Another week has gone by and I'm pleased to report we now have internet in our apartment, although I am writing from a city called Camana on the coast of Peru about 3 hours away from our apartment in Arequipa (at the church building). This week started with the missionaries' p-day (preparation day). We went to the mission office to use the wifi and there were a lot of missionaries there having fun playing volleyball and fútbol:
This is the parking lot of the church where the mission office is.
Then zone conference was on Tuesday and another one on Wednesday. The missionaries are grouped into zones, then districts, then teaching areas. For example, there are 8 zones in the mission. Each zone has one to three districts. Then each district has about 5 companionships of missionaries assigned to a certain teaching area in or near where they live.
Tuesday was zone conference for 3 of the zones - two in Arequipa and one was bussed in from the coast. Then Wednesday was zone conference for 2 zones - the other two in Arequipa. The zone conferences are led by the mission leaders and are a way to teach and motivate the missionaries. We attended the first one and just part of the second one since they taught the same thing both days. Presidente Chipman gets very animated when he teaches which made us chuckle:
We ate lunch with the missionaries and spent some time getting to know them - so many names and faces to remember. Presidente Chipman recognizes the birthdays after lunch for all those birthdays coming up between then and the next zone conference (Tim being one of them). It's his tradition to do a little birthday song and dance for the missionaries and then he passes out candy for them. Being that he and Hermana Chipman both have birthdays in February, I encouraged the missionaries to come up front and do the same dance for them. Here they are:
The missionaries did it the next day as well. Then Tuesday night we went to the temple with the La Costa Zone missionaries (the zone that bused in), which we really enjoyed. The temple here is beautiful and sits up on a hill so you can see it from pretty far way.
We took a quick selfie that didn't turn out great.
Then Thursday morning we headed to Tacna with the Chipmans about 4 to 5 hours away south of Arequipa. Parts of the drive looked like we were on the moon:
Then other parts looked like Mars:
Tacna itself looks like a scene out of Star Wars:
This is the view from our hotel room
(which was very nice by the way).
You can see the dust on our window
In Tacna the mission employs a driver, Socrates. Socrates drove us all around Tacna to all the pensionistas' homes, so we could get to know them and go over their responsibilities. Pensionistas are paid by the mission to "take care" of the missionaries as far as meals and many of them supply their housing. It is important that they feed them safely of course, so they don't get sick. We reviewed with them the importance of filtered water, fruits and vegetables, etc. The Peruvians serve rice and potatoes with every meal and we ask them to include something green as well. We also wanted to be sure they know not to be offended if a missionary doesn't eat everything on their plate. Sometimes they serve A LOT of food. We met with 11 out of the 12 pensionistas in 1 1/2 days. It was amazing how well Socrates knew the city and could take us right where we needed to go. The addresses here are not clear at all.
Here is Tim at the home of a pensionista.
She is the only one we weren't able to get a hold of.
The car is Socrates'. No air conditioning, so a lot of wind blown hair
We loved sitting down and getting to know these women and some of their families. Very humble circumstances.
The next day was the zone conference for the Tacna and Ilo Zones. We actually visited two more pensionistas during zone conference and returned just before lunch. Wow! The stake there served us sooooo much food. After lunch we headed back to Arequipa with the Chipmans. We got back around 8:00, stopped for dinner and they dropped us off.
The fun for this week is no hot water. We had to take cold showers this morning. The office couple didn't have power for a few days and lost food in their fridge, so I guess we are lucky, especially since we stayed in a hotel for part of it.
Today we drove out to the coast (Camana) for a district meeting. Since I don't speak Spanish, Tim is in the meeting and I am working on the blog. I didn't need to come, but I wanted to see more of Peru and meet more people.
I'll end with a description of how it is to travel by car here. They have two lane roads (highways) with no speed limit. You can go as fast or as slow as you want. There are many very slow trucks on the road, and sometimes very slow cars. There is some mountain (they look like very large dunes, not like the Colorado mountains) driving with twists and turns and some straight away driving. Most of the time you are having to pass the slow vehicles into oncoming traffic. If the road is too twisty, then you are just stuck behind a line of cars following the slow trucks. This goes on the entire road trip. Yikes!!
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