Temple Trip

It was a good and busy week. We had the local missionaries at the house for lunch on Monday. I can't believe we didn't get any pictures.

We spend a few minutes with Elder Tapia. He is headed home.

I thought we were going to make Pizza till I went to the store and they didn't have any mozzarella cheese. They always have mozzarella cheese.
So we have learned you don't make a menu and go to the store to get the items. You go to the store, see what is on the shelves, decide what you want to eat, buy the stuff. Repeat about every other day. Most things don't last too long even in the fridge. So the store (Raulitos) is visited often. We ended up making burgers.
Most of the week was spent helping people get their family history put in the computer.

Elder Elton has been in Nasca for about 6 months. He is headed home too.

 We also have been visiting families in the evenings.

So the big event for the week was a temple trip to Lima. We spent the day cleaning and getting some ideas together for a combined adult lesson I had been asked to give on Sunday.

We are all smiles as it's only 11:00pm and we are headed to Lima.

 We left the house at 8:30 pm. Went (walked) to the chapel. Where we helped with a few last minute family history items and visited with the departing missionaries. We talked about all kinds of subjects. The transition back to normal life, school, work, dating, marriage, kids.  It was a fun visit.
At 11:20 pm we got on the bus and take a quick photo as the journey begins. Cesar (front left) is going to miss his very good friend elder Elton. I think they spent most of the seven hour bus ride talking and looking at pictures of their adventures together in Nasca. We had enough people going from the two branches to rent a bus.  
  We got there about 6:00 am and stayed till about 4:30 pm. Then it was back on the bus for the trip home. We got back to Nasca a little after midnight. We  noticed alot of fireworks and busy restaurants on our walk home from the bus station.  Not sure what 

that was all about.  Probably a normal Saturday night that we just usually sleep through. 

A great day for the Cocche family.

   

I think we had been on the bus about 20 minutes. 

Joyce and I took a short break to find a KFC for lunch.

 

We showed up  Sunday morning to find the chapel in need of some cleaning.

Internet service.

 

The scaffolding in the hallway had to go outside.

A little side note. You may remember that we didn't have internet service for a few days a couple of week ago.
After several days and a few phone calls we finally talk to the landlord and she said. She wasn't going to pay the bill and that we needed to get my own account. So we order the service. The tech comes to the house and tells us he has to run all new cable from down the block, across the street and new boxes in the house. So he does and now there are two of everything
into the house. So now we know why there are sooo many cables hanging on all of the poles.  Nothing comes down and it can't be used by another customer even in the same house.

Conveniences

It's already started out as a great week - We got a water filter today!  We (really, let's just face it, it's not we, it's just Curt) no longer has to pack 20 liter boxes of water home from the store.  This comes  as we are finally starting to remember not to just rinse out a cup or a toothbrush under the faucet.  We are excited to get to try it out and it sure makes things easier and cheaper.

The missionaries had planned a ward talent show for this week.  They put a lot of work into it.  We had all ages participate.  There was singing, dancing, acting, playing the piano and even a little magic show.  These four pictures are of Hermana Fernandina and her mother.  The missionaries refer to Hermana Fernandina as Hermana Awesome.  She is always willing to help anyone and she has such a positive attitude.  Her mother only speaks Quechuan so Hermana Fernandina explained the steps of how her mother makes her own yarn while her mom demonstrated the process.  They then showed us a blanket and some other handiwork she'd made.  They also sang some very catchy little quechuan tunes and had everyone clapping along.

A good turnout.  There were a lot of us trying to capture the nights events for future enjoyment! 

Young Women did a great job with their song.

This is a group of young adults that had everyone enjoying the night.  Some even participated multiple times.

Sister Missionaries beautiful singing.

Elders had everyone laughing through their magic show.

Curt had hauled our microwave down to the church and we made popcorn for everyone when the show was over.  My favorite part of the night (which of course I didn't get a picture of) - was when a lot of the sisters gathering in the kitchen to see how popcorn was popped in the microwave (and of course we snitched a few pieces - just to test it).  I am often humbled by these wonderful people that without many comforts are living such rich lives.  They are so good to us and we can learn so much from them.

A little late

We try to get this done on Sunday night or Monday morning. But Sunday night the internet was super slow and I was wore out so I put it off till Monday morning but then we had a couple of days with no internet service here at the house.

A quick lunch before we head to the beach for zone activity.

Well this week was full of travels. We got up early Sunday morning and caught the shuttle to Marcona. We attended the regular Sunday meetings there. Of course we got called up out of the audience to share our feelings of Christ. Joyce did a great job she hadn't prepared anything and didn't even have her old notes to go by. After the meetings I had a "short" meeting with the district presidency to finalize the agendas for district conference the following Sunday. Luckily it is cooling off nicely in Marcona this time of year so Joyce wasn't roasting while she waited. A couple of nice sisters sat and visited with her during the wait.

Monday is P-day "preparation day".  So we did some laundry which takes longer to dry cause it's cooling off here. House cleaning is a constant battle. There is always dust in the air so everything gets dusty fast. So we dust and sweep and mop constantly. Monday is the big day for that.

 At 1:00ish we met up with Elders, Elton, Larrancia, Tapia and Lucero and Hermanas Russell and Ybanez for the shuttle ride to Marcona. The poor lady in the back left of the picture is NOT part of our group. She got to hang out with us while we waited almost an hour for the van to finish filling up and then the hour drive to Marcona.
We went to playa hermosa and met up with Elders: Moran, Rosario and Castillo.

We played capture the flag on the beach, threw the Frisbee some and just messed around. The biggest adventure sometimes is taking group pictures.

playing capture the flag. 

Coming to the end of a fun day at the beach. 

 We went to a family night where the elders shared a message about Christ then way all took turns remembering other titles that referred to Christ in the scriptures, Lord, Master, Redeemer, Savior, Prince of Peace..... that taxed my brain. After that we played a game of tying ties. That was a game of speed and dexterity. We enjoyed Inka Cola and popcorn too.

 I spent most of this week on the phone
or the computer or waiting for a phone call trying to co-ordinate things for district conference.

 By Friday we needed a break and some out side exercise to get ready for the weekend. So we put on our jeans and T-shirts and caught a taxi out to the aqueducts. They are only a few miles from town. They are original 2000 year old construction water supply systems. The short version of how they were made is. They dug down till they hit surface water then dug a canal at that depth to where they wanted the water to go. Then they lined the canal with clay and river rock about 3 feet up then covered that with flat rocks. then covered it all back up with dirt. At some points they left it uncovered, the canals are curved to control flow speed and limit evaporation. The holes in the covered part are there because once a year someone would have to crawl thru the covered portion and clean it out. those are air holes for the cleaning crew. I dropped down inside one of the tunnels at an air hole. The tunnels are curved and narrow. There is NO WAY I would crawl into those tunnels.

This is looking down the tunnel. About every 10 feet it curves. At this point I am about 30 feet below the surface. 

 While we were there a small group came in "original" clothing and performed a ceremonial blessing of the system.











After the aqueduct we headed cross country (across a melon patch) to some nearby Nasca Lines. We had a close encounter with some dogs but they couldn't get to us for the thick line of thorny bushes between us. The thorny bushes story is for another day.

Behind Joyce in the tree line is the aqueduct. We were headed to another site for a look at some of the smaller Nasca lines. 

 This place is called Las Agujas, (the needles).  To the right you can see one of the smaller needles

 They are a little hard to see from ground level.

 We decided to walk back to town. This neighborhood is called Buena Fe.

This brought our adventure to an end and meant it was time to get back to phone calls and emails.
Saturday and Sunday were filled with interviews and meetings. Did I mention the Conference was held in Marcona so we got to help set up all the internet transmission equipment to show the meetings Nasca on Saturday night and Sunday. We went to Marcona with President and sister McGinn for those meetings. So that meant 4 trips to Marcona this week. It was a good week, we stayed busy on the Lord's errand. Love you all, thanks for your prayers.  The Mayberrys.

Immigration

If you are ever going to travel to Peru, please let me give you a friendly bit of advice: when you are getting off the plane and going through customs and immigration, they give you a little slip of paper about the size of a small receipt when they hand back your passport.  Although nothing is said about this tiny little paper - it's important! It's not a receipt, you will pay 18% more at hotels if you don't have it and you will need it to leave the country.   No, we didn't lose ours but we also didn't realize how necessary that little scrap of paper would be!
OK, back to our story - When we'd first arrived here in Peru, we had to go to Interpol and get our teeth checked, fingerprints taken and some paperwork filled out.  We later sent our passports back to Lima (on a bus) with a general power of attorney so that we could get a card to stay here for more than the 183 days allowed per year. We didn't have an ink pad so we broke a pen and got the ink out and took our fingerprints with that to send back up to people in the area office who were helping us (that's Marco sitting by Curt at Interpol).  Thursday we went with some great Elders to immigrations and filled out more paperwork and got our fingerprints and picture taken again and were given a card (carne de extranjeria) that allows us to stay here for a year.  Here are some pictures of our interpol/immigration adventures.

 We happened to be in Lima on Cinco de Mayo and the Myers and ourselves were able to wrangle an invitation to go celebrate.  There was a group of senior missionaries (about 2 doz) that got together and went to a little Mexican restaurant they'd found that was having a big cinco de mayo celebration - including a fun but very loud mariachi band!  In the group were the Lima MTC President and his wife, a couple of the area doctors and their wives, some humanitarian missionaries and I think some self reliance missionaries in the mix.  It was fun to get to meet some new people and hear about some of their experiences.

We stayed at a bed and breakfast this trip and we had a nice little balcony outside our room.

Okay, you're in Lima.  You've been kinda sick for a few days.  What would you do?  Well, let me tell you what my adventurous sweetie did - he bought a slice of cake with a custard filling from a kid (out of a duffle bag). The little guy was trying to raise money for a scouting activity. I am freaking out a little bit and he just asks me what it's going to do?  Make him sick?  Well, he's eating and enjoying his (not so yummy) cake and he gets almost done and he takes a bite and says, oh, I don't think I should be eating this!  That bite tasted bad!  So I snapped this picture as a before in case we ended up in the ER with an after picture but, he's good now.  He makes life so fun!

 On Wednesday, there was a specialized training for the hermanas in our mission.  Sister McGinn let the two senior sisters help out a little with putting it together.  It was informative and a lot of fun and I think the sisters enjoyed the day together.  I loved getting to know the sisters outside our area a little better. They are such wonderful young women and they are trying so hard to be excellent servants of the Lord.

We were also able to attend a day of training on Friday that included the physical and mental health of the missionaries.  We had a couple of area doctors come and talk to all the missionaries from the Lima area, the McGinns will be taking the training to
the rest of the missionaries in a week or so.
                             ***
These are pictures near where we were staying in Mira Flores.  We went with the Myers to Larcormar on Tuesday night after we'd arrived in Lima. It's a big mall inside a cliff next to the ocean that caters to the tourist.  We had a good old fashioned hamburger!  The old lighthouse was across the street from the B & B we'd stayed at.  There is a long narrow strip with a beautiful park that runs between the road and the ocean. There is a gorgeous view.  If you decide to walk down the steps to go to the beach - just let us warn you it's a long way back up -especially if you start         feeling ill!  Life worth remembering!


B&B Key - pics upside down but this was a cute inexpensive little place to stay and they had the sweetest little receptionist!

More Food!  Delfino Mar Restaurant

Starting the almost 8 hour bus ride back to Nasca.  Hurry and send a text to Jessica before I lose service and then ... nap time?!