Independence Day - Viva Peru!

Sunday we participated in Tahuantinsuyo's ward conference since they asked Cindy to play the piano for them.  After sacrament meeting we headed out to Picchu ward.  We wanted to pay our fast offerings in this ward so they could help our friend, Nilda Mamani.  We will probably pay in this ward each month from now on.

 This is Nilda Mamani.  She is fighting cancer.  We had worked with her to help her get a business up and going.  It was growing and improving and then she got sick.  She has spent quite a bit of time in and out of the hospital getting tests to find out what was wrong.  They finally diagnosed her with uterine cancer, stage 2 or 3.  She is not sure yet which stage.

We were upset to hear the news.  She is such a good lady and has had to fight so many other challenges.  It just didn't seem fair to have her now hit with this when things were finally looking up for her.  We have started a Go Fund Me campaign to help raise money to help her pay for her medical expenses so she can get the treatment she needs as well as help pay for some hired help to keep her business going.  

Please check it out and donate at http://www.gofundme.com/8g5dp5defc.  We have so much and she has so little.

We had a slower week due to holidays.  Peru's Independence Day is July 28th.  But it is not just a one day celebration.  They actually took Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday off as holidays.  This meant the center was closed those days as well.

We did learn that Peru uses three different flags.  This flag with the coat of arms that has a vicuna, the national animal of Peru, a quinine tree, which is the national tree of Peru, and a cornucopia with gold coins spilling out, which is supposed to represent the mineral richness of Peru is used by official institutions like government buildings, schools, military posts, etc.  The other flag is simply red, white, red with no symbol in the middle and that is what private individuals and buildings are allowed to fly.  The three symbols are said to represent the three kingdoms, animal, vegetable & mineral.

The flag may have two variations of the coat of arms.  The one on the flag we bought has on one side a palm wreath & the other side a laurel wreath.  Or the symbol used may have the one below.  The same coat of arms but surrounded by flags is the national emblem, the most official version of the three'

.

I still had my piano lessons Monday afternoon, but the attendance was only about 50%.  A lot of the families travel since this week and next are also school vacation time.  Many families said they were planning to travel to the temple during this or next week.  That is pretty exciting to hear.

Tuesday we walked around town trying to see some sort of patriotic celebration as it was the 28th.  But it was just a normal day.  When we asked about it, we learned that Sunday was actually the day of festivities, apparently.  That would explain why we saw this out of our apartment window, Sunday afternoon.

We did go exploring on Independence Day and found a whole new section of town just off of the Plaza de Armas that we didn't even know exisited for the last year.  And it was pretty exciting because Dave finally found the rock he has been looking for.

 We found the Inka Museum.  We didn't have the time or the money to go in but we will have to check it out.

 We got a new view of the Plaza de Armas.  We were just above at the level of the roofs.

 And here it is!  The famous (or infamous) rock with the carving of what Dave believes is a horse.  However, the porter told him it was a puma (which is possible since that is one of the Inka dieties)  There were a lot of rocks with snakes on them (which is another one of the three dieties) Below is a photo of one of the rocks.

 These carvings were on the outside of a long ago convent that has now been converted into a 5 star hotel.  Dave made friends with the porter as he was photography the rocks so the porter invited us in and we walked around the facility.  We found some pretty cool things, like this weaving machine

 It had a number of patios to enjoy as well.  It is probably the closest we will get to a 5 star hotel while we are on our mission.

 We found all of these sights in the Nararene Plaza, just up from this school (below) that was founded in the 1600's, which is just up from the Plaza de Armas.

 We walked to a couple of other plazas, hoping to catch some action, but nothing.  We did learn that this cathedral in the Plaza San Francisco, is where the skeletons are that we had heard about.

We are going to have to visit this museum as well, but here is a photo off of the brochure we were given.  Those are skulls at the bottom of the photo.

We did see plenty of families out enjoying the sunny weather and the time off of work.

Wednesday, the last day of the 3 day Independence holiday we had been invited to join the missionaries for a multi-zone conference they had out in the countryside.  Apparently, once a year during the dry season, the President has them plan an outing for their meetings and it is an all-day event.  Since we knew there would not be a lot of members banging down the office door, we said we would join them.

We headed out from the chapel early and took a bus up past Sacsayhuaman, the ruins close to town, and it got a little dicey when the bus headed up a dirt road that was pretty narrow in places.  We hiked in a bit after the bus couldn't go any further.  The spot they had picked to hold their conference was very pretty.

 A bus full of missionaries can be pretty energetic.

 Our backdrop to our conference was this granite cliff.  A small river ran through the cliff as there was a cave at the bottom.  It was pretty cool.

 Our seats were the rocks in the field.  But it was good to be out in the sunshine all day!  We did get a bit sunburned by the end of the day, however.

 These were some of the activities we participated in as a way to teach them the concepts they were being taught.

 I tried to avoid being part of the pyramid, but the first time without me they failed, so they begged me to help them out and with me in there we managed to do it, just not for long.

 The fire activity was a bust as they couldn't get the box to burn.  I tried to get Elder Rhoades to help them out, but he was having too much fun watching them struggle.

 We were given only 15 minutes to talk about self-reliance.  We had prepared a 30 minute presentation so at the last minute we scaled back a lot.

 In the late afternoon, during the President's teaching, we had visitors join us.  We also took a bathroom break and found these rocks in the middle of nature.  You can tell they are not formed naturally.  We realized we could very well be walking on top of Inka ruins that have not been uncovered yet.  How cool is that?

 Sister Harbertson's message had them holding their backpacks out while she spoke.  They hada their scriptures and other things in their bags.  Mine was fairly light as we use tablets for our scriptures.

 These are the two zones that met together.  Above is Cusco zone and below is Los Incas zone.

 And then of course, the whole group together with Pres. Harbertson front and center.

It was a great day, weather wise, activity wise and we were fed well, both for lunch and by the spirit.

Thursday at the last minute we were invited to go with the mission presidency out to Andahuaylas the next day for the district conference they were holding.  Andahuaylas is one of the few areas of the mission we have not visited yet and we are past the year mark and it has been on our radar screen for some time, but it has never worked out to go there.  So we felt compelled to try to make that work, even if it was last minute.  

We already had a scheduled trip out to Quillabamba.  We had to make a lot of phone calls to reschedule and check with our manager.  He jumped all over us getting out to Andahuaylas and everything seemed to fall into place so we felt it was the right thing to do so we headed out Friday morning.

The trip to Andahuaylas is one of the longest and windiest roads.  It is right up there with Quillabamba as far as distance/time and curves go.  We were a bit worried about it.  The first part of the trip we were familiar with because you go out to Abancay first and it had been only a couple weeks since our near-death experience traveling from Abancay.  

We took cars again, the sisters in one car and the men in the other until we reached Abancay.  The drivers were decent but we were still all a bit queasy and our stomachs a bit uneasy when we arrived at Abancay.  But we took a lunch break and put a little something in our stomachs before heading out to Andahuaylas.  From Abancay it was a 3 hour drive and we were able to all be in the same car.  Apparently, we are lucky as the road has been completed and is now all asphalt instead of dirt like before or it would have taken 5 hours to get there.

Here we are cramped in the car on the way to Andahuaylas.  Below, the photo shows the view looking back across the valley to Abancay.

 It never ceases to amaze me how rugged and pointed the mountain peaks are and how the vista just shows ridge after ridge after ridge.

 The valley was green even though it is the dry season right now, so it was very pretty.

 Sights along the way to Andahuaylas.  Above you can see how the road just goes along the side of the mountain.  We also got to see an animal drive up close and personal.

I like the photo below because it shows how close to the clouds we were traveling.  We climbed and climbed and climbed.  I felt like we were driving along the top of the world.

Below is the bulletin board announcement of the district meeting we were attending with President and Sister Harbertson's photo.

We gave a 30 minute presentation to the district leadership on the new self-reliance program and there was a lot of interest.  We couldn't tell them everything in 30 minutes, but at the break many of the leaders came up to us and asked a lot of questions.

I also got recruited to play the piano for their district choir for the Saturday night and Sunday meetings.  I was able to practice with them once before they performed and it was actually one of the better latin choirs I have heard here in Peru.

 We had a little time to explore the city.  We found this statute in front of the big new stadium they had and this small produce market below.

Near the chapel was this park dedicated to a Peruvian author who was from Andahuaylas, Jose Maria Arguedas

He wrote fiction works that treated the theme of the indigenous people and modern society.  His most famous works are Los Rios Profundos, Todos Las Sangres and Yawar Fiesta.

They even had his grave there as part of the park.

 Below shows the views of the city from the park.

Saturday night's dinner included this soup, the famous chicken feet diet.  Guess whose bowl is on the left and who ate more of their soup?

The district conference meetings had a very good, strong spirit.  There were a number of talks on tithing.  Apparently, not too many members of the church are full tithe payers.  I heard the number 2% from Sister Harbertson as to those who pay a full tithe.  She is convinced that is the reason the church is not growing here in this mission and I'm convinced that is the reason the members struggle so much with self-reliance.  Without obedience to tithing, prosperity will forever be an elusive dream.

The members were very open and sweet.  We loved the district president.  His talk Sunday morning was about autos and he started out talking about physical autos and travel.  Then he related that to the many autos that exist such as autojustificacion, autodisciplina (you need to know that auto in Spanish means "self") and finished up with ...ta da! ... autosuficiencia (self-reliance!)  and he even mentioned us in his talk.

We feel we planted some good seeds and generated interest and we hope that when we are scheduled to go back to Abancay on the 22nd of this month we can go a bit early and hold some meetings with the members in Andahuaylas on the 21st.

We are not real excited to travel those roads again, but there is only one way to reach these two cities and that is by car or bus and we hear bus is even worse than car.  So we better get used to it and we hope you all will pray for our safety!

And now for the coolest thing we saw in Andahuaylas.... Kevin's cousin! (Kevin is a pig owned by some of our home ward members). This hog was huge!  I was a bit scared to get to close to him, but we definitely needed a photo.  He was napping just around the corner from the chapel and seemed oblivious to us as we snapped away.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Todd D Christofferson of the 12 Apostles said in April 2015 General Conference..."Brothers and sisters, many things are good, many are important, but only a few are essential.  Much that is good, much that is essential - even sometimes all that is necessary for now - can be achieved in less than ideal circumstances.  So many of you are doing your very best.  With confidence we testify that the Atonement of Jesus Christ has anticipated and, in the end, will compensate all deprivation and loss for those who turn to Him.  no one is predestined to receive less than all that the Father has for His children."  "Why Marriage, Why Family".