When a Child is Born, so is a Grandma

On the refrigerator is a magnet which reads, When a child is born, so is a grandmother. Lily Jane is our ninth grandchild. She is a beauty. When Ben and Jenny asked if I could come help with Jordan and Lily, I was grateful to be asked and excited to visit their little family in Las Vegas. I had permission to leave the mission field.
Lily has a happy disposition. She smiles. No one can tell me that's "gas."

Jordan is also a beautiful little girl and a gentle, helpful, and kind big sister. We had great fun playing in the back yard, eating picnic lunches on the patio, reading together, feeding the ducks, and sketching on her easel. She can count to 20, recognizes the letters of the alphabet, and she can sing the alphabet song and the Primary songs.

Thank you, Ben and Jenny, for two wonderful weeks of grandmothering.

A Little Sight-Seeing Close to Home

Dad, Gabriela, our driver, Luis Cedeno, our medical connection in the Chile Vina del Mar Mission office who was visiting us from Ecuador, and I are standing on the patio outside the cocina or kitchen of the 15th Century estate of a Quechua noble.

Pots like this one were used for burial "caskets" and for hauling all kinds of grain, water and seeds. In La Molina pots like these are used for planters. We have been told some of them come from excavations of ancient tombs. The clay pot industry here is quite lucrative. We have yet to find where they are sold.

These first three pictures are random. I added them after I had created the blog. This room shows one of the bedrooms or living quarters. There is no evidence of a roof. There are windows for light and air, and the triangular shaped cut out on the left is a niche for placing some kind of object.

Not quite five miles from our apartment building is the 15th Century estate of Purochuco, the estate of a noble, one of the Quechua people. At the time the Inca was the most powerful ruler in all of South America. The Inca's empire stretched from Ecuador to Chile. Cuzco was the seat of the empire. We have been wanting to visit this site since we first heard of it early in our mission. When Luis Cedeno, a friend from Ecuador came to visit us, we decided to ask our driver to take us. We were greeted by a Peruvian hairless dog.

I included the picture below to show where the archeological site is located. We are looking east from our apartment study window. The hill in the background is about where the site is located.

The ancient Quechua people were advanced in science--harnessing water, telling time, and telling the seasons by how the light hit these niches. In a sense this is an Inca calendar.

This is the parade ground, a place for the noble to receive goods for trade, to address his people, to hold large gatherings--a town square.

The noble had slaves to work the cotton fields and take care of the llamas. There is evidence they grew the cotton which they made into clothing which they sold and traded. The woman knew the arts of carding, spinning, and weaving, using various looms which were on display in the visitors' center. There were pictures depicting the sheering of the llamas.

The picture below shows the natural colors of the cotton grown on the land. There were also pictures of the estate, the farmlands, the cotton fields, and the llama pens.

This room, an outside patio, is just off the kitchen. Dad and Graciela, our driver and friend from the LaMolina Ward, are looking down into a deep granary. The holes indicate a roof covered the grain to protect it from the elements.

This room was the kitchen. The people used a mortar and pestle to crush the grain, but it was also used as a blender. Liquids were added to the corn.

In the picture below we are standing outside the kitchen on the patio used for gatherings and meals. Our guide told us there is evidence cooked food was brought in. Interesting! From here the noble could look out onto his farmlands, the workers, and he could see anyone approaching for miles.

This picture shows the platform or stand from which the noble would address those who gathered for meetings, bartering, buying and selling.

Guinea Pig is the national dish of Peru. The traditional meal dates back to the ancient people of the Inca. This was the pen for the live guinea pigs.

This was the stable for the llama and vicuna. There are artist's interpretation of spring shearing. The artist shows a man covering the face of the llama so he won't be spooked.

This picture shows the estate from the outside. The lighter stone shows the restoration or patching which takes nothing away from the beauty of the estate. The climate and lack of rain serve to protect the site. We were interested to note that the outside walls are not part of the living quarters not unlike today's Peruvian construction of homes behind heavy stone walls with iron gates and heavy wood or metal garage doors and front doors which hide the home and lead into a courtyard in front of the actual home. Someone told us most of the heavy protective walls were constructed during the years of terrorism in the 1980s.

This is a family burying site or tomb outside the estate. Several bodies were found here along with artifacts. Some bodies were buried inside huge clay pots. These last few pictures show the black rock and dirt hills so typical here. These hills remind Dad and me of the badlands of the Wild West lore, rough, hot, dry, stony, inhospitable, but the Inca found the hills great places for strongholds.

This picture is a close up of the family tomb. Only the rock wall has been partially restored. The early Inca did not use mortar in their structures. In Cuzco Dad and I saw massive walls of rocks as big as trucks so tightly fit or constructed that a piece of paper could not be inserted between the rocks. Mortar was used in the 14th and 15th Century dwellings.

A March Adventure

One of the really enjoyable experiences we have in the mission field is traveling to the missions to meet with the missionaries. Presidente and Hermana Chipman invited us to visit Mission Peru Piura, a 1 1/2 hour plane flight to the north. They asked Dad to speak in zone conferences held over two days. Unlike our experience in Trujillo visiting three different cities in the mission, these two conferences were both held in the same chapel in Piura.

Piura, incidentally, is desert, a Humboldt desert, dry but with high humidity. When it rains, it floods, so the roads are unpaved, rutted, and a 4WD is absolutely necessary. Earlier this year, the rains turned Piura into an island. Food and water was airlifted in.

Sister Chipman asked me to talk for 10-15 minutes about managing stress. Dad also examined missionares with ongoing medical concerns and visited three clinicas/hospitals to establish good relationships with the providers of health care.

One of the really fun things about these trips is seeing the missionaries we knew well in the CCM. These missionaries show such growth from the CCM greenies to hard working, faithful, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed missionaries.

Dad and President and Hna. Chipman talked with an Elder who had suffered with an infected, ingrown toenail for a long time. Dad dianosed the problem, put him on an antibiotic, and prescribed treatment that will keep him from having surgery.

This is one of my favorite shots. What you cannot hear is the "unos, dos, tres" repeated over and over. We didn't know who to look at next. So what we have here is a picture of missionaries taking pictures of us.

Dad is missing from this picture because he was talking with an Elder who had drawn him aside for a "consulta, por favor." This is one zone. The other zone is taking pictures of us.

Finally, only in these small cities like Piura and Trujillo, do we have to walk down stairs to exit or climb stairs to enter the planes. It's OK if it is not raining. Passengers can enter and exit from a door in the front or in the back of the airplane. This security officer didn't like my taking a picture of the plane. I smiled at him and took his picture which seemed to please him and I got the plane. On the day we flew back to Lima, the humidity and heat were overwhelming. We were dripping, really. The waiting room was not air conditioned. Overhead fans gave some relief but not nearly enough. I wet paper towels to wipe our faces and foreheads and the back of our necks. What a relief it was to enter the back door of the plane and have a cold mist coming from underneath the overhead bins.

A Few of Our Favorite Views

There is really no subject or theme to this blog. These pictures are just a few of many we have taken when we are out and about--going to the missions for clinics, walking to the grocery store, or looking out our front window.






The sunsets have been spectacular this past month because of the clear skies in the afternoons and the incoming coastal clouds. Our apartment faces east, but our wall-to-wall picture window in the front room faces northwest so we get some wonderful views of the setting sun. We didn't know the sunsets could be so beautiful because, for the first five months we were here, the sky was overcast with heavy clouds. We are ten miles by crow flight from the coast. In the daytime we see only roof tops and trees from the window, but wouldn't you agree with me that the sunset is reflected in the water? Look at the lower half of the picture. Stuart says we can't see the ocean from here. I say we can!

This picture is a study in advertising. Betty Ford had no influence here when it came to highway beautification. Not only is every flat surface used, but look up on the cerro behind these stores. Because it never rains in Lima, the dry, brown, rocky cerros make a perfect billboard for products, politics, and love letters. Not too far from this cerro is another one with a huge perfectly proportioned heart and the initials of a couple of lovebirds.

These narrow stores are filled with antiques--massive crystal chandeliers from some old Spanish Lima mansions, loose crystals, china, silver, estate jewelry, massive dark furniture, ship mastheads, old paintings--treasures and junk. The antiques are not cheap. One wonders whom the owners cater to. There are at least ten stores side by side. We wandered in and out of every one of them. One smelled so bad we just looked from the outside. Others were quite inviting. The fascinating thing is that some go right into the rock cerro and we wondered if they hacked their way through the rock to extend the length of the stores.

Where ever there is unoccupied land, someone can build a shack of wood, bricks, tin and even cardboard. When enough houses have sprung up on a cerro or on flat land, the city will provide electricity. Some areas do not have plumbing. What we think is fascinating is that his homeowner has a satellite dish. This up-and-over-the-mountain drive, by the way, is one way to reach the La Molina area other than the crowded Javier Prado. The highway offers sweeping views of two different distruitos which flow one into another--La Molina, Surco. If Javier Prado is too crowded the taxi driver takes the mountain road.

Last Saturday we walked to the grocery store on La Molina, a street which runs perpendicular to Javier Prado. This flowering bush had just begun blooming or maybe we had never noticed it. It looked like a Hawaiian plumeria which has a wonderful scent and is used in leis. This flower has to be a relative of the plumeria, but it has no scent. There was a perfect blossom on the ground. I picked it up and tucked it behind my ear. It stayed lovely for three days in a little vase.

The entrance to this house has such charm. It is one of few houses not behind a tall stone, adobe, or iron fence. This entrance is the fence or wall. You can see the house farther back. The cactus is the cactus of choice here. Kept short it is used as a bordering plant. Look how tall the cactus grows. We haven't seen a blossom yet, but most cactus blossom. Also, this ochre color is a favorite color here for houses, businesses, even stone fences.

This is the side of the house, another landscaping idea. The picture doesn't show the white plastic chair where the vigilante sits. He had stepped to the curb to talk to someone in a car and was quite suspicious of Dad and me as we took pictures of the cactus and the flowering bush across the street.

One Good Turn Deserves Another

About two months ago one of the North Mission office Elders told Dad his hearing was diminishing--he could hear very little of what was going on in the office. Dad diagnosed an ear infection and excess wax. As soon as the Elder's infection had cleared with the antibiotic, he told him to buy olive oil and put the oil in his ear twice a day to soften the wax. The plan was to wash out the wax the next week. The short story is the ear was difficult to clean out. Over three weeks Dad syringed his ear. The office Elders got into it. Every one of them had to have an experience with the otoscope. I was so entranced by the drama of washing out Elder Ortega's ear I forgot to get out the camera. So this is an after-the-operation picture.

In the meantime, Dad noticed his hearing was diminished. I had noticed he wasn't hearing much and wondered outloud if he needed another hearing aid. Dad figured he had excess wax building in his ear. Elder Steed, who is the finance secretary and probably a 3rd cousin, took a look after Dad showed him what a normal ear looks like. Lo and behold, he had excess wax. One week the Elder whose picture is above washed out Dad's ear which took several washings. The final washing was done by Elder Steed just last week. Some of these Elders have told Dad they want to go into medicine.

Trujillo, Peru

On February 16th, 2010, we flew an hour north to Trujillo, Peru, the second largest city in Peru. There are 35 chapels (maybe more--not sure), several wards and stakes and branches and districts. The missionary work is really going well. A new temple site was purchased recently. It is a four-hour trip to Lima by car or a one-hour plane ride, so a temple will be a great blessing for the members in the area. Trujillo is right on the coast. In the morning we could smell the ocean and fish. Two huacas or sacred Inca sites are also in Trujillo. We were so busy we didn't get to see either one. One is a city within a city, a maze of walls and and rooms. We hope to get back someday. The farthest city in the mission is Jauraz, eight hours by car. There is no direct plane from Trujillo, only from Lima, so the Moras must make that drive every month to visit and interview their missionaries. It's a favorite assignment for the missionaries. We had just enough time to put our carry-on bags in the guest casita before leaving for the truly scenic, hour-long drive along the coast to Casa Grande. We went straight from the car into the chapel where the missionaries were already meeting. It was quite moving to walk into the chapel and be greeted by standing missionaries who shook our hands and gave us abrazos. We spoke first and then held a clinic for the missionaries the Moras had concerns for.






The Peru Trujillo Mission president and his wife invited us to speak to their missionaries and to hold clinics in three areas: rural Casa Grande, and two cities--Chimbote and Trujillo over three days. We also met with hospital administrators, nurses, and doctors in the two cities. President and Hna. Mora, really friends now, met our plane and took us to the mission home where we stayed in a very lovely, casita separated from the house by a covered patio. This picture was taken at their favorite pescado restaurant in Chimbote a two-hour car trip from Trujillo. They are clearly frequent customers by the way they were greeted. We ate sea bass a la plancha.


The roads in Chimbote are not paved, but the dirt is packed and even unlike the roads in Trujillo where a recent rain storm has done great damage. Their 4-wheel drive van bounced and jerked over the rutted roads of Trujillo.

Young girls had set up a volleyball game in the middle of the road. They didn't even stop the game as we navigated around them.

We have been fascinated with the mode of transporting everything from tree cuttings, mattresses, machinery, family members, and storage containers which this man seems to have loaded into his basket. He has a bicycle he can ride, but we have seen men and boys pushing their bicycles loaded so high they cannot see over the load. Others have three-wheeled motorcycles crudely fashioned. We have wondered if they operators' licenses. Our butane gas tanks and water jugs come by motorcycle either in a basket like this one or strapped onto the back of a motorcycle.

Sugar cane is grown in Trujillo and along the coast to Chimbote. It is like a green carpet to the sea on an otherwise brown landscape. We passed several trucks carrying stripped cane or cane still green.

This picture was taken from the rocky coastline of Chimbote but it could have been taken anywhere along the coast. The beaches are either rocky and not fit for sun bathing or sandy, a brown/black sand. The massive stone seawalls are quite typical in Peru and in Chile.

In the 1970s Chimbote was leveled by a massive earthquake. This fishing boat may have been a victim of that earthquake--the Moras didn't know the boat's history. It doesn't seemed rusted enough to have been so long on its side.

This is the carpet of sugar cane. The border trees are evergreens. I used the zoom to get this picture. The hills are brown and the landscape is brown, but we learned from President and Hna. Alder in Antofagasta, Chile, which has similar landscape, to notice how light plays on the brown dirt. Such a landscape has a beauty of its own. Like Antofagasta, Trujillo is a gold and copper mining area.

The ocean is across the two-lane highway to the right. These sand dunes are on the other side of the road. One wonders if the ocean actually extended to the hills hundreds of years ago. Earthquakes can change a landscape dramatically.

Dinner at Mangos

This view is looking north from the restaurant Mangos in Mireflores, one of the coastal districts of Lima. The picture does not do justice to the dramatic jagged cliffs with the tall apartment buildings overlooking the ocean. This beach is not the kind of swimming beach with soft sand that we are used to in California or Oregon. The beach is rocky and access is difficult. Better swimming beaches are further south or north. However, people find accesses and park their cars on the beach. We have seen families sitting on blankets and towels on the rocks, barbeques hot, making dinner.

The Mireflores skyline is dramatic with the Marriott Mireflores Hotel and the Larco Mar Mall which isn't as close as it looks. The Larco Mar Mall is nestled into the cliffs and across the highway from the Marriott. The mall cannot be seen from the hotel. At the ground level is a beautiful park and gardens. Staircases and escalators take one down to the mall and restaurant level. The views of the coastline are really breathtaking.

We ate dinner early in the afternoon but we were there long enough to see a colorful sunset over Larco Mar because of the dense clouds. What would it be like to live so close to the coast you could take a walk every morning and evening with views like these. If Mireflores weren't 30+ minutes from the Area office and if it weren't so expensive to live there, the district would be our first choice for an apartment. The streets are wide and clean, and it's a shopper's paradise--it is probably a good thing we don't live in Mireflores.

This is the view south from Mangos which has open air seating as well as indoor tables. This is our second time to eat at Mangos. The first time was on Halloween.

Mangos sits on a cliff that juts out over the coast highway. We are standing on a viewing platform about 100 years away. I used the zoom for this picture.

The Chile Area psychologist (on the right) and her husband had planned a trip to Machu Picchu. Because of the flooding, they were only able to visit Cuzco, but they took a side trip to Arequipa, the city of white adobe houses. They brought us one of the two electric mattresses we had bought in Santiago . four years ago. The Chile Area doctor remembered there was an extra one. Hna. Cleverly and her husband are the office couple for the Lima Central Mission. We have become great friends. They are also friends of the psychologist and her husband--connections are a good thing.

Our dinners were just scrumptious. My salad was filled with fresh mangos, bell peppers, and whole shrimp. Dad had a white fish stuffed with crab and covered with a crab sauce. The next time we go, I am going to try the crepe-thin wraps Elder Cleverly ordered.