Nothing says, "I love you Mom," like a cage full of guinea pigs!

School girls

Rush hour traffic accident

Traffic congestion

Soldier transport 

Teenagers

Chicken delivery by taxi

Sleeping buddies

Sleeping buddies

Estranged

The true b&w

Socialism at work

More Socialism at work

More Socialism at work with a smidgen of capitalism

Awake and Struggle, even more Socialism at work 

Road under construction since our arrival, still more Socialism at work 

Road under construction since our arrival

Have a cuy (guinea pig) for Mother's Day

All ready to go!

I love you a lot Mom

Mother's day gifts

Mother's day gifts

Mother's day gifts

Mother's day gifts, chocolates for "My Queen"

Mother's day gifts, Nothing says "I love you Mom" like a massive stuffed panda

A great name in our takes, Alan Bruslee Huamanachoque Nena

A Peruvian doll...

Stock life market along the tracks

Nice rooster

A cage of guinea pigs

Sacks of live chickens

Chicks for sale

Un-Weened puppies for sale

The Baratillo

The yarn spinner

The baratillo from above

Nothing goes to waste here!

We had a meeting with the Johnson’s Sunday afternoon to discuss a project that the archives want us to do for “Cusco Days” at the end of June.   It’s actually a big agricultural fair and the Archive Director wants us (missionaries) to man a booth about the archives here, family history and what we are doing with Family Search.  We will have the young missionaries help out and we are ordering about a thousand My Family booklets and will have computers etc. where people can see the Family Search site and generally help get people interested in their own family history.  It should be a great project; sadly we’ll be in the USA during that time.  We’re busy helping to plan it and get things done before we go.

Monday afternoon we were walking out the door to go to our district meeting in Urubamba when Rich received a call from the missionaries there. They said we didn’t need to come because the Zone leaders were already there so we were off the hook. We thought, “Great!”  We came back inside, changed our clothes and were just settling down when the missionaries called again and said the Zone leaders couldn’t stay, they had a meeting in Cusco they had forgotten about. We threw our dress clothes back on, grabbed a taxi to the busses leaving for Urubamba and made it about 15 minutes late. Whew!

Rich, Elder Johnson and Enrique Meneses, (the Family History coordinator for the mission boundaries,) met with Senor Farfan the director of the Cusco archives to further plan the booth for the big fair. Rich also talked with someone from Family Search in Salt Lake City about the really old books here from 1545 - 1880’s. Salt Lake wants more information so Rich will discuss that with the director next week.

Rich set apart a missionary from Choquehuanca who is going to the Ecuador Guayaquil South Mission. What a jolt that will be for this missionary from a tiny little pueblo in the Andes. He also released a missionary coming home to Puerto Maldonado who served in the Chile Concepcion Mission and interviewed a young woman going out.

We taught a Book of Mormon class in English that Elder and Sister Rhoades usually teach and Rich taught the Pearl of Great Price class. Julie taught her English classes and we were relieved to learn that after another visit to the doctor, Rich’s lungs are clear and he is feeling great again. What a relief.

At work we have been suffering with the birth records for Espinar. The books are full of hundreds of extra papers glued in and are impossible to keep open, straight and level. With some of the more “normal” books we can take between 1000-2000 photos a day. With the books from Espinar, our “good days” averaged about 800. We have been fretting over the audit reports in Salt Lake City, certain that we’d have to re-take the beastly books. We received a true miracle because the report came back with all of them “passed!”  We are still amazed and so relieved! We do wonder if someone just threw up their hands and said these books are hopeless…

While Rich was attending all of the meetings last week, Julie slaved away on the books from Espinar. Rich will do anything to avoid them! Happily, we only have four left. Hooray!

On Wednesday, Rich ran smack into a large crowd protesting injustice of some description in front of one of the Cusco department offices. There are several.  It amazes us to see something that has so clearly failed as communism/socialism. The evidence is abundant and clear as glass in these countries. Yet, there are supposedly intelligent people in the free world who still consider it viable.

 

Mother’s Day paraphernalia was everywhere this week. There were heaps of fake roses, banners, candies and mountains of huge stuffed animals. Go figure. Mother’s Day is huge here and we were remembering last year when we tried to travel to Pitumarca on Mother’s Day. There were no busses and finally found a taxi to take us. We are very happy to stay put this year.

Some time ago Rich was asked to paint a picture of “Señor de Qolloriti” on a rock. The Qolloriti festival gathers more than 10,000 pilgrims annually, most of them from rural communities in nearby regions. The festival is known to the local descendants of the indigenous population of the Andes as a celebration of the stars, hence the name qollor is star in Quechua. In particular the Pleiades, which disappears from view in April and reappears in June and signifies a time of transition from old to new and the upcoming harvest and New Year, which for the locals begins on the Winter Solstice. The festival, from the pre-Columbian perspective, has been celebrated for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Painting the image was a new experience for Rich, we’re still not sure exactly what happens to it now but it will go with the pilgrimage to the glacier where the festival takes place and left there we think. The young man who asked for it wanted to pay Rich back so he invited us to lunch in the restaurant where he works. The restaurant sits high on a mountain over-looking Cusco and provides a spectacular view of the city. The restaurant is called Wislla which means big, huge wooden spoon in Quechua. A wislla uma, means wooden spoon head and is the equivalent of knuckle-head in English…

Rich forgot to take a picture of the first, and likely, only Catholic icon he has ever painted…

We had a delicious lunch of trout and lamb and then climbed in a bus for the ride back down the mountain. We have met wonderful people here and we love our mission!