Week ONE!

 From Whitney:This week has been a WHIRLWIND! We can't believe we're already through a full 7 days! Our first 3days were spent in Lima- where we took care of visa's and watched conference. It is a crazy city! The shopping is incredible! You could probably find anything you could ever imagine. Literally. We couldn't wait to get out of there!
It was a wonderful thing to walk off our plan in Trujillo and be assaulted with the delightful smell of manure.
Trujillo is almost 10x smaller than Lima. It is a small city as far as south America is concerned. But- even though it's smallish by their standards- it has a higher population than the whole state of Montana. Sooooo......it's madness. There is constant new construction and demolition-so you can't tell which is which most of the time. It  just seems to have a lot of "rubble". The economy has been so great-everyone is wanting to rebuild and improve. Sometimes it feels like the exact opposite of Bigfork. At the same time.... We both feel very much at home. It's ....unexpected. (Except for watching people take home 5 lbs bags of chicken feet from the Super Mercado...that just left us feeling scared and confused....and a little cold.)
We've spent the last 5 days being chauffeured around the city by our new Peruvian dad, Miguel. He works as a facility manager for the area. He found our house, and has now spent almost an entire work week helping us shop for all of the necessities. We've spent time with his wife and son, also. They are so great! It's nice to feel like we already have family to rely on while we're here. Miguel also introduced us to other LDS Americans in the area. It's funny that after only a few days it's strange to hear someone else speak straight up American English.
Our house is nice and roomy,has no water pressure, and only one room has hot water. (The guest room-you lucky devils.) We're trying to make home as comfortable as Possible-so the transition is easier for us. It is a little unnerving to have to pay for 24 hour security guards-as well as a newly installed security system. But we are assured we are in the safest area.
We have been all over the city but I haven't been able to take many pictures thus far. For a few reasons- when we feel more comfortable I'll be taking a million. So hold tight for those.
All in all-we feel very fortunate to have any home here. We would have stayed in a shack  if that's what we had to do. We feel safer than expected and well taken care of. We have already  seen a lot of the excitement of the people to have a temple here. That has helped us feel like living away from our family, friends, school, and all of our "cooshie" comforts at home, is all worth it.  We are happy to do it and happily doing it. We have found that the Lord is taking good care of us, and that the things we were most worried about have been dropped in our laps.
I was determined to continue some type of art schooling down here, but have been nervous about how to find one or the cost, and not speaking spanish. We pulled up to our house on day 1 and noticed that 2 doors down is a community art school-with classes in English. The owner told us that if I had anything special I would like to learn she would find a teacher-and she would start looking for a metalsmithing instructor right away. What are the odds? Coincidence? I think not.
We are being /taken care of by the Man in charge- We are determined to find the beautiful and fun things the area has to offer, and not for one second regret coming.
 From James: We have been so blessed that it continually amazes us. We have people that love us back home and pray for us and wonderful people here that are taking care of us as well. We are nervous because of the unknown, but feel unexpectantly comfortable despite so many reasons to the contrary. We know that Heavenly Father is taking care of us and protecting us and we look forward to more fenn-tastic adventures!

Leaving Lima

 A church downtown Trujillo in Plaza de armas

 James Picking the brain of Willy(''weelee") the handy man. He is telling James the Spanish names of all of his tools.

 Chambar-Most traditional meal in Trujillo-It is ONLY served on monday. Those big pink pieces of meat? Pig skin. Miguel took us to try it on our first day!

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 James's  1st lunch- It really was the size of his head! It was a CRAZY amount of food!

 Our hotel llawn mower. There were 3.

  1st dinner in our home-Pizza Hut with Miguel, Umberto, Martha and "Weelee".

 ANNND our first (make shift)home cooked meal.

(I know these pictures are SO exciting! It's all I had!)

 In the institute  building we found all sorts of fliers and pamphlets with the Temple on it. This Rendering of it has only been released for 3 weeks!

P.s. We apologize for spelling and grammatical errors- On a spanish network it sometimes auto corrects and changes weird things!