Cusco, The Ancient Capital Of The Inca World

Skimming over the two posts I've done since arriving here in Urcos, I realised I've hardly told you anything about the place, porject, or happenings of our first week and a half here.
So since all you know of Urcos is that there's a Jesus statue and we watched a footy match between Lima and Cusco here, let me shed some more light on our time here so far.

Inti Raymi...

Right, he goes, information on Urcos and our project, I think its only fitting that I start with a festival in Cusco that we went to on our day off, makes sense...

Inti Raymi is Peru's largest festival and the second largest in South America (apparently). So what exactly is it? Well, from watching it I'd say its a big parade of colour with hundreds of people dressed up like Incas, walking/dancing up to some ruins above Cusco, stopping on the way to say the odd thing and play some music. Thankfully I've done my homework since Monday and I now know a little of the history and meaning behind it all.

The Inti Raymi (Festival of the Sun) was a religious ceremony of the Inca empire in honor of the god Inti, one of the most venerated gods in Inca religion. The festival that is celebrated today is actually a dramatic recontruction of what they think would've happened at Inti Raymi, whilst also telling the story. There's a bit in the story where they would've sacrificed a lama, but unfortunatly that no longer takes place. 
It was amazing, although Rach H was very nervous as she can't deal with crowds and Cusco was packed!! Incredibly the other Rach had a friend from Marlborough who also happened to be in Cusco, so we met her and her friends and were able to spend the evening with them too as we were staying the night in Cusco. We felt like such 'gap yah' travellers but it was nice to meet some English people and get out of our 'bubble' for a bit (as nice as the bubble is). 

5 Nights in Cusco, 7 in Urcos...

We stayed in Cusco on Monday night because we had been invited to a group run by Ian and Hulianna for Quechua 'golden oldies'. The involved your classic food and sermon but also exercises and games. If the exercises were funny then the games were something else! We played hot potato and if you lost you had to do a forfit. Needless to say I ended up singing the national anthem to everyone, very proud moment.

After our morning's fun half of the team headed back to our hostel near the Plaza de Armas. When I say hostel, I mean some nice rooms above a cafe run by some American missionaries who give 100% of their profits away to local projects. Truly brilliant people (and even better waffels...). Whilst we relaxed in central Cusco four of the girls went with Jenny (our supervisor's wife) to the children's ward of the public hospital to do visits. They did games with the children they saw and were even able to pray with some of them. They gained so much from it, where as the only thing we gained was weight from our massive waffels, soooo worth it though!

Having spent 4 days in Cusco last week with Allie because she was ill again, I feel that I've spent more time there than I have here. Much as I loved the time to discover Cusco on my own last week, returning to the team on the Saturday night was so nice. Made me realise how much I enjoy their company and just how blessed I am to have them. 

That's Why The Prophets Seem So Angry...

Yesterday afternoon, whilst shifting cement we got chatting to Hoseas, little footnote on him by the way: He is the head of the sinod of the IEP church south of Cusco. Basically he oversees every single IEP church south of Cusco and is something like the second most powerful guy in the church, a big deal, archbishop style. Yet, he's been helping little old step team to build a wall in Urcos. Another example of his great humility and service was shown when the American medical mission came to Layo. Hoseas was part of the team overseeing the whole thing and had a major role. On the second day I wonder into the guys bathroom and who's there cleaning the whole thing on his own? You guessed it, the equivalent of the Archbish in the IEP! True legend. I think we should get Adrian to follow his lead and clean the parish rooms in my absence...

Anyway, we were talking to him about Inti Raymi when he told us that some people still perform old animal sacrifices like they used to do for Inti Raymi. 
"Haha, how silly" we all said, "shame there's still so much spiritualism around, and poor old Lamas". Then Hoseas dropped the bomb, "They even still perform human sacrifices". 
"What?!! But these people are caught and done for murder, right?"
"No.."
Much as Peru is a different country and local government is still fairly corrupt, we were not expecting Hoseas to answer with 'No'. These people are satanists/spiritualists who essentially believe that in order to have a good life and for the land to give them good things they have to offer a live to the ground/spirits. So these people target nobodies, people without friends or family. They invite them round, give them food, show them love and intrest, whilst steadily getting them more and more drunk before they kill them. Real people, these are real people!! Most of the time they target girls aged around 12, and they're often their own children. The awful thing is that Peruvians are still very much attached to their Inca heritage and culture that believes everything has a spirit, mountains, rivers, the sun etc. They may not really believe it or practice anything but they're scared to completely discount it or insult it through fear of being cursed if it happens to be real. Therefore everyone, including the government, is afraid to confront these practices.

'But this is murder' you say, as we did, 'isn't that illegal?'. According to Hoseas, it depends on the situation. For example, the law is to do with public order and allows freedom to practice all religons. Therefore if you kill your own child or someone no-one cares about who has no real place in society, in your own house or in the woods where it won't affect anyone, in the name of your religon, thats okay. Especially if people are worried that if they confront you, they'll be cursed or targeted. Horrified we asked, "but this is really rare, yeah? hoping for some reassurence. 
"Not that rare, and little by little its becoming more common.". The more we heard about this disgusting activity, the wider out mouth dropped and the more incredulous we became. All we could do once the conversation died away was to suggest to Hoseas that we pray together, which we did. 

It got me thinking about the prophets in the old testament though (yes, another rather long though, feel free to skip...). Most of the time we read the prophets in the new testament and want to tell them to calm down. We hear them telling people how messed up the world is and how they need to change and we think wow, Jeremiah they're not that bad mate, stop getting so wound up! Often, because of this they're hard to read and we just skip over them. Well if you feel like this here's an image that help:      

Imagine someone singing a really great song very loud, but they can't sing to save their life (in south america that doesn't take much imagination). Well if you've got a tin ear and aren't musically trained, then that song sounds great, nothing wrong at all. But if you're musically trained and have perfect pitch (step up Sarah Morley) you can't stand to listen to any of it, because you know how good the song would be if it were sung well and just how far off this person singing it is. You think, 'how can this person with the tin ear think this sounds okay?!' 
For the prophets, who see the world through God's eyes, they look at the injustice, greed, selfishness and passivity of the world and say to Israel and all of us, 'how can you stand listening to this?!' Add to that the state of their world: dominated by violence, 2 Samuel 2:11 starts with, 'In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war' war is just an anual thing, as normal as spring coming. A world where sacrifcies that Hoseas told us about which are so horrific, are common place and are done in the name of God! You can see why the prophets who could see how good the song could be got so annoyed. Why they were desperate to tell the people just how far off they were. We're all very quick to say that we've moved on since then, our world is not as bad as that. Yet if you look you can still find it. The fact is, more often than not, we'd rather not look. Micah 2:11 says that we'd rather a prophet tell us how good everything was than the truth. So what should we do? God makes it very clear in Micah 6:8 -

⁸ 
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.    And what does the Lord require of you?To act justly and to love mercy    and to walk humbly with your God.

As God's people we need to have a burning heart of justice in this world, and to have courage to not ignore what's wrong with this world, but to stand and say this is so off pitch, and I'm going to do something about it, in any way I can.

Project...

Our project is essentially building a wall. To be honest its fairly dull and many of the team are struggleing to keep going, and just want to get to team holiday and for many travelling. The project is just us an Hoseas working so whatever we don't do, stays unfinished, none of the extra helpers we got in our other projects. We do have a youth group that come round on wednesdays and last week there was a sort of 'peruvian colwyn bay' using our centre but please pray that the team have motivation to keep working and that we don't just fizzle out before holiday.

Sorry for the essay and once again the lack of photo's (there will be some to come), the computers in Urcos are slower than those in Cusco... plus the odd highlighted bits, not sure whats going on there. Hundreds of love and thanks to you all.

JJ