Bertoch Arequipa Peru Mission

Since it has been a while since our last post, I am having to scroll through our photos in order to remember all that has happened in the last two months. We are still loving it here. We just finished another transfer, so we are down to 3 transfers left until we head home. (April, June, July). It's crazy how fast the time has gone. We just finished the rainy season. I've mentioned in the past about the clear skies (not a cloud in the sky for months) and 75 degree weather everyday. Well, summer arrived and the clouds came in and the rain started. The temperatures dropped in the 60's and we started wearing sweaters. The volcanoes also have snow on top at 20,000 feet. The rain has stopped, but we still have clouds. You can tell it is getting warmer though. We're having to use fans again in the apartment.

This is Chachani volcano as seen from our apartment complex. Of course, we don't get snow down here even though we are at 8,000 feet.

This is the top of the Misti volcano

Here are some photos I took when Hermana Chipman and I were spending p-day together. President and Tim had gone to Camana for the district conference there. Lisa and I can get more done if we stay at home. The meetings there are, of course, all in Spanish, so we don't know much of what is discussed or said at the conference.

We had lunch at the main plaza in Arequipa and did a little shopping. We wandered into a courtyard off the plaza and this is what greeted us. They were being filmed.

Our friends Randy and Julie Skalla from Colorado and their son Ryan came for a visit, so we took some time off to do some sightseeing with them. They arrived in Arequipa while we were at Liderazgo (leadership meeting). Hermana Chipman picked them up at the airport and they met us at the church. Ryan took this photo of President training the zone leaders and sister training leaders.

We then took them to the mall, so Julie could get a hair appliance, because her's wouldn't work here.

And we, of course, found her a Coke Zero (no diet Coke here)

They went back to the mission home to rest and then we all met for dinner:

The next day we left early for Chivay and Colca Canyon. Because it has been raining so much here it was very beautiful and green.

The river was very high and muddy because of all the rain. The hotel had to close the hot springs which was disappointing.

The hotel we stayed at:

While we were in Chivay, the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square visited Lima and put on a concert. The Church had sent the mission 30,000 invitations at the end of the year for the missionaries to distribute. The concert was streamed into the stake centers in Peru, Boliva and Equador. Tim had the responsibility of organizing and distributing the invitations to our missionaries. We were nervous about the wifi capablilities, especially in the branches that are outside the city - Chivay being one of them. Everything turned out great! Here we are at the concert at the small branch in Chivay:

We returned to Arequipa that night and on Monday Tim and I showed the Skallas around Arequipa. We started at the temple and then took a couple of taxis into the plaza and had lunch and then walked around. We took them to the cathedral and to the market.

The Chipmans met us for lunch then had to get back to work.

The next morning we met the Skallas at the airport for a flight to Cusco and Machu Picchu. The Chipmans stayed in Arequipa for the mission zone conferences. They have been to Machu Picchu, so they were fine. We had hired a guide and he met us at the airport and got us to our hotel. We spent the rest of the morning exploring the town and ate breakfast at this fun little restaurant that Ryan found for us:

We met the guide that afternoon back at the hotel. He first took us to some ruins in the city called Sacsayhuaman. It is a quechuan word and is pronounced like "sexy woman."

You can see the weather would look threatening at times, but it only rained on us one night on our way back to the hotel after dinner. Our guide said we were very charmed as we were there during the rainy season.

A view of Cusco from the ruins.

Ryan slid down this natural slide.

The next morning our guide took us out of Cusco into the sacred valley on our way to the train station in Ollantaytambo. We visited a Quechuan family who showed us how they make and dye fabric out of alpaca wool.

It is common in Peru to raise guinea pigs for food.

We stopped at these ancient salt mines that they still use today. There is an underground salt lake that feeds into these pools. During the rainy season the pools don't dry out, so you can't see the salt as well.

More ruins

A photo with our guide

This is the train we rode to Aguas Calientes, which is just below Machu Picchu.

We got a little entertainment at the train station

Here is a look at Aguas Calientes. We stayed right here near the river. It is a subtropical climate and is very green:

The next morning we caught a bus with our guide right outside our hotel and rode up to Machu Picchu. Our guide taught us that the people here are not actually called Incans. That would be like calling us Presidents. The Incan was the leader of the Andeans. It is the Andean people who built Machu Picchu.

We were able to spend two hours with our guide at the site. Then we loaded back on the bus and headed back to the town. I definitely can check that one off my bucket list. It doesn't disappoint.

We spent the rest of the day eating lunch and checking out the town. We ran into some kids having a water fight at the plaza using buckets to scoop water out of the fountain.

We then took the train back to Ollantaytambo and there we got on a bus and drove back through the sacred valley to Cusco. We spent a little more time in Cusco as our flights didn't leave until the afternoon of the following day. Tim and I headed back to Arequipa and the Skallas headed back home to Colorado.

Our vacation being over, we got back to the work of the mission. But first, we celebrated Tim's birthday! The Chipmans' niece and her boyfriend were visiting and joined us.

Before we left for Machu Picchu, we organized 5 trips to the temple for the missionaries. We were able to attend the last one when we returned.

Soon after that, President Chipman let us know there there was a missionary down in Tacna who needed to return home early for mental health reasons. Tim drove down with President to pick up the missionary and bring him back to Arequipa. They stayed in Tacna that night and then the missionary stayed with us the next night. That day we took him into town for lunch and to buy a poncho since his flight didn't leave until later that night. We also walked around the temple with him so he could visit it one last time. I took this photo:

The Chipmans, VanDusens and us went together to the Mollendo District Conference later that week. Mollendo is on the coast, so when we arrived we ate lunch at a restaurant right on the beach and then took in the ocean air afterwards before the meetings started.

This ceviche cart amused me. Ceviche is raw fish and we don't allow the missionaries to eat it to keep them from getting sick. The Peruvians are very sad about this. But this sums up the reason we have that rule. We've eaten it at nice restaurants where it is safe, and it is yummy.

Some more highlights:

We've been to a couple baptisms in our ward. We missed another one because we were at a goodbye dinner for the VanDusens. They actually finished their mission today and are on their way to meet family to tour around Peru. In the month of March our mission had 220 baptisms which is the most baptisms in a month for the Chipmans.

This was the baptism of a 15 year old young man

We also attended the despidida of 9 young missionaries, one senior missionary couple and a service missionary who went home last week.

During the despidida, the departing missionaries eat lunch together, watch a slide show (which they take home on a flash drive) and bear their testimonies. We were grateful that we were able to join them this time. The Latinos up top went home the week before so they could attend a special class to help them with school and job opportunities after their mission. The VanDusens are the senior couple on the right. They were our office missionaries and we didn't get anyone to replace them, so the young missionaries have been trained and have taken over for them.

We went out with the ward mission leader again this week. We didn't have a lot of luck. Many people didn't answer the door and a couple of them that did, didn't have time for us. We did talk to one inactive sister for a bit and invited her to watch general conference. We also chatted with her parents who drove up at the end of our visit. We then joined the missionaries for a lesson with Luis who is getting baptized this Sunday. His father and grandmother also joined us. I'm glad we are getting out again now that my knee is feeling better.

We ran into the ward clerk who is helping the ward mission leader download the LDS Tools App in this photo. We are hoping this will help us be a little more efficient in the future. We don't have access to this ward's directory.