The TRUTH! June 28th

We just decided to walk to where Walter said the church would be. On our way we ran into some Elders! They weren’t even serving here in our part of town! Apparently there was a big conference here for all of the missionaries serving Cusco with a General Authority. They gave us directions to both of the churches and off we went. One of the Elders was from Sandy, Utah named Elder Palmer and the other missionary was from Trujillo, Peru named something like Chugara or something? {I obviously was paying more attention to the one who could speak English!} We made our way to the first church where we met some Sister missionaries who told us that meetings started at 10 in the morning and they gave us a Spanish Book of Mormon! Rach and I were so proud, so emotional, so happy. We must be doing something right when our only goal of the day was to find the Elders and it happened! We made a trip to the other church and walked inside but it was under construction so that was a little bit disappointing but I cannot tell you how grateful I feel that our church is universal. It doesn’t change from place to place-sure, the customs and people change but our religion is constant. Yo se que Dios vive. La Iglesia es la verdadera!

Learning and Growing, June 28th Part 1

Today has been such a great day. I feel so at peace here. I look around at all of the architecture and scenery and I can’t help but fall in love with Cusco again. I don’t feel like I am a changed person BUT I can say that this has been a life changing experience. I love all of the music playing throughout the streets-a mix of Peruvian music and American. I love how friendly the people are here. I love how cheap it is here. I love that I am not only learning more about Peru each day but also learning more about Rachel and myself as well. I have loved being here because I feel so happy. I have never laughed so hard with anybody else at the dumbest things ever. I have never felt this accepted by a group of people that I am just getting to know. It’s amazing to me how people come into our lives so we can learn more about ourselves. Today in Spanish class, Walter was being the best teacher ever and reminding us of some vocabulary words for vegetables. He started to write them on the board when Rachel whipped out a book her friend Josh gave her to help her learn more Spanish. He asked where she had gotten this book at Rachel told him her friend gave it to her and he asked if he was Mexican or something. We then explained to him that Josh served a 2 year mission in Georgia. He then got excited because he remembered that Rach’s boyfriend Steven is serving a mission right now. He asked us if we practiced the same religion as the boys and we replied “yes.” He then asked us what the name of our church was-I struggled a little bit but then I remembered my dad practicing it with Bryant before he left so I spit out, “La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los santos de los ultimos dias!” He knew exactly what we were talking about. We tried to describe what Elders look like and asked if he had seen any-he said he knew of the “Mormons” and thought he had seen the missionaries before. He also was able to mention “James Smith or something.” He asked if we wanted his opinion but I quickly replied “no” so the moment would not be ruined. Of course we were able to tell him his name was Joseph Smith and he immediately told us where a church was. He described the architecture of the steeple and everything. In that moment I could not have been happier. THIS IS GOD’S WORK. Rach and I are now planning to get a Spanish Book of Mormon for Walter to give to him when we leave. I love this experience of my life-this is my mini “moving away/mission” moment and I could not be more grateful for these opportunities I am having. 

this one's for my #1 fan club..

Wanted. Monday, June 27th

Today was a very chill day. We woke up and went to Spanish class where we of course fell in love with Walter again. The “devil” was there as well to give us our fact of the day. Today we tried to explain to Walter was “tickling” was. He admitted to being very ticklish with the cutest boyish grin I have ever seen a 62 year old man wear. We had a tea break also, luckily there were crackers to help the nasty taste. After class we bought some post cards and then came home to having lunch cooked and ready. It was delicious-our mamita cooked us some oatmeal soup-it was delicious, I could not even tell it was oatmeal-and some chinese food stuff. It was the best I have eaten here. Our mamita told us we will be getting some new roommates on Thursday, and they are boyfriend and girlfriend haha. Interesting, right? After lunch we hung out and then went to the black market where everything is seriously SO cheap. We are going back pronto. Then we ran to the post office and then to the supermarket to get some food storage (aka so we don’t starve before bed). We came back home then went to the orphanage. I brought some puzzles, coloring books, crayons, and card games from back home for the girls. Watching all of these girls ranging from 6 to 17 made me realize how blessed we are to live in the U.S. All of the girls were like ravenous wolves trying to get at what I had brought. I also talked to a few of them about the orphanage, etc. Listening to their stories made me so grateful for my mom and dad. I feel blessed to know that my parents want me and love me always. So far on this trip I have done pretty good without being homesick but today I seemed to be much more emotional when thinking about my family. I miss them a lot and it’s only been 9 days. I just love my family so much and feel so blessed to be raised by two of the most amazing people that exist on the planet! 

Tour day 2, Sunday June 26th

Today began totally different than yesterday.  We had to be up and out of the house by 8 for the next day of tours. There was a lot more time spent driving but also a lot more time spent walking and hiking up mountains to look at the ruinas as well.  We also had a different tour guide for our English tour and it turned out to be much better. It was funny though because he would say, “Please more again give me your attention.” I kid you not, he said it at least 7 times and each time I thought he was saying my name over and over-more again..haha. The ruins were seriously so beautiful though. We learned the coolest things and the neatest thing happened too. As we were on the bus driving to a ruin, Rachel was looking out the window and she saw an LDS church-we seriously got so excited. It was funny to see it though because it was much nicer than I thought it would be. It was a two-story building with a big, white steeple. To add the excitement, we then saw the Elders! Rach and I started going crazy and waving at them like they were the coolest people ever. I even got emotional seeing them with little kids hanging all over them as they try to walk down the streets. This truly is the Lord’s work. It made me grateful to have Bryant out there serving, even if it is a huge sacrifice and I haven’t heard from him in 13 days (no, I am not bitter…). Anyways, we didn’t make it back home til like 7:30 or so and we skyped rach’s family and I set up an account for my dad and told him the password so he could skype too J I cannot wait til we go to church this upcoming week and experience more of the culture here. 

Tour Day 1, Saturday June 25th

Today started off very chill-we were able to wake up when we needed to and then finally got up and ready for our tour to start at one thirty. We got on a tour bus for our English tour, aka Spanish speaking men attempting to speak English.  The ruins that we saw were very pretty and of course there was a whole lot of walking. Good thing since I only eat bread here! Haha, okay not really but 2/3rds of the time-I do. After the tour we stopped at an Al Paca store where Rachel bought a jacket made of straight up BABY ALPACA. That’s right-if you don’t know what that is, let me educate you. Basically, when the Al Paca gets it’s first hair cut, that’s baby al paca. Crazy, I know.  After our tour we had a girls night with the other girls here from our same volunteer organization.  First we went and bought some desserts and then we watched Take the Lead with Spanish subtitles. It was great fun. It’s nice to have a little bit of America in Peru. 

Party hardy! Friday, June 24th

Day 4-fri 24

Today we woke up early for an annual festival that is an all day event in cusco. The festival is called Inti Raymi-festival of sun (in Quechua).  Basically they started off in a placed called Qoricancha where there are hundreds of peruanos dressed in different native attire and pretty much have a dance/play performance for everyone around. After this the performers relocate to plaza de armas a few blocks over for more dancing and singing.  Finally the dancers end up in Sacsaywaman, where the play ends and they sacrifice a llama. Anyways, we made it to qoricancha but unfortunately there were a bazillion people there so it was really hard to see anything. Then we went to Plaza de Armas but since the performance was taking forever to begin we decided to hike up to Sacsaywaman to try to get some good seats. Let’s just say I wanted to die. The hike is so hard! There is a part in town were you have to climb 110 steep steps before walking uphill the rest of the way. High altitude + out of shape + way too long of a hike=me doubled over thinking I was literally going to die.  To make matters worse I got to be a first hand witness of little Peruvian women in high heels with babies tied onto their backs hike up the mountain with great ease.  At one point a little old Peruvian man turned to me and said, “Esta bien?” Am I ok? Let me think about that for a second…NO. Literally. Anyways, we got to the performance 2 to 3 hours early for our seats on the hill. We just sat on the hill waiting for the stuff to start. Scariest thing of my life happened—we were sitting on the grass when all of the sudden Rachel looks at my leg and jumps up and screams. I look down to see a huge spider on my pants. It was HUGE. (not tarantula big but definitely the size of at least a half dollar) it was so scary. But then it got boring just waiting for everything to begin again. I started getting really annoyed with how close Peruvian people sit next to you. Seriously, they have no concept of personal space. What was really funny was that when the performance finally started there would be people standing up blocking people’s views so the Peruvian people would yell, “sientense!” and chuck rocks and food at them until they sat down. Hilarious, I tell you. The best part of the performance was the sacrificing of the llama so we waited until that part then started our journey back down the mountain. We ate at a little restaurant and didn’t get home til about 7 or 8ish. It was an awesome time being able to be a part of such a special celebration. We were pretty tired so we stayed in for the night. Our host mom is so funny. She took in a chinese man for a few days so he could go to Inti Raymi. It was hilarious because he only really speaks chinese so maria elena would try to speak broken English to him so they could somewhat communicate. I wish I could have captured a picture to show his facial expressions. He would say something and then just pause with a huge, cheesy smile on his face and it was his cue for us to laugh. It was so funny to try to convince him to get a Facebook-he kept saying, “My master say study much books and articles, articles, articles. I no have time.” Now, just imagine this sentence coming out of a tiny chinese man’s mouth-it was precious and took so long to spit out since it was more like, “my my my my my master say he say say to study much books and and and articles articles articles.” Needless to say, it was hilarious.

Caution: Do not attempt to say the above stated quotes in a chinese accent. It may cause the wetting of the pants. The end.

Day of Laughs. June 23rd

today started out great-we got to our Spanish class and walter showed up a few minutes later. We had a great time learning and talking and what not. I love walter. He is so cute! Anyways, on our “tea break” with walter, the unnamed boy that works in the front office came out to give us some facts about cusco. Before school we had told our host mom that we would eat out at the plaza de armas. The boy (whose name I seriously cannot pronounce) brought up the plaza so I pointed in a direction and asked him if that was where it was located. Obviously I was way off base because he just laughed at me and then offered to walk me and rach to the plaza with walter. After class ended he took us to the plaza and became our tour guide for the day. We walked FOREVER. He took us all over the place showing us the difference between incan made walls and Spanish made walls to going down “piss alley.” Yes, you guessed that right-apparently everyone just pees in that street-at first I thought he was lying, but the smell spoke for itself. Gross. He then took us to a more “touristy” restaurant where he hit on the peruana waitress all afternoon. He called her “mi amor” and “Corazon” more times than I can even remember. We were so glad to hang out with him-he would tell us all of these stories about himself that were lies and we just laughed and laughed when we realized we would never know who he really is. There was even another girl who was listening to his stories and she all of the sudden spoke up saying, “okay I can’t take this anymore! I don’t believe anything you just said!” we died laughing at everything that was said-to the point of tears. After lunch he took us to the supermarket so we could buy some snacks since we pretty much starve to death every night. We then parted ways and went back home til we had work. Honestly, this sounds awful but rach and I were totally dreading going back to the orphanage for a few reasons. Number 1-the girls were so much older than we expected. Number 2-the girls seemed to only want to watch tv. Number 3-Rach and I didn’t really get to experience it together…etc. BUT, when we went back it went so much better than expected. Rach had apparently danced in her girl’s room the first night so of course when I get there my girls all wanted to dance. I taught English the first night so of course rachel’s girls all wanted to  learn English and teach Rachel some Spanish-so cute. Seriously. Anyways, it was great and I think I am already starting to get attached to my girls even though they aren’t super young or what I expected. They are very sweet and I love that even though they aren’t living in the best circumstances they are happy and loving just as Christ would be.