Saturday, January 31, 2015

Tweezer Season

Tweezing

More Tweezing

Still More Tweezing
The Tweezing Never Stops... Seemingly







Priesthood meeting

Two missionaries and the  primary





Red flower

Drying hides

Pitumarqueño pig




Wool for sale

Pitumarqueñas

Niña Pitumarqueña

Bottle collector




















The delicious “tuna” (cactus fruit) is in abundance again. There are ladies all over town with wheelbarrows, buckets and boxes full of the delicious fruit. When we buy them, the ladies slice the skin, open it up and we pluck the juicy fruit out and happily slurp the treat down as we walk. The fruit is heavenly. It is funny however, to pass buy a wheelbarrow when no one is buying the fruit because every single lady keeps a pair of tweezers in her apron pocket and spends the “down time” plucking the little cactus spines from their fingers. We think it’s a pretty rough way to make a few soles, but we’re certainly happy that they sell the fruit!

We had a great Sunday in Pitumarca with Elder and Sister Johnson. It was a wonderful reunion and we loved meeting with the members there. The Johnson’s had a wonderful time and we all felt the spirit as we taught and visited with the group.

We haven’t really officially announced this but we are extending our mission and will finish up June 1, 2016. We are making a trip home for three weeks at the end of June, 2015. We have grandchildren and our own children to visit and get reacquainted with and we need to do some re-supplying for the following year. We are excited to continue our work here and love serving in Peru.

We took 9,989 images this week, so we felt pretty happy about that. Julie has started teaching English to a woman that is working in an office across from us. Marta works for the archives and is organizing amazingly huge stacks and piles of legal documents. What a project. Julie teaches Marta from 12-1pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and continues to teach Marvid and Yahir later in the afternoons.  

We learned this week, that we will need to move to another apartment. The Agüeros are being moved to Lima and they have dealt with the landlord for us. The landlord is going through a divorce and really has no interest in taking care of this building or the people who live here. Brother Agüero said it would be to our benefit to get out and move to a place that has a landlord that is available. 

Fortunately, another friend and his family are being transferred to Arequipa, so we will move into their apartment. It’s about a 10 minute walk down from where we now live. It has three bedrooms so we’ll have a bit more space.  It’s quite new and is on a quiet walk-way off the busy main street. The landlord is very attentive and helpful so that is a huge plus.  We shall see how things go.

On Friday we traveled to Abancay with President and Sister Harbertson and the two mission assistants. We had a pleasant trip and attended a Multi-Zone Conference there. Rich had several interviews to take care of while the President was in the Conference.  It’s always enjoyable to meet with the young missionaries and we had a great time. 

Because of the rain, everything is green and beautiful. The Apurimac River is really full and it’s charging churning, gushing and muddy this time of year. It’s quite the sight indeed.

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Tire Smoke, Upheaval, Wrath and Rage

Smoke from burning tires

Battleground Expulsion

Owner with his shovel

Police kickin' back






Muneca 
Roof Cat

Roof Cat 2

























trunk-full of chickens

trunk-full of chickens












Saturday Evening Sky
We went on or usual walk Monday morning and noticed a big crowd around the corner and not far from our apartment. As we got closer we saw smoke and realized there was a fire. Amazingly, there were no fire trucks or anyone trying to put it out. When we approached it, we recognized that tires were burning and people were throwing rocks and pieces of cement at the fire. Strangely, it was not in the street. We thought that was a strange way to put out a fire. Then we saw the police in their riot gear and talked to a man who was watching. We learned that a property owner was evicting some people for not paying rent or some other reason. 

The friends of the evicted people were angry with the property owner and the property owner was trying to protect what was his. There was a lot of yelling, cursing and rock throwing and at one point the angry crowd surged forward over the wall and it seemed that they began assaulting the people inside the wall. Shortly after that, the crowd charged out again with the property owner wielding a shovel behind them. All the while the riot police just stood and watched.  We guess they were there to make sure no one was killed, but that was it. We even wondered how effective they might be should a life be threatened in truth. However, the police are paid so little, about $500.00/month, that they might figure, why risk my life for this? It made for an interesting walk.

Tuesday morning, we attended our missionary zone meeting and then Rich went to work in the afternoon and Julie worked at home doing laundry etc. Rich taught his last Isaiah class Tuesday night. We now have Tuesday evening free until March, when institute starts again.

We spent Wednesday orienting Pat and Dawn Johnson, the new senior missionary couple. They will be helping with the Family Tree/Search program, which will be great. They are really excited and enthused and look forward to their time here. We took them to the San Pedro Market which is the big central market in Cusco. We also introduced them to our tailor friend who has made suits for Rich. We pointed out different shops and places that would be of interest to them and then met with Elder and Sister Rhoades for lunch. We had a great time.

We figured if we average taking two weeks per shelf to image the books in the archives we have about 72 weeks’ worth of work left to do. That’s almost exactly how much time we have left on this mission. Yikes! Happily, we can work through some shelves more quickly, so we’re going to do our best to finish this project. 

Saturday, we did our running that we might have less of that sort of stuff to do during the rest of the week and we hope to be able to really crank out some photos!

Rich continues with his Quechua classes. He is gaining more confidence as understanding goes but it is a challenge. A fascinating language since it has very, very little in common with the Indo-European languages with which we are familiar. He’s going to put it to the test on Sunday with a run to Pitumarca with the Johnsons. More next week…