First I started off accompanying two sister missionaries who sang The Olive Tree, a Spanish version that I translated in my spare time while waiting for piano students to arrive. These two sisters, Hoskins & Miceli, both have beautiful singing voices and they were companions in our ward! Since this Sunday was just before changes, they needed to perform the song today. Since they are both good singers they didn't need much practice and since Peruvians really don't know how to sing very well nor in harmony, the members thought they sounded like professionals. I thought they sounded like angels.
As soon as I was done playing for them, I had to take off and head over to another chapel to accompany a group of missionaries who were singing the EFY medley - As Sisters in Zion and Army of Helaman. The two sister missionaries were companions, and Sister Valenzuela was finishing up her mission on Tuesday. She speaks very good English and her companion, Sister Hollingshead is an American so they sang their part in English. The Elders in their district sang the Army of Helaman part and they sang in Spanish, then when they combined they sang both English and Spanish until the chorus and they sang all in Spanish. This number took a lot more time to practice and get sounding good. But I have to admit, it sounded quite nice the day they performed.
Early Sunday afternoon we headed out to Sicuani for a training meeting to their stake self-reliance committee members. There had been some confusion and miscommunication so it wasn't until the last minute we knew for sure we were going. Then when we got there, we found out the hour set for the meeting was during the self-reliance workshop meetings and the two facilitators are part of the committee. So we joined in the workshops and participated in those and ended up having our training meeting start about 40 minutes late. It was very disorganized and observing the workshops we could see the facilitators really need some direction and training as well so we hope we can get out to give them some training soon. But we walked away with a following date for the committee to meet for their first meeting.
We had to spend the night in Sicuani and it was cold! Bright and early Monday morning we headed out back to Cusco, only getting back in time to give the afternoon students their piano lessons. Monday night we were preparing for the next day's returning missionary training.
Tuesday we had a small group to train, only 10 missionaries about evenly split between Elders and Sisters and Gringos and Latinos. This was the first time we presented the new recommended outline. We had to make a few changes to what we were doing before but not too much. They do want us to spend more time talking to them about the importance of education and learning English and make sure they know about BYU-Idaho Pathway and PEF options.
An all day training session on the last day of your mission. Not sure it is the funnest way to end.
Here is our group photo. Sorry it is blurry. The member who took the photo had a broken wrist apparently and couldn't seem to hold the tablet steady. This is the best out of three tries.
After giving this presentation we realized that we only have four more times to present this training and we will be going home with the last group. Wow, that hit us like a ton of bricks.
We've started our second semester of teaching the English Book of Mormon class. We only made it through First & Second Nephi, and Jacob during the first semester. I have appreciated the opportunity to teach as I have studied more in depth these writings and I have learned to love Nephi and Jacob more and it has become even clearer to me how The Book of Mormon truly is a testament of Jesus Christ.
Wednesday evening we had our first self-reliance committee meeting with the Inti Raymi stake. Everyone was in attendance. Yeah! We did a bit more training to help them understand their role and we talked to them about the need for setting up their own center and getting these workshops offered to their members and not just a select group. They set up a follow up meeting for July 11th with the objective to plan a presentation to give to the bishops at their bishops council on July 18th.
We like what we are seeing with the leaders of the Inti Raymi stake.
In the Friday morning English class for the Inti Raymi zone missionaries, we celebrated Elder Powell's birthday, which was actually July 2nd, the day before.
Friday night the leaders of the Cusco stake were supposed to meet. That meeting ended up being postponed. It was disappointing particularly since that very day, our model center was dismantled and died. We no longer have a self-reliance model center in Cusco any more. We had been warned about it happening and it actually took a month longer than we had first been told, but it was still a very sad day.
We understand the rationale we've been given for why they are closing the model center, but it is still hard to not feel like all our hard work and progress will be lost. Each of the stakes and districts are supposed to provide their own services to their own members. Our role now is to train and help these stakes and districts get organized and up and running, so our emphasis is on training. Please pray for us as this is going to be a very challenging task.
Saturday we were off traveling again, this time to Juliaca for a Sunday evening fireside with their stake. But as we didn't have commitments with them until Sunday evening, we headed down to Puno to try to hook up with the self-reliance committee members in the Puno Central stake as they are not meeting regularly and need some guidance.
This was our first trip traveling on our own and are happy to say it all went swimmingly. At the airport in Juliaca you can catch a shuttle service down to Puno that will drop you off at the door of your hotel. We arrived with time to check in and do a bit souvenir shopping at the Saturday market. We ended up buying too much as we had only brought our two backpacks and didn't have a lot of spare packing room.
When we got to the chapel for our training meeting, much to our surprise, no one was there. We learned that our priesthood leader was out of town, in Cochabamba, Bolivia (the nearest temple for the members in Puno)! Somehow, something went wrong with the planning apparently. We were discouraged. We did managed to talk to the full-time missionaries who teach the English classes. They happened to be at the chapel waiting for their ward council meeting. We gave them a bit more guidance and answered some of their questions. So it wasn't a total loss, but it wasn't what we had hoped to accomplish.
Sunday turned out to be another story. We truly felt we were guided and miracles happened. As we had brought down some items for the Puno Central leader that stood us up, we decided to attend his home ward so we could leave them with his wife or bishop depending whom we saw. His ward building turned out to be outside of the main part of the city but we managed to find it. It just so happened that the stake president, Pres. Soto was attending this ward. We managed to speak to him and left the items with him. We learned from him that there are three PEF applicants that have gotten discouraged because the process has not gone smoothly for them. We were asked to help. We told him to send us their names.
After Sacrament meeting we decided to head over to the Bellavista stake building in hopes that we might run in to the stake leaders we need to talk to as we have not had any follow up from them since we gave training to them a month ago. We walked in to the tail end of a sacrament meeting and lo and behold on the stand were the Stake President and also his counselor in charge of self-reliance. We spoke to the counselor first and not much was happening. Then the stake president joined us and he made things happen. He introduced us to the facilitator for the education workshop, and the business workshop and said he wanted us to come and train them and do the Mi Camino fireside to kick things off as soon as possible.
We checked our calendar and found we had July 19th open so boom before we knew it, we were committed to come back July 19th. Caramba, something had lit a fire under the stake president! It was far more than we had hoped to accomplish. We truly felt like we had witnessed a miracle.
From there we had to head back to Juliaca for our facilitator training at 4:00 pm and the Mi Camino fireside at 5:00 pm. Everything went off smoothly with that and we had pretty good attendance. We handed out 42 booklets and we had a good amount sign up for the workshops afterwards. Juliaca is up and going now! Yeah.
Oh and yeah, it was FREEZING in Puno and Juliaca. I had to wear my thermal garments, a warm outfit, my overcoat and my gloves all while presenting the workshop at 5 pm, not 7 pm. Thank heavens for heaters in the hotel rooms and look what was heating the lobby!
Spiritual Thought for the Week: I read the conference talk "We'll Ascend Together" this week. I like it on so many levels. In particular, one of the self-reliance spiritual principles is unity and this talk spoke to that.
"Thee life me and I'll lift thee, and we'll ascend together"
"In this long eternal quest to be more like our Savior, may we try to be 'perfect' men and women in at least this one way now -- by offending not in word, or more positively put, by speaking with a new tongue, the tongue of angels."
"I know that through the enabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and our faith in Him, we can do it. I pray we will put our trust in Him to help us help each other live happily and eternally as we ascend together."
--Linda K Burton
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