It's the People

Not a  lot to report this week.  It was a pretty slow week at the Self-Reliance center.  This allowed us to get a good jump on our calls this month, with 10 already completed.  

We do have one success story to report.  Below is Silvia.  She is in her 40's but wanted to find a part-time job she could do while her son was in school.  She has a lot of abilities.  She knows how to cook, sew and is good with numbers.  She came to the center and I worked through the Career Workshop with her individually over a period of weeks.  At one point, we were contacted by an employer that was looking for someone with sewing skills.  We sent Silvia to interview and she got the job.  She is very excited because it is a business that makes children's party dresses and she is going to learn some additional skills with this job.  She says it is exactly the type of job she was looking for.  Congratulations to Silvia!

Wednesday was a national holiday so the center was closed.  The holiday was in honor of General Miguel Grua Seminario.  His death was on October 8, 1879 and they have declared it a national holiday.  I had to look him up to learn what was so special about him.  He is one of Peru's national heroes, who died during the Battle of the Pacific against Chile.  He was the Admiral of their Navy and has the nickname, the Gentleman of the Seas. He was from Piura, which is up north so they may have made a bigger deal up there, but here it was just a day off of work and we made the mistake of going to the mall and it was packed.  I have never see such a long line to get into a movie theater.  I should have taken a photo but didn't think about it.

We spent the holiday at Gladys Machado's house in the early afternoon.  Gladys is one of our volunteers at the center and she is mostly responsible for us getting the graduation surveys done. She lives up on one of the hills overlooking Cusco.  Her view from her kitchen window was magnificent. 

 View from Glady's kitchen overlooking Cusco. Can you make out the snow on the peaks in the top left of the photo?

Renzo, Glady's 11 year old son

 She has a good view of the entire airport so she can see the planes come in and go out, but she doesn't have the sound effects to go with it.  She also has a good view of the mountains outside of Cusco.  The night before we had had a major rainstorm and there was actually snow on the peaks of the mountains to the east of Cusco.  Gladys spent two hours preparing us lunch.  I helped a little, but she did most of the work.  She fixed us the Peruvian version of spaghetti, which included chicken and everything was from scratch (except the pasta).  We brought a cake in honor of the holiday (which I did not make from scratch but bought).

Our English classes this week were really fun.  The lesson was on the supermarket and so it involved a lot of food vocabulary.  We decided we needed to bring some visual aids and snacks so we brought them peanut butter and jam sandwiches and peanut butter and honey sandwiches which were a hit.  We have a couple more weeks to go and we will have completed the first level of the course.  We've decided we need to have a party to celebrate.

We are finding out about other families that are struggling financially.  I am working on translating the church's Family Finance Workshop, which I have in English so we can hold a workshop.  The target date is October 26th and we will be working with the members from the Ttio ward.  Our family, the Cuadros, worked with our visitors from the US this past week so we didn't have any contact with them.

Here is photo of Dave with Kent Smith, our visitor from California, a former missionary in Chile.  He brought down brown paper shopping sacks that will be such a help to us for making our carmel corn.  He also brought a big container of Jelly Bellies from Costco which we have been sharing with our English class students and those that come in to the center.

The two seemed to hit it off pretty well.  Kent Smith helped Dave with the roof project and him and his friend helped the Cuadros family.  They talked to them about keeping records for their business and bought them some ledgers to start using.  We will have to provide follow up or that will not bear fruit.

Kent Smith also brought down supplies for making bubbles.  Here Renzo is playing with one of the toys Kent brought.  Renzo thought it was pretty fun so I think the bubbles are going to be a big hit.

The newlywed couple, Austin & Rachel, finished up their stay in Cusco so we invited them over for a Sunday dinner.  They were so kind to help us out with our English class at 7 pm while they've been here.  It has gotten quite large and often I am still involved with the Planning for Success workshop that starts at 6 pm so Dave many times is on his own with this class.  It was such a big help to have them there.  We were able to provide more individual attention to the students and do more role playing.  We will miss them.  Their plan is to travel around the world for 8 months, combining study and a work project along with an extended honeymoon.  What a romantic way to start off married life!

Probably the funniest part of our week was Saturday when we went to a new Saturday market we had heard about, Bariotio.  Apparently, a lot of the vendors sell used products from the United States, along with artesanian vendors that sell in bulk to the street vendors so you can get souvenir items at a much cheaper price.  Our purpose for going there was to hopefully find Dave a pair of boots he can use during the up coming rainy season.  His feet are much larger than these tiny Peruvian, Inca descendants and none of the regular shoe vendors have anything in his size, which down here is a 46.  We had to look long and hard but we finally found him a pair that was his size and hopefully will function well in the rain.

But after that was when the fun began.  We then walked down street after street filled with vendors selling anything and everything.  That is where we found these cute dolls dressed in typical costumes.  We think Kent Smith will be able to bring them back with him so Sadie, Sierra and Cosette can have them for Christmas. 

We saw a lot of other souvenir items, but we can't buy everything all at once!  Dave was going ga-ga over all the old antique items being sold.  He managed to not buy anything until he made a discovery that he could not pass up.  These silver coins below.  They are pure silver (we believe) and one is dated 1706.  Dave looked it up on the internet and he believes they are worth a lot more than what we paid for them.

We've learned that October is the best month to visit Cusco as far as weather goes and amount of tourists around.  So here, Kayla, is my plug for visitors, just so you won't be disappointed.  Plan on October, anyone who wants to visit, and let us know in advance so we can plan some free time in our schedule to visit with you.

Spiritural Thought of the Week:  "It is God's will that we be free men and women enabled to rise to our full potential both temporally and spiritually, that we be free from the humiliating limitations of poverty and the bondage of sin, that we enjoy self-respect and independence, that we be prepared in all things to join Him in His celestial kingdom."  Todd C Christofferson  "Free Frever, to Act for Themselves"  Oct. 2014 General Conference

Technology is Great!

Wow, October already.  We had a good week that was capped off by being able to listen to all sessions of conference via the internet.  We were so grateful to be able to hear conference as if we were sitting in our family room in Utah.  Well, not quite as good since the internet here is slow and at times the download was delayed but for the most part it was good.  I couldn't help but be reminded of what conference was like when I served in El Salvador 35 years ago.  Oh, that's right.  There was no general conference available.  We had to wait until the Ensign arrived with the conference talks in them and then we would read and study them.  That was it.  Next week, they broadcast the conference to the members so we will hear it twice, but this next time will have Spanish voice overs for all but the two talks that were given in Spanish.

Sunday was election day down here.  They do not hold church meetings on election days.  It is against the law to have anything conflict with being able to vote, so the church members here had no church.  We learned that in Peru you get fined if you don't vote so people do everything they can to vote.  Sometimes they have to travel back to their home town to vote and if the fine is less than the cost of travel, they just pay the fine.

But political ads were everywhere.  They don't have a two party system here.  Each candidate is identified by a symbol so those who are illiterate can still vote.  We must have seen somewhere between 6-10 different symbols.  Here are some photos just to give you an idea of what we were seeing. 

Guys driving around in trucks with flags and signs were pretty common.  Sometimes there would even be people cheering for their candidate in the back of the pick up.

The candidate above, for example,  his symbol is the vicuna and the candidates below used the wheat symbol.

 Here are two more.  The ones above use the shovel.  We figure they represent the labor party and below the symbol is the typical inca cap.

During the week there was a lot of loudspeakers blaring out of candidates' headquarters and caravans of vehicles with balloons and signs and people piled in the back of pick-ups cheering for their candidate.  We tried to learn what the political candidates stood for, but no one was able to give us a real good idea. 

We spent Sunday at the other missionary couple's apartment watching conference and having lunch with them.  She fixed the best roast (lomo fino is what the cut is called here) and Dave prepared a potato salad that was delicious (nothing to compete with Cyndee's salad however).  For dessert she had baked a chocolate Texas sheet cake with chocolate pecan frosting that was amazing.  We ate a big piece of that and were on a sugar high the rest of the day.

There is an empty apartment right next to theirs that we looked at and I am convinced we need to move there.  It seems to address most of our complaints with our current apartment.  Dave is holding out to find something even closer to the chapel.  So far everything we've seen closer to the self-reliance office is not adequate or very pricey. We're seeing more and more rain, and some of the storms come with pretty heavy rainfall.  It just makes Dave more determined to find something closer to the office.

Saturday was the hottest day we've had here.  It got all the way up to 74 (which is 23 centigrade) and it felt downright hot!  Dave was involved in a service project helping a member build a new roof on his house.  Apparently, the rains had caused his roof to cave in.  It was made of logs and straw and tin pans.  Dave said there wasn't a single nail used in the construction.  They had tied everything together with leather straps.  Here are some photos of the work.  He recruited the four missionaries serving in that ward to help.

You can see them hauling away old bamboo that was used for the old roof.  You can also see the adobe bricks they've made being dried in the sun.  Below is a sample of their bamboo construction.

Below is where the roof caved in and they are working on fixing.

We ate at Chili's twice this past week as we treated these four missionaries to lunch and their schedules didn't allow them to go at the same time.  These four missionaries - Elder Talavera (from Lima, who is an awesome missionary) and his companion who is new to the mission, Elder Webb went on Monday and Elder Gallegos, who is set to finish up his mission this month and Elder Bird - were a big help to us with the Career Workshop we had just finished so we wanted to thank them.   Dave didn't much care for Chili's in the states but he is learning to really appreciate the daily specials they have here.

We had some wonderful experiences this week with the spirit guiding us and providing revelation on behalf of some of the members we are trying to help.  It has been gratifying to see the scripture "ask and you shall receive" apply to us here on our mission as well as the scripture "For it shall be given you in the very hour, yea, in the very moment, what ye shall say."

 On Wednesday we met with Jose, the head of household for this family in financial distress, and his bishop.  We were truly guided by the spirit in what we said and how we handled working with the father.   That morning while at the center, I came across some articles on self-reliance and finances that were exactly what we needed for that meeting.  I was also led to D & C 104:78-80 that fit perfectly with his situation, but it wasn't until we were in the meeting that it was clearly given to me how to teach from this scripture and the invitation that needed to be given to him and his family to pray in faith for deliverance from their financial bondage.  Dave as well was inspired to share a personal experience he had had as a young father with his down syndrome daughter, Danielle, that could apply to this situation.  We truly felt the spirit in this meeting.

The second experience came Saturday night and Sunday when we were approached by a leader from the Picchu ward we've been working with.  On behalf of the bishop he shared with us some of their concerns for 2-3 families in their ward that are struggling financially and how they hope we can help solve the problem.  It was very disconcerting as their solution is not in harmony with the counsel we received during our training.  We set up a time to meet personally with the bishop in this regard.  We went home and earnestly prayed for help in dealing with this challenge and then went to bed.  The next morning both Dave & I during our scripture study had strong impressions as to what counsel we needed to give this bishop and how we need to approach this problem.  We don't meet with the bishop until next Sunday but it was such a relief to get a clear answer to our prayers so quickly.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Your life is carefully watched over, as was mine.  The Lord knows both what He will need you to do and what you will need to know to do it.  You can with confidence expect that He has prepared opportunities for you to learn.  You will not recognize those opportunities perfectly, as I did not.  But when you put the spiritual things first in your life, you will be blessed to feel directed toward certain learning, and you will be motivated to work harder.  --Henry B Eyring

Welcome Spring!

We forget that we are on the other half of the world but when the members talk about it being spring here, then we are reminded that Cusco is in the southern hemisphere.  It still gets dark about the same time each night but the grass is getting greener, we are starting to see more flowers (see below for examples)

and the best part of all is that the overnight lows stay in the 40´s, low 40´s, but we are out of the 30 degree overnight low temperatures, hopefully for many months to come.

We had a pretty routine week.  Dave had his turn with digestive problems due to something he ate that I didn´t so we kept things low- keyed this week.  There were a couple of days when he stayed home while I went to the center on my own.  We hope our stomachs will toughen up enough at some point that we won´t have to worry about how the food will affect us. 

We finished up the Career Workshop with the Picchu Ward.  We had only two members attend all 4 classes.  There are a number of members that missed just one class.  We´ve offered to teach a make up class this coming Saturday.  We are waiting to hear from the ward leaders if there is enough interest in that.  We let our new volunteer, Julio Condori, teach most of this class.  Along with having a better grasp of the language here, he is very confident talking to a group and enjoys it as well.

We spent quite a bit of time having them practice interviewing and then critiquing how it went.  We also found some good videos to show to supplement the concepts from the class.  The best one was a five minute clip about Chris Gardner, a black man who sacrificed to get the job of his dreams, a stockbroker on Wall Street, back in the 80´s.  The movie Pursuit of Happyness is based on his true to life story and the video used clips from this movie.

Here is a link.  It´s in Spanish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Oh80PgfPo

Here is a segment of that video in English that I was able to find on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n482Jm2iGG8&list=PLV4JDA4wjWxBRh4Zd0o7ZWPa2KS8TJQ_d

We really appreciated the invite from the ward leaders to offer this workshop to their members.  We think this is just a beginning, however.  We now need to do follow up and most likely one on one mentoring with the members to help them put into practice the concepts we taught.  The full-time missionaries were a big help and instrumental in getting this off the ground so on their P-day Monday we took them out to lunch at Chili´s.

We are anxious to begin to offer a financial workshop that teaches how to manage your money, which we hear is a problem for many people (not a problem exclusive to Peru, however) and we anticipate receiving the new workshop materials in Spanish that we were trained on back in June.  We were told to expect them the end of September, but still haven´t seen or heard anything regarding that.

It is the end of September and my goal had been to complete all our Graduation Surveys to the PEF recipients in our system.  That was 50.  Well...that didn´t happen.  The lack of help from the new volunteers impeded our proress on that.  We are sitting at 35.  That´s a lot more than the 2 we did in August.  In the next month or two we should get that caught up.  But then there are all sorts of other types of surveys and calls that need to be done.  We are just chipping away at the tip of the iceberg.

We had written off both of our new volunteers and surprisingly, one of them came in last week and has started to work with us.  She has been in two times and I´ve been able to train her on the calls and have her listen in to some calls I made.  She says she is ready to start doing the calls with my help.  Yeah!!

Dave´s conversation group has sort of petered out, but our English classes are going strong.  We are two thirds through the first level and our students are really starting to know how to say quite a few things.  We had a fun time with this week´s lesson on going to the Post Office.  We role played using Dave as the postmaster.  We brought in stamps, envelopes, boxes to represent packages and had them buy something and send something.  It was a lot of fun.

We also had one of our class members, Jhonathon, have a birthday, Sept. 25th.  One of our lessons has them learn how to say how old they are and when their birthday is.  To our surprise a sister in the class had taken note and brought a small birthday cake so we had a little celebration.  The cakes here are nothing to brag about, but it was so sweet of her to do that as she is not that well off financially.  Jhonathon was so touched he was fighting back tears as we sang Happy Birthday in English.

 Jhonathon holding his birthday cake, Emperatriz Dolmo who brought the cake and myself.

Here is a photo of the group that attended that night.  From left to right are myself, Jaime Reyes, Nefi, Jeremiah Reyes, Jhonathon, Emperatriz and her two children, Victor & Caroline.


We realized that we haven´t posted a photo of the outside of the chapel we are working out of, so here it is, our home away from home away from home.

We are feeling like we need to find an apartment closer to this chapel.  With the rainy season coming up we´d really like to be able to get quickly home.  We also would like to be able to return to our apartment during the 2 to 3 hour lunch breaks that they take.  When we have to walk 20-25 minutes one way, we figure that´s too much time to get soaked and with no heat in the buildings we are concerned for our health.  We´ve been looking around and hope to find something suitable next month.  We do know of one apartment that is on the third floor and would heat up a lot more than our first floor apartment, but it only is about a quarter of a mile closer to this chapel.

We had yet another earthquake this past week.  It happened Saturday evening about 9:30 pm.  We were watching a movie.  This earthquake wasn´t as strong as the last one, it came in at 4.9 or 5.1 (I´ve seen both figures).  But this one was A LOT closer to Cusco.  The epicenter was near a small rural town that is near Urcos, a town that is about 20 minutes by bus from Cusco.  Here is a link to a news story on the quake.  There are some pretty good photos of the damage.  Most of the small town was demolished and 8 people died due to the adobe construction of the houses.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-29406622

This last Friday was the Single Young Adult ball, which they call  Gala de Clavel (Carnation) y Rosa (Rose), held at the Inti Raymi building where we do our Friday night English class.  So we peeked in.  This was a formal dance and so the YA all looked really sharp.  They did a better job of actually dancing instead of just standing around.  We took a few minutes to do a little bit of dancing as well.

One of the members of our English class, started staying after class so we could help her look for a part-time job.  She had good skills, but is in her 40´s which puts her in the "unhirable" status here.  We went over the Career Workshop individually with her, helped her write up a Curriculum Vitae and when we got an inquiry from an employer looking for someone with her skills we sent her over and she got hired!  And it is for a job sewing party dresses for children, which is a good match for what she was looking for.  Our first success story where we were directly involved from start to finish.

We also visited a family in our home ward, Ttio, that is a hard-core case of financial trouble.  The local members have worked with them for years but to no avail.  They run a business selling flowers, vases, candles and incense, but really have no working knowledge of how to run a business or how to live within their means.  Here's a view of their stall in the market.

They are in debt out the wazoo according to the bishop.  We are going to start working one on one with them to see if we can make a difference.  This is probably going to take a miracle, so we hope you will remember us in your prayers.

Here are some random photos we´ve taken in the past but haven´t posted.

Here's a photo for Kent - come visit us and use your travel points to stay here.

 Here's one for Alyssa.  This reminded me of your winter guard competitions as these dance teams were lined up like each school would line up to await the results of the judging.

And Elder Rhoades is not keeping arms length away from the women.  He better hope our mission president doesn't see a copy of this!

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Provident living means avoiding excessive debt and being content with what we have.  Many believe they should have all that others have - right now.  Unable to delay gratification, they go into debt to buy what they cannot afford.  The results always affect both their temporal and spiritual welfare.

When we go into debt, we give away some of our precious, priceless agency and place ourselves in self-imposed servitude.  We obligate our time, energy, and means to repay what we have borrowed - resources that could have been used to help ourselves, our families , and others.

As our freedom is diminished by debt, increasing hopelessness depletes us physically, depresses us mentally, and burdens us spiritually.  Our self-image is affected, as well as our relationships with our spouse and children, and ultimately with the Lord.

I testify that happy is the man who lives within his means and is able to save a little for future needs.

It is important to understand that self-reliance is a means to an end.  Our ultimate goal is to become like the Savior, and that goal is enhanced by our unselfish service to others.  Our ability to serve is increased or diminished by the level of our self-reliance.   --Elder Robert D Hales, "A Gospel Vision of Welfare:  Faith in Action"

Always Something Unexpected

Since Cusco is a huge tourist magnet, we are regularly meeting tourists from all over the world that have come to visit Cusco.  Some of them actually are church members.  When they see our tags they will stop to visit with us.    Some even walk into the church building during the week to find out when Sunday meetings are held.  We've met tourists from the US, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, and Brazil. 

It's a small world in the church.  Here is a photo of one of the full-time missionaries, Elder Sanders with one of the tourists who stopped in.  He was from Switzerland.  As they visited they found out that he knew the missionary's dad and had been an employee of his when Elder Sander's dad had worked in Switzerland.

Today at church we met a couple on their honeymoon that are going to spend a month here and they offered to help us, but their Spanish is very limited.  We also met a couple about our age that were here visiting from Brazil.

We also had a call during the week from two former missionaries who served about 10 years ago that have plans to return to Cusco and spend two weeks here, but want to be of service while they are here.  They somehow got the Self-Reliance center's phone number and not only offered to help us but also offered to bring down anything we wanted.  They are from the southern California area so don't get excited about sending down stuff with them, it's not like they are in Utah.  Any suggestions on what we should ask them to bring?  We haven't been down here long enough to truly be missing much from the states yet.  Maybe peanut butter for Dave.

We had a disappointing week with our new volunteers.  After training them last week and setting up a work schedule, they didn't bother to come in once.  We did follow up calls to them but never spoke directly to them although we left messages.  They had indicated they would come in the afternoon so we stayed at the center every day waiting for them but they never showed.  We won't be doing that this next week.  We are on the prowl for additional volunteers who hopefully will be more committed and responsible.

We did get a new volunteer to help teach the Career Workshop.  We are really impressed with him and he did come through and show up to our class on Saturday and helped present part of it.  He is a 33 year old single guy from Puerto Maldonado, the jungle part of the mission.  He has come in to Cusco to further his studies and I think hopefully find a wife.  We have set him up with our PEF recipient in Lima that we met who is also in her early 30's we think and still not married.  It will be a long distance romance if anything comes of it.  His name is Julio Cesar Condori.  We found out he was the Career Workshop instructor four years ago so he is very familiar with the material.  Our class this week was on good interview skills, interview preparation, and writing a good resume.  The resume outline is different here so we didn't feel very capable to discuss that part of the lesson, so we had him teach that and also help us handle some role plays with the class members.  He did a great job.  We are thrilled to have him as an assistant.  We may get to the point where we can turn the full workshop over to him, if he doesn't flake out on us and that is always a possibility here.

We continued our sightseeing during our lunch hours.  We toured the main cathedral at the Plaza de Armas on Monday last week.  Holy smokes was that impressive!!  Not like the famous European cathedrals by no means but for tiny Cusco it was impressive.  No pictures were allowed inside as well.  So don't have too many photos to post on this.  Here are some shots of the outside of the cathedral that we took back in July.

 This shows a shot of the main cathedral.  Construction started in 1559 and was completed in 1654, almost a hundred years in the building.

It really is three churches hooked together.  That is why it is so big.  This one is on the left side and it was the last one built.  It is called El Templo de La Sagrada Familia and was completed in 1735.

 

This is on the right hand side of the Cathedral and it was built first and is called El Templo del Triunfo.  This was built in 1536 just three years after the conquistadores arrived in Cusco.  It was actually in the best shape of the three so I was surprised to hear it was the oldest, but they had to rebuild it after a major earthquake damaged much of it.

There was plenty of gold leaf on the many alterpieces.  One room was full of silver items.  There was also plenty of ornate wood carvings, especially in the choir section of the main cathedral.  Here is a photo of a postcard we got showing one of the altarpieces. 

 

 

Tuesday we had a very good, productive day.  We were busy at the center the whole morning and then we did last minute preparations for a presentation we had in the afternoon to 70 full-time missionaries.  The mission president was holding a tri-zone conference and we again finagled our way onto the agenda.  It was the two zones here in Cusco and then the Valle Sagrada zone.  Just outside of Cusco, about a half hour away by bus is a valley that has a lot of different tourist destinations for Inca ruins and they call it the Sacred Valley.  We haven't made it out there yet, but there is a lot to see there.  There are only 12 missionaries out in that zone so that leaves about 58 missionaries serving in Cusco.  We prepared an abbreviated power point presentation to teach them what we do and how we can work mutually together to bring about Zion here in Cusco. 

 

I had a slide to start off with this painting of William Turner, a famous English artist from the romantic period in the early 1800's.  It's called The Rescue Boat.  

 So I had the missionaries start off singing Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy.  I had only the elders sing the verses and the sisters joined in on the chorus.  There is one elder who is a whiz at the piano and can improvise at will so I asked him to accompany us and he didn't disappoint.  He played a beautiful arrangement for us and it sounded wonderful!  It was a great way to start out with the spirit.

 

The missionaries had a late lunch right after our presentation and Dave took some photos during the break.

 

 

 You can see Sister Harbertson, the mission president's wife, by the stage talking with a couple of the missionaries.  President Harbertson and his wife have been serving since July 2013 and she still struggles and has limited Spanish.

 

Wednesday during our lunch break we went and toured the Archbishop's Museum.  Here are some photos from that.

This is the central patio area.  The museum is in the rooms surrounding this patio.  They only let us take photos outside of the rooms, but we managed to get some glimpses of what is inside.

First of all, though, it was another place where the woodwork was magnificent.  All the doors and door frames were intricately carved work.  Here you can get an idea of what we saw, just times it by about a dozen.

Example of a complete door.  Below, is a close up of one of the lintels and below that a close up of the door itself.

 

 Dave managed to get some shots of the artwork.  The frames were more impressive than the paintings themselves.

And here you can  see a few of the stained glass work that was in this part of the museum.

 

But Dave scored big time when he asked for special permission to take a photo of a very antique organ they had on display.  They said it was the first organ brought to Peru.  It was shipped over from Italy.  I couldn't believe they gave him permission to take a photo.

 

 This week, we made a bit of progress on our phone calling responsibility, but we are still miles away from where we need to be.  We were reading a Self-Reliance newsletter that was sent to us and read about some calls that we had never heard about and some aspects of the PEF program that were new to us.  It occurred to us that we are lacking training in this regard.  We are going to try to find someone we can contact and get better trained.

 

Friday after our English class we had to peek into the Gold and Green Ball that was going on in the cultural hall for the youth.  Can you believe it a Gold and Green Ball?!  That was like stepping back in time to our teenage years.  They haven't done Gold and Green Balls forever up in the states.

 Not sure if you can read the words on the screen but it says Welcome to the Gold and Green Ball 2014 and behind that they had put up the words Come Unto Christ, but in Spanish Venid a Cristo.

Thay had this display of cakes and a centerpiece made up to look like a cake and on top they had put the YM and YW's medallion emblems.

 

There wasn't a lot of dancing going on when we were there so we had to set a good example and go out and dance.  We got a lot of youth watching us.  They probably couldn't believe us old folks could really put on the moves.  Dave was twirling me all over the place.

 

Here's how they were dancing, well, sort of.

 

 Friday night we also met up with some local fireman.  Of course, we had to get a photo.

 

Saturday we went back to San Blas Plaza to pick up a custom made item we had ordered last week. from this little Indian woman who makes her own crafts.

 She wasn't quite finished so we watched her as she worked to finish up the item we had requested..

 

 I also bought Dave a sampona.  Last Saturday he had spent a long time at this vendor's booth and I could tell he really wanted one.  They were good quality and the vendor could play it like a professional.   Here it is.

 

These are the pipes that have the eerie sound to them that you hear all the time particularly with the song, El Condor Pasa or The Condor Passes.  Simon and Garfunkel made it famous back in the 70's.  When we tried to play them we were pretty weak.  Apparently you have to really put your whole diaphragm into it to get a good solid sound.  Good thing we have 15 months to practice and develop our breathing technique!

 

We also finally got us a good warm alpaca blanket to wrap around ourselves when we are just sitting around this chilly apartment of ours.

 

 

Dave went off Saturday afternoon to fly kites with the young men that come to our English class.  I stayed home and cleaned house.  Dave had a blast and I felt better having caught up on household chores and having an apartment that was finally clean.

 

 Most of the time we have to pinch ourselves to make sure we really are living here in Cusco.  When we see so many tourist come and go, we think to ourselves, "We live here, one of the most famous locales in the world.  We are not visitors for a week or two.  We actually live here."  And we are serving the Lord and our brothers and sisters.  We hope we are making a difference.  In small and simple ways, we hope that great things will come to pass.

 

Spiritual Thought for the Week:

 

 With all this amazing Inca stone work around that you can see just about everywhere, this scripture seems appropriate.  Helaman 5:12

 

And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea his shafts in the whirlwind, yea when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.

 

We bear our testimony that Christ is the only sure foundation in this world and He is mighty to save.  There is nothing too great that he can't save us from if we will let him into our lives by being obedient to his teachings.