Tunas and Terabytes

The rains have been hitting us pretty hard and steady all week. Reminiscent of the downpours when we first came to Peru in 1998, it can sometimes be hard to think and or talk over the din of some of these heavy downpours. When we came to Peru, the news ran one story of disaster after the next. While not that severe, we see many reports of flooding and landslides. Some have compromised highways and just yesterday, we saw where a railroad had been destroyed by a river undercutting the tracks in Huancavelica. Hard to build anything and have it last in one of the steepest terrain’s in the world, the heavy rains exacerbate the problem and crews scramble to keep up. Well, “scramble,” may be a little generous.

They do work on this situation and we see many road crews out and manual labor is king. We drove past a crew with guys busting big rocks into small rocks using an array of jury rigged sledgehammers, with no eye or foot protection that we could tell. They break big rocks into little rocks to put them in the gabion baskets, big wire-mesh, cubic cages that they set in place to shore up the hillside before it all comes down. This is an effective technique that our engineers used to build bridges from Tintaya to highway. When we first came to Tintaya, we had to ford six good sized rivers to get to the city from our mining camp. These were often impassable and we could not get out for weeks at a time.

The upside of torrential rains is that everything is becoming so green and lush that the hillsides look like Scotland, well, a really steep Scotland.

We had a lovely dinner and movie at the mission home Monday night. We enjoyed visiting with President and Sister Harbertson and swapping missionary stories and adventures. We laughed and marveled at our experiences here in Peru, what a great time this is.

We were able to attend the Cusco Zone Conference on Tuesday with all the young missionaries that are serving in this area. It’s always a treat to feel so welcome and loved by the elders and sisters. We share advice, encouragement and lots of laughs together. There is always a wonderful spirit at these meetings.

There is a new director of the archives, Umberto Apaza Quispe. He visited us on Wednesday to learn more about what we are doing and how Family Search works. He was very interested in the image taking process and the churches interest in genealogy. We were invited to the archive meeting on Thursday afternoon at the University where we presented the Archives with our first full hard disk of our approved and passed images. A full Terabyte, several thousand images, it was pretty exciting.
Julie’s brother and family are coming to visit in March. We’re excited about that and visited a funky bed and breakfast to see if it was livable. The house is built around a big tree and has parts of the tree in some of the rooms. It really is a kind of tree house in the old part of Cusco. It will be an adventure for sure!

A different aspect of the rains and our proximity to the rainforest is that we get to choose from an unimaginable wealth of fruit. Right now, the mangoes and tuna are on. Now, one might be tempted to seek a tuna sandwich, in which case, he/she might be disappointed. The tuna are cactus fruit/ prickly pear and they are juicy and tasty. This is one of the things we love about life here and one of the things we miss about it when we are gone. One of Rich’s favorite soda pops is made from the guarana fruit, famous in Brazil.

On a fruity note, Julie hit upon an idea of such deliciousness that it pretty much defies description. Maracuya is a very sour passion fruit, about as strong a flavor as a lime. They sell them in heaps, most of the year. She decided that it would make a great cheese cake to add its juice instead of lemon to the cream cheese and then make a thick sauce of maracuya to pour over the cheese cake. Pretty sure this has to be bad for you because it is positively decadent.

Things are getting back to normal after the holidays. Rich is back in his Quechua classes and Julie back on track with her Spanish lessons.

We had a great Sunday in Izcuchaca with about 35 in attendance. Julie taught primary and she’s teaching them songs for the 2014 Primary Program. The children love to sing and “Do as I’m Doing” in English, is always the first request. It’s lots of fun. Rich taught Priesthood and had a great time. We are so grateful to be serving a mission together. It is challenging and difficult at times but mostly it is a grand spiritual adventure. We love the people we serve and work with, we love being together and we love serving the Lord.

 

Photos From Before Our Mission-Upper Reaches of the Apurimac Gorge

Photo2 From Before Our Mission-Upper Reaches of the Apurimac Gorge

Photo3 From Before Our Mission-Upper Reaches of the Apurimac Gorge (One of the switchback segments of the road in and out of the canyon)

Photo4 From Before Our Mission-Upper Reaches of the Apurimac Gorge

A beggar in the pharmacy

A lady on her way to work, all business, this one...

Presenting our Terabyte of photos

Llamas on their lunch break

Llamas on their lunch break 2 (we just liked both photos)

The reason that Peruvian surgeons excel in hernia surgery

The  Tree Hotel 1

The  Tree Hotel 2

Lady selling tea

A lady not selling anything... Warm Sunday afternoon

Tunas for sale

Izcuchaca on Sunday afternoon, in the car waiting to go home

Fresh Tunas

Huge and delicious Curahuasi mangoes