Merry Christmas...Complete With Travel and Viruses

Site  of one of Peru's worst bus accidents...

Abancay

Abancay Conference Hall With District Presidency

Abancay Conference Hall with Elder Guerra

We left for Abancay at 6 am Friday morning the 19th.  Actually we finally pulled out at 6:25am and the people on the bus were not happy. They were shouting “hora, hora!” and stomping their feet.  We had a good laugh over that because 99% of Peruvians are late for everything! But they want the busses to leave on time! What a country. Our trip was uneventful but we did have to stop for nearly an hour while for road construction. About five years ago the Apurimac River (one of the Amazon’s mighty tributaries) washed out a huge chunk of the road between Cusco and Curahuasi. They are finally repairing it and fixing it so that won’t happen again... (wink, wink) It should be completely paved and finished in a few weeks. 

While we were stopped there were ladies selling all kinds of food, fried trout with rice, fresh fruit and yogurt, chicken and rice, etc. We didn’t buy anything, but pretty much everyone else on the bus did. We finally arrived in Abancay, left our things at the hotel and had some lunch. Julie had been coughing for a few days and wasn’t feeling great, so we came back to the hotel and slept.

Rich had interviews at the church at 9am Saturday morning and afterwards we met the Sandburg’s who are serving in Abancay, and we went to lunch. We ate at a member’s Cevicheria and had rice with shrimp. It was good and happily we didn’t get sick from it. Always a good thing but never a given…

At four pm the meetings for the District Conference began at the church. While Rich taught the priesthood session, Julie trained the sisters. After an hour we came back together and Rich instructed the leaders on the Area plan for moving the work forward. It was a good and productive afternoon. Rich had more interviews before the 7pm adult meeting and we both spoke at this meeting. Afterwards, we were so tired that we went back to the hotel, drank some yogurt, ate a piece of bread and went to bed.

Julie was pretty sick in the night with a fever and coughing. She did manage to get up and ready to go to the 10am conference on Sunday, trooper that she is. It was held in a theater of the university and was quite the spectacular place, with a balcony, red and gold curtains, and lights everywhere for their theatrical productions.  

When we arrived, the elders said that there was no power. The meeting began and I’m not sure many people heard the first talks. The hymns were sung with gusto, even though the members in Peru have their own versions, since they learned most of them without piano accompaniment.  Julie stood up to speak and shouted the first two pages of her talk in her raspy voice and finally some enterprising members managed to hook up a working microphone. They had run an extension cord from who knows where, but Julie was able to finish her talk in a normal voice and we had the mike for Rich’s talk.

At the end of the conference a man came up to Julie and asked if we remembered him. He had served in Espinar when our boys were still there, just before they left for Brazil. His name was Elder Guerra. He was from Piura then but has since married and relocated to Abancay.

It was a great conference and we enjoyed meeting with the members. The busses to return to Cusco left at 1pm and 5:30pm. We figured that since the conference wouldn’t end until 12pm, there would be no way we could make the 1pm bus so our tickets for were for 5:30pm. Happily, we were able to get to the station, change our tickets and jump on the 1pm bus just in time. What a relief, we arrived home about 6:30pm.

We didn’t work Monday or Tuesday and Christmas Eve, we were able to walk through the huge Christmas market in the main plaza. We took Elder and Sister Rhoades with us since it was all new to them. We had a great time, what an adventure.

We had Christmas Eve dinner at the Agüeros, with the Rhoades and the Harberstons. It was a lovely evening and as we arrived back in our apartment at midnight, Cusco lit up with spectacular fireworks. They were so fun to watch, but we finally went to bed about 12:30am. However, the celebrating continued until about 5am. Thank goodness for ear plugs!

Rich began to show signs of Julie’s ailment somewhere about this point.

Christmas Day was peaceful and relaxing, and we had several sets of sister missionaries come to Skype with their families. It was fun to hear the squeals of delight from their families and the sister missionaries were all teary after their time was up.  We were able to visit with all of our children and grandchildren and brothers and sisters. It was a wonderful Christmas Day.

We have been relaxing and pretty much doing nothing, Rich is now fighting the rotten cold and we hope it passes quickly. We hope your Christmas was wonderful, relaxing and full of love and joy.