Friends

It's cliche, but the most interesting experience here is the people we meet. Here are some of our new "friends."

This is Estrella.  On the sidewalk just outside a small Catholic church Estrella and, I believe, her grandmother, are nearly always stationed selling cheap candy. The sight of an old woman or a little girl sitting on the sidewalk "selling" candy is, unfortunately, common in Peru. Sometimes they'll even wander into restaurants begging and, as long as they don't annoy customers or stay too long, the restaurant owners don't seem to care.  

The most convenient way to walk to the Temple, the Institute (Pathway) and the nearest supermarket (Tottus) takes us by that small Catholic church and Estrella and her grandmother. We always buy some candy and, since this is a route we frequently take, we have purchased a fair amount and are probably among their most regular customers.

Usually, beggars approach with a sorrowful expression that pleads for sympathy and mercy but also betrays a certain wariness about your reaction. This was the case with Estrella, at first, but not now. When Estrella now sees me coming down the sidewalk (and here I'm easily recognized) her face lights up into the big smile you see in the picture and she runs up, knowing she has a sure sale (but also knowing that I will smile back). The candy is, frankly, not very good, but the smile is certainly worth a sole or two. 

To right of Evie is a sister with whom Evie became a good friend while working together in the Temple. She received a call to serve a mission in Bolivia and invited Evie to attend her setting apart (and Mike got to tag along). 

Missionary "setting aparts" seem a little different here. Family members and close friends are invited to attend (that Evie was invited says something about her regard for Evie). The Stake President offered some remarks to those present and then set her apart as a missionary with an inspired blessing. Nothing unusual about any of that.  

What happened after seemed different. In this case the Stake President left, as he had some other assignments to attend to, but the others, being a group of about 10 or 12 people, remained and one by one each stood and bore their testimony about missionary work, usually their own conversion, and something nice about this new missionary. This took a while, but for me and I think the others it was a very moving experience. They then all left to celebrate with a dinner (pollo a la brasa) at a nearby restaurant. It was late and we passed on the dinner, but we haven't forgotten the spirit of that event.

This is Draco (as in the blond kid in Harry Potter, Harry Potter is big here). I walk by him everyday going to and coming from the Area Office or the Church.

Unfortunately Draco has a fairly miserable life. He lives alone on the concrete behind this iron fence, absolutely ignored by his owner. There are a lot of dogs in La Molina and from what I can see, they are well cared for. Every evening the park areas in front and behind Draco's place are full of dogs getting their daily walk from doting owners, and a very busy dog grooming business is located about 50 yards down the street. I have, however, never seen Draco outside his fenced area and, aside from a time I saw that he had been sprayed off with a hose while someone was spraying out his concrete pad, I don't think he has ever had a bath. 

At first, I was worried about him getting enough food and water, since the food and water bowls were usually empty. But I discovered that a number of passersby, including a senior missionary sister, would slip him food and water through the fence.  In fact, due to their kindness he may have been one of the better feed dogs in La Molina. I also never saw anyone maliciously taunt or tease him through the fence.

But food and water weren't his only needs.  I soon learned that what he really needed was someone to scratch his back and also to play with. That he was filthy and would occasionally snap at people discouraged most from petting him or having much else to do with him. After Draco and I worked through the snapping issue and he would let me pet him (I just needed to remember to wash hands as soon as I got to the office or home). I learned how much he enjoyed a back scratch (not surprising if you think of the fleas he likely had). So, each time I passed by I would stop and scratch his back. He learned to look forward to me coming by.

After awhile I taught him to bring one of his toys (such as the plastic chicken in the picture) to me at the fence and play fetch. He was so excited to play, jumping up and down while he waited for me to throw, and would retrieve the toy. However, often he would only come about halfway back to fence, as if inviting me to come in and play, which due to the locked fence I could not. Consequently the fetching games usually did not last very long.  Nevertheless, it became a regular part, for both me and Draco, of my walk twice a day past his place. Then about a week ago he was gone. Don't know what happened; just that the place is now empty.  As  now I walk by the empty fenced area, I miss my friend Draco.

These are some of our best friends here in Peru -- our Pathway Group!  As Pathway Missionaries (like facilitators) we have the opportunity of meeting with this extraordinary group of young and older Peruvian church members.  These students enroll in online classes from BYU-Idaho.  The classes (one each semester for three semesters include study and life skills, math and English writing) are all in English, so this is a very real challenge for our students!  The work is done online, but the group meets every Thursday evening at the Institute for 90 minutes.

On the left is one of our Pathway students. Towards the beginning of the semester he and his wife got a puppy, who promptly got very sick. Having exchanged several Whats App messages (with pictures) over the plight of the puppy who is named Lukas, Evie sort of bonded with them. 

They brought the puppy to class one day for Evie to meet. Holding Lukas, of course, was the highlight of the month.

This is a group of young women with their leaders who we met at the Malecon in Miraflores.  The two leaders (on the right) are both returned missionaries. They're from a neighborhood in north Lima and, since it was a holiday, were on a YW's activity to Kennedy Park and the Malecon along the beach in Miraflores.  

The amazing thing to me is that it all seemed so normal. Sometimes the Church here reminds me of a well known Shakespeare play that is recast to a very different time and place. Everything is different, except the plot. It works, of course, because it is the plot, not the setting, that counts.

English speaking members, such as the families of mission presidents in Lima and expats working in the Embassy or a multinational company, are encouraged to attend our ward. Sacrament meeting is translated and there are English Sunday School and Relief Society classes. They also have junior primary class for the English speaking children and Evie is a teacher for that class.

The pictures were taken at their post Primary program cake party. The Primary program was great, but as you can see the La Molina ward also sets a pretty high bar for post program cake. (There was a sons of Helaman  warrior action figure on top but it was removed to cut the cake).

This is Karina and Jose (Pepito) and family at Pepito's birthday). Karina is a legal coordinator in the office. Pepito is an engineer for a petroleum company.  They are a delightful family that we have had the good fortune to become acquainted with.  Their children are named Andrea and David!  (Names in our family!)

This is the Area Legal department. On the left is Brother and Sister Johnson. The area legal counsel had to leave early for health reasons and Dic Johnson filled in on a interim basis. On the far left is Elder Garfield,  the other senior missionary, assistant area legal counsel, from Arvada, CO. His wife Vicky is missing from the photo. They are a great couple and were especially helpful to us when we arrived. Next to Elder Garfield is Felix Gil, the other legal coordinator. Felix is a very savvy coordinator and I have grown to enjoy working with him. 

These are some folks from the area office where I work. Karina is on the left, Next are the Brother and Sister Henrie from Albuquerque. They are humanitarian missionaries who work on projects in Peru, such as clean water wells, wheelchairs and vision. The others work in the humanitarian-welfare department in the Area office. They are singing happy birthday to our granddaughter Mary Hammond. 

We have opportunity to work with a lot of the full time Church employees in the Area Office. They are so nice to us, dedicated to their jobs and each have very interesting conversion stories.

One of the Self-reliance missionaries, Sister Rosario, has become very involved in teaching English classes at the Area Office.  We have had the opportunity for the past couple of months to help her with one of her classes.  After having struggled so much with Spanish, I appreciate these amazing adults who are taking the time out of their busy lives with their families, work and church responsibilities to learn another language (and English at that -- not a logical and consistent language!)

The LUM

The message universally implicit in missionary blogs is that missionaries never get sick, but spend their days continuously enjoying interesting and faith promoting experiences in perfect health. Fake News. Fact: missionaries get sick.

This last Saturday morning Evie, trying to recover from a sinus infection and the side effects of medications (sleep deprivation), had little interest in venturing out in search of yet more interesting experiences. Instead, she was looking forward to a Saturday morning of simply sleeping (a lot), and when awake, reading.

After confirming that Evie really didn’t want him around interrupting her sleeping and reading, Mike took the opportunity to do something he really wanted to:  a visit to the “Lugar de la memoria, la tolerancia y la inclusión social” in Miraflores.  (Since it is a museum entirely in Spanish, it is not high on Evie’s list of things to do in Lima.) 

Twenty years of the Shining Path

After 12 years of military rule in Peru, free elections were finally held in 1980 and a civilian president and legislature were elected and put in place. That same year, however, the Communist Party of Peru, more commonly known as the “Shining Path,” which had rejected any participation in the election, set about to replace this new “bourgeois democracy” with "New Democracy" through “armed struggle.”  So began a bloody twenty year struggle between the government and terrorists that nearly toppled the democratic government in Peru. The Shining Path attacks began in the small villages in the highlands, but eventually terrorist murders and car bombings came to Lima and to the very center of the government. In the end, the terrorists were defeated, but the brutal tactics of the terrorists and the government's military “death squads" that targeted them resulted in the deaths or “disappearance” of over 69,000 (no one really knows with any certainty).

The story of the Shining Path and the government’s fight against them (and its continuing repercussions in Peruvian politics) is fascinating but best left for another time. This post is about Peru’s way of remembering, and hopefully, for future generations, learning from that tragic period.

   

The Place (not museum) of Memory

The LUM, as it is usually called (as in – Lugar de Memoria),[1] is a record of that time, excellently presented with the tools modern museums now use to explain things in graphic and engaging ways. Despite the intensity of feelings about that era, its continuing role in current politics and the fact that it is government funded, the LUM nevertheless seemed to represent a genuine effort to provide a “balanced” account.  Indeed, one of LUM’s leading premises is that “it is not possible to fit all these memories into a single one, [rather] different ways of seeing and giving meaning to the violence of the past is part of reality.” Its goal is to use “these divergent views to provide the population the tools to critically examine questions of violence and authoritarianism in light of the need to protect human dignity and respect for democratic institutions.”

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[1]Here in Peru they have the useful practice of including vowels in their acronyms in order to have a pronounceable word, not just a series of letters. That way we get “LUM,” a nice sounding word suggestive of light (luz and iluminar), instead of a bureaucratic LMTIS.

This a may be the most affecting part of the museum. Nearly life size, ordinary people, tell their stories. It is problematic since once you start to listen (and even with my rudimentary Spanish I could generally follow them) you want to hear it all, all of them. It is a problem because that takes time and most of us are “drive by browsers” at museums. The woman on the left, who was assaulted by government soldiers, is telling her experiences and the effect on her and a daughter later in life. The man on the right with crutches is telling of a Shining Path car bombing. Another is a man telling of an older brother who joined the Shining Path. 

Germans

In 2008 Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, the German Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, visited Peru in connection with a European - Latin American conference. While in Peru, she saw a presentation about some Peruvians in the highlands seeking to preserve the memory of those lost in this terrorism. Deeply affected, she suggested a building to commemorate this period of violence and the dignity of the victims. In fact, the German government donated two million euros to Peru for that purpose. That was the beginning of the project.

I was not surprised by the interest and involvement of the German government in this project.  Several years ago, Evie and I visited Dachau (WWII death camp) while we were in Germany.  On the day we were there most of the other visitors were students. High school students in Germany are required to visit a death camp as part of the school curriculum, in an effort to assure that future generations understand and, therefore, do not repeat mistakes of the past.

Unlike Germany, I do not believe high school students in Peru are required to visit the LUM, although it might be a good idea. Nonetheless, while I was there on a Saturday morning there were several other visitors – all mostly young people. I think that is a good thing. In fact, I think it would be a good thing if Americans visited this place. There may be some lessons here for us too.