Miracles in Cusco

This is a late post.  We've been so busy dealing with the fall out of our latest "miracle" that I haven't had time to record the miracle in our blog until now.

But first an update on Nilda Mamani, our friend fighting cancer.  She continues to show miraculous signs of improvements.  They have held off operating on her and continue to do testing since each time the doctors analyze a test, they say the tests come back different than before in a good way.  The doctors are baffled by the improvements, but we know it is faith, prayers, fasting, and priesthood blessings that have created the changes that so baffle the doctors.  Thanks to all who have offered prayers in her behalf as well as those who have generously donated to our Go Fund Me account for her.  We are almost half way to our fund raising goal.  Please if you haven't donated already and feel inclined to help us help this sister, please visit the following link.

http://www.gofundme.com/8g5dp5defc

We did talk to her bishop about the best way to distribute these contributions.  We want them to be used correctly.  If we donate through the church it can only be used for medical costs or living expenses.  It can not be used to help sustain her business while she treats or isn't feeling well.  We would like to donate through the church, but the concern is whether the monies go directly to her or if they will be put into a general stake fund and the stake president decides how they are used.  We are needing to get to the bottom of how things work here.  We have been told we can not specify her name on the donation slip.

 Quillabamba, the paradise of the mission

 We started the week out in Quillabamba.  We visited all three branches Sunday morning.  They have two branches that have over 100 people attending and another smaller branch with probably 60-80 people in attendance.  One of the branches is without a branch president currently.  Other church leaders were in Quillabamba as well, Segundo Regueati, counselor in the mission presidency, along with the mission secretary were there interview possible candidates to call as branch president.  As part of their supervision they took a look at the branch records and while we were at the building, there began to be a stir.  They called our boss, Carlos Hale in and then they asked Dave to come in and be a witness.  Carlos used to be an accountant and apparently, they found some irregularities in the contributions and distribution records they wanted his professional opinion on.

To make a long story short, they determined that the branch president had pilfered thousands of dollars from the church through the fast offering account with bogus records of members requesting fast offering assistance.  Over a 10 month period, he apparently fabricated s/60,000 soles worth of contribution assistance.  That is equivalent to $20,000 which comes to a lot of money here in Peru!  It was such a disappointment to hear of a church leader doing something like that.  There are definitely wolves in sheep clothing among us and as long as Satan has power to tempt us, these sort of things will happen from time to time.  Most of the leaders, however, are good, honest men working under incredible odds doing the best they can to build up the kingdom of God here in Peru.

Throw back to last week's blog, these photos show us working with the members Saturday night helping them complete their Perpetual Education Fund applications.

Sunday evening we had a training meeting for the leaders to hopefully get the self-reliance committee up and running properly.  The district specialist had not been getting much support from the leaders as they believed she was responsible to do everything.  The Peruvian people are not used to working in committees.  It is a new concept to them.  So we are finding we have to do a lot of mentoring with the leaders to get them to understand how this works.

In Quillabamba we drank a lot of cremoladas (a frozen fruit drink that was very refreshing in the heat there) and we found THE best chocolate cake we've had here in Peru.  It was actually moist and sweet.  Too bad Quillabamba is so far to go for a piece of chocolate cake.

Carlos shows off our empty cremolada glasses, above and below, we toast our success in Quillabamba with a couple of pitchers of chicha morada, the drink all Peru loves.

This palm tree is on church property in front of the chapel in Quillabamba.

We left Monday morning early and stopped in Urubamba for breakfast.  We had THE best pancakes we've had here in Peru at a small restaurant that you would never have guessed knew how to make pancakes.  Most of the time when you order pancakes here, you get crepes, not pancakes.  But these were actual, thick pancakes with maple syrup even!  Most of the time they serve them with honey.  So needless to say, a few pounds were added to our frames during this Quillabamba trip.

I just love the views we enjoy on this road trip.  The mountains are brown now since we are in the dry season but once we drop down into the jungle part it is totally green.

There still are a few spots with water run off crossing the roadway.

The mountains had gotten a fresh sprinkling of snow over night.   It had rained in Quillabamba, but up at the higher elevation it was snow.

The rest of the week was the normal things, English classes, Book of Mormon class, Self-Reliance workshops, etc.  UNTIL...the miracle day - Friday, August 21st.

I truly can't recall what precipitated the events exactly.  I do know that in our English Book of Mormon class, our student Angel came and we found out that he is the one that has been promoting Pathways with his friends and had round up 6 names.  We told him we could help him with some additional names.  That was on Tuesday night, but I think we finally had some breathing room to do something about it later in the week.  The night before, Thursday, we had gone online to the pathway website and found the application form for requesting a new site.  When we looked it over, we realized that most of the steps we were very close to having in place and that there were just a few key items missing.

So we woke up Friday morning and went to work.  We had to get permission and support from key leaders and from BYU-Idaho to make it work.  We first made a call to BYU-Idaho and learned that Gene Hayes was the man to talk to about approval of new sites.  We called him but he did not answer.  We left a message.  We also sent an email to him as well and told him where we were in the process and asked him to let us know what more we needed to do to make this happen.

You have to realize that the deadline for enrollment in Pathways for Fall Semester 2015, the start of the three semester school year, was Monday, August 24th so we didn't have much leeway.  My mind was telling me it really was going to be impossible to make this happen with only three days to go.  But we moved ahead anyways.

We went to talk to the institute director, Segundo Regueati, and he got on board and gave us the thumbs up from his direction.  He was key in giving us names of area leaders that would have to approve as well.  The main man being the area seventy.  It took us awhile to locate the correct area seventy.  It turned out to be Carlos Godoy, who had been here for the Inti Raymi stake conference a few weeks back.

At our lunch break we found some very encouraging emails from BYU-Idaho saying they were thrilled to hear from us and would pull out all the stops on their end to make this happen.  When we read these we started to think maybe this would happen.  Worst case scenario would be that the program would begin in January instead of September.

We were able to find time for the Guerras, Henry & Gabby, to meet with us Friday afternoon.  We had learned a few weeks back that they had been the first service missionaries in Peru when Pathway first came to the country.  They had served in Lima in 2011.  What a blessing to have a couple with experience in Pathway right here in Cusco!  And they are friends of ours even.  We asked them if they would be willing to head up the first group of Pathway students here in Cusco.  They were excited for the opportunity.

Next we had to get a local stake president on board as the sponsoring local leadership.  We contacted President Mario Garcia of the Cusco stake. We haven't been on the best of terms with him lately.  He was not real happy when the model self-reliance center was closed and he hasn't helped us get the volunteers we need to run the center, so we weren't sure how this proposal would go over with him.  He was able to give us a few minutes late afternoon.  We met with him, explained what Pathway was and that we needed him to sign on the the sponsoring stake leadership.  He agreed.  We breathed a sigh of relief.

All we were missing by then was the area approval.  BYU-Idaho was taking care of that on their end.  By early evening we were given notice that all had been approved and that Cusco, Peru was an active site on the Pathway web site for members to register for Fall 2015!!  We were stunned at how quickly and easily everything had fallen into place.  We were pinching ourselves and asking each other, "Can you believe this?"

We went online to pathway.lds.org and saw this wonderful sight:

We realized we had witness a miracle unfold before our very eyes.  To reach everyone in one day and have them not raise any objections or stall in giving their approval was phenomenal.

But here was the bad news.  

This meant we only had 3 days to get the word out to the members and have them apply!!  Yikes!

We had a trip to Abancay scheduled for the weekend but we had to call and cancel with them as a result of this.  We knew the weekend would have to be dedicated to getting the word out and facilitating as many as possible signing up before midnight on Monday.  If we didn't reach the minimum of 15 students, Pathway would still not be a reality here.  With only three days to do it in, we had so much to do and so little time!

We spent Saturday at the self-reliance center making phone calls, and helping those who had already heard about the opportunity sign up.  We made sure to call all the stake and district presidents and ask them to make an announcement in all their wards and branches about Pathway and let them know that they only had until Monday to sign up.  We told them to announce that we would be at the center Sunday between 4 pm and 8 pm to help anyone and also to field questions.  We put this announcement out to the two Cusco stakes, the Sicuani stake and the Urubamba & Abancay districts, all are within a distance that members could come in to participate.

By the end of Saturday we had 5 people who had passed the required English exam with an intermediate-low level or higher an were enrolled in the program.  Only 10 more people to go to meet the minimum requirement. 

We were praying and holding our breath we could pull this off.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Mosiah 8:18

Thus God has provided a means that man, through faith, might work mighty miracles, therefore he becometh a great benefit to his fellow beings.