Three Month Mark

Three months we've been serving as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or should I say la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias.

We had a much better week.  It took me until Thursday to be back to mostly full steam and able to handle a full day's worth of work.  Tuesday Dave had to go it alone.  I was in bed the whole day.  I think my sickness helped Dave to become more fluent in Spanish and more confident in his abilities.  He didn't have me to rely on so he was forced to do it himself.  It was good for him.  I've noticed that he is doing a much better job with his Spanish now. 

We made up for a slower start to the week by working extra hard over the weekend.  On Friday we learned that all the branch presidents in the mission and the district presidencies were in Cusco for training meetings on Saturday.  We finagled our way onto the program so we could hopefully get the priesthood leaders to help us get good current contact information for our PEF recipients from their units.  So we quickly had to come up with a 10 minute talk.  So we decided to review what President Hinckley´s vision for the PEF program was when he introduced it and talk to them about how that isn´t always how it turns out.  We asked them to please emphasize to their members that PEF is a loan and they need to have integrity to pay it back.  Of course, I was the one to deliver that message.  I was willing to do it so we could get all this contact information at one time rather than having to make multiple phone calls.  This was Saturday afternoon.

Dave took this photo from the back before our presentation.

Then Saturday night we held our first Career Workshop with the Picchu ward.  We prepared for 31 as that is how many had signed up but never believed we would get even close to that number at the class.  Boy were we surprised!  We had 24 come.  That is about 2/3rds.  We took two hours to go over the first class.  Most are wanting help either starting or improving their own businesses.  The Career Workshop is more for job seekers and the lessons are geared towards helping them with interview skills, networking, writing a good resume, etc.   The church doesn't have material out in Spanish for self-employment until the end of September, so I hope the members aren't too disappointed.  We will encourage them to continue with the new workshop once they complete this one.  Dave was back up support but I really had to handle the whole two hours.  It went pretty well.  I will be really glad when Dave can present parts of each workshop.

The full-time missionaries helped us out as well and we are grateful for that as a number of them are native speakers.  One of them took photos and shared them with me.

Here is Dave welcoming the members to the class.  As you can see we only have one row of participants at this point.  As the priesthood holder I always try to get Dave to at least welcome the class and call on someone for prayer.

Here is what the workshop ended up looking like once everyone got there.

He got a good shot of us in action.  I'm walking them through how to do one of the activities in the workbook.


Sunday we attended our home ward for the first time in a long time so could be sure to pay our tithing and fast offerings.  We decided to take some photos of the mural that we walk by everytime we go to that meeting house.  It is a pretty cool mural depicting different areas and locations that are of interest to tourist.

 This one above shows the jungle area of Peru.

 In this one you can see Sacsayhuaman or sexy woman whichever way you want to say it.

 Of course the famous Macchu Picchu.

Close up of the Sacsayhuaman with Cusco in the background.

 Close up showing a condor flying over the inca ruins.

 Dave having a stare down with one of the natives.

 This Peruvian lady and I are good buds.

 Here depicts Tipon, a city where the Incas built very complex water systems.  We've been told it is a must see.  As well as this one below that depicts Moray, another archeological site that is a popular tourist site close to Cusco.

 

This one is at the corner where the mural curves around.  It shows the golden disc that you can see everywhere and then has a saying that is also popular, "Cusco ombligo del mundo".  It cracks me up because ombligo means navel or belly button.  A literal translation would be Cusco, belly button of the world.  But apparently they use the expression ombligo del mundo to communicate the idea that the world revolves around that object.  I think the idea is to say Cusco is the center of the world after all, Cusco was the center of the Inca empire.

After attending fast and testimony meeting and breaking our fast, we headed out to Sicuani, a small town about a 2.5 hour drive from Cusco for a PEF fireside.  We have a new PEF specialist for that stake.  The one we trained back in July didn´t work out. But this one is really dedicated and got this organized right off the bat.  We were supposed to be there at 5 pm but didn't get there until 5:45.  We kept having to pull over on the drive out to take phone calls from the church leaders in Puerto Maldonado (the big city out in the jungle).  Our PEF specialist there, who is 34 years old,  had what appeared to be an anuersym burst earlier that day and they were seeking advice on what to do for him.  Carlos Hale & Javier kept asking Dave for advice.  Dave's medical training and background came in handy as he was able to tell them to have the brother do a few activities to test the damage.  He apparently had facial paralysis on the left side of his face but equal strength in each of his hand grips, which Dave said was a good indication that the damage was not as severe.  But the hospital out in Puerto Maldonado is not well equipped and had only recommended that he seek some physical therapy for his paralysis.  They were able to convince him to fly in to Cusco on Monday and see a neurologist and get a tomography of the brain done.

We met him today just before he was flying home.  It turns out that he has an inflammed nerve that is pinched, thus causing the paralysis.  Dave was stumped because one of the questions he had them ask was if he had a fever because that indicates inflammation.  But their response to that had been no.  But we were relieved to hear that it wasn´t anything more serious.

Back to our Sicuani activities.  So we started the Sicuani fireside about 5:45 pm and didn't finish until 8 pm.  Long fireside huh?  But we had good attendance and they had a lot of questions we were able to answer.  I played the piano for the hymns and I was excited to play on a real piano.  Most of the chapels have electric pianos.  This was a Yamaha and it was actually in tune and had a very nice touch.  It seemed fairly new.  It is the best piano I have played on here in Peru.  Funny, that a small town in Peru would have the best piano I've seen.

I also gave a talk, which I had to change when we were about a half hour away from Sicuani since that is when I found out what they really wanted me to talk about which was not the same thing I had presented at our last fireside in Puno back in July.  Good thing I've given a few other talks since then.  I was able to quickly adapt my talk to the branch presidents for this fireside.  I introduced ourselves, told them how we can help them, then reviewed what President Hinckley's vision was for the PEF when he first announced about it 13 years ago.  I spent quite a bit of my time emphasizing to them that this is a loan and the need for them to be true to the commitment to pay it back.

Dave gave the same talk he prepared for our Puno fireside, but this time did a much better job.  He didn't make very many pronunciation errors and he was able to pause and give better inflection to his sentences so his delivery was so much better.

The stake president talked after Carlos Hale gave his presentation and we were quite impressed with him and his advice to the members to quit buying items that drain them financially or going into debt too soon and focus on buying items that generate income and hold off making big purchase items (like a house) until they are better off financially.

We had good attendance and they all stayed the whole time.  Here is some photos Dave took somehow.

We had to stay the night in Sicuani.   I was a bit nervous as to what type of accomodations we would have due to the small size of the town.  We pulled up and it wasn't much to look at, but to our amazement, it was a VERY nice place.  We took quite a few photos so brace yourself.


 The photo above shows the view we had as we walked out of our room.

 This is the inner patio/courtyard area.  Very pretty, huh?

 A sitting area.

They had a lot of wrought iron and plants around which gave it a very pretty atmosphere.  The paintings they had were of dancers in native costume.  Here are some samples.

This last one shows a dance where the men wear masks.  The one with the long nose is a caricature of a Spaniard.  They were seen as having big noses compared to the Indian population apparently.

The owner is an antique afficionado and had many of his antiques on display. Here are some samples.

 For Alyssa & Kelan, here are some reminders of your England/London days.

 This was my favorite.  A really old sewing machine where you turn the handle on top to make the needle go up and down.  Anyone have any idea what era that comes from?

These were on display in the reception area.  Pretty cool typewriter, don't you think?

Then for the older generation, does this bring back memories?

We also were in for another surprise when we briefly turned on the TV and channel surfed and found ourselves watching BYU television....in Peru!!  Crazy.  I never expected to see that.  Here's the proof.

We had to get up bright and early to head back to Cusco as Monday was the returning missionary seminar that starts at 9 am.  On the way back we drove past a pretty bad accident.  Why we don´t see more of them with the way people drive here is beyond me.  A small pick up truck had flipped over.  It was full of boxes and things in the back that were scattered and all the cab´s windows were shattered out.  We didn´t see any people in the truck so they must have taken care of that before we got there. 

We got back just in time for Carlos Hale to start the seminar.  We headed home to shower and change.  Our part of the seminar didn´t start until 11 am.  We teach the Career Workshop during a two hour time frame so it really is just an introduction and hit the highlights enough to hopefully get them to check out the full class at their local center. 

This group of returning missionaries was mostly sisters.  We had 8 missionaries in all, 6 of whom were sisters and only one of the missionaries was from the states.  The rest were all latinamerican.  We actually knew two of the missionaries.  The one from the states had served in the Cusco zone as his last area and the other sister that we knew was the sister I had gone out with during the missionary invasion that took place during our first week or two here in Cusco.   I had been pretty impressed with Hermana Gomez.  She had been very confident, and easily taught the members we had visited.  She used the power of testimony well. 

I was much more comfortable teaching a group made up of mostly sisters.  I was smart enough to have them introduce themselves a bit and I was able to find out that most of them were well into their studies and some even had jobs already liined up for them upon their return.  This helped me adapt the presentation to what they needed.  I also am now much more confident with my Spanish speaking ability.  At the lunch break I asked the sisters how I could improve my Spanish and they thought I was kidding.  They said I do great right now.  I had really hoped for some suggestions for improvement.  Dave was my technical support for the videos we showed.  He has six weeks before the next round and I hope he will be able to teach part of that.  I think he should be ready.

Here is the photo of this group of returning missionaries.

L-R  Sister Parraga, Hermana Rhoades, Elder Rhoades, Elder Ortiz, Elder Jones, Presidente Harbertson.  Middle row L-R  Hermana Del Rio, Hermana Huaman, Hermana Enriquez,  Front row L-R Hermana Oliveras, Hermana Gomez.

This weekend we had the opportunity to get to know the other senior couple that is serving in the Cusco mission, the Sandbergs.  They are serving in the area of member support services and were asked by the mission president to serve out in Abancay.  He is serving as a branch president and his wife works a lot with the sister missionaries and the members.  They had come in for the branch president seminar.  We went out to eat Friday night with them when they first arrived.  They were interested in eating American food so we took them to Chili's.

This is their second mission together, the third for him.  He served originally as a youth in Central America.  Their first mission was in the mountains of Guatemala, pretty rough conditions, but it didn't deter them from serving again and this time they find themselves in Peru.

We also got together with them and Elder & Sister Hasler on Monday night for another dinner, this time at an Italian restaurant near the Plaza de Armas (tourist central) so it was a bit pricey, relatively speaking.  My lasagna was still under $15 but I guess we've become accustomed to the more typical prices of around $5 a plate.

Before hooking up with them Monday evening, I finished up working with a gal from Sweden who is a member of the church and had come over to do some humanitarian projects.  She needed some help translating so I helped her on two different occasions.  She was gathering stories from a small village and plans on publishing a book.  From the sales of the book, she is hoping to make enough money to purchase a vehicle for the village to use to help them transport their products to the market for sale.  Look what she gave me as a thank you present!

A huge bar of Swedish chocolate.  She says Daim is a real popular brand of chocolate over there.  It is much better than any chocolate I can find here in Peru.  It tastes a lot like a Hershey symphony bar.  And since I've lost 15 pounds since being here in Peru, I don't feel a bit guilty if I eat the whole thing myself!

Here is a photo of her with the Haslers in the Plaza de Armas on Monday night as we went our separate ways.  She was leaving to return to Sweden the next day.  Her name is Jenny Geuken and she is now part of our mission experience.

We took quite a bit more photos this week round about Cusco and our daily lives, but since this is now quite long already, I think those will be part of next week's post.  I don't think we will have quite as active of a weekend or week for that matter.

Spiritual Thought:  Not every prayer is answered so quickly.  But truly our Father knows us and hears the pleadings of our hearts.  He accomplishes His miracles one prayer at a time, one person at a time.  We can trust that He will help us, not necessarily in the way we want but in the way that will best help us to grow.  Submitting our will to His may be difficult, but it is essential to becoming like Him and finding the peace He offers us.  C.S. Lewis said, "I pray because I can't help myself.  I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping.  It doesn't change God.  It changes me."  General  Conference talk, "Fear Not; I Am With Thee"  April 2014  Jean A Stevens

Enough Already!!

For all of you who think we are having too much fun on our mission, this past week was for you.  We spent the whole week sick between Dave and I which I can guarantee you was NOT very fun.  Therefore, there is not much to report this week, as we really did minimal work.  We just managed to keep the ball in the air but didn't make much progress with it.

Dave was sick from Sunday through Thursday with a major cold.  He felt bad enough that he spent the whole day in bed on Wednesday.  The stomach bug stayed with me until Wednesday and caused me to drop a bit more weight.  Then Dave was kind enough to share his cold with me and Thursday night  I started to feel a sore throat come on and by Friday I had congestion, a lack of energy and felt achy all over.  On top of that I had two large cold sores break out, one in the center of my upper lip and the other in the right corner on the bottom.  Sorry, no photo will be included of that.  I spent another Saturday laid up in bed.  Dave was a busy beaver and did a lot of household errands and chores.  I think he was so glad to be feeling back to normal he was anxious to be busy again.

He made a shopping trip alone to Plaza Vea, a major supermarket here and came back with many American food items, among them

1- a large box of Kellog's Corn Flakes
2- Hunts ketchup
3- Kraft mayonnaise
4- Pringles

And the biggest prize of all - bacon!!!  He probably paid a minor fortune for all that.

Our week of review with our Cusco stake English classes went well.  It was good for them to see how much they have progressed in just one month and how much they can say.  The English classes in the Inti Raymi stake are in the second week and are slow to pick up momentum.  The 7 pm class is doing well, the 8 pm class is just about dead.  The Wednesday night class, I had to teach on my own due to Dave being sick and the Friday night class Dave taught on his own because by then I was feeling pretty crappy.

Our center is getting more volunteers but they come with problems.  One of our volunteers quit coming because she was intimidated by the computers.  She doesn't have much experience with them.  If we hadn't been so sick, we would have gone to visit her to assure her we are there to help her and help her see what a good skill it will be for her to learn.  Another volunteer was supposed to start this week, but never showed up.  Again, if we hadn't been so sick, we would have given him a call to help push him into action.  The one dependable and gun-ho volunteer we had, has had to stop coming.  We hope to work things out with her, if possible, but not sure where that will go.

We are starting to get some success with  our phone calling.  We were able to complete a few (6) graduation surveys.  I know it doesn't seem like much but to just get any done still takes a lot of work as it often requires multiple calls (we have alternative contact persons we try to call and if that doesn't work, we look up their bishop or stake president and call them to ask for the recipient's phone number and then we can finally call and speak to the person we originally wanted to call) just to locate our PEF recipient.  One of our volunteers is very willing to do the calls, but is computer challenged as well, so I helped her enter the data and she did the calling.  Hopefully, the ice is broken and we will be able to pick up speed on this.

Since we are the model Self-Reliance center for the mission we are responsible to call PEF recipients from all over the mission.  Here is a map that shows the mission boundaries.  I thought I had posted it before, but it looks like I may have missed doing it.

Not the best photo, but you can see it covers quite a bit of area and very diverse as well.  The darker green section is jungle, the lighter green section is mountains and the browner area is the altiplano, then you can see the blue on the far right which is Lake Titicaca.

This weekend was Cusco's stake conference with another area seventy visiting.  Dave had to attend the Saturday night session by himself as I needed to work on getting better for a presentation we were scheduled to do on Sunday, something I just wasn't going to be able to hand over to Dave to fill in.  The visiting area seventy, Winsor Baldarrama, from Cochabamba, Bolivia apparently was fairly young (we looked him up and he is only 37 years old) and as part of his talk he asked all the full-time missionaries to stand up and started to count them.  He got to 19 and was confused as to why it was an odd number.  Dave went like this

and he figured things out.  Dave said he had so many members come up to him afterwards and give him medical advice to help me get better.

One of the wards here in Cusco invited us to present a self-reliance lesson to their ward members this Sunday.  Even though I don't have a lot of experience with preparing Power Point presentations, I am proud to say I put together a very basic, but thorough self-reliance presentation.  We needed this to help us remember what to say and how to say it in Spanish.  Here are a few samples of our slides.
This was our introductory slide.

Then this is the slide teaching the four basic spiritual principles of self-reliance.

In case you can´t read Spanish or deduce what we are talking about the basic principles are 1-Faith,
 2-Obedience, 3'Individual Responsibility and 4-Unity & Service.

We found some very good quotes to use in our presentation but they were only in English.  I had to work at translating them and some of them weren´t easy.  One claimed to have it translated in Spanish on their website which got me excited, but when I looked closely at what the translation was saying it wasn´t anywhere close to a accurate, so I had to tweak it quite a bit.

Dave gave his short talk about self-reliance and the pre-existence again and this time was much iimproved in his pronunciation and wasn´t nearly as scared.  We used our story from 2 Kings about the widow, her debt, the cruse of oil and the instructions from the prophet Elisha as an example of the four self-reliance principles in action and they seemed to catch the vision.

The ward members were very grateful for our presentation and at the end were invited to attend the Career Workshop that will be given at their building the following four Saturdays.  The priesthood leaders did a good job selling this opportunity talking about how this type of instruction would cost hundreds of dollars through any other organization but this is free because it is through the church.  They also told them to take their commitment seriously and plan on attending all four sessions if they signed up.  After the closing prayer, there was a long line to sign up and at the end we left with 31 members signed up for the workshop! 

It made me think of the early missionaries who went out to preach the gospel and found whole congregations ready and prepared to accept the message of the restored gospel.  It seems this ward is like the field that is white and ready for harvest.

Then an even bigger miracle occurred later that day.  Our native instructor, who has been on no show, no contact, disappear off the face of the earth status, called us! He apologized and claimed he had an emergency that caused him to leave town and he didn´t have the opportunity to call us to let us know.  He also claimed that where he was at did not have any access to internet or cell phone and he just got back and heard my messages and got my email.  Whether it is true or just an excuse, we don´t know but we were able to tell him about this ward and asked if he was available to teach.  He said he would come in and coordinate but believes he can help.  I sure hope so.  We´ll keep our fingers crossed and prayers and faith working.

Sunday evening we had invited Javier Caseros, a service missionary at the Self-Reliance, and his family (wife and 3 year old daughter) to dinner.  Dave also invited a young returned missionary to dinner as well.  Since I´ve been under the weather, Dave was the cook and chose to prepare pancakes, hash browns, fried eggs and the precious bacon.  It was a hit with everyone except the 3 year old.  I should have taken a photo of the feast but forgot.

After dinner we taught them how to play Yahtzee.  They enjoyed it very much, especially the young man.  Just for the record, I had 3 Yahtzees in one game.  That never happens to me and I had 4 witnesses of this accomplishment.  So of course,  I won the game.  No one came even close to my score of 486.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  The Lord has placed currents of divine influence in your life that will lead you along the individual path He would have you fulfill here on earth.  Seek through the Spirit to identify it and carefully follow that direction that the Lord has put in your life.  Align yourself with it.  Choose willingly, to exercise your agency to follow it.  - Richard G Scott  August 2014 Ensign  "Act Upon This Land as for Years".

Shaking Things Up!

We had a marathon Sunday last week.  We have been working mostly in the Cusco stake since we live in the Cusco stake and the Self-Reliance center is located in the stake center for the Cusco stake. But there are two stakes in the city of Cusco, the other one is called Inti Raymi and it actually has more units and covers more area, I believe.  We realized after about six weeks here that we needed to make ourselves known to the members in that stake by visiting and helping them see us.  We learned that one of the chapels has three wards meeting in it so we decided to attend as much of the meetings of each ward as possible.  We started at 8 am and ended at 3 pm, which is when the sacrament meeting of the last ward ended.  We could have been there until 5 pm if we stayed for all of their meetings, but we had a plane to catch down to Lima that night and had to be at the airport by 6 pm at the latest so we thought that might be cutting it close.  We were able to get the word out about the English classes that we planned on starting up in their stake this week.

English classes are taking up more and more of our time.  We are now booked for Tuesday through Friday nights with classes, plus Tuesday and Thursday mornings.  And there is still a demand for additional classes.  There is an interest in offering a conversation group for those return missionaries that studied English while on their mission and still need to practice to get ready for the English exam BYU-Idaho offers that allows them to study via the internet if they can show proficiency in the language.  As well as there are many people who have already had quite a bit of English instruction (it is required in the schools now) but need opportunity to practice what they have book learned.  It looks like we will be starting next month a conversation group that will meet in at 6 pm Tuesdays and Thursdays each week.  Dave will head it up.  Since his Spanish is limited, he can't contribute a lot to the Planning for Success workshop that meets at that same time.  English seems to be his niche.  We would also like to teach a Book of Mormon class in English, but to do that through the Institute program we would have to teach it at 6:30 am on Saturday.  Yup, 6:30 am!!!  Who goes to Institute at 6:30 am on a Saturday??  They say that's a popular time here, but it has to be dang cold at that time in the morning.  I think church at 8 am is hard to handle with no heat in the buildings.  We have taken that proposition under advisement. 

Our trip to Lima was successful.  Our flight down had 14 other missionaries traveling down to Lima for visa business as well.  We figured that it is a never ending process.  With 12 missions in Peru and if each mission has as many missionaries as our mission (about 225) we are talking 2,700 missionaries that at some point or other needs to deal with the government regulations when it comes to visas (except for native Peruvian missionaries, I would imagine, which actually probably brings the number down).  We had to be into the immigration office first thing in the morning so we had to spend Sunday night there in Lima.  It took all morning and we spent the majority of it standing in one line just to go to another line to then go to another line.  But at the end of it, we had our Peruvian ID. 

This whole process will have to be repeated next summer since the visa goes for a year.

Our open house produced two new volunteers for our center!  We've had two sisters coming this week to be trained and help out.  Unfortunately, we learned one of them may not work out as she may not be able to get cleared by her ecclesiastical leader as she is not attending her assigned ward due to conflicts with some of the members.  Apparently, the Peruvian government has a Ministry of Work Department that is probably comparable to our Dept. of Labor.  We were told that a representative from that Department could show up at anytime to audit what we are doing and we have to be able to show that everyone is working as a volunteer or the church can be fined and required to back pay anyone that we can't prove is strictly a volunteer. So they require everyone to bring in a form signed by their ecclesiastical leader and themselves designating they are a volunteer and we keep that on file.  Apparently in the past the church has been on the losing side of this law and doesn't want to repeat it.

But I have a task for the Ministry of Work to handle.  Friday night after teaching English class, we headed over to the one mall Cusco has in town since it is only about 1/2 mile from the chapel.  When we got there it was probably close to 9 pm and when we left it was 9:40 pm.  On the walkway leading up to the mall, we saw one boy, about age 6 by our best estimate, sitting on the ground with a pile of candy bars that he was supposed to sell, but he was konked out, fast asleep sitting up! Poor thing!  Then on our way out we saw two little girls sitting on the walkway as well trying their hardest to stay warm while they tried to sell their treats.  These girls were probably 10 and 6 years old.  We gave each of them a roll we had just bought in the store and I bought a treat from the 6 year old.  I don't know how late they stay there, but obviously there are no child labor laws in Peru!  I've been haunted by those scenes ever since

Our new workshop instructor for the Career Workshop has been a no-show since the first class and we can't seem to get in touch with him by phone.  We've left a number of messages but he doesn't return our call.  Our Self-Reliance Center is considered a model SRC so we are supposed to be offering all the services.  It looks like we are going to have to be prepared to teach this one until we can find someone more reliable.. 

We are still struggling completing phone calls. I spent one day fixing the headphone settings on the laptop computers so that they would function ok.  That has been part of the problem, the computers hadn't been configured correctly.  Well, duh.  Now that we are getting busier at the center, it is harder to find time to make the calls.  We have the goal to get enough volunteers we can have some come after hours to make the calls, while we are not open for services and then we would also like to be able to have the center open in the evenings.  We may have found a volunteer today in church that will make that possible.  We'll see how that pans out.

I had my first member that I helped go through the whole PEF application process send her request in this week.  I worked with her during the Planning for Success workshop and then I helped her fill out her request online.  She has been working as a pre-school teacher, but needs to get certified.  Your pay goes up immensely when you can show that you have graduated and are certified.  Currently, she works full-time and gets paid equivalent to $120 a month!  Once she becomes certified, she anticipates her pay will go up to a range from $555 to $740 per month.  What a difference that will make for her and her family!  BTW, I saw a job posting for an English teacher that pays $555 a month.  Any takers?

Dave went ahead and bought me a new tablet this week.  One of the returned missionaries coming in for help had a two week old Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7 inch screen that he needed to sell since he found out it wasn't the best fit for what he needed for his classes at the university.  It has a lot more technology than we had planned to buy (and more expensive).  We may come home a lot more tech savvy than when we left!  If I can manage not to lose this one!

We also broke down and bought some drawings from a street vendor.  There are quite a few of them on the streets trying to hit up tourists.  One of them told us his name is "Johnny Cash" and he spoke a bit of English so we promised we would look at his drawings later.  Well, this week "later" came and we liked two of them enough to buy them and now have them displayed in our apartment.

This one we liked because of how well it captures what we daily see around us.  We just don't have a view of the snow capped mountain where we live.  What we see is this hillside (in photo below) everyday as we leave our apartment.

Not sure if you can make it out.  I was trying to capture the lettering that is mowed into the side of the hill.  It says Viva El Peru.

The other drawing we bought is below.  It makes us think of something Emily Rhoades would draw.  It is very well done in charcoal and also depicts a very typical scene here in Peru. You really ought to come down for a visit, Emily.  You would have a hay day here getting lots of new inspirations for drawings/paintings.  As well as taking tons of photographs.

 

I guess it was a week for house decorating because we also bought some coverings for our desk.  When we picked out the desk a number of weeks ago, we chose it for its L shape.  We didn't particularly like that it had sections of the tabletop in glass so we decided we could fix that by purchasing some cloth to cover it.  We finally got around to doing it.  We had them made up to fit each glass section.  Here is a photo showing one of them.

 I don't think the photo does the colors justice.  They are very vibrant and gives our desk a local flair.

 

Saturday I woke up sick as can be.  I somehow picked up an intestinal bug and had stomach cramping, diarrhea (pretty gross), no energy, aches & chills.  I stayed in bed all day.  Dave went to the local outdoor market all by himself and bought the produce we needed for the upcoming week.  He had no problems, a definite indicator that his Spanish is getting better.  It was a gorgeous sunny day in Cusco and we had planned on going kite flying mid-afternoon so Dave took off for that on his own and managed to go and come without any problems as well.  He was so busy flying kites he didn't take any photos.  Our neighbors, the Guerras, joined him so I hope I can get some photos from them.  

Dave took his dragon kite and he said it made a big sensation with the kids at the field.  Here in Peru they sell kites but the cheap plastic kind that are only in the shape of a diamond with various graphics on them so a kite in the shape of a dragon was quite an abnormality for them and the kids were very curious about it.  Dave said the wind was good this time and the weather was warm and he had a great time.  But he had been fighting off a cold for the last few days and I think all that wind didn't help because the next day he woke up pretty sick with head congestion and fever.

Sunday, August 23rd, we both managed to get up and go to church for three hours but that was about all we did.  We rested up and tried to get better the rest of the day.  I was on the mend but David was worse.  We visited the Villa Union ward.  Their chapel is actually very close to our apartment, closer than our own ward building, a 10 minute walk that's all and they meet at 9 am instead of 8 am the time of our home ward meetings.

Behind my back, prior to the meeting starting, Dave committed to the bishop that I would speak to the ward about the center and self-reliance.  When he let me know, he gave me the impression it was merely an introduction and invitation short announcement type of thing.  Well the announcements were given and nothing was mentioned about me coming up.  We had the sacrament and then when it came time to announce the speakers, that is when the bishop is telling everyone that I am going to SPEAK on self-reliance.  Oh my heck!  I looked at Dave and he shrugged and told me he hadn't wanted to scare me too badly.  Luckily, I've been preparing a Power Point presentation for next Sunday in the Picchu ward on spiritual principles of self-reliance so I was able to pull some of those thoughts together and give a brief 3-5 minute talk.  Learning to speak extemporaneously I think is part of being a missionary.  I'm also learning to be prepared to play the piano at anytime.  Good thing I've developed that talent well.  It's just I don't get much practice time here in Peru and they do have some hymns that we don't have in English.

We had another experience with an earthquake on Sunday as well.  Two earthquakes in two months and both on a Sunday.  This one hit later in the afternoon.  It seemed to last a good long time.  It shook our building with enough force that we decided we needed to go outside when it didn't subside after awhile.  All the buildings are cement and we've commented that we'd be dead meat if a significant earthquake were ever to hit Cusco.  We've been told that Cusco rarely gets earthquakes and yet we are here in Cusco just shy of two months and we feel a strong one!  The epicenter was actually near a town called Tambo which is 393 miles from Cusco but I think that is a bit deceiving as that is not how the crow flies but as a car drives and there are a lot of switchbacks on these mountainous roads.   So here is a screen shot of google maps showing where Tambo is compared to Cusco.

 According to Dave's caluculations using the map's legend it is more like 102 miles away as the crow flies.  It was a bigger earthquake, 6.9, than the one that hit California earlier in the day.  It was also a lot deeper about 50 miles deep.  It's a good thing it was as far away as it was.  So keep us in your prayers.  We'd sure like to make it back to the states come December 2015!

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  The scriptures are full of references to self-reliance.  We are now reading the scriptures with that mind set due to our call and we've been amazed at how many apply.  Here are a couple.

D&C 38:39  And if ye seek the riches which it is the will of the Father to give unto you, ye shall be the richest of all people, for ye shall have the riches of eternity; and it must needs be that the riches of the earth are mine to give; but beware of pride, lest ye become as the Nephites of old.

D&C 132:5  For all who will have a blessing at my hands shall abide the law which was appointed for that blessing, and the conditions thereof, as were instituted from before the foundation of the world.

 

Be Careful What You Wish For

or pray for... you just might get it.  During the first few weeks here in Peru, we weren't very busy and we didn't feel like we were contributing very much or like we were being diligent missionaries.  We prayed and wished for more work to do.  Well, now we have what we wished and prayed for, plenty of work!

August 10th we had a busy Sabbath day.  It was our mission president's 60th birthday and we were invited to a surprise birthday dinner in his honor.  It only involved the local senior missionaries, his assistants and the couples that work with him in the mission office so it wasn't a big group.  It was interesting to find out that President Harbertson is the same age as David, just 4 months older.

 Pres. Harbertson blowing out his candles.  You can see Dave practicing for his turn in December.

Here is the merry group.  L-R  Elder & Sister Hasler, document retrieval missionaries for family history, President & Sister Harbertson, the Rhoades, Veronica & Carlos Hale, unknown couple, Bro. & Sister Aguerra, mission secretary

 

We didn't get to stick around much, we had to eat and run because we also had our Self-Reliance Center Open House for the priesthood leaders of the Cusco stake that evening.  All the bishoprics for all the wards, the stake presidency members and their wives were all invited. It was well attended.  We had 42 people in attendance and it was a fairly big affair.  We had flowers for the office.  Below is an example of one of the arrangements. Look at the flowers not me (not the greatest photo of me)

 



You can also see an example of the English posters we use for our English classes.

 

We also had a program.  I spoke and introduced Dave & I and gave a little background of how we came about to be serving in Cusco.  Told them about the big long delay in getting our call and the obstacles we had to overcome to get out on the mission.  Then told them with how hard we had worked to get on a mission we wanted to make sure we worked hard while here in Cusco and we asked for their help.  I had also been given the assignment to plead for volunteers to help us man the center.  Dave bore his testimony.  It was short & sweet since he is still struggling with Spanish.  Each of the other volunteers bore their testimonies, Javier & Carlos both spoke on Self-Reliance and the stake president, Mario Garcia spoke.  He is great!  He is very supportive of the center and our activities.

 

After the program we invited them all to visit the center and see what resources we have.

It was a bit crowded as you can see.  This photo shows a bit of both rooms.  The leaders are in the room with the six new laptop computers, but you can see through the window that connects to our other room as well, where we have two desktop computers and printer.

 

We also served refreshments.  Not just a few nuts or cookies and punch.  We served a full meal it seems.  We served two types of empanadas (which are very popular here), chicken & cheese, a veggie tray, drinks and cake.

 

It must have been a success because we've been busy ever since with lots of people coming in to the center for help.

 

English classes continue.  It is always anybody's guess as to how many will show up for each class.  Sometimes we have to divide the group and we both teach.  Other times we are lucky if we have three to four people there.  We do have a handful of faithfuls that are coming to every lesson.

 

We started the Career Workshop this week.  We found a teacher to present the class who has experience with this workshop.  He taught it down in Lima before moving to Cusco.  He is also in his branch presidency and starting his own business so I hope he will be able to keep his commitment.  Now we just have to get the members to attend.

 

We also met with the leaders of the Picchu ward.  They have caught the vision of self-reliance.  They are asking us to help them present the Career Workshop to all their members. I told them it was really important that they be taught the underlying spiritual principles first and then the workshop so it was decided that we would meet with their ward on the 5th Sunday during the combined priesthood/relief society hour and talk about self-reliance principles and then each Saturday in September we are going to present one of the 4 lessons included as part of the Career Workshop.  It is their hope that if their members don't necessarily need help finding work right now, they will learn something they can pass on to others that they know who do need the help.  It should be interesting to see how this turns out.

 

We received some additional training from Lima this week as well via telephone conferencing.  This training was on the system that tracks the PEF recipients and their loan status.  I have been exploring the system and trying to figure things out and some of the things taught I had managed to master on my own, but I did learn a few new things that were very helpful.  There are a couple of surveys we are supposed to do with each recipient, which this training helped me learn how to handle and register in the system.  One is a graduation survey and the other is a work survey.  We are behind in all these tasks because we didn't understand the system.  We have 52 graduation surveys needing to be done and we have 245 PEF recipients (and growing) that we need to stay in contact with and track.  We received this training on Tuesday.

 

I really feel this is a mountain that needs to be conquered and it has been such a struggle.  So I determined that I would faithfully make phone calls the remainder of the week.  I wish I could report good success, but it was a flop.  So many of the recipients' contact information seems to be out of date.  Even the alternative contact information wasn't very useful.  But I did learn how to look up their bishop's contact information and stake president's information as well.  It may be slow going to get everything verified but hopefully once we do we'll be able to consistently contact them.  We learned that Cusco is in the bottom of the cellar for repayment of PEF loans.  That is not something to be proud of.  It needs to be a major emphasis for us to help turn that around.

 

By the time we hit Thursday evening when we attended our first Cusco stake self-reliance committee meeting I had devised a plan.  I asked the stake counselor to help us.  I told him I had made a list of all the recipients from his stake and that we needed help from the ward leaders to verify the contact information.  He said he would talk to all the bishops in a meeting he had scheduled for Sunday and that all I needed to do was get him my list.  I did that before the meeting was over.  Let's hope that will help.

 

Dave got to travel this week to Abancay with Carlos Hale.  I opted to stay in Cusco.  At that point, I was still hopeful regarding phone call success.  Plus I really needed some time for housekeeping items.  But to be truthful, a big factor in me choosing to stay home was what we were told the road was like to get there.  Abancay is lower in altitude than Cusco but you have to go down, then back over another mountain and then back down to reach Abancay.  Apparently, the road has many switchbacks that are quite acute and motion sickness and nausea are very common.  Dave was told to go without breakfast since it is easy with an empty stomach.  It is a 4.5 hour drive one way from Cusco to Abancay so they were planning on leaving Friday morning spending the night and coming back sometime on Saturday.  So it was the first time we worked apart since arriving in Cusco.

 

I did a lot of grunt work those two days.  I gave our apartment a good thorough cleaning, did laundry, walked all over doing errands, shopping at the markets, and working on a power point presentation for the Picchu ward and getting no where with phone calls (very frustrating).

 

Dave had a blast on his trip.  He did say he had some problems with the drive but while in Abancay he enjoyed his time.  I had given him a list of PEF recipients for that district and asked him to verify their contact information.  He came back with current telephone numbers.  He also met with some of the members who need help and met a number of the full-time missionaries out there.  He said it is much warmer, more tropical there.  He said there were banana trees, avocado trees, and mango trees.  Yup, that's tropical.  Here are some of the photos he took.

 Close up of an avocado hanging in the tree.  Here the word they use for avocado is palta.

Here is a close up of some bananas hanging in the tree.  So interesting how they grow!

 Dave says the taller tree on the left is an avocado tree and the taller tree on the right is a date tree.

 On the road to Abancay.  Apparently one of the straighter sections of the road.

I liked this photo because you can tell how high up in altitude they are since the shot is from the car window and the clouds are on level with the camera.

They passed this mountain which if it is snow covered, you know it has to be one of the higher peaks in Peru.  They are so high up it's like you're only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

 

Dave took quite a few photos of the tropical flowers they had there in Abancay.  Here are some of his photos.  I have no idea what types of flowers they are, except the first one does look like a daisy.  He says there were orchids there, but I don't think any of these are orchids, at least not the kind I am familiar with.

 



He said the hotel where he spent the night had a flower garden.  Here is a photo showing part of the garden. 

 

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  "What an amazing source of power, of strength, and of comfort is available to each of us.  He who knows us better than we know ourselves, He who sees the larger picture and who knows the end from the beginning, has assured us that He will be there for us to provide help if we but ask.  We have the promise:  'Pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good' [D&C 90:24]  ---President Thomas S. Monson  Ensign August 2014 "Heavenly Father Said No and Yes".