Friday, Oct 9, 2009

10 pm and we are at an institute building giving a vocational test and interviews.  At midnight we pick up Sam and Peggy and Jared at the airport.  We leave for Cuzco on Monday and I don’t expect to write for the next couple of weeks while they are here.  You’ll get a detailed account of our trip to Machu Picchu when we get back and they leave.  After months of seeing the sun for a few minutes every 7 days or so, on conference Saturday the sun came out, the breeze picked up and we had 6 days of spring weather, with sun.  Then it went away again today.  It was so nice, and in a little while we will have summer sun every single day.  Hopefully that will last until we leave for home.

Glenn is teaching a start –your-own-business class every Thurs. in Villa El Salvador.  That is what I imagined a mission would be like—meeting people and interacting and helping them.  They are a great group of people and it has been nice to get to know them through this class;  it will last 11 weeks and we just finished lesson 6.

Samuel Gomez, the new PEF director, finally arrived in Lima with his family.  We have a leader again after no one for 3 months.  So things are looking up here.  Orlando wants us to move to Trujillo to finish up our mission and work with him in employment.  We haven’t decided yet.

I am going to post some more things I have learned while on this mission, and observations.  The last time Glenn posted these he came in and said I wish I could see people’s reactions when they read these.  I guess my enemies aren’t reading this blog, because you that responded were positive.  And there was no hate mail…

20.  There are scriptures and lessons that take on new meaning here.  In a lesson on fasting a sister said:”When I am hungry I think “Which of my brothers and sisters are hungry?” and she meant that literally, not figuratively.  How many of us in the US have ever thought of that?  Not me?  3Nephi 6:12 And the people began to be distinquished by ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning: yea, some were ignorant because of their poverty, and others did receive great learning because of their riches.  We don’t see that so much in the US with free elementary and high school education and plenty of loans available for college.  It is a great problem here however and the PEF is helping a lot to help solve the discrepancy. 

21.  It is so strange to be either completely ignored in the area office because we are just missionaries and will go away in a short while.  But then we went to Bolivia as representatives of the area office and people acted like we were special because we were from the ”area office” and they listened to us and they are interested in what we have to offer.  How can you be the same person with the same message and be treated so differently?  I suppose because of the rank or status you have relative to everyone else.  Strange to me.  I have come to the point that I try to judge things by their merit, not by the status of the person presenting the message.  Unfortunately that can get you into trouble if you don’t think a high status person is correct.

22.  We had a great experience in Bolivia, except for the very last day when we went to visit a district outside La Paz.  There was a good turn out; but the discussion of the fund turned into a debate between Br. Cabeza, who is the church employment person in La Paz, and 3 men in the audience who just wanted to complain and criticize.  They said there is prejudice against them in the district; and they complained about a number of things that we can’t do a thing about such as the fact that their youth have to go to La Paz to study because there are no schools in the district, and how the fund won’t pay for kids to live in La Paz while they go to school.  They just wanted to complain because we weren’t doing enough for them.  What was the sad thing is that those men wasted the time of all the other people who did come and had a good attitude; because the time was wasted with their griping, Glenn didn’t get to present much of the message he brought. 

That is a hard thing for a teacher, or in this case leader who really did come to try to help these people, to learn, that is to not let a few people dominate and ruin the meeting for everyone else.  And it was hard to listen to people who say the church is rich so why isn’t it giving them stuff. There is actually a lot of division in the country overall because of the current president who is fomenting division between the campesinos and the wealthier people in the cities.  This mentality that you owe me something and should give me stuff is actually common in the US also, but it is not the teaching of the church.

 And there is some merit to the complaint that the PEF serves the wealthy more than the poor.  The poorest don’t know how to get through the process to get the loan; they don’t have computers and in many cases computer skills.  They are the least able to pay the cost of transportation to and from school, etc.  But it is not an issue of prejudice or lack of desire on our part to help them.  The system is just so complicated and it is hard to train all the local people on how it works.  If these men would have worked with us to make sure they had the stuff they need in place in their district we could have accomplished something.  Instead they wanted us to do everything for them, and complained when we couldn’t.  It was a pretty frustrating experience.  I for one do not want to help the rich more than the poor.  The fund was set up to help people get out of poverty.

23. Connie Earl taught me that in Peru it is easy to be generous.  When a child, or a man for that matter, is selling something on the street, or singing in a bus for money, or juggling in front of traffic, or shining shoes, or washing car windows at a stop light, or selling ice cream or water, or any of a number of things they have to do to make a living here it is easy—usually 1 sole or $.33—to buy something from them.  And that little thing is a real help.  I suppose there are little things we can give away that will help other people, too, like a smile or a kind word.  But it is so much more obvious here.  I am glad Connie taught me to be generous.

24.  A couple of times now I have seen that marvelous spirit of cooperation that President Hinkley talked about in regard to the Perpetual Education Fund.  He said that people would work together to make this work and bless the lives of the youth of the church with the opportunity for an education and a better life.  This morning we visited the Institute in Canto Grande where there are volunteers and paid employees working with the kids to help them through the process to get the loans.  You could tell they care about the kids and are working hard- some for no pay and sometimes not enough gratitude- to help them.  I was proud of them and grateful to be a part of it.

25.  I realized yesterday at church as I sat through a lesson on the pioneers going west that revelation from God is real and pretty simple—go west.  It is in the details of carrying out inspired direction that it gets messy.  The fund is like that.  It is an inspired program, but carrying out that inspired program is messy.  There have been mistakes made.  The program is inspired but not every policy, or document, or process, or person working in it is.  And that is okay.  The fund has been run by men trying their best to learn how to give good loans to real young people all over the world.  That is not an easy thing to do, or know how to do.  It has been a learning process.  Once you understand that you won’t be intimidated thinking that every process, rule, etc. is necessarily correct.  The prophet is pointing the direction, but the road is a little curvy and has holes and detours and rivers in the way.  And there may be more than one trail that will get you there.

26.  This mission is conflicted for me because we work as volunteers with paid employees in the area office.  The fact is the corporation of the church is a corporation.  And I forget that from time to time and expect it to have the same values as the church.  In particular, the value taught over the pulpit and in the scriptures that all are alike unto God, male and female, black and white, bond and free. He is no respecter of persons.  We are told that it doesn’t matter what our calling is in the church.  But the corporation is set up to promote a hierarchy. Pay level, management level, who has the best office, who is listened to, or gets special treatment, who has power to hire and fire, are all so in your face in the office.  Glenn is used to it, but I am not.  And then the church status gets mixed in; if you are visiting from Salt Lake, whether you are a volunteer or paid employee, you get the red carpet treatment.

Missionaries on the other hand are at the bottom of the food chain.  It is so in your face, the inequality.  I have decided to handle it by not going into the office any more than I have to.  It is probably a male/female difference; men as so used to it –the status heirachy–they take it for granted, while women do not.

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