Ken & Linda Whitney

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Carnival in Huaraz

We're in Huaraz doing Puertas Abiertas/Open House at the churches in Caraz, Carhuaz and Huaraz. We do a training session Sunday and hold the open house the following Saturday, so there's a week for us to help everyone prepare. With two down and one to go, President Rios called us back to Trujillo. We'll have to come back next Saturday to finish up. Meanwhile, we love it here. The mountains are beautiful, the ice cream's delicious, the people are wonderful, the weather's cool, and we keep running into parades. After narrowing down the hundreds of pictures I took, here's what's left.

Look, a parade!

With balloons and a band

Beautiful costumes...or is that regular dress?

Some of them are definitely wearing costumes.

Carnival!

Delightful dancers

Handsome horses

Yampy llamas

The princess waved to us.

Curious character

Dubious dog

What in the world?

Huayno dancers hold their skirts and step daintilly.

And raise their hats

It looks like they're dancing, but really she's running from a water gun.

Cute kids

Bashful bystander

On to Carhuaz

Sweet smiles

Cat in the Hat?

But they assured me it wasn't Carnival.

Click here to view the colorful

Carhuaz Parade》》Carhuaz Parade

Buses

We ride a lot of buses. As we cruise down the mountain from Huaraz, we bask in the comfort of a luxury bus complete with snacks and reclining sleeper seats for the ten-hour voyage. I wish I could sleep, but swinging around the switchbacks and crunching through mudslides keeps me awake. It's a stark contrast to the other buses we ride. The Virú-Trujillo bus squeezes its passengers into tiny midget seats. If the person in front of you decides to recline, you feel paralyzed in the cramped space. We try to sit by a window that opens, so we can breath some cooler air, since Peruvians religiously avoid drafts for fear of illness. In the current summer heat, it's torture. Then there's the city buses we ride in Trujillo. I'm always impressed by the bus courtesy. As soon as I enter a crowded bus, somebody always offers me their seat. I ask myself how is it that everyone tells me how young I look, yet they always treat me like an old lady on the buses. So I try to step smartly up into the city buses and strut to the back with a show of energy that surely makes me look young, but to no avail. Someone always offers me his or her seat. Last week we were stuck in a power outage in Trujillo, late at night after a rare rainfall, and in the dark. Traffic stood still, we couldn't get back to Virú, the taxis were full, and the buses were packed and not stopping. People panicked, and we felt nervous too. We decided to make our way to the temple albergue where we had rented a room the night before to do 35 of my family sealings. After an hour we finally squeezed onto a packed bus, worked our way up the steps to the front seats, and someone got up and offered me a seat. As usual I protested, and she insisted. Then I realized I was exhausted and gratefully sank down onto the seat. Ken wound up a few seats back where someone gave up a seat for him too. It took about an hour to go what was usually a 20-minute ride. Thankfully the temple albergue had a room for us and even had power. It's the only place we know of that has American style air conditioning...what a treat!

Elder Velasquez, Dr.Asay & Elder Whitney, our life savers!

Fancy lunch with the temple missionaries, the Haws family

In Trujillo for multi-zone

Making pizza with Rosita

Beautiful Andes peaks

Waiting to get into Church at Caraz. The lady on the left is Octavia. She's 87.

More snowy peaks

Mother & daughter at the Carhuaz market

Peculiar sign

Pizza with the missionaries...Hermana Silva's going home next change.

We made no bakes in my rice cooker.

Look at the mangos coming out of the fruit truck.

Scenes at the market

You rarely see a Peruvian with white hair, so Elder Whitney tends to stand out.

We'll see markets like this in Cusco.

Beautiful ladies in beautiful hats

Cute monkey!

They're buying baby chicks...maybe for Easter.

Market day in Caraz

Rosita's moving to Chile. Patti's sad...like the rest of us.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Feliz Año Nuevo 2017

Is it really 2017? Time flies by! We celebrated New Year's Eve with four of our favorite missionaries here in Virú Pueblo. We took turns wearing the yellow party glasses, ate our twelve grapes each, drank hot chocolate with marshmallows, and Paneton, also pineapple and mangoes. We put on some church videos and then we watched out the window at fireworks and people burning their "last year's sins." Interesting and festive.
We can tell we're getting used to life here because we hardly take pictures anymore. What used to be surprising has become just normal. I'm afraid we may have trouble adjusting to life back home. We said farewell to another group, but this time all the sisters were ones we had welcomed when they first arrived! It was teary-eyed. Most of our missionaries have been here less time than us. One of the new sisters asked me if we lived in a little village. I told her, no, it's a pueblo. Oops, I guess that means village.
Last night we attended a young adult fireside as the guest speakers on marriage. After 42 years, they figure we're experts. Then today we gave talks in church about family history. I talked about how Family Search recently opened up some old Newfoundland census records providing nearly a hundred family names for me. It's been such a treat sharing those temple ordinances with our kids and grandkids back home. And it's been especially moving to perform temple ordinances for parents, grandparents and some of my favorite aunts.
I was thinking we need to get back into the piano lesson routine. With Christmas, school summer vacation, and our ever busier schedule, it's been a month. I worry no one's practicing, yet today in church several students pleasantly surprised me. First Mary played all three hymns today, and two from the regular hymn book...wow! Then Mel and her family did a special musical number, "Teach me to Walk." Mel accompanied beautifully, even though she hadn't yet learned it last time we met for lessons. I stayed to attend the later branch because Alissa said she'd be accompanying for her first time playing the sacrament hymn. Since I wound up leading the music, I was there for the special family number too. What a surprise, Susana accompanied! So that was four students making me proud, all in one day. I promptly scheduled lessons for Tuesday.
Then Pulidos announced that they just got an oven. We know what that means...pizza lessons for family home evening!