Safe on a deer hunt...

Safe on a deer hunt

Rain Recovery

Charo's nativity, close-up

Rich took this photo and then carried her packages to the bus station, man, they were heavy 

Mandolin maestro

Shucking some corn

Catching some zzzs

Toughy

hand-pump bike

Dogs on the tracks

Blue eyes

From Quillabamba

We enjoyed a relatively calm week. There was no district meeting since some of the missionaries travelled to Machu Picchu. Near the end of their missions, all the missionaries are able to take a long day and visit Machu Picchu. 

Tuesday Rich helped the Poulsen’s with their propane gas and took them to the printer to have business cards made. Julie worked and we met for lunch at the Cusqueñita. It’s a noisy fun “picanteria,” where they serve traditional food and have a show of traditional dances. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed yummy trout, rocotto relleno, pastel de papa and choclo.

We have been experiencing a bit of trouble with our computer at work. Wednesday we had to calibrate it at different F-stops and email the results to Salt Lake City. We also had to retake books that had some blurred pages. We can’t figure it out, we haven’t had any retakes in nearly two years and suddenly… We did notice that on some of the pages that the ink has bled into the paper, so that could be the issue, but if they’d just look at the printed portions the auditors would see that nothing is blurred. Oh well. There is a section for comments about the book we are photographing so now that will be filled with every description from bleeding ink to completely warped and water damaged pages. We’re hoping more detailed comments will help us avoid these retakes! 

Julie taught her English classes this week and received a thank you card from Marvid for the little Christmas gifts she gave him. It’s a store bought card with vicuñas pulling Santa’s Sleigh. The vicuña is a relative of the llama and alpaca and lives wild in the Altiplano. It produces small amounts of extremely fine wool, which is very expensive because the animal can only be shorn every three years, and has to be caught from the wild. The Inca valued vicuñas highly for their wool, and it was against the law for anyone but royalty to wear vicuña garments.

Marvid wrote such a sweet note on his Christmas card to Julie in English and said that “my heart is jappy, jappy Christmas and New Year.”  The h & j still cause some confusion, but what a cutie. 

Leah received a new german shepherd puppy “Lando,” for Christmas and he ran off on the 8th of January in Albuquerque. Leah was trying to get him in the car and she lost her grip on his leash and he took off. They were across the street from a high school which has an enormous campus and a huge open, cross country track on it. She looked all over there, and Glenn came to help but with no luck. They visited all the shelters and vet offices in the area and left Leah’s name and phone number just in case. 

Naturally Leah and all of us were heart broken. Leah flew home to Salt Lake on the 13th of January and when she landed she had a text message saying that someone had seen her missing puppy on Facebook and that they were sure they had seen the same puppy on the high school grounds! Leah immediately called Glenn who was in court but was able to call the guards at the high school and they said “yes, we’ve seen that puppy but we can’t catch him.” Glenn was finally able to get to the high school along with several other strangers who through Facebook and texting were there trying to help catch the dog. Technology is amazing! Finally, after several tries at corralling him, and prayers by Glenn, his family and all of us, Lando seemed to recognize Glenn and came running full speed right to him. What a miracle! He still had his leash and collar on, and had lost weight from not eating for six days but other than that, he’s perfect!  Leah drove back down to Albuquerque on Thursday and is so happy to have the little “run-away” home again. Whew! 

Rich left for Quillabamba with the other counselor and one of the records auditors on Friday. They had meetings to attend to on Friday evening. The road to Quillabamba crosses from Cusco at the foot of the Veronica peak an impressive massif 19,334 feet and the pass itself, Malaga goes over at 14,160 feet above sea level. As always, never lost on us is that we live and work along the spine of the Andes. 

It is crazy that sometimes we refer to the campesinos here as people who live in the mountains. Cusco sits 1,000 feet higher than Leadville Colorado. It is all relative.

From Malaga, the road winds down from above timberline to a mere 3030 feet above sea level. Because it is sheltered by the Andes, even that high the vegetation gives way precipitously to jungle foliage. Before you know it, you leave the few pines high up and move into the mango, banana, coffee and other tropical plants that is called in local jargon, “eyebrow jungle.” The road is insanely windy but the beauty of it takes one’s breath away. Equally, photos just cannot do it all justice. 

In Quillabamba, Rich and the others worked with several leaders, training them in aspects of church discipline and in membership audit procedures. Sound thrilling? Still, work with these men is always a true joy. We have come to love so many people here, in so many ways. We will certainly miss this mission when the time comes and it all feels like it is passing very quickly.

Breakfasting on sublime roasted lamb in the Ayaviri bus station

A huge trench across one lane of traffic and two little signs to keep you from it...

Panty tea???

The frog lady

Just six of the 400+ varieties

Market dog

Charo's nativity (Rich's Quechua teacher)

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A painting Rich did

Cusco bus station

Shoe shines in Sicuani

Bus station lamb, yum!

Monday came quickly and we are back to work. We figure we have just enough time to finish our work here before the end of our mission. We’re going to do our best!

We enjoyed our district meeting and have really enjoyed the warm weather when we have it. Monday night was sweater weather and the walk home was so pleasant. 

We met with Elder Lyle and Sister Nancy Poulsen on Tuesday night. They are the couple who are replacing the Johnson’s and Elder Poulsen served with Rich in Italy when they were young missionaries. We all went to dinner together along with the Harbertson’s. We had a lovely evening.

On Wednesday we helped the Poulsens get some groceries and pay for some of the electronic things that needed to be recharged. We took photos in the afternoon and Julie taught English to Marvin and Yahir. 

Thursday morning we took the Poulsens to the center and to our tailor. Elder Poulsen picked out some material for new suits and we chose material for our son who would like a new one.  We also walked them through the San Pedro market which is always an adventure. We both bought some nuts and dried fruit. We didn’t know what fresh Brazil nuts taste like until we lived here. They are so different from the nearly impossible to crack dry nuts we get at home around Christmas. The fresh nuts are delicious! 

We enjoyed showing them the sights of the San Pedro market. It is pretty much always fascinating, from pig heads and cow snouts to the shaman supply shops where one can buy desiccated llama fetuses and everything else an average shaman might need. It was not lost on the Poulsens who have seen a great deal of this world. They seemed to enjoy it.

We took them to eat lunch at Papacho’s and the Poulsens decided that they could indeed survive here. It was a great day.

Rich needed to visit the branch in Ayaviri and we invited the Poulsens to come along so they could learn where the busses are and how it all works. We left Saturday morning and arrived in Sicuani in time to have some pollo a la brasa for lunch. The Poulsens had set up a couple of appointments with the sister missionaries to do some family history work. Sadly, the first appointment fell through so we walked to the other church for the second appointment. We had some time to wait and it was fun just visiting and watching life go on in Sicuani. 

The second appointment wasn’t at home either but her mother was. The four of us and the two sister missionaries climbed some really narrow cement steps that our “gringo” feet are just to big for. Once at the top of the stairs we walked over some very old wooden planks to her room. We were all a bit nervous, the floor didn’t feel very stable. The sisters sat on some blankets on the floor and we sat on a mish-mash of stools, some of which were really short and barely off the floor. It was a great experience and Elders Hasler and Poulsen gave this sweet sister a blessing before we left.

We took some moto-taxis back to the hotel for about 45 min. then back to the church that is close to the hotel. We met with Omar Zevallos, the Stake President. When we lived in Tintaya he was our home teacher and Elders Quorum President in the branch. It was so fun to see him and introduce the Poulsens to him. He was discouraged about doing his family history and we had a wonderful experience as we all talked to him and shared our testimonies. He had big tears running down his cheeks. What a sweet, humble man. Goodness, we love our friends here. 

Back at the hotel we had a light dinner and then to bed. We were all wiped out!

Sunday morning we left at 7:00am to catch the combi to Ayaviri. Fortunately, we didn’t need to wait long for the combi to fill up. However, at one point the driver left the engine running with the side door open so we nearly choked to death, our eyes were burning like crazy and someone finally told the driver to turn the engine off. Gas fumes are horrible!

The countryside is so beautiful on this drive. There were lot’s of llamas and alpacas and we even saw some Andean flamingos. That was a treat! When we lived in Tintaya we would see flamingos all the time on the tailings pond at the mine. We were so surprised when we learned that they really do live at 14,000ft.!

We made good time and arrived about an hour early for church so we walked to the other bus station and introduced the Poulsens to “Kankacho,” the slow roasted lamb that is to die for. This was our breakfast along with roasted potatoes. It was delicious. The Poulsens remarked that the place seemed pretty sketchy. Indeed, it is a bus station where a woman sits in a chair with a bunch of roasted lamb and potatoes wrapped in brown paper inside of a blanket. She opens her blanket and, with a butcher knife and a cleaver, whacks off impressive portions of the meat that she puts in a little paper-lined basket and serves it to you. She also produces little bowls of fiery and oniony hot sauce with mysterious ingredients that is simply divine, but, it is a bus station…

We had a good meeting with the members, a little sparse in attendance but we enjoyed our time there. The Poulsens bore their testimonies and Rich and Julie spoke. The Poulsens were asked to teach Sunday School and talk about family history. Nothing like getting right to work! 

Our bus rides home were uneventful and we arrived back in Cusco about 6:00pm. We were all exhausted and but what a grand adventure! We love serving a mission!!

We are down to the home stretch here and really do hope that we don’t take for granted what a truly marvelous experience it has been to live here over all of the years we have spent in Peru. This month marks twenty years since Rich first came to Peru! We have seen so much and tried not to take it for granted but sometimes when you are approaching 14 hours on a bus in two days, you can lose perspective. Still we have seen and done amazing things from the deepest Amazon Rain Forest to trekking along over mountains above 16,000 feet. Most importantly, we have come to love so many people. This week we were thrilled to receive the news that Maria Quispe, our maid in Tintaya will be sealed with her family in the Lima Temple. We have always said that it is a special privilege accorded to us to have loved and served here in Peru and that, is not lost on us.