just before he left.  He had invited her to come serve with him there.

Saturday we started our third workshop group for the starting and growing your business here in Cusco.  We had 6 participants come, but there are probably double that amount that want to come.  Cindy had to facilitate that on her own as one of the other groups are still meeting and we felt like we needed to support that, so Dave went there.  That group only has one more lesson to complete the course and there have been four steady attendees that should earn the LDS Business College certificate.

Saturday we also took some time to go explore some new ruins we had heard about that are just outside the city limits and have no charge to see.  A bus ride of 70 centavos and a short walk is all it took to get there.  We first visited the Temple of the Moon ruins, which is basically a cave with an altar inside just below a hole in the ground that apparently on a full moon will shine down and light up the altar.  The ruins were not all that impressive except for the fact that they are so close to town.

Temple of the Moon (Luna) from the outside and below from the inside.

Below is the altar rock.  You can see some sun shining down through the hole onto the altar and someone has left a small offering that has dried up at this point.

Looking down from the top onto the ruins below. 

Next we walked down a short distance to what they called the Temple of the Monkeys.  We were told the path we followed was the very path the Incas used to travel from Cusco to Pisaq in Sacred Valley.  It was about a day and a half journey on foot.

The temple was more like a granite quarry.  It gets its name from an altar that has some formations that can be construed as monkeys.  Some were easier to make out than others.

Cindy's hand is pointing towards a couple of the monkey shapes.  Can you make them out?

The one above is probably the hardest to see.  Below the rock forms a monkey with his long tail in the back.

This rock was used as an altar and they would sacrifice an animal and it's blood would run down the groove and drop onto the rock below in this small cave which they call the heart stone as it is shaped a bit like a heart.

We then went back to the Temple of the Moon and sat at the top and enjoyed the view.  You could see other small areas of ruins all over the place.

We then headed back to the ruins called Qenko, which are even closer to the city then the Temple of the Moon and Monkeys are.  It had some interesting features.

We think this area may have been an amphitheater as we could hear a tour guide talking clearly that stood on the other area of the open space from where we were.

These well carved stones make me think this site is an extension of the famous Sacsayhuaman ruins nearby.

They used some of the natural rock formations to construct their site.  Above, a narrow walkway through the massive stones.

This is on the other side of the walkway, very smooth worked rock.  After you came out into the opening, you took a right and then entered this cave below.

Above is the altar stone, which was very cold to the touch.

More ruins see below Qenko.  The stone work was everywhere and the countryside is nice and green due to the rainy season.

We walked back into town and had some great views of the city.  It was a nice sunny day, but not real warm.

Sunday was another all around great day.  We attended the Santiago & Picchu wards in the morning.  We were able to hear Glady's daughter bear her testimony.  As she served in Argentina, she now speaks her Spanish with the "j" accent on the "ll" and "y" sounds.  It was interesting to hear.

We got to walk back through the Santiago plaza on our way home.  They were having a community meeting to discuss public works scheduled for their section of town.  They were also preparing to open up a road that had been long shut down for improvements.  We had walked down that road a number of times while it was being worked on and to see what it looks like completed was impressive.

Town officials presenting their planned works.  They had this butterfly bush in the plaza.

The finished street all decorated for the celebration.

Friday we had gone down this street and the home owners were all painting up their homes getting things spruced up for this big day.

We then left in the early afternoon to visit Sicuani where there is a stake and give the Mi Camino a la Autosuficiencia fireside.  Sicuani is about 2.5 hours out from Cusco so it is not too bad of a trip.  We had to go in bus as Carlos Hale is no longer around to provide transportation in his car.  Just as we arrived in town it began to rain pretty hard and this was an hour before the fireside was to start.  I thought for sure that meant we would have poor attendance.

But to our surprise and great pleasure, we had about 50-60 people in attendance and I would say this was the best fireside we have done in regards to the interest and questions from the members.  It was great to see such proactive involvements as during the week, we had had some disappointments in regard to members doing what needs to be done to change their lives to acheive self-reliance so it was a very nice boost to the end of our week.

:

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  "Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves--to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life.  Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves yourselves to the will of God, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved."  2 Nephi 10:23-24