Last heap of books and farewell Andahuaylas!

Hydrant kitten

Out of the storm

Drying out

Hail, the gang's all here

Cusco's women traffic cops, cute but MEAN!

A passel of school kids

A wall we walk by every day but never saw the sculpted stones

Cusco's finest

When that pile is done, so are we!

Cusco Skies looking towards the Pacific

Cusco Skies looking towards the Amazon, a second later

A heap of ginger

Limon

Zapallo

A happy lady

Halo inesperado

An Andahualino gathering

Monday morning dance practice

Julie had a bit of altitude sickness and didn’t feel very well Monday after our return from Puerto Maldonado. Rich is usually the one that has trouble with the altitude but he was able to go to work and Julie took care of things at home. We attended our district meeting and had an enjoyable evening with our district.

We worked Tuesday morning and as we were trying to download the work from Monday, the external hard drive quit working. It said that all 33,500 + images were “unreadable!” We were frustrated. We went to lunch with the Poulsens and Rich called David, our supervisor in Lima to try and figure out what to do. David remembered that he had sent us another hard drive so Rich was able to pick it up at the bus station. David then gave Rich a code that reopens everything that was on the computer and we were able to reload the images onto the new hard drive. Whew! Technology is fabulous when it works!

Rich has been working with a young man for months to get him back on his mission. It has been like pulling teeth to get all the documents in a row and finally, at long last, everything has been turned in! The new missionary will be returning to his mission in La Paz, Bolivia. He will report to his mission on May 10, 2016. It was Rich’s goal to get him gone before we return home. Looks like it’s going to happen! Happy, happy!

We have been giving Rich’s Quechua teacher clothes that we aren’t bringing home. She teaches in a very poor area of Cusco up in the mountains and the parents can remake our clothes and use them. We’re happy about that they can be used. 

Yahir came for English class, his cousin Marvid was sick and couldn’t come. Julie finished her classes with Marta so she is able to work a bit more in the archives.

The best news of the week is that we pulled the last stack of books off the shelf to be photographed! We should finish by the end of the week which will give us time to do any retakes should we need to. Hooray!

Friday we took an 8:30 am car to Abancay. We paid for the whole car since it is so much more comfortable. Our driver was young and Julie had to keep telling him to slow down on the extremely windy road. We arrived in Abancay at 12:30pm and walked to the bus station to get our bus for Andahuaylas. Rich had called early in the morning to reserve the front two seats. That way we could control a window and get some fresh air. We’ve mentioned before how much Peruvians hate fresh air in any bus or car. We still can’t figure out why. 

We were early for the bus so walked down to a little store and bought a popsicle and sat at little table out front and watched Abancay life. There are some delicious popsicle flavors here. Rich had limón and Julie had lucuma. We will miss these flavors, they are wonderful. 

We had a spectacular drive to Andahuaylas with plenty of fresh air. The sky was crystal clear and the nevados (snow topped peaks) of the Andean Cordillera Vilcabamba were gorgeous in the late afternoon sun. We also climbed up to the Abra Huayllaccasa 4100m (13,450) mountain pass, it is breathtaking, literally! 

Andahuaylas is a pretty town surrounded by mountains with the Chumbao River running through it. We walked from the bus station to our hotel which was an adventure. Hundreds of people were getting things set up for the big weekend market. We saw truck loads of choclo (corn), zapallo (squash), mandarinas, granadas (pomegranates) oranges, palta (avocado) platanos (bananas) and everything in between. It was really fun to see and we bought some delicious pomegranates. 

We dropped our things off at the hotel and met the district president and our very dear friends, Miguel Huayllapa and his wife Veronica for dinner. They are both school teachers and have been married for about 3.5 years. We had delicious pollo a al brasa and enjoyed visiting with them.

Rich had meetings Saturday morning and the Harbertsons arrived from Abancay in time for lunch so we all went together to eat. There is a lovely outdoor restaurant that we enjoyed and had delicious trout. We returned to the church for the rest of the meetings and had an enjoyable evening with the members.

Sunday morning we enjoyed the conference and Julie at the last minute was asked to play for the choir. We visited President and Sister Huayllapa in their small home in the afternoon and then went to the church for a new member fireside. Several members were asked to bear their testimonies and Rich and President Harbertson spoke. We heard sweet and powerful testimonies from these precious members. It was wonderful.

We left at 8:30am Monday for the trip home with the Harbertsons. We stopped for lunch in Abancay and knew that we would arrive home too late to attend our district meeting, so Rich called Elder Polad, our district leader to tell him. We got home about 5:45pm. It’s amazing how tired one gets just sitting in the car! Still, the ride was just as magnificent as ever all along the spine of the Andes!

We are sad to know that these are our last conferences with the members here. To say we will miss them is an understatement! We have been blessed beyond measure by so many of them. How we love this part of the world!