Extreme Bussing...

Scissor Dancer Poster

Cusco From our Morning Walk



Siete Culebras en Sepia

Calle Inca Roca

Pitumarca Extreme Adobe

Priesthood Meeting in Pitumarca

Hand Study 1

Hand Study 2

San Blas Street

Photo Hustlers Hustling 1

Photo Hustlers Hustling 2

Photo Hustlers Not Hustling

Hat Hustlers in Espinar

Espinar Parade

Clipboards in Tarcuyoc

Clipboards in Tarcuyoc

Primary shelter in Tarcuyoc

School Roof advance

One Big Crawdad!

Family History Fair

A friendly little guy

Last Saturday afternoon we were tired and really didn’t want to travel to Espinar to spend the night. It’s so cold there right now we just didn’t feel like packing the heater and all the stuff we would need.  We decided we could get to bed early and leave our apartment at 3:30am to catch the bus to Sicuani, which is just what we did. We bought some alpaca/wool “colchas” (lap blankets) to wrap up our legs while on the bus, because none of the busses use their heaters, they do have them. Thank goodness for the blankets and Little Hotties Hand Warmers that we brought with us from the states. We got bundled up and on the road by 4am. We dozed off and on and rejoiced when the sun finally crept over the mountains.

 

When we got out of the bus in Sicuani at about 6am however, we found the suns influence imperceptible. With steam coming from our breath, stamping and chafing like plow horses, we happily climbed the next bus to Espinar. We bundled up again but felt a little warmer with some sunshine coming in the windows. We arrived in freezing Espinar at 9am, made our way to catch the combi to Tarcuyo and arrived in time for the meetings to start at 10am. Surprisingly, neither of us nodded off…a modern day miracle.

When we arrived, the elders told us that the whole group would be diminished because the grandmother and her son and his family were all in town. The group leader’s son is leaving soon for his mission to Argentina and they thought he might be giving his farewell address in Espinar, the ward on which the family group is dependent.

We had a big box of clipboards and some colored pencils and coloring pages with us for the primary. The children were so excited to be able to color and draw during primary. There is no furniture of any kind for the primary; each child has their own rock that they sit on in a circle so the clipboards were a huge hit.

It was Fast Sunday and Julie wanted to deliver her testimony in Quechua. She wrote it down in Spanish and we had a member from Espinar help us with the terminology that gets used in such discussions and then Rich got his Quechua teacher to review it for the grammar. It is not as simple as translating a book from English to Spanish. She did a great job and the members enjoyed hearing her testimony.

No one likes the translation that the church has done of the Book of Mormon because it is very true to the Quechua but not to local usage and is therefore, quite difficult to understand. Quechua has been significantly impacted by Spanish and it varies from town to town, Kay (this) in Cusco is Key in Espinar. Even bigger differences are Onu (water) in Cusco, is said (Yacu) in Espinar. On top of that, some words, like Taytay (God) have specific reference to the Inka pantheon and don’t play very well among the church members and other concepts that are foreign to the indigenous culture simply have supplanted Spanish words.

For lunch, we and the young elders were invited to another member’s home since the Hatun Mama wasn’t there. We enjoyed a yummy potato soup and then more potatoes, rice and a fried egg for lunch. It was delicious and the little family was so excited to have the missionaries in their home. We had to wait a bit for a combi to head back to Espinar. The one we finally rode in was so old, with little protection from the dust, that we were all gray by the time we got out in Espinar. It is impossible to keep the collars and cuffs of white shirts clean, along with most everything else! Julie has a solid bar of laundry soap that she uses to scrub the white shirts and they look good for about thirty minutes in this country. Such is life.

We have needed a headboard for a year now. The brick wall, even though it is an inside wall is cold near our heads, so a headboard should help. Rich tried to buy one the other day and naturally one cannot buy just a headboard here. You have to buy the whole bed set. Finally, a woman said, “You can’t buy a headboard but we can make you one.” So our headboard is being made. Ours will be just plain and simple, but we have seen some marvels of construction and design on headboards here. They make them with shelves, drawers, lights, mirrors, and wild, swoopy designs in colors and wood. We think we would have nightmares sleeping with some of these above our heads!

Thanks to good, easy books to work with this week we were able to take 11,400 photos. We were happy about that and figure to date that we have taken around 250,000 images to be indexed. We’re enjoying these nice books and are looking at the next shelves of difficult books with some trepidation, but we will persevere.

The group, for whom we are working taking pictures, is called FamilySearch and it is the genealogy business end of the church. There are various people involved and a group of them planned and executed a genealogy fair on Saturday. They called it a genealogy and technology workshop. They advertised it reasonably well and in the end, got something on the order of about 300 people to participate throughout the day. We had been asked to give a two-part talk on why we are serving this mission and what the experience is like and on the more technical aspects of our photo capture and preservation of the records.

There were a lot of people there and Julie gave the first part of our one hour presentation and Rich gave the explanation of the drier technical aspect of our work. Others who spoke gave presentations on heraldry (family shields), on genetic genealogy, ancient handwriting and so on. In the main the meeting was interesting and we enjoyed our participation in it. A local Seventy was on hand and gave the wind-up speech about the importance of family history.