I meant to post this last week but our Sundays are BUSY now with our new assignment at the MTC……

We have some new assignments.

1. I , Faye, have been asked to facilitate an English language learning class from the church’s Pathways program. The students will be some of the local employees at the area office. I’m going to a class that is already in session to watch and learn this Thursday. The class is starting this September and will meet in one of the area office conference rooms after work on Thursdays at 5:00. I won’t be teaching, the students teach themselves with the curriculum provided. But I’m excited! I can do English!!!

2. President Moore from the MTC  met with us on Tuesday to ask if we would serve in the branch presidency for the English speaking missionaries at the MTC. We are still learning what our responsibilities will be. I do know that we both will be giving a talk in Sacrament Meeting on different basic gospel subjects once a month. The couples in the branch presidency take turns speaking along with the missionaries. Spending time with the missionaries is one of my favorite things here! What a blessing to have this responsibility! We will pretty much spend most of the day on Sunday at the MTC.  President Moore said that even though these missionaries will be learning Spanish, Sunday meetings are in English except for the opening and closing prayers and the sacrament prayer. The meetings on Sunday are so we can be ‘fed’ spiritually, not to learn Spanish. I agree. I had just decided that I was going to start going to all of the English speaking classes in our La Molina ward for that very reason. I’ll miss the good people there but looking forward to the MTC experience. I need to get used to calling it the CCM. That’s what they call it in South America. It stands for Centro de Capacitacion Misional.

Last week we spent 4 days in Bogota, Colombia. Here’s part of a letter I wrote to our children:

June 13, 2017 – Dad and I flew to Bogota, Colombia yesterday to do some teaching at the MTC here. Yesterday, we taught a health class to the Spanish speaking missionaries and tomorrow we teach some new missionaries that will have just arrived. That will be a bilingual class. The class is 10 Laws of Health for South American Missionaries. Today, we have a free day to sight see and do some shopping. One thing I am shopping for is hairspray. They don’t have it in Peruvian stores. I have looked and looked. You can only get it in expensive salons and it is indeed expensive. I’m told it is a regular item here like in the United States. I will be stocking up.

There is one little wrench in this trip… We both have some altitude sickness going on. We didn’t realize that Bogota is over 8,000 feet. Yesterday when we got here, we both had headaches. We thought it was from the “headache” at the airport. It took FOREVER to get out of that place once we landed. There are much more efficient ways to move people and luggage! The class was supposed to start at 2:00 but we didn’t arrive on time so it started at 3:15. The MTC president’s wife, Sister Hansen, gave us something like Excedrin, I think it was, for our headaches and we felt better at dinner time. We went to dinner last night with President and Sister Laney from the Bogota North mission. They are from Gilbert, AZ and know my sister, Diane’s, family and Carter’s sister, Michelle’s, family. He was Michelle’s stake president for 6 years until he got called to be a mission president. There was another couple at dinner with us also who were going home today, the Meyers. The first part of their mission was in Peru and they knew Curt and Joyce Mayberry who served in their mission. Super small world!!! We took pictures!

After dinner with the President and Sister Laney

No more headaches this morning, but I am a little light headed and Carter is just plain tired. We both slept really good last night, but it is 9:30 in the morning and he is back in bed for a half hour to see if he can have some energy for the day. He is also on the healing end of a cold. There’s no time difference here and he is not feeling sick from his cold anymore, so I hope we can make it out of our hotel room. It a nice hotel room, but I don’t want to stay in it all day long. There’s hairspray to buy and there’s a beautiful city to see. The air is fresh and clear here. It feels like mountain air. The Laneys said they drink water right out of the tap. We are told that Bogota is more Americanized. There is a Costco type store here and lots of American restaurants, but I’m not really interested in going to those restaurants. I like to see what the local fare is like. We are told they have some good Mexican food! We are going to pretend it is local fare.  :o)  We haven’t found any Mexican food in Peru…or chocolate chips or brown sugar.

Carter is snoring lightly as I type. Good sign! 

We both felt better later in the day…. found some hairspray….ate some Mexican food. It wasn’t good old Southern Arizona Mexican food but the chips and salsa were good. The restaurant had a Nacho Libre theme! We did go to Costco and bought a bag of Kirkland chocolate chips and some sheets for our bed. They barely fit in my carry on, but I got it zipped! Something else I can’t find in Peru yet is corn tortillas…. only flour tortillas. I should have looked for those in Costco too.

Mexican food with the Hansens

Wednesday morning, before teaching the second health class, we went up to Mount Monserrate to see an old Catholic church. It was beautiful at 10,000 feet overlooking the city of Bogota.

Beautiful archways in the Catholic church on Mount Monserrate

We ate lunch at a little restaurant up there. Here’s a receipt for 2 bowls of soup, 2 bottles of water and a coconut lemonade. At first glance it looks like it cost almost $43,000 but that’s in Colombian pesos. In American dollars we only paid about $14.34. It’s weird to be paying for everything in million denominations!

The bill for our lunch up at Monserrate  –  $14.34

At the airport returning home,  we ran into 3 missionaries who were finishing their missions in Bogota and on their way home. We had 3 hours to spend talking with them. Two of them knew some English. One of the missionaries was from, (you guessed it), Venezuela!……… and is from San Cristobal where Carter served! He and Carter hit it off and had some great conversations about San Cristobal and the people there. We talked about our families. He asked about our children and it was so sweet to witness his caring concern when Carter told him about Ashton.  Elder Callejas was sitting across from him at the time and immediately moved to sit right beside him, looking him straight in the eye and would look at me intermittently. I’ll bet he was a kind, caring missionary.

Elder Callejas and Carter

Elder Callejas, from Venezuela; Elder Chaves, from the Dominican Republic; Elder Acosta, from Argentina? (not sure); and Elder Mayberry in the Bogota, Colombia airport

Written by Faye

June 10, 2017  –  I’m sitting at my computer on a Saturday evening, listening to the little kid birthday party next to us. When someone here has a birthday party, the whole area around them has a birthday party too! But, we don’t get any cake! We can hear everybody’s everything. There are 2 little doggies that live above us and we can hear when they run across the floor. We hear the little girl next door cry at night when she’s tired. I’m sure our neighbors can hear our blender going when we make a smoothie for breakfast or the conference talk Carter listens to when he takes his shower in the morning. That’s just life in our little patch of Peru. We’ve been here for 2 months and we are getting used to it. It’s a lot different than our 1 acre chicken farm in St. David, AZ. We sleep pretty well at night. Our bedroom is at the back of the apartment away from the street so we don’t hear the traffic noises very loudly. We live on the 3rd floor of our 4 story building. There’s a walkway on one side and on the other side are homes that are just one story, so I can see down into their courtyards. I can see their laundry hanging. Every day there is different laundry on the line. It is not normal for Peruvians to have a dryer, but we have a little one to use. Thank goodness! We also have a rack on the ceiling of our laundry room that we can bring down to hang things on. We put our towels on it every morning with a fan blowing on them. They don’t get dry otherwise.

It takes 3 keys to get in our  place. There’s one outer gate, one inner gate and then the key to get in our apartment once we get up the 3 flights of stairs.

Looking out our bedroom window, this is the first gate we enter to get in.

The second gate to get in.

Carter on the stairs inside our building

We feel very safe here. The streets and walk ways are well lit at night. There are vigilantes, security guards, that patrol every little street. We pay them 70 soles monthly, which is about $23. The vigilante rides up and down our street on a bike at different times during the day and night and blows a  whistle that sounds like the whistle referees use. We are still trying to figure out when and why he does that. There are lots of different horns, whistles and clangs we hear. One is from the bread guy in the morning. He rides his bicycle around and honks his little horn to tell you he is there. People come out and get fresh rolls from him for their breakfast. Carter has been out a few times when we first got here to sample the bread. The guy sells 4 different kinds of buns. They are OK, but not wonderful.

Another  sound we hear is the garbage truck when it comes around in the morning. A bell clangs to let you know they are coming. There are raised metal containers along our street that people put their little bags of garbage in. They are picked up every morning. Another sound we hear are the horns honking from the the taxis, cars and trucks that pass by. It is very popular to use your horn here when driving. When we walk down the street, taxis that pass by honk at us letting us know they are there. There are LOTS of taxis. LOTS!

An empty garbage container and a vigilante riding his bike in the back ground

We see this adorable doggie sometimes when we are walking to work in the morning. He is always on the same doorstep. He never barks, just lifts his head up and looks at us through the flap of fur over his eyes. I don’t think he’s a stray. I think he lives in the home. We don’t see stray dogs here much at all. We see lots of people walking their dogs. If a dog barks at us, it is from the top of a building. We do see stray cats sometimes. We are told that we live in  a middle class neighborhood. It is mostly kept clean and neat.

I named this good & gentle doggie Chet! I wonder what his real name is and is he a he or a she?

Last week we had an earthquake drill at the office. We are supposed to leave the building and stand in circles like these while we wait. The S stands for siesmo, earthquake. We are told that they get tremors here in May and October. We didn’t get any this past May. This is one of the siesmo circles at the MTC next door.

Some of the beautiful fruit here

Written by Faye

On Wednesday, May 24th, the Lima, Peru MTC was expecting 103 new missionaries. I was there helping that day and got to witness some sweet things. I was at the table close to the MTC president and his wife when they got to meet each missionary individually, give them their badge and chat for a bit. They had the badges orchestrated so they knew who was coming next, could greet them by name, give them each a hug a make them feel welcome. It tugged at my heart and I couldn’t keep the tears in, watching the love that was flowing. During a lull, the wife of the president came over and asked how I was doing. It was obvious that I was tearful, and I told her how much I loved watching them greet each missionary. She told me it comes with the calling to feel a genuine love for each missionary. Those missionaries are excited or nervous or both, starting their mission and what a blessing to be greeted in such a loving way by President and Sister Moore. David Archuleta’s “Glorious” was playing during this time. There were some other stations that the missionaries stopped at with a station to get their hair cut too. if they needed it. I was going over the pages the missionaries filled out upon entering, telling if they needed anything, like toiletries, clothing, etc.  Later on in the day, I went back over to the MTC to help distribute the needed things. The day before, I helped put together snack bags for the missionaries who would arrive in the middle of the night. There was a juice drink, some chips and Oreo cookies. I also helped collate the welcome booklets each one received upon arrival. I will be doing this same thing every 3 weeks, along with a few others from the area office when the MTC receives new missionaries. Most of the missionaries c0ming that day were Spanish-speaking from South America, but there were about 12 from the United States who will be serving in our area and need to learn Spanish.

Carter did some more nurse training this past week for the third week in a row. He is training Hermana Carstens in the Lima MTC and Hermana Willis on Facetime who is already on her mission in Bolivia. I was there with them this time. I took some initial pictures before they got started and then Carter thought I was on my iPad during the training, but I was actually taking pictures of him doing the teaching! He is a good teacher. The nurses really enjoy  him. They learned about nose bleeds, mastoiditis, anaphylaxis, gallbladder disease, pilonidal cysts, infected surgical wounds, Dengue fever, diarrhea and when to use Imodium, tuberculosis (TB), immunizations, making friends with local pharmacists, and how to handle dog bites. These sisters are actual RN’s from the United States. They have Spanish-speaking companions who will help them communicate with Spanish-speaking missionaries when they care for them. They also do some proselyting.

Enjoy the pictures! Carter is a great teacher and I can tell he loves it!

Hermana Carstens, her comanion, Hermana Dobbins, Dr. Mayberry with Hermana Willis on Facetime.

Notice the laptop keyboard reflection in his glasses!

Written by Faye