More Pictures on our way to Puno

We traveled southeast of Cuzco to open family history accounts for the new members and people who the missionaries have recently reactivated. We were gone for 10 days and just returned yesterday.  My last post was posted in a hurry between appointments. I am sorry I had so many duplicates.  I think they are all fixed now.  Below are some more pictures of the trip.  I feel like I am traveling back in time every time I am on the Altiplano.  These people have been living this traditional life for centuries.

The man is cutting the grain and his wife is gathering it.

The community is gathering for an activity.

This is how you wash your car or taxi, take a bath and do laundry all at the same time.  I am not sure what the man on the railroad trestle is doing, but he wasn't the only one sitting on these or on the railroad tracks.

We were almost to Juilaca when we saw all these gas stations.  We counted 17 within 2.5 miles.  Some are being built, some were abandoned and some were open for business.  Every business here in the bigger cities are lined up in one location.  There will be a whole street of tire sales, then a street of hair dressers, then a street of pharmacies, then a street of roasted chicken restaurants, ect., but a line of gas stations all located several miles out of town doesn't seem to make much sense.

The next town we went through is Juilaca (population 220,000).  We returned later to work with the missionaries here.  It is one of the biggest trade centers and industrial centers of Peru.  The economy is booming here.  So the question is why has this big major street been under construction for years? This is a major thoroughfare into town and the first thing travelers from all over the world see as they travel to Puno through Juilaca.  No one seems to have any answers.   This is where you catch all the buses. When we were through working here we took a taxi to get to the bus station.  The poor taxi driver ran right into a huge rock while trying to find the right bus depot and navigate the ruts in the road and the crazy traffic.  The first time we came here, it had just rained and this was a river of mud, but everyone was still driving through it and going about their business. Luckily most of the city has finished roads. We just can't understand why there are so many unfinished buildings and projects here in Peru - maybe they just run out of money.

This is a lumber yard.  The benches and sidewalk in front go all up the street, they are really nice.   

Colorful benches and sidewalks and statues line the street.

This lady placed her fruit stand on the street.  The bus could not get in the other lane because it was blocked off so the whole bus had to sit and wait for her to figure out how to either move her stand or get the bus around it.

Finally we arrive at Puno, Peru - Friday April 22, 2016

Working with the great missionaries and their converts here.

Teaching a young man how to navigate familysearch.  He had 4 generations of information entered by the time we were through.  We usually are happy when they can enter three, so four is great.  

More of our great missionaries.

Notice our coats, it gets really cold here and the buildings are not heated.

We love working in Puno. The Church is strong here and still growing thanks to all these wonderful missionaries.

After our familysearch appointments the missionaries invited us to go with them on a couple of missionary appointments.  It was so great to be with them and bare testimony with them to the families that we met with.  The mother of one of the families committed to be baptized that night (2 of her kids are all ready members, but haven't been very active) and the kids set goals to go to the Temple and go on Missions.  The mom is a nurse and couldn't make it to church the next day but all the kids came and sat with us.  Lyle and I were so happy to have them with us.

Oh, by the way, the electricity for the whole city was off from 6 am to 3pm on Sunday.  I guess that must happen often because no one said a word.  Church just went on as usual and no one said anything like, "You will need to speak up because the microphone is not working because the electricity is out".  Not a word about having classes in the semi-darkness, or how are we going to do our financial records without internet and electricity.  We need internet to do our work, so we just waited like every one else and sure enough at 3 pm the electricity came on and we were up and running.

One of the markets in Puno.

We saw this adorable little girl in the market. Can you see her doll riding on her back?

Hermana Choquehuanca is a sister missionary in this area over familysearch.  She has at least 5 young men from different assigned wards that come to learn indexing each week-the wards take turns.  The boys love her and she loves them.  She is amazing.  She told the boys that we were there all the way from the United States to help them with their family tree.  They reluctantly let us help them, they really wanted to do indexing instead. The youth here love indexing, they get competitions going and they make it really fun.  Our friends the Haslers have been doing records preservation here for 3 years and they just finished photographing about 850,000 records, so we are so happy to see so much indexing taking place.