Some Assembly Required...

An amazingly omnipresent beggar woman 

Red pants

Street minstrel

Cathedral doors

Ice cream girl

Did not get this way from drinking the purified water in those bottles

Cathedral dog

Watch-cat

You want a piece of me???

After the rains, aahhh el sol!

Sunbather #2

Dapper grandma

Trash dogs near Villa Maria #1 (Reminds us of the "Can You Find the Indians In The Trees" drawings in Hi-Lites magazines)

Trash dogs near Villa Maria #2

Trash dogs near Villa Maria #3

Yuli Sotec, Maria Quispe, Julie, Jose Maria Sotec, Rich,  Jesus Sotec

A seemingly endless series of breathtaking cloud edifices over Cusco...

Monday was a normal work day and we felt that for sure that we were back in the swing of things.  After work, we went to the mission office at 5pm so Rich could set apart a missionary.  The Elders, who were supposed to pick up the young man at the bus station, didn’t as one of them was sick. Naturally, they hadn’t bothered to call the office and let anyone know.  A couple of the office Elders said they would find him, so we waited, and waited and waited. We were supposed to meet brother Agüero at 5:30pm to help him put together a new headboard for the Johnson’s, a new missionary couple who were arriving on Wednesday.  

The office Elders went to every bus station, stand, and bus stop in Cusco and couldn’t find the young man who was supposed to be arriving from Abancay. Rich finally gave up and at 6:45pm called the office Elders and told them that we had to go. He changed from his suit to his work clothes and just as Julie was folding his white shirt, the office Elders called and reported that they had found the young man and were on their way back to the office. Rich hurriedly changed back into his suit, met and set apart the new missionary and flew back into a vacant room at the church to change again into work clothes. 

The rain began and it dumped! Thankfully, Brother Agüero was waiting for us with a taxi, so we jumped in and arrived at the new apartment for the Johnson’s to tackle the headboard. En route we learned that the new missionary didn’t follow the directions of the mission office and got on a combi from Abancay instead of one of the big travel busses. What a night and it continued downhill, da ta ta da…

We pulled out all of the pieces for the Johnson’s headboard and learned that it was a headboard that connected to two nightstands with drawers. OK, we were ready for this, but we weren’t ready for the lack of directions that were included with the beast. It was a “Christmas Eve” nightmare with pieces of wood everywhere and one million different nails, screws and connectors.  We like to think we’re fairly intelligent but it took us an hour just to get the right pieces together to form the nightstands. At nine pm we had gone as far as we could, since we needed a hammer and brother Agüero didn’t have one. We were starving and exhausted and finally gave up on the project and stopped for some Chinese food. We were laughing, because we thought Chinese directions on projects were horrible, but this Brazilian piece of furniture with its “directions” makes the Chinese directions look positively legible and organized. Not one drawing was identifiable without magnification. Neither was there a single word on either side of the page, in Portuguese, Spanish, Korean, Ethnic Albanian… Nothing. There were many non-missionary sorts of words/thoughts that ran through our heads and occasionally slipped our lips.

As Julie went to bed Monday night, she had a horrible dizzy spell and suffered with it all night. In the morning she was the same and had to hang on to the walls just to walk. Megan had sent her a new treatment for “positional vertigo” so we gave it a try. She had to go through the procedure four times, but it worked! She was ecstatic. She was still feeling somewhat woozy, but she was able to function. We both stayed home on Tuesday since Julie wasn’t up to par and Rich had loads of mission work to do and to take care of Julie.

 

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2012/04/23/colorado-doctor-finds-way-to-treat-common-vertigo/

We were back to work on Wednesday and feeling great. We had a meeting with President Harbertson and met Elder and Sister Johnson. They will be working with the missionaries and teaching and training on using the Family Tree program of the church. They have had some Spanish lessons, but will be paired up with English speaking missionaries who can translate for them.

 Julie taught her English class to Marvid and Yahir on Thursday. After work on Friday we went to the store and when we returned about 4pm we noticed that the electricity was off. Rich called brother Agüero and learned that he had forgotten to pay the bill. They have no lee-way here, if you haven’t paid by the correct date, the power and or water is cut off immediately.  Brother Agüero ran to the office and paid the bill, but said that we wouldn’t have power for three hours. We were happily surprised when the power came back on after 1 ½ hours. He felt terrible and was very apologetic. We were fine; it was just cold, which is nothing new here. 

Saturday we busied ourselves with projects in the house when the power went out again! This time however it was the whole street and was out for about 30 minutes. @##$%! Saturday night we picked up the Johnson’s for dinner and answered their many questions about living and surviving here. We had a lovely evening and enjoyed getting to know them.

On Sunday, we decided to attend the Villa Maria Branch about 20 minutes from our apartment. We had to leave about 8:30am. Since the family group in Izcuchaca was closed, the members there are supposed to attend in this branch. They now have to travel about 15 minutes and we wanted to see if any of them were making the effort to come to church. 

At 6:55am we received a call from our dear friend Maria Quispe. She was our maid when we lived in Tintaya and she and her family joined the church while she worked for us. Their daughter Lisbet is serving a mission in Antofagasta, Chile right now. They wanted to stop and see us before they headed back to Arequipa. We said come on by, but we had to leave at 8:30am. Sadly, they got lost and couldn’t find our apartment until 8:30. Rich was walking up and down our street giving directions, but they arrived too late. We were able to visit for about 10 minutes and take some pictures. What a morning. We will see them again though, so all is well.

One of our more entertaining experiences with Maria happened when we first lived at Tintaya. You may or may not know the challenges of cooking and especially baking at high altitude say 5,000 feet, but Tintaya sits at just under 14,000 feet and adds another level of challenge. Not long after Maria came to work for us, we still had not really figured out the adjustments to certain recipes. Julie had baked banana bread and when she pulled it out, it had sunk in the middle, not a lot. Maria, said, “Oh, that is my fault…” 

Julie did the baking and so, asked her, “Why do you think that this is your fault? You had nothing to do with baking it.”

She said, “Oh, I’m pregnant and I watched you prepare and bake the cake…”

When we arrived at the Villa Maria Branch, we were thrilled to see so many of the members from Izcuchaca. It is wonderful to know that they are committed and still attending their meetings. They greeted us heartily and seemed happy to see us.