January 18, 2010,

We have exactly 4 weeks to go before we come home. We leave on the 15th, ten days before the official date of the 25th.  We have the plane tickets and we are trying to get rid of stuff out of the apartment—that is, give it to other missionaries so they can use it and then pass it along.  Another couple arrived last week, the Noalls, from Bountiful Utah, and we gave them a bed, sheets, towels, one of the couches, heaters, fans, etc.  They bought a refrigerator and stove and other stuff because they didn’t want to wait 5 weeks for the ones in our apartment.

And we are trying to finish up a couple of projects as we mentioned before, the book for self-employment and a vocational test.

We went out shopping tonight and I had a feeling of competence come over me when I realized I could buy stuff, talk to the clerk, and get home on a bus;  that means finding the right bus and being able to tell the “cobrador” (I don’t know the English equivalent) where I needed to get off.  Sounds pretty simple, but 16 months ago I felt pretty helpless and couldn’t do any of that. 

The promised sun never has come to Lima this summer.  It is an El Nino year, with a different weather pattern.  Too bad for me.  It has been in the 70’s so that is good.

I am going to add here some of what I wrote in the past but never posted:

December 24. 2009

Christmas Eve we had 3 other couples come to a potluck dinner at our house: Beals, Slingerlands (area doctor) and Abeytas (area auditors).  Then we went to the MTC for a Christmas program; each of the missionaries had a part, like a primary presentation, Glenn said, and we sang Christmas songs. 

Christmas day Jessica called on Skype and we saw Kinsey and Kyler open presents; we also call the kids that were at our house together: Emily, Melanie, and Micah and their families.  In the afternoon we went to the zoo with Beals.  We were able to talk to everyone else that day or soon after.  It wasn’t a bad Christmas.

New Years’ eve another missionary couple invited us and several other missionary couples for a party.  It was fun.  We played some games and talked.  And before midnight we went onto the roof of their 3 story apartment and watched the fireworks.  It was a great experience.  People all over Lima buy fireworks, bottle rockets, firecrackers to full fireworks as good as the fourth of July.  And they shoot them off in the streets all over the city.  So off in the distance, and sometimes down on the street below you could see and hear fireworks, surround sound 360 degrees.  And people burned something on the street.  The weather was nice, and it was beautiful.  I would almost recommend traveling here to see it.  They also do fireworks Christmas Eve, but we were at home and did not have such a good view.

And we are close enough to going home that we have been talking about it and making plans.  This two weeks before Christmas and after new Years there has been absolutely nothing going on in the office or with the fund.  I have been checking loans and only one has come in the last 7 days.  So Glenn has been working on his vocational test, and I have been doing miscellaneous keep busy stuff.  We decided to move our departure up by two weeks because no one here cares what we do, but there is another missionary couple coming in next week and they need an apartment so we may leave earlier so they can have this apartment.  Glenn is going to talk to the employment guy in Lima to see if we can do anything for him, and if he has no plans for us, there really isn’t much more to be accomplished by hanging around. 

We have had maybe 3 days of sun, and it is warm here, so it might be better weather here than we are going home to.  We do have a few things to settle up before we leave.  Our final date is February 25, 2010, it won’t be later than that.

Sunday Jan. 3, 2009

Today we had an experience that reminded us why we are here, and made me discouraged, because, with all the good intentions of the PEF, I know it isn’t doing what it was intended to do, help the very poor.  Well, we are not completely failing, but there are cases like this that are so desperate that they need more help than we can give.  Sr. Baglietto lives in Manchay with her 14 year old son, Angelo and her 17 year old daughter, Angelina.  She left her husband and moved here to live with her sister and family because her husband was molesting the daughter.  We have known her since we began attending at Manchay; she is about 4 foot tall and very outgoing and friendly and positive.  So she is someone you would notice.  She is a hard worker, but cleaning house for other people is a hard way to make a   living, and she has no skills to get a better job.  She also has bad knees.  Abeytas brought down some medicine for her from the US and that helped but she still hurts when she walks.  We talked to her daughter Angelina months ago about going to school and encouraged her to go to school with the PEF.  She even got the application filled out, but at some point in the process she quit.

They invited us to dinner at their house today after church.  So we went.  The three of them live in a “house”, which is a wooden premade “playhouse” of one room.  They all sleep on one bed, and it is not a full size bed, maybe a little bigger than a twin.  The “kitchen” which is more or less a Coleman-type camp stove is in this room and the only other furniture is a wooden closet.  They have no water, they have a garbage can size plastic water barrel down by her sister’s house and Angelo carries water up to their house in a bucket; they buy water from a water truck that comes through the neighborhood once in a while.  They are buying the piece of property, which is on a sloped hill for 3,000 soles, which is about $1,000.  Men from the branch have helped them by leveling out a space big enough to put the house on; hopefully they will eventually help level out more space, but it is hard going because the hill is rock.  They had Christmas decorations up, no tree, but ribbon and a nativity.  How they manage to get to church in clean clothes is difficult to understand.  They can use their relatives’ bathroom down the hill a little way.  The relative sells them electricity by running a wire between the houses. 

I didn’t think about it too much while I was there but now I am crying.  Angelina asked to talk to us alone, when her mom and brother had a party to go to and left.  She asked us to take her with us when we go home to the United States.  She said she wants to learn, maybe I could teach her how to play the piano and she could work for us.  We explained that it is not that easy to take someone home with us into the US.  But that we would help her.  Can you imagine being 17 years old and living in a one room shack and sleeping in a bed with your mother and brother, no privacy, no hope except for lousy jobs because you have no skills.  Even starting a little business seems out of the question.  With no resources, no place to make anything if you could figure out what to make, with the threat of having anything you might accumulate stolen.  The situation does seem impossible.  I wish we had been more aware before, we could have been more proactive in helping her.

This is the situation the fund was meant to help and we will make sure she gets into some kind of school, the shorter the better, because her situation is so precarious.  I don’t know what else to do.  Glenn wants to help them expand the house so Angelina could have a little privacy and a place to sleep, but until more rock is chiseled out, there is no room to expand the house.  This is a girl the Fund was meant to help, but it isn’t enough to pay for living expenses, bus fares and extra school expenses. 

On a lighter note, Manchay wants to start a choir and they asked Glenn and me to help them.  That is really pretty funny, because I cannot play the hymns and Glenn only knows the treble clef, so he worked with the alto and sopranos on the treble clef and with a little electronic keyboard, I played the tenor and bass parts for the men.  It is fun and they appreciate it.  When we arrived a year ago we tried to teach math and English without much success—Glenn has helped a few individuals.  We should have started with music.  I guess this is the way of a mission, when you finally figure it out and make some friends, it is time to go home.  Better that way than to hate it and feel totally incompetent up to the end. 

January 18, 2010 again,

I should report that since that Sunday we went to Baglietto’s house in Manchay that I have had Angelina come here a couple of times and showed her some simple things she can sew and sell to make some extra money for bus fare, etc.  She can’t go to school and have a job at the same time, so she needs some self-employment activities she can do while she goes to school. We do not yet have her started in school.   We loaned her mother 100 dollars, which we are not supposed to do, so she could start a small business making a couple of cleaning products, which everyone needs, so that is a good choice for her.  Saturday evening she had finally made her first batch. We will see firsthand if self-employment really works.  These people are not standing around waiting for a handout, or for someone else to solve their problems, though I guess we did help by the loan.  I do admire Sis. Baglietto, who manages to be so positive in the face of such hard circumstances.  I think Glenn will put up the pictures on Picassa Web.

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