To Lima and Back

Lima Fruit Cart

Larco Mar, Comercial Center On the Coast, Lima

Larco Mar Renovation

Our Friends, La Familia Cisneros-Jimenez

The Haslers Out for Sushi in Jockey Plaza

Painting Competition 1

Painting Competition 1

Hard At work

Photo Hawkers by Ccoricancha

Sunday we spent the day in meetings in Cuarahuasi where Rich gave a talk, and Julie played the music. Then she taught Relief Society, it had the sense of a one man or in this case, two person band… It all went great and we drove home after another lunch in the Curahuasi bus station. We drove back through the town of Limatambo and noticed several restaurants and believe we will have to try that out on the next trip out there.

We neglected to mention that some friends of ours, the Lowes, a couple serving in Huancayo called last week. She was feeling poorly and had a bad reaction or failure to adapt to the altitude, ~11,000 feet. They had to return to Lima and won’t be going back to Huancayo. That can happen, though they had been there before, she just could not make the adjustment. Too bad, but it really could have been worse.

On Monday we attended a mission conference to which Elders Quentin Cook of the Twelve, Tad Callister, and Christopher Waddell and their wives addressed us. We did feel a bit like the grandparents with all the young Elders and Sisters.  Still, it was quite the session. Elder Cook pronounced an apostolic blessing on all of us and promised us “that everyone we love will be blessed because of our serving a mission.”

We talked about the way he said it later and could not help but marvel at the scope of his promise. We do not doubt him, and we could not help but think about how expansive that statement was. We really love a lot of people. It was a great and wonderful conference!

On Monday, we went to Lima to get our visas going. We had the pleasure of going to Interpol where they made dental records, photographed and fingerprinted us. They were amazingly fast and we were done in no time. A first for Peru! The rest of the time we ran errands, spent money, and ate Ceviche and Sushi since we were on the coast.

We visited our dear friends the Cisneros family and got reacquainted with our goddaughter Sofi and her brother Victor. Ceci, the mother, was at Tintaya when we lived there, she is a travel agent and handled all of the travel for the mine. It was a great reunion.

A trip to Lima serves as a great reminder, how blessed we are to be in Cusco. Lima was cloudy, gray, humid and very cold. When we returned to Cusco, the sun was shining, birds were singing, it felt like a weight was taken from our chest. Still, Lima has many things that we needed and we feel a step closer to having our visas.

Julie had some trouble getting adjusted again to the altitude but feels better and back on her game. On Friday, we finally got the internet installed at the archives! Due to our trip to Lima we didn’t get much work done but we now have an internet connection. Hooray!

On Saturday, we got rain in Cusco, probably some sort of juju for having complained about Lima. Seriously, we have likely headed into the first hints of the rainy season. The real rains begin in September or October normally and are impressive. In three or four months all of the major rainfall that charges the Amazon River for the next year drops on the East side of the Andes. The display would bring a tear to Al Gore’s eye and we have arrived just in time to witness it! The good news, aside from saving the planet, it swishes out all of the urine, vomit and other refuse that accumulates in the months prior and leaves Cusco smelling and looking great! The hills will soon look like Scotland and well, paradise.

In the plaza that we walk through on the way to work, we have been walking past a sort of artistic competition where various artists do their best painting in a couple of different genres. It is pretty fascinating. Much of it is copy type work but still there are some interesting draftsmen. It will run until Thursday of next week.

We spent a quiet Saturday walking to the Plaza de Armas, popped into Starbucks to download some new books on our Nooks and escape the rain for a bit and did laundry.  It’s the little things that make life great!