El dia de vacaciones

Today was sort of like a vacation day for us. It wasn't supposed to be. It started off as a normal day. We went and visited the church's offices where they have the Employment Office and the Mission Home. After that Jenry went back to our office and Heather and I continued with Miguel to do visits...but we had to go to the supermarket first to get some water (it's on the 1st floor and the church offices are on the 2nd floor of the same building)...while we were there we thought it'd be nice to buy a little treat for Flor since we were going to be doing visits in Miguel and Flor's neighborhood and Miguel needed to stop to get his cell phone...we decided to get an ice cream treat (like the Viennetta ice cream rolls or whatever they are), take it to the house (which is close to 20 minutes away) eat it first and then go do visits. While we were at Miguel's finishing our ice cream, Jenry called and said we needed to come back earlier than usual for lunch, so we ended up doing one visit in the morning before having to head back to our neighborhood.

In the afternoon, we were going to return to Miguel's neighborhood, but our friend Alberto had called us earlier really concerned that we were in third world Trujillo suffering great depravation. So he hooked us up with a girl from Trujillo whose father is the manager of an important bank and he wanted us to spend the afternoon with her seeing a different side of Trujillo. At the end of the afternoon, we returned home to have dinner with our family who wanted to take us out, so...not a super productive day, but after dinner, we did come back to the office and have been working for about three hours.

A few things:
We are huge fans of Miguel and Flor. We love them. They are the couple that just got married last week and they are one of the purest, sweetest couples. Miguel has talked to us a couple of times about his feelings regarding the church, God's plan, his faith, what it's like being married to

Flor...he's amazing. He's so good and so kind and so full of faith. You don't find many people like him anywhere in the world, especially in the United States. Flor is the same way--so humble and so sweet. They are starting really with nothing. They laugh about it. Until last night they were eating on the floor of their kitchen because they didn't have a table, but Flor's mom just bought them one as a present. Their apartment is really small but there is a great spirit there and they are trying so hard to start their lives together right and do things the Lord's way. We love Miguel and Flor. I posted an extra picture of them here, especially for my little sister Darcie. Flor got this shirt from another Peruvian who served in her mission. He gave it to her because she loved playing soccer. Who knows where he got it from, but...it's a Timpview Soccer t-shirt!

After lunch we went and met Alberto's friend Cynthia and her sister Claudia. They are both in their 20's. They are Catholic, but they live next door to the mission president and their brother is at BYU. We also met their mother and together the five of us drove around Trujillo while they showed us a few other parts of the city. It was really fun for me to see a different side of Trujillo. There are parts of Trujillo that are actually really well taken care of and quite beautiful. For some reason it made me feel better to see that people can reach that economic level here. Most people that live in the nicer areas of the city work for banks, large companies like Nextel and Gloria (a big dairy company), or own their own larger, profitable businesses. It made me feel good to know that hard work here doesn't always get you a higher economic level of poverty. A small few are actually blessed with more.

At the same time, it was sad to see the contrast and it provoked a lot of thought...these girls have probably never experienced the poverty of their country firsthand, so I wonder how in touch they are with how hard life is for the rest of their fellow countrymen and women. I think this happens a lot to us in the United States. We of the middle class take our economic status for granted and part of us feels that if people wanted to have more, they could. I've thought a lot about a quote from Primo Levi's book Se questo e un uomo (Survival in Auschwitz) where a man named Kuhn is praying and thanking God that he has been saved by the random selection process where the S.S. guards in Auschwitz would send a few prisoners to be killed. Levi sees Kuhn praying and says, "Se io fossi Dio, sputterei a terra la preghiera di Kuhn," which is, "If I were God, I would spit Kuhn's prayer back to earth." I don't agree with Levi. I think we should ALWAYS be grateful and thankful to God for what WE have, but at the same time, I think it's a careful balance between gratitude to God balanced with humility that recognizes both our blessings (through no particular worthiness of our own) and the innocent suffering of others. Anyway, all this talking is about me and not about these girls. They were very sweet girls and very generous to us. And their home, home life, and situation all reminded me of something you would find in the U.S., so I don't fault them for having what we have. It's just such a stark contrast here in comparison to the U.S. where most of us are well-insulated from those who do suffer in poverty. I guess it was good for me to see the contrast as a reminder that there is suffering in my own country very close to home that I often ignore.

As for dinner with Jenry and company, it was delicious! Jenry treated us all to dinner at a great restaurant that serves chicken served three ways that are very typical in Peru: rotisserie, deep-fried, and on the grill. It was really great and so much fun to go out with everyone again. Luckily, this time no accidents were had by Angel David. At least not at dinner. Prior to dinner when Heather and I arrived at the house, Adrian was mad at Angel David and had shut him in the room without knowing that the door would lock. No one had a key. Angel David is too little to open the door from the inside, but the whole time he kept calling out that he had to go to the bathroom. Meanwhile, Jenry was trying to break into the room. When the door was finally opened, it was a little too late for Angel David and his pantalones. At least this time he didn't have to sit on a cold high chair afterward.