Party Season has arrived with Corpus Christi kicking things off

June came in with a bang.  The first part of our week was pretty routine with all our classes and the self-reliance center activities.  But the whole week was party week here in Cusco because of the Catholic celebration of Corpus Christi.  The members have warned us that June and July is one party after another.  Thursday was the official day and it was an official holiday with businesses closed and all, I It did impact the attendance to our English classes that day.  So many of the celebrations and holidays are linked to Catholicism.  But much of it is viewed more as a cultural event than a religious event.

We were told we should not miss the celebration so we headed up to the Plaza de Armas and spent about 3 hours there as we joined the Cusquenians and I'd have to say there were A LOT of people there.

Above is what the Plaza de Armas looks like normally.  Below is what the Plaza looked like for Corpus Christi -- solid people.  I'm not sure I have ever been somewhere more crowded than this.  At one point we were smooshed by the crowd as one of the saint statues passed by really close to where we were standing.

 Below is looking from Plaza de Armas down towards San Pedro market.  Solid people as well.  We've been here for almost a year and visited both places often and have never seen this many people in the streets like this.

It was like waiting for a parade.  Many people had come hours before to save seats to see the procession. 

And there were plenty of concessionaires, hocking their treats.  Just take a look.

Peruvian version of snowcones  and below regular popcorn and the pink version is like kettle corn.

Above, fried pork. They love this stuff! Below - cotton candy!

Police and fireman were there for crowd control and emergencies.

Basically, what they did was bring in all the patron saint statutes from each of the main "barrios" of Cusco to be paraded around the Plaza.  Each community accompanied their saint statue with a band or dancers or both and other community or church dignitaries.

They presented 15 saints in all.  We were there 3 hours but still didn't see all the statues parade around.  It was a very slow process, mostly due to the heavy crowds, I think.

Here are some photos for a sampling of what we saw.

Parade Banners

 Some are very elaborate.  They usually announce the saint or the community coming up.

Bands

 Here is an interesting band above.  They blew conch shells.  Maybe you can make them out below.

Dancers

And the stars of the show, the statues of the saints.

The statute above was of San Jeronimo.  Below, if I remember right it is San Sebastian.

The photo below shows how they carry them around.  A group of men carry them on their shoulders.  These statues are VERY heavy.  There was usually a minimum of 24 men carrying each statute and they were usually huffing and straining while they did it.

Religious Dignitaries

There was a typical dish that was served during a few days of this celebration called Chiriuchu.  We tried a bit of it and it was very interesting.  It had a little bit of chicken, guinea pig, salted alpaca, roasted corn kernels, a cornbread type thing, and seaweed.  

It was one of the sister missionaries birthday, June 4th as well, so the English class decided to bring a cake and celebrate with her.  

 Here the custom is to try to push the cake into the face of the birthday girl/boy.  They get a big kick out of it.  Her companion really caught her off guard and got in a good shove.

Friday after our English class, they were showing the Testaments movie in the cultural hall so we caught the tail end of that.  The good thing was we were able to talk with the Inti Raymi stake leader and set up a meeting to train his committee next Saturday while our manager Carlos Hale will be in town.  We already have Friday night set up with the Cusco stake for training so we are going to be busy next weekend.

Saturday we had a nearly perfect day.  We started it out with a workshop in the morning for the perpetual education fund that was taught by Zoila and Lourdes Roble.  We had 5 people there and our facilitators did a great job presenting it.  We only had to be in the background for support and back-up help if needed.  The only thing they needed help with was using the computer to show the videos.

Then we went out to Sacred Valley to meet with the district president to set up a leader training.  It was the first time we traveled somewhere all on our own.  We took what is called a "combi" out and back, which are glorified mini-vans.  It looked like we almost were going to be stood up, but he finally got there and we held a very abbreviated meeting with him but walked away with a date set up to train his other leaders - June 20th.

We then rushed back to Cusco to hit up the Saturday evening workshop for the PEF being held in the Inti Raymi stake and facilitated by Miguel Farfan.  We arrived late but walked in to find 11 people in attendance!  And Miguel did a great job as well.  He didn't stay within the time frame but he held the youth's attention the whole time and made some very powerful points with them.  He allowed us to make a few comments as well.  However, the great thing is the members are taking ownership of these programs and running it themselves.  We are working ourselves out of a job!  Yeah!  That is what self-reliance is all about I think.

Sunday we met a new volunteer who has been called to help us out.  Hopefully this one will come through for us.  We'd really like to get the center off our plates and onto the plates of the members.  We have so many other things we need to be focusing on in our last six months of our mission.

Spiritual Thought for the Week: Dallin H Oaks said the following:  "Last week I was talking with a member of the Quorum of the Twelve about comments we had received on our April conference talks.  My friend said someone told him, 'I surely enjoyed your talk.'  We agreed that this is not the kind of comment we like to receive.  My friend said, 'I didn't give that talk to be enjoyed.  What does he think I am, some kind of entertainer?'  I speak of these recent conversations to teach the principle that a message given by a General Authority at a general conference - a message prepared under the influence of the Spirit to further the work of the Lord - is not given to be enjoyed.  It is given to inspire, to edify, to challenge, or to correct.  It is given to be heard under the influence of the Spirit of the Lord, with the intended result that the listener learns from the talk and from the Spirit what he or she should do about it."  CES fireside for YA May 1, 2005.