Are we trunky yet?

We started the last week of November off by attending the Inti Raymi ward so we could support Isaiah Marco and his wife Juana.  Isaiah is very interested in being baptized into the church.  His wife not so much.  But she bonded to Carol, Dave's sister when they came and has been more friendly since then.  She has been trying to reach Carol by email but she said her 10 emails she had sent haven't been going through.  We had told her on Saturday if she came to church, we could help her when the meetings ended.

Isaiah came, but not Juana.  She did show up at the end of the meetings, so we did get her to step foot into the chapel.  We did help her and we sent some emails to Carol that went through.  We also suggested we could skype with Carol.  She was very excited about doing that so we set up an appointment to do that the first Sunday in December.  They also invited us to their house for lunch that day.  She really is warming up to us if she is willing to have us visit her in her home.  Just goes to prove that service often times is the key that opens the door to learning the gospel.

Isaiah is taking the missionary discussions more regularly now and enjoys coming to church, but still isn't completely consistent every Sunday.

Monday we had some free time so we tried to do some of our last minute souvenir and gift shopping.  I think our family can be pretty sure they will be getting Peruvian items for Christmas since we come home a week before.

We visited San Pedro market.  In the past we mostly shop for food items here.  This was the first time we went down all the aisle with souvenir items.  It was actually quite fun.

Monday evening we had another invite to attend Family Home Evening with a member family, the Aimochoque family.  These are the three sisters who take piano lessons from me and are as sweet as can be.  They live in the Cusco ward.  We love this family!  There is such love between them and a good spirit in their home.  They live humbly, but happily.

 Above is a photo of their kitchen, dining room and living room as the rest of the house is bedrooms or bathroom.

 Us with the entire family.  I teach piano to the three older girls, they have a younger sister as well.

As usual and so typical here, we were asked to give the lesson at the last minute, but I have learned to be prepared or think really fast.  I had them study 2 Nephi 5 and used the topic "living after the manner of happiness".  Teaching the Book of Mormon institute class and covering 1 & 2 Nephi twice has really helped me to know those two books well.

We had a good time.  They served us paneton (which Elder Rhoades will not touch) and hot chocolate.  Their daughter Lynn doesn't like paneton either, so Elder Rhoades started to call her his favorite after that and they giggled like girls do about that.  I showed them the Frozen game on my tablet that I played with Sierra before the mission and let them play some of the beginning levels.  They liked that as well.

I am going to miss these three girls when we go home.

A photo of me teaching the Aimochoque sisters, from left to right - Sharlene, Lynn & Melani

We've been having very warm weather for Cusco - high 70's and one day even hit 80.  Monday was a hot day.  No sooner had we made it home from the Aimochoques, we had one of those quick change ups that are famous in Cusco but this one was extreme, because it started to hail.  It came down hard and fast and before you knew it, the roads looked liked this.

 Taken from our apartment window.  It looked like snow and for a minute we thought we were in Utah.  We had a river of water coming down the street in front of our house.

This is our last week to teach English classes.  We will be having our graduation celebration on Dec. 2nd and that will finish things up with that.  Elder Rhoades talked with the zone leaders of the two groups of missionaries that we teach and got them to set up missionaries in their zones to be the teachers so they could continue practicing.  The members are out of luck, unless the new couple coming to replace the Johnsons will take on some English teaching.

Our morning English class on the last day of class.  I gave away some of my jewelry to the Pinto sisters, Marcia & Gina and a sweater to Juliane.  Dave gave Guido one of his suits.  He had to pay to have a tailor make some adjustments but Guido thought he had won the lottery when Elder Rhoades gave him the suit.

The members of the English classes are very sad to see them ending.  They have enjoyed coming and told us they will miss us and the classes.  They have threatened to glue our feet to the ground so we can not leave.  I think it was just a joke, at least I hope so.

I am also winding down my piano lessons.  The students are preparing for one last piano recital which will be on Dec. 4th.  They've been learning Christmas songs.  I found out that their repertoire of Christmas carols is pretty limited.  At least, they didn't know a lot of the simplified carols that I was able to find.  They didn't know Good King Wenceslaus, or God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman for example.  But they did know Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas and any of the songs in the hymn book, but not many of those have a simplified version for their level of play.

I've had a couple of the students who have missed for quite awhile show up and now I have to get them prepared on short notice and with very limited skills since they haven't advanced much since the last recital.  Should be interesting.

The Cusco stake set up trainings for their ward councils based on the area satellite transmission on self-reliance.  It's good to see they are following through and taking the next steps outlined in that devotional.  They asked us to help them with the ones on Wednesday night.  The other ones for the weekend we were not able to help with as we had a trip to Arequipa planned for quite some time.

Elder Rhoades had already scheduled a drywall class for that night, so I was on my own.  I had back to back trainings.  The first one with the Villa Union ward, which is Javier Caseres ward.  He is the self-reliance specialist for the stake and should be more on top of things than he is.  We have been disappointed lately about that.  He should have been the one doing the training but he has not kept up with the changes that have happened in the last year.  I went from that ward council training to the Tullumayo ward council.  This ward is on the ball and has started the self-reliance program in their ward.  They have led out in the stake, so I didn't need to do as heavy of a training with them.

Each ward council needs to understand how they, as a ward council, needs to help the bishop meet the needs of their ward members who are not self-reliant.  The first step is they have to identify who in their ward is not self-reliant.  The church has an online tool to help the bishops do that.  Then they need to use the home teaching and visiting teaching program to help the families or individuals in need as well as the bishop needs to invite them to participate in the self-reliance workshops and the stake/ward needs to offer those classes.

It was also good to see that other members of the stake self-reliance committee were at these councils learning how to train the councils as it falls to them to do the training on the weekend.  The stake had set November 30th as their goal to accomplish this training so they didn't want to postpone until the next weekend when we would be here.  That was just great.  They were being self-reliant!!

This Thursday there was no Pathway meeting due to the Thanksgiving holidays in the states.  We did hold a make up Book of Mormon class for anyone who has a number of absences.  The ones that attended were the more diligent students and really didn't need the make up it seemed.  It was weird to have a class of only 6 rather than a group of 25+.

All week long we had the distraction of knowing that Alyssa could have her baby anytime.  Her due date was the 16th and she started the week already a week overdue.  We spoke with her on Thursday as well as skyped with Bryan and his kids.  It was fun to see the kids.  Crazy and hyper as ever.  It was much easier handling being away from home for this Thanksgiving.  Probably because I knew it was only a matter of weeks before we would be back.

We are now three weeks out from our last day as full-time missionaries.

Saturday we left early for Arequipa.  I so love to visit Arequipa.  One it gives us a chance to see the whole Hale family.  They have become like an extended family to us, or at least very good friend.

It seemed like Benjamin had grown so much since the last time we saw him.  Carla is getting ready to travel to the states to study.  We found out she is leaving on Dec. 7th.  She will be studying at the English Language Center in Provo starting in January.  She has a married sister in the states that she will visit with until the semester starts.  We have invited her to attend our homecoming talks on Jan. 10th.

Another reason why I love Arequipa is it is always warm!  Right now it was very warm since we are in their summer months.  Carlos didn't have a lot for us to do on Saturday so we spent the morning near the Plaza de Armas and did some souvenir shopping.

 They had the nativity set up in the Plaza already.  We are still in November so that was surprising.  I noticed last year that Christmas decorations didn't really go up or get put out until a few weeks before Christmas.  Maybe times are changing in Peru.

 The pigeons were out in force this morning.  The sun was quite strong and it was getting warm by 10 am.  Wow!  We were loving it.

 We had time to kill before Carlos was going to be ready to pick us up so we discovered a terrace restaurant that overlooked the Plaza de Armas and hung out there for awhile sipping a cool drink.  It was very pretty.

 We saw the Cathedral and the Plaza de Armas from a whole new angle.  It was nice to just relax and not be in a hurry.

Carlos took us and the whole family out for lunch at a very nice restaurant called El Gaucho.  I knew they would have good meat as "gaucho" is what the Argentine cowboy is called.  Argentina has lots of cattle ranches so they raise plenty of beef and know how to cook it.  We had an awesome steak that was tender and the cut was large.

We came back to the hotel and as I've done all week long logged into Facebook to see if there was any news about Alyssa and baby.  And there was!  She had delivered while we were eating lunch.  I think we got to be the first of the extended family to see the baby.  How odd, to be so far away and yet the first to greet Kael Alexander Steck, our ninth grandchild.

Isn't he beautiful?

We thought Carlos would have us helping him with some self-reliance groups in the evening but he said we were free until Sunday when we would be traveling to one of the districts to help him present a Mi Camino devotional.  We didn't quite know what to do with ourselves.  We headed down to the local mall that is near our hotel and we watched a movie for the first time in almost 18 months!  It was the last installment of the Hunger Games and it was dubbed in Spanish.  We both understood most of it.  Dave has really come a long way with his Spanish.  In my opinion, he can feel good about where he is at.  Still can't conjugate verbs much, but maybe that will come on our SECOND Spanish speaking mission!

Spiritual Thought for the Week: 2 Nephi 19:6  "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder...

Jeffrey R. Holland, Christ and the New Covenant, 80 - The fact that the government would eventually be upon his shoulders affirms what all the world will one day acknowledge - that he is Lord of lords and King of kings and will one day rule over the earth and his Church in person.  All can take comfort from the fact that because the government - and the burdens thereof - will be upon his shoulders, they will be lifted in great measure from our own.  This is yet another reference in Isaiah to the Atonement, the bearing away of our sins (or at very least in this reference, our temporal burdens) on the shoulders of Christ."

Early Thanksgiving

We started this week out in Abancay.  We attended church in the morning and then had to bide our time until our scheduled meetings in the evening.  We did discover a great new restaurant that probably served the best and most tender beef we've eaten here in Peru.

We met with the branch leaders and did some training with them first at 5:00 pm and then followed up with a Pathway fireside after that.

 Another full house.  There is always plenty of interest in Pathway.

 Below, is President William Teves, the counselor in the stake presidency in charge of self-reliance. He has been on the ball, despite his health problems.  We've enjoyed working with him.

 View from our hotel room.  We were on the fifth floor this time.  It was interesting to watch the clouds roll into the valley.  Abancay is a town that is all up or down.  I think the missionaries that work here must get really good leg workouts every day as they walk around the town.

 Abancay has the earliest crowing roosters in the whole mission.  It is not uncommon to hear roosters first thing in the morning as we travel around, but both mornings here, the roosters started crowing at 3:30 am!  It does get light early here, especially now that we are in the summer months, but what is a rooster doing crowing at 3:30?  We left Abancay early Monday morning exhausted.

Every time we travel to Abancay from Cusco we pass this part of the road where the cliff overhangs the roadway.  The photo doesn't do it justice, you can't really tell how much the traffic goes under the overhang.

The drive back did not include any roadside stops due to car sickness.  Thank goodness!!

Monday afternoon after taking a good nap, we sat down and planned out our calendar for the rest of the 5 weeks on the mission.

Monday evening we enjoyed a Family Home Evening at the home of Javier Caseres, Carlos Hale's sidekick for self-reliance.  He and his family have settled into their new apartment and we were given the grand tour by the 4 year old daughter, Alexis.  She did a great job pointing out all the features.  They really have found themselves a very roomy and modern place to call home.

We are down to the last two weeks of teaching English classes.  Due to our travel schedule in December, we didn't feel we could accomplish much good as we would only be in town sporadically.  We also felt we needed to give ourselves time to wrap up other items of business and prepare ourselves for our return to the states.

 Our morning English class plays a new game that has them practice spelling of the lesson's vocabulary as they work as a team to spell the word out first before the other team.  They really liked this activity.

Wednesday was Karolayne Dolmos birthday, Empe's daughter.  She turned 19.  She is preparing her paperwork to go on a mission.  We certainly hope her bishop will allow her.  He has a reputation of being rather strict about nit-picky things.  I gifted her a sweater and a blouse hoping she can use those as a sister missionary. 

We are starting to give away items that we no longer want to bring home so we aren't trying to do it at the last minute.  Elder Rhoades has given away a couple of his suits.  The problem he has is the people are so much smaller than he is, even if they are rather tall.  All of his suits require alterations so they will work for those he is giving them to.

I am preparing my piano students for one more piano recital before we go.  It is scheduled for Dec. 4th.  They are all learning a Christmas song, along with a simplified version of a hymn to present.  I do have one student who is trying to learn the full version of I Love to See the Temple.  I hope she can have that ready.  It will sound very beautiful if she can.

We have decided to buy a few electric pianos to gift to the most dedicated students to help encourage them to continue learning after we go.  The price is very reasonable and you can sometimes find used Casio keyboards.  The trick is going to be giving it to them without them trying to give us something in return.  The culture here is that a gift deserves to be reciprocated and we don't want them to do that as most don't have extra cash for something like that.

Helen Rodriguez Bravo presented the Pathway lesson this week.  She is the one I helped to prepare.  She actually did a pretty good job.  She came up with a clever way to keep the group on task and to quickly move from one activity to another.  She gave them 40 points to start out and then would tell them a set amount of seconds or minutes for each activity.  If they took more time, they lost points.  At the end of the lesson if they had 20 or more points, they were awarded with cookies.  They managed to finish the lesson with 24 points.  Chocolate No Bake cookies for everyone!

Her lesson was on work and how your attitude influences your ability to be successful.  It also talked about the difference between leisure and work.  I suggested to her she might want to show this video below, which she did.

Friday we celebrated Thanksgiving early as all the senior couples and mission presidency members and a few others gathered together for a nice homemade turkey dinner.  We had to work around the president's schedule and this was the only time he could make it work.  So during the day time had to be given to preparing the dishes we had signed up to bring.

Dave has been working on seeing if he can help Nilda, our member fighting cancer, with the repair of her motorcycle that she has.  It would help her deliver her laundry more effectively.  He tried to help her months ago, but it didn't go anywhere, so this time we thought we could use some of the donated money from our GoFundMe campaign to help with that.  We will give more of an update on her status in a future blogpost.  But Dave worked on that project while I cooked.

We know we have been in Peru for a long time because this dinner was extremely tasty and delicious.  More than last year's dinner it seemed we had died and gone to heaven.  It made us anxious to get home sooner and eat more of your typical holiday fare - turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, pies, homemade rolls.  We even had cranberry sauce as one of the Harbertson's daughters had just flown in with her husband to visit and of course whenever family visits, they act as couriers as well and bring requested items from the states.  The only thing missing was eggnog and pumpkin pie, but we did have pumpkin chocolate chip cookies as she had also brought down a can of pumpkin.  

 President Harbertson, his wife, Elder Hasler, a counselor in the mission presidency & Sister Hasler and Vicki, the employee that helps Sister Harbertson with household and cooking duties.

 Sister Johnson and across from her, Elder Johnson visit with Pres. Harbertson's daughter and husband whom live in their stake back home in Utah.

Elder Rhoades entertaining Sister & Hno. Regueati, counselor in the mission presidency and area institute director, with one of his stories, while Brother Keko, head of Operations & Maintenance for the Cusco area, who also serves in the mission presidency as secretary I think, takes a photo.

Saturday we took a trip to Baratillo one last time to look for souvenirs & gifts to take home.  We also hoped to find one more piano to gift out that wouldn't be too expensive.  We hit the jackpot and found a used Casio piano which will serve wonderfully.  

We also visited with Isaias and his wife, Juana.  She is frustrated because her emails to Carol, Dave's sister, have not been going through.  We invited her to come to the church tomorrow and we would help her make that happen using our computer that we have.  She talked a lot about wanting to save up her money and go to Utah for a visit next winter during her summer vacations from teaching school.  Her and Carol must have really bonded.

Saturday evening we helped with an Education workshop.  The facilitator is doing a great job and attendance is good by the group members.  We had a downpour just prior to the start of the class and yet most members arrived, some later than others due to traffic problems created from the storm.  We are reliving the rainy season as we watch the streets turn into rivers once again as the rain often comes down so fast and hard. 

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Russell M. Ballard - October General Conference 2015 - "God is at the Helm"

"Thankfully, Christ is always near, waiting and willing to help us when we pray for help and are willing to repent and come unto Him."

I am grateful for our Savior, Jesus Christ, for his Atoning power and grace that can make us better people and give us joy and happiness in our journey through this life and towards eternal life.