September 22, 2013

Good week for us.  Although we are back in foggy Lima, the sunshine from Nazca still is warming our blood.  We have had a busy week preparing for cambia which is transfers in english.  Every six weeks new missionaries come in and some missionaries finish their mission.  In addition, some missionaries have been serving in an area for quite a while and get the opportunity to go somewhere else.  Elder Durfey who has been the Mission Secretary is being transferred to Pachacamac which is on the very south end of Lima about a 30 minute drive from us.  He is very happy to get back out into the field.  He will be a loss to Carolyn and I.  He has been our trainer.  Oh well we will just have to do everything in our own.  We are going with the Mission President to a ward where there are going to be two families baptized.  We are looking forward to seeing that.  We did make it to another Huaca, the one close to our Mission Office.  It wasn't nearly as impressive as the others.  It was used as a burial ground both by the Limas and the Incas.  In the 1800's much of it was destroyed by people excavating the clay and the rocks.  More recently it has been resorted to look somewhat like it did.  We also visited Larcomar which is a shopping area built into the cliff above the Pacific Ocean.  Great views of the ocean.   Also some good restaurants.  We ate at the Mango.  We had Lina Saltada, a good Peruvian dish cooked in a wok.  It consists of tender beef, with onions, peppers, tomatoes, and spices.  It is very good but we had the same dish in ICA cooked for the Missionaries by a cook who is a member of the church and owns a restaurant across the street from the church.  His Saltada was better.  Carolyn also was able to see some of the local handicraft.  Sister Douglas had a lady from the Nazca area who weaves all kinds of figures with reeds or other similar materials.  I will try and attach a photo.  Still surviving and learning.  Our Spanish needs a lot more practice.  Love you all Ken and Carolyn, mom and dad, grandma and grandpa.

Photos for September 17, 2013

September 17, 2013

Wow.  what a busy week.  We did learned how to do a lot of the financial surf in the office and had to multi zone conferences we went to with about 80 missionaries between the two.  Learned a lot about teaching the gospel to others through the Spirit, Book of Mormon, and asking good questions.  These young men and women are very uplifting to be around.  They have a great positive attitude although the places they live are not the best by US standards.  We also got to travel about 10 hours south of Lima along the coast to Ica and Nazca.  Both have long histories with ancient people having lived there with remains of temples and other structures.  The most famous are the Nazca lines which cover more the 450 square miles of lines, geometric shapes, and some animals marked out on the desert floor.  These lines were made centuries before Christ and took over several hundred years to build.  The people are called the Nazca.  There is a lot of speculation about why they built them ranging from religious to astronomy.  The lines can only really be seen well from the air.  We also attended a planetarium session about the lines.  We got to tour an Inca structure that was built about 500 years after Christ when the Incas took over the Nazca part of Peru.  The most interesting structures are the aqueducts that were built in Inca times.  They intercepted the groundwater at about 50 feet then piped it down to their fields through additional holes and aqueducts until the water was at the same level as their farms.  I am going to attach a bunch of pictures for everyone to see.  The photos will give a better perspective of what we saw.  In Nazca we stayed at the Nazca Lines Hotel named after the Lines family I suppose.  It was a very goo hotel with a beautiful swimming pool  The area south of Lima is much warmer than Lima and the sun shines all day.  It was wonderful to see the sun again.  The town is very small and the people are poor but were very friendly.  The Church is growing quite fast in this are.  There were over 190 people at the regional conference we attended in Nazca.  Met some great people.  Still very hard to communicate with them.  They speak poorer English than we do Spanish.  Let me know if anyone has some questions about what we have mentioned in this blog today.  The roads are not good but are better right after tolls are collected.  We went through 3 to 4 toll booths on the way to Nazca.  There are also some beach resorts along the way that are used by the very rich.  This part of the Country is a desert where very little grows if it weren't for the groundwater they use for their crops there would be almost nothing there.  Some has suggested that when the Nazca lived there the climate had to have been different, more rainfall  Thinking of all of you and enjoying are experience.

More photos. Peruvian scenes plus missionaries

9 Setiembre 2013

Wow!! was it hard to get this working again.  We forgot Carolyn's email and password.  Thanks to McKenna we got it going to night.  We had a good week last week.  Went to eat for our anniversary at Bistecka.  It is a fabulous restaurant that cooks all kinds of food.  They have a large open area with all kinds of salads, cold cuts, and fish.  They also have counters all around the room where you an order and watch them cook your food fresh.  The best were the pastas about 20 different kinds and the Chinese where we had steak cooked in a wok.  Most peruvians spend the whole night until 1:00 am eating.  We only stayed until about 9:00 but we ate a lot.  We are getting a little use to the cooler and damp weather (no rain but very humid).  Carolyn has bought some nice sweaters to keep her warm.  They are made from alpaca wool.  This week we are going to Nasca with the Mission President.  It is about 8 hours south of us.  It has a lot of interesting things to see.  We look forward to having a little time to sightsee.  Love you all.  I am going to also try and upload some photos from last week and some of the sites we saw at missionary conferences and room inspections.

HELLO AGAIN,  Hope everyone is doing ok.  I lost the last one of these that i tried to do because I tried to add some photos.  oh well.  I will be more careful this time and upload this before I try and put in some photos.  We are doing well and enjoying our time here.  We went to a ruin called Huaca Pucllana.  It was built between 200 - 700 years AD by people who worshipped a female god and sacrifices young women every so often.  They built this large temple about the size of two football fields for religious ceremonies such as the sacrifices.  There were probably about 5000 people surrounding this temple.  They grew crops and had to haul water 5 kilometers.  the used alpacas and llamas for food, clothing and transport.  The cultivated guinea pigs for eating yuk.  We had a multizone conference with about 60 missionaries.  it was great to be able to associated with all of these young people from around the world.  They have a great attitude and work very hard.  They love being with each other and learning.  Our office missionaries found a subway sandwich place close to our office and have eaten there at least three times this week.  Main course for most missionaries is rice, fries, and chicken.  They generally have someone cook for them for lunch and dinner.  A good subway sandwich would taste very good after eating the same thing for a while.  We are learning all of the office procedures and enjoy the Elders in our office.  They work very hard in the office and then go out and meeting with people at night.  They are very committed and enjoy what they are doing.  The three Elders we get to work with are Elders Diaz from Peru and Elders Hartvigsen and Durfey from Utah.  They are all looking forward to getting out and doing regular missionary work.  I am going to try and add pictures but only after I have saved this blog.  We love you all Elder and Sister Alkema.

1 Setiembre 2013