Some Miracles mean Work

As exciting as the news was to have Pathway approved for Fall Semester here in Cusco, it meant we had our work cut out for us.

Sunday we visited as many wards in the morning as we could to make sure the announcement was made.  Good thing, because some places had the information wrong.  We wanted them to announce that we would be at the self-reliance center that afternoon from 4 pm to 8 pm to answer any questions and help those interested get signed up.  Some places we found out had announced 3 pm so we adjusted our schedule to make that happen.

We honestly thought we would have perhaps two dozen people come by.  We had asked the Guerras to be there to help us field questions and get people signed up.  Good thing.  Because our expectations were way off the mark.  We had a flood of members come.  They filled the office, overflowed into the hallway.  We didn't know what to do with so many people.

We decided to herd them into the classroom across from the center.  It is one of the bigger ones.  Capacity is probably 30 people when jammed.  We filled it to overflowing and then began an informational presentation.  I handled that along with Brother Guerra.  Dave and Sister Guerra stayed out in the hall and in the center to sign up people as they showed up and tell them to wait for the next informational session.

 This is one of the informational sessions held on Sunday.  This is one of the later ones so the room is not that full.

 Franz Guerra standing, fielding questions from members.  Below, I explain the program and the requirements to be accepted.

 Members waiting out in the hall and in our self-reliance center for their chance to hear about the Pathway program

We had an informational meeting on the hour every hour from 4 pm to 8 pm.  I had a set presentation down pretty well by the time we were done.

In the meantime, Dave and Gabby were busy trying to help people register.  The hard part was that registration required an English evaluation which required 60 minutes to take and with our model center gone we no longer had the six laptop computers at our disposal.  They would have helped tremendously.  We now only have two very antiquated desktop computers used by family history.  We had brought our laptop and the Guerras had brought theirs but we still were ill-equipped for the number of people that showed up.  We had to start telling people they could sign up on their own computers at home or in other locations.

Nefi Jarom Miranda Ramos, one of our English class students, in the red jacket works on taking his English evaluation test.  He passed with flying colors.  His English is quite good and he really has an interest in linguistics.  We are excited for him to have this opportunity to study through BYU-Idaho.

We were there until 9 pm or later.  When the dust had settled we counted how many had registered a visit and we had 107 on our list and we are sure not everyone signed up.  We also had a call from the missionaries at the other stake center saying there were a group of people over there looking for us.  We don't know if they came over or not, but this far surpassed the two dozen people we had expected to talk to.  Many were there just to learn about the program.  Many probably didn't have the needed language proficiency to qualify, but my goodness, we realized that previous to this we probably only knew about the tip of the iceberg when it came to member interest in this program!

By the end of the day we knew of a total of 10 people that had signed up and been accepted.  Just 5 more to go.  But we felt pretty confident that we would reach the minimum and probably more.

Monday we made ourselves available not only during the morning office hours for members to come and register for Pathway but also during the afternoon.  We had planned to stop at 6 pm due to it being Monday and family night, but we were not able to close up shop until 7:30 pm.  We had received news from our contact in Idaho that we were sitting at 47 enrolled and accepted!  Say What??

We had an appointment for Family Home Evening at our apartment with the stake president's family already set or we would have been tempted to keep the office open longer as midnight was the deadline.

But we had a lovely Family Home Evening and french toast dinner with the Garcias.  Much of the talk was related to Pathway and how everything had fallen into place.  We made sure the stake president knew how great a privilege this was to have his members have access to this and how miraculous we felt it was but we also made sure he knew of our appreciation for his support.  Prior to this we had felt more of a cold shoulder from him than any warm acceptance of our service.  This miracle has created a change in heart in him towards us.  The lesson was on faith and miracles, imagine that!

There were still many members who wanted to register.  BYU-Idaho said they would extend the time to register until the first day of class on September 14th but it would be on a stand-by basis if there was room in the group, so the names would go on a waiting list and enrolled in the order they appeared on the list.  So all week long we have continued to encourage people to register and take the English evaluation.  We have been busy all week at the center.  Such a contrast from the time since our model center was closed down.  No one was coming in prior to the Pathway announcement.  We were beat by the end of each day and we didn't have much down time all week long.

Such a miraculous few days!  We were stunned and euphoric at the same time.  But this miracle hasn't come with smooth sailing.

Late Monday I noticed a couple of girls going through the registration process and the website kicked them right past the English evaluation and automatically accepted them.  I questioned them what had happened.  They didn't know.  The step before the evaluation are questions, in English, about their educational experience with English.  As I tried to understand why they would not have been required to take the English evaluation, it occurred to me that probably if they mark a high number of years studying English the site probably was programmed to just skip over evaluation.

However, the problem was that they had misunderstood the English questions.  All the questions asked if they had attended schools taught EXCLUSIVELY in English or if they had attended certain INTENSIVE English study programs.  Well, English is taught in the high schools and universities and many take classes from foreign language study institutes of learning.  But they are not exclusively in English nor intensive in nature, but the members saw the taught and the English and marked multiple years of study.

I spoke to them in English and discovered that their English was very limited and they struggled to understand what I was asking let alone give me an answer.  I frankly told them of my concern.  The last thing I wanted was for them to waste their money and time and fail to succeed in this program.  I told them I wanted them to reapply and take the English evaluation.

It turned out that wasn't a simple thing to make happen.  It also turned out they were not the only ones that had made this mistake.  We realized if these two girls had misunderstood, there was a good chance others had as well.  We talked to Ismar Villacientos with Pathway on Friday and explained our concern.  He did a search of the 47 accepted participants and found that 28 of them had not taken the evaluation!  Oh no!  That was more than half.

He sent us the list of names and we started the arduous task of contacting each one of them and evaluating their English skills.  Luckily, Brother Guerra did most of the work as we had a trip to Puerto Maldonado previously planned for this weekend.  Luckily, as well, we personally knew 6 of the names on the list and could vouch for their high English abilities and felt confident they did not need to take the evaluation.

We left for Puerto Maldonado Saturday around noon.  The last time we had gone was in March.  I had checked the weather forecast and it was showing temps in the high 90's but with the humidity it was saying the RealFeel would be 110.  Oh boy.  As much as I like warmer temperatures, that was a bit more than I wanted.  Luckily, it was hot, but didn't feel like 110.

We met the new area self-reliance on the plane.  He was taking the same plane out.  He was also staying at the same hotel we were.  This was his first visit to Puerto Maldonado so we had to show him around, which was opposite of what normally happens when we travel with Carlos.

We got checked in and then headed out to the best restaurant in town, Burgos.  We were not disappointed.  The meal was excellent.  Fresh fish, yeah!

 I am talking with the new self-reliance area manager, Jorge Ramos, for the Puerto Maldonado area.

 Right there at the restaurant a cocoa tree!  The bean pods get much bigger when they are mature.

 The view from the restaurant looking over the city above and the river below.  Now that looks like a jungle scene to me.

We learned about the copasu fruit.  It's the big ugly brown things above.  It only grows in the jungle and they use it to make fruit juices and they use it to flavor ice cream and slushies.  We tried it in a drink and it was quite tasty.

We had a few hours to kill before our first meeting so we visited the market and picked up some more piranha head key chains.  Gotta have enough for all the grandsons.  It is just what a boy would think is cool.  No doubt about it.

 One of the stalls in the market.

Here are some of the sights we saw while we were in the jungle this time.

 Above, Dave took this photo of the wall mural painting at just the right angle to make it look like the hummingbird is drinking from the flower in the foreground.

 Since it is so warm there, motorcycles are the preferred mode of travel or else the mototaxis.  But we sure see crazy things like this mom above carrying her baby between her legs as she straddles the motorcycle.  The dad is wearing a helmet but he doesn't seemed too concerned for the safety of his wife and baby.

Our 6:00 pm meeting with the facilitators was a bust.  No one showed up.  Our 7 pm meeting with the leaders did not go well either.  It didn't get underway until way late (30 minutes, typical Peruvian time) and not that many came.  Mostly women representing the Relief Society and Young Women.  I think we had one branch president there out of 5.  We did hold a meeting but at the last meeting we changed our presentation and mostly talked about following the inspired leaders and accepting this program that yes, requires more work, but I likened reaching self-reliance to learning to play the piano.  It doesn't happen over night.  It takes time.  We had been told the leaders in Puerto Maldonado were no supportive of this new workshop programs as they had complained it took too long (6-12 weeks) and wanted to stick with the old program that only required 2 weeks to complete.

More about the rest of our stay in Puerto Maldonado in the next post.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Ether 12:16  "Yea, and even all they who wrought miracles wrought them by faith, even those who were before Christ and also those who were after."

Topical Guide shows labor, toil, work as synonyms for "wrought"