Feburary 6, 2016 Choquehuanca

Sorry it has taken so long to post.  We were gone for a week and when we returned our internet was down. We were told it would be fixed every day this week and  finally it was fixed today. Hooray!

 Elder Hasler had to go to Puno, Peru (next to Lake Titicaca) and he took us with him. We visited a small town called Choquehuanca, where Elder Hasler needed to train some of the leadership there.  He is a counselor to our Mission President and the Mission is in charge of the districts, so he has assignments to visit and train in the smaller towns in the mission. On our way we saw these llamas grazing.  The little memorial in the foreground is a grave marker.

While we were waiting for Elder Hasler to finish his training in Choquehuanca, I thought I would shoot a few pictures of this little town.  It is maybe 10 blocks by 10 blocks and full of very old buildings.  It felt like a place that time had forgotten,

The town is full of old houses like this.

This is a happy boy pretending he is riding this motorcycle.  It made me miss my grandson.

 This is the church building in Choquehuanca.  This is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere but they have a nice ward here. They really want us to come back and help them with Familysearch and we will next time we head in this direction.

 This boy is selling some sort of bean pods. He had been sitting here for hours. Look how big those beans are.

 There are little stores like this everywhere in Peru.

 And every town has a market place and a park where there are food carts and people passing the day.

 Below is a view looking down a street.  The girls are herding sheep.

 You can see the kids playing volleyball in the background.  This man was just wandering the streets. It is cold and he has no shoes. Don't you wonder what his story is?

 Some buildings are painted with such bright colors.

Peru is full of the contrast between ancient and modern - not only the buildings but the people too.

This is our view on our way out of town. This is the Altiplano.  Isn't it beautiful?

Our Work

Just in case it looks like we are only on vacation, here are some pictures of some of the families we have been visiting. You can see our computer out on the top picture.  Lyle brought an Ipad to entertain the children while we work with the parents.  This is the whole house there is a bed on the other side and I think there is a room on the top where the kids sleep.  The floor is dirt. Check out the stove in the corner. It was a hard climb to get up to this house, straight up a dirt path.  The picture below is the family.  She wanted the picture to be taken with the view of Cuzco out her front gate.  We were not able to get her membership number to set up an account, so we will be returning.

 This is Edgar.  He has been less-active for a while and the sisters found him and he told them that he needed to get his father and brother's temple work done. He felt a real urgency about it.  We went to his house.  The first night we could not get an account set up and made an appointment for Sunday.   On Sunday he was all dressed up in his suit and came to church.  That night at his house we were able to get an account set up for him.  (he was able to get his membership number from the Bishop) He brought out all these amazing family pictures that he had collected since we last met. He has an incredible memory and he filled out his my family workbook by memory (including dates and places).  We were able to go back another 4 generations and send in 32 temple ordinances.  I asked him if he wanted to do them himself and he said, no, no send them now.  These were his great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, and his brother.  His eyes were filled with gratitude and joy when we left.  He has not been able to sleep because he has been so worried about his family having their temple ordinances done.  It was an amazing experience for all of us (the sister missionaries went with us) We had another meeting to be at so we were packing up the computer,  when he told me he had a sister that died as a baby.  I will have to return to make sure she gets included and I am sure he will have more names for me by then.

Here is the meeting we went to afterward at the ward building.  It seems easy for someone like Edger to come to the meetinghouse to do his family history but it is not that easy.  When we arrived we couldn't get in to Wifi,(which has been a typical experience at the churches).  Only one person had a computer besides our 2.  Someone showed up later with a router box and then we needed an ethernet cable that would reach from the closet where the connection was and luckily we had brought one with us from Utah.  Finally we were up and going.  The older people do not type and so I need to enter everything in for them in Spanish.  That is a challenge for me.  After I get everything  in I ask "Correto" and they look it over and say yes or no.  I was getting all kinds of  record hints and records and green temples for the lady I am setting next too.  She was so excited. Then we entered in her two sisters that died as children and she just started to cry.  I was crying too.  We have had many experiences like this.  The veil is very thin at times and the love of family is stronger than death.

We will be travelling to other areas all next week.  We haven't been in the same ward twice yet. It will be interesting to see how it goes in these other areas.  The Zone leaders are setting up appointments for us.  We will be in each town a couple of days.  There are a lot of people excited about our visits, I hope we can help them.

A Tour of the Mountains above Cuzco

The Plaza

Lyle negotiating a tour on a double Decker bus.

These stones are amazing, no one knows how they got here.

This round area was filled with water and used somehow in astronomy.

This is a real family that arrived on horseback for a picnic. Isn't it picturesque? 

Horses grazing.  For about $1.5 you can go on a little ride.  It is so beautiful here. 

potato plants 

A view of Cuzco from the mountains.

The White Jesus over-looking Cuzco.

The children are adorable.  This little one would not look at me, but when I pulled out the camera she started waving.

herding llamas

These little statues are on all the roof-tops.  A blend of Christian and Inca Idols.

 It felt good to be in the mountains for the quiet and fresh air.  When we returned we saw these children with their business all set up.  We also met several Hermanas from Cuzco that were in town.and were able to set up appointments with them to do Familysearch.

Check out this business.  These children each had a scale and  were weighing people and collecting money for it.  

A Visit to the University Library

 We were invited to meet Elder and Hermana Hasler at the Univeristy to meet with the man that is in charge of the records they are preserving.  On our way I took a couple of pictures on the street of some of the street vendors.  This woman and her son above rolled her stand all the way down the middle of this busy street and pushed it onto the sidewalk where they opened it up for business.  They had sodas and snacks. I imagine they just roll it home at night.  I hope their house isn't too far away. Pedestrians have no rights here.  You really have to watch carefully to cross the streets, so I am surprised she made it safely.

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 All the babies are strapped to the backs of the moms and nursing in public is totally acceptable. Even in church.  I imagine the babies love being so close to their mom all the time and they always have a great view of what is going on while riding on mom's back.  The children come to work with their moms.  Here is a mom with her two daughters, see the little one in a box?  The older sister is there to help with the baby and the work.

 We arrived at the library and were privileged to see some of the records that are stored there.  The man in charge has been so good about lending the records for the Haslers to digitize.  They are working on the records that start in 1930s or some time around there.  I asked why they didn't start on the older records first.  It seems the newer records are fading faster because the quality of the ink and paper are inferior to those used years ago.

 Here is a girl that is looking for information in the book to enter in the computer.  Family search has machines that take pictures of each page and then they are indexed by volunteers so they are available for everyone.  It is a much easier way to preserve records.  There are thousands of records available and there is a great need for more indexing.  After they are indexed then we can find them through Familysearch and we can build family trees.  There is nothing as fun as watching people find pictures of their ancestors records.

 See these old records. These are from 1560!  Can you see the leather binding.  That is original as well as the paper and ink.  We were lucky to be able to see them. The director asked Lyle what his college degree was in before he would let us look.  I guess "International Relations" passed the test. It was thrilling to be standing there in front of all these old records.  I just wish we could copy them and index all of them.  The Director wishes we would too, but there just isn't enough people to do the work.  The Haslers have been here for 3 years and will be leaving the end of May and all they have been able to do are records from about the 1930s on up. There are records all over the world like this, familysearch is doing a great job at getting some of them digitalized but there is so much more to do.

Here are the Haslers handing a digital copy of the records they have scanned to the Director.  We will be working with him when we do a few booths that will be set up for familysearch this year.  We will have one in March and a longer one in June. They are during some sort of city celebrations and we are happy to have him help us with them.  Last year the one in June gave the missionaries over a thousand self-referrals.

A Ward Talent Show

 We had just finished up an appointment on the lower floor of this church building when I remembered that the ward that meets there was having a talent show.  We ran upstairs and were delighted to be able to catch most of the program.  The families showed us their great traditional dances and the colorful costumes.  The family in the picture above did a middle eastern dance where he magically turned his wife who was a mannequin in the beginning, into a real person.  The girls are his daughters and they were enjoying being dressed up for the performance and dancing with their parents.

This man sang several songs that were about lost love.  They were very sad.  It was so great to see him share his talent.  I don't know how old he was but he was pretty stooped when he stood up and shuffled when he walked.  The MC for the program just stood and held the microphone for him the whole time.
 The people here show respect to the elderly.  They give up their seats on the bus for women and older people.  Especially the young men.  I saw a very handsome, tall Spanish-looking young man that got on the bus and he just looked around the whole time for people he could help, An older woman was trying to get on and she could barely move her feet. He immediately jumped down to the bus entrance and gently led her with both hands on to the bus and made sure she had a comfortable seat. I have seen that over and over.
At about the end of the program they passed out sandwiches and cups of soda.  It was a simple ward activity and I was so impressed by the talent.

Typical Day in Historic Cusco

 Behind me are some men in traditional Spanish dress and playing traditional instruments.

 This is the typical bus we take when we don't take taxis.  Bus fares one way are less than 50 cents for the two of us and Taxis are about $1.30 for the two of  us.  Transportation is inexpensive and very accessible for us.  We have now been without a car for almost a month and we are doing fine.  We just give the taxi drivers some sort of description of where we need to go and they are great at getting us there. Usually it is just one of the churches we are visiting and they seem to know where the Mormon churches are.  After a long bus ride that took us to the edge of town and back and after the time we got off too early and had to walk forever to get to our apartment, we have about figured out how to use the buses.

 The markets are so colorful and the smell of all the fruit and vegetables is amazing.  All of the food is so fresh, it is easy to be a good cook here with all these amazing ingredients.  There are grains and fruits I have never seen before.  It has been fun learning new dishes with these new ingredients, every dish has turned out great so far.

 Lyle is buying Quinua from this lady.  We have been eating a lot of Quinua in salads and soups. It is easy to eat healthy here.

 This is a typical busy street.  How do you like Lyle's hat?  After the first couple of days of having a sunburned head and ears, he decided he needed to wear a hat for protection.  He has been looking for a good hat every since but he hasn't found one he likes yet, so here he is wearing something he found at our house before he left. Notice how tall he is compared to everyone else.  I love it because I can always find him in a crowd.

The people work so hard getting their goods to market every day and then setting in their little booths waiting for customers. I think this Senora deserves her little nap.