Lake Titicaca and nearly to Bolivia...

Day of the Dead bread

A couple of Cusco's finest

Eight elders and us

Sally with a bone

Charlie trying to rumpus with Rich

Bus name

Cleaning up the salt, see last week's blog

Roof dogs

The endless weeper, he gets a lot of money this way

Puno graveyard

Ayaviri kankacheria

Puno braids

Our hotel view in Puno

Lake Titicaca

Lake Titicaca

Lake Titicaca

Juli conference attendees

We had the office elders and the mission assistants for lunch last Sunday. There were six from the USA and two Latinos. We fixed New Mexico red chili, beans, tortillas and BYU mint brownies for dessert. It’s always gratifying to cook for the missionaries because they eat with such enthusiasm, gusto and moans and groans of pure happiness. At one point or another each one said, “Wow, no rice! “We had a wonderful afternoon with them. 

We attended the Zone Meeting on Monday morning and slipped out after two hours because Rich had to set two missionaries apart at the mission office. While there, we were given more paper work to get notarized. Apparently one of the Power of Attorney papers from last week had a dot of white-out on it and Immigration wouldn’t accept it. 

In Peru, bureaucracy and ridiculousness reaches a stratospheric height! Back to the notary we went and Julie watched as the young woman started typing and filling out her part. Julie saw her use the white-out again and said that we couldn’t use that paper because immigration won’t accept it. The young woman asked if we had other copies, which we didn’t. She then said that she would re-type the whole thing for us, which totally surprised us. Usually it’s just a “sorry, bring back another paper.” 

While she was typing up the form she noticed that the passport and carnet identity number were mixed up and in the wrong places. Rich’s passport number was even incorrect. We love the office missionaries who type these papers up but they are after all, young, in a hurry and inexperienced and have to deal with hundreds of this type of thing all the time. Thanks to the young woman, after 30 minutes of work and calls back and forth to the mission office, we were able to get the papers corrected, notarized and fingerprinted. She then charged us the standard 8 soles for two documents. There was no way in the accounting system for her to charge extra for re-typing and doing all of the extra work she did, so we gave her a S/20.00 (about $7.00) tip for all her help.  She was so sweet and very appreciative of the tip. We now have a buddy in the notary office, and we really must remember her name!

Rich released an Elder on Tuesday who was on his way back home to Ayiviri. The rest of the week we kept really busy trying to get our work done in the archives, preparing talks and materials for auxiliary training so we could leave Friday morning for Puno for the Juli District Conference. 

We arrived at the bus station at 8:00am Friday morning to catch our bus on a fairly new bus line to Puno. When we tried to check our bag, we were informed that the bus wouldn’t be leaving because of mechanical difficulties. We just laughed and asked what do we do? They had arranged with another bus line to take us, and after Julie grilled them to make sure it was safe, clean and secure we proceeded to get on the San Luis bus. 

We have learned that it is critical to get a seat with a window that we can open. Because of the “bad/evil wind” that can “kill you” Peruvians will ride on busses with absolutely no air circulation. The windows are usually open when the bus is loading, but as when the bus leaves the station all of the windows are slammed shut! It can be miserable. Happily, we had a seat with a window so we had a “pleasant” 7 hour ride to Puno. We were so tired that we managed to doze off and on for the whole trip. 

Once in Puno, we dropped our bags at the hotel and walked to the mall where there is a Plaza Vea grocery store. We needed to get snacks for the ride back on Sunday and bottled water to use in Puno. The store had an aisle of Christmas stuff out which surprised us. Our big find however, was a small bag of dried cranberries! Maybe we can figure out a way to make a little cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. We found a good restaurant and had roasted chicken and fries, then dropped into bed back at the hotel.

Rich really suffers with the change in altitude. Even with the Diamox pills, he was feeling pretty poorly with shortness of breath and a headache.  Puno, at the Lake Titicaca level, is 13, 122 feet and everything goes uphill from there. The weather was beautiful and we were so surprised that it was warm! 

We met the mission president and his wife and the assistants in the plaza on Saturday morning and drove about an hour and twenty minutes around the lake to Juli. Juli sits about an hour from the Bolivian border and is also on the shores of Lake Titicaca. It has a lovely LDS church and that’s where we spent our day, from 9am to 7pm.  

It turns out we had been too Juli on our way to Bolivia nearly 20 years ago. However, the road was not paved then and we did not go through the town center itself.  But the ride along the lake is spectacular and we did remember that.

We helped with missionary training, and while Rich was in the Priesthood session, Julie and Sister Harbertson did auxiliary training with some of the women leaders in the area. It was a good meeting and Julie translated for Sister Harbertson when it was her turn to teach. 

Rich interviewed five men to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood and two of them spoke Aymara, the native language of Bolivia and the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. It’s very different from Quechua, so he’s hoping he was inspired in the right direction with these men! 

We had a good adult session where we both spoke and Julie played the electric piano. We arrived back in Puno about 8:30pm and had pizza at a member’s restaurant. It was actually pretty tasty. We had a funny encounter while there with the president, his wife and the assistants. When Rich came upstairs to join us he said there was a whole table of missionaries downstairs that we hadn’t seen when we came in. Apparently, it was a mix of zone leaders and others elders that had crossed zone lines and were actually “breaking the rules.” Nothing like getting busted by the Mission President, his counselor and the assistants! The rogue missionaries were pretty embarrassed but it all ended well laughs. Not sure the president is still laughing though…

We were in Juli again Sunday morning for the 9:00am general meeting. It finally got started at 9:30am because the president was interviewing/counseling a young couple who are getting ready to go to the temple. Julie’s hands were pretty pooped after playing 40 minutes of prelude music. The members there have such a wonderful spirit and it was a delight getting acquainted with them. One of the women, who had all of her front teeth rimmed in gold (this is actually for looks and status) asked us if we were returning to the United States. Julie told her “no, we’ll be back several times before we leave Peru.” The woman squealed and hugged Julie so tight, it was really sweet. She was dressed in the typical Bolivian style with long skirts, a long shawl and a bowler hat.

The President had to be at the airport in Cusco by 5:30pm because a missionary who had been sick was going home. Happily for the Elder, he was at the end of his mission.  We had to leave quickly after the Sunday meeting and it is always so hard. Everyone wants pictures with the four of us, they want to visit and chat and hug and kiss cheeks. We finally pulled away in the president’s car about 11:45am and made it to the airport by 5:30. Whew, what a ride! Rich had a touch of food poisoning that made the last part of the ride less than enjoyable. It is noteworthy because we have so little of that sort of thing.

We got home it time to talk with our son, William’s family. His wife shot a deer and his eight year old son had just shot his first buck and that was exciting to hear about.