Behind the Scenes, Feathered and Peruvian Friends, and Sharp Knives

1 October 2017

Behind the Scenes - Humanitarian Work

It seems like a whole army is pushing our humanitarian work forward. We are at the forefront, but without all the helping hands, this work would never move forward. Here is a glimpse of what we see each day:

Area Office - Five Countries

The hub of our work activities, the Lima Area Office

The Area Office is the administrative center for our church covering the countries of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. This beautiful building houses our humanitarian office, along with the offices of three church General Authorities and about 100 full-time church employees. We walk 12 minutes each day from our apartment to the office. We stagger back home when our day is done.

Purchasing

None of our projects could take place without our friends in the Purchasing Department. We work with them every day to coordinate purchases of materials for clean-water wells, vision surgical equipment, fetal monitors, wheelchair repair tools, ultrasound devices, etc.

Purchasing Department: Miguel Hurtado (right) and Napoleon Quispe. They are key players in every humanitarian project we operate.

Finance

Every project here requires timely payments for the many things we purchase. We deal daily with our friends in the Finance Department to pay for the donations we make, the equipment we order, the taxes that we have to pay, etc. These are a great bunch of hard-working financial experts.

Finance Department - this team pays the countless expenses required to fund the humanitarian work

Travel

We are constantly traveling around Peru. The travel agency, BCD, has an office in our building to coordinate all the trips we and others take around the country.

Travel Office - Carol Herrera (right) and her colleague Cynthia from the BCD Travel Agency. They book our flights, arrange our hotels, and take care of our transfers within town.

Donors of Humanitarian Aid

None of this work would happen without the donations of millions of people from around the world. Since the founding of LDS Chartities in 1986, almost $2 billion in aid for humanitarian projects have been given to the most needy in desperate places around the world. This work is carried on by volunteers like us using the donations given by generous people worldwide.

Our humanitarian aid is funded by millions of people from all areas around the world.

This entire army of people, from volunteers like us to the support staff in the office to the donors around the globe, helps to carry forward this work to help the most vulnerable throughout the world.

We give thanks every day for this chance we have been given to lend our hands to this work.

Feathered Friends

We find colorful and unusual birds wherever we travel in Peru. Even around our apartment or the office in Lima, birds abound. Here are some we've seen.

Vermilion Flycatcher. We see these gorgeous red and black birds on the grounds around the Area Office catching bugs mid-air.

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Saffron Finch. These cute little yellow birds live in our neighborhood only in the summer, then they migrate to warmer spots during the cold season.

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Andean Flamingos. We see these rare flamingos that live year round in lakes high in the Andes Mountains around 12,000 ft. elevation. We think of flamingos as being tropical birds, but these flamingos face freezing temperatures every night of the year at high altitude.

Frigate Birds. On the northern coast in the mangrove islands, hundreds of thousands of frigate birds arrive each year to mate. The males inflate the pouch under their bills to impress the females. The pouch looks like a big red balloon.

Friends in Peru

Michael Trejo works with us in the Area Office. He and his wife Nadia invited us to dinner this week to celebrate my birthday (today I turned 63). They are fun to hang around with - kind of like having our own kids here with us.

Dinner at the home of Michael and Nadia Trejo. She made a delicious dinner of Papas Rellenas (meat filling wrapped in mashed potatoes and then fried - just the right amount of spicy).

They live on the 11th floor of their building with incredible views of Lima. The city spreads out below them.

Lima stretches out on all sides as far as the eye can see from the Trejo's apartment.

The Trejos live on the western edge of the city in a suburb called San Miguel. Their area has lots of 'huacas', ancient archaeological pyramids that the city has built around. Their apartment has an incredible view of one of the largest huacas.

Huaca Tres Palos - the view from the Trejo's of this giant pyramid site with the city built around it.

There are over 250 huacas around Lima - only a portion of them have been excavated.

Huaca Tres Palos - 5-story-tall pyramid. Most of the more than 250 huacas in Lima have not been excavated. 

We drove around with the Trejos and passed several of these huaca sites, all surrounded by apartment buildings and businesses. Lima must have more ruins per capita than any other city in the world.

Huaca Huantinamarca - surrounded by Lima

The Knife Sharpener

Every week, merchants walk up and down our street selling items door to door. The knife sharpener always comes by, blowing a noise maker out in the street to let everyone know to bring out their knives. Out of curiosity, I called out from our balcony and he stopped and setup his sharpening machine. I brought him a few of our kitchen knives and watched as he pumped on his trundle with his foot to make the sharpening wheel spin around. In a few minutes, the knives were sharp again. The man told me this was a family business, something his father (and possibly grandfather) had done before him.

The knife sharpener - he wheels his contraption up and down the street, calling out to the neighbors to bring out their knives for sharpening.

Traditional Peruvian World Music Concert

When we find concerts, we get together with other senior missionaries to attend. This week we attended a concert of an instrumental group called Lucho Quequezana who performed at the Gran Teatro Nacional. The group included members playing lots of traditional Peruvian instruments, along with members of the group from Vietnam, Turkey, and Japan playing their traditional instruments. It was a nice escape.

Lucho Quequezana - concert of Peruvian and world instruments.

Happy Birthday in Peru

Sandy baked a cake for my birthday, and we took it to work the next day so everyone could sing me the birthday song to celebrate my turning 63.

Birthday celebration in the Area Office. (L to R) Lily Davalos, Sandy, Marshall, Miguel Hurtado, Oscar Sanchez, and Michael Trejo)

And so the weekend is over and another busy week begins. We travel to the jungles of Iquitos tomorrow to help develop a vision project. This will include cataract surgeries and donations of glasses for children of families of scarce means. Once developed, this project will be carried out early next year.