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Urubamba district missionaries, Sisters Crump, Hinostroza,
Elders Bravo and Jensen and us... |
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Our Multi Zone Conference at these ruins |
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| Daring dude |
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| Curious construction practices |
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| Curious construction practices 2, let's just leave the door there... |
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| Kind of adorable bulldog |
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| The guardian |
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| The guardian 2 |
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| Ah, squid... |
Two worlds
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| Two words |
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| Pukara bulls |
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| Streets of Puno |
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| Puneña Carmen Miranda... |
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| Sorry for so many shots of Lake Titicaca but it would make Van Gogh drool |
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| Card reader |
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| Puno jetty walk |
Since we didn’t have a preparation day because of our Andahuaylas trip, Julie stayed home on Monday to catch up on things and Rich went to work for awhile. We traveled to Urubamba Monday evening for our District meeting with the missionaries there. It was Elder Jensen’s last district meeting since he is going home in a few days. We will miss him, he has been a great missionary. Since transfers happen this next week, I’m sure we’ll see more changes in Urubamba.
Tuesday we joined the Inti Raymi and Tawantinsuyo Zones for an outdoor combined zone meeting. We are in the Cusco Zone, but our zone leaders never told us and other missionaries never mentioned it, so we missed the outdoor meeting with our zone. We were invited to this one.
We went to some ruins that are just outside of Cusco, part of the Sacsayhuaman site but a totally new and different place. We had no idea they existed. Supposedly they just started uncovering them last year, there are terraces everywhere, a temple they are working on to restore, a big round area of terraces and baths with running water. It is a beautiful area. There are also two big ovens that the Spanish used with Incan slaves to bake the tiles for the roofs of the cathedrals in Cusco. Peru is literally covered with ruins.
We had a great day with the missionaries, learned a lot and even had tacos for lunch! A member who cooks for the mission home sometimes prepared the lunch. Flour tortillas, black beans, ground beef, chicken, guacamole and rocoto for hot sauce. They were delicious and they hauled it all up to the ruins, complete with a little make shift stove to heat the tortillas. What a feat!
Wednesday and Thursday we were back to work. We didn’t get a lot of images because the books were marriages and had just a few pages each. It can be frustrating because we have to do all the set up for each book and sometimes we end up with just five images per book, because there is one marriage in a given year and with the front and back pages we end up with five!
Marriage still is not encouraged, it costs money and the tradition is to live with someone and decide if it will work. Some couples finally get married when they have grandchildren! This has been a huge detriment to society here, there are so many abandoned women and children and the men as a whole take no responsibility. This is not the new immoral tradition, it is the old Inka immoral tradition that has perpetuated into modern times. It is so sad and frustrating.
Rich had to travel to Puno on Friday and Julie stayed and worked. He got home late Sunday pretty wiped out. To get there, he has to travel to Puno one day. Then he has to go to Yunguyo (Along the lake to the Bolivian border) and return the same work day, Saturday. That runs about seven to eight hours, all in. They were having the celebration of the Virgen of Copacabana, in Bolivia so the bus prices got jacked up to boot.…
After meeting with Elder Uceda Rich was asked to visit the districts he is over once a month. That means traveling over 10 hours one way to Juli/Yunguyo, about the same to Andahuaylas and a short trip, only 4.5 hours to Ayaviri/Choquehuanca. Life is about to be even busier! We love serving here.
Wow! All that busyness and still a bazillion pictures. I'm in awe. I loved the Carmen Miranda impersonator and, of course, all the dogs. I want the patch-eyed-dog, please.
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