Dedication of the Trujillo Temple - Part I
The cultural celebration - Saturday
 

Back in February when the dedication date of June 21 was announced for the Trujillo Temple, we made reservations to fly there and also for a nice hotel. We knew there would be many ex-missionaries and ex-mission presidents from both Peru and the U.S. who would gather for the occasion. We also wanted to see the cultural celebration on the Saturday evening before the dedication. President Monson often mentions these and how beautiful they are in his conference talks after returning from a temple dedication. Besides, the youth of our stake were invited to perform a dance number and we wanted to support them, plus see the other colorful dances from around the country.

About a month ago, we learned that the Church was not able to reserve the large soccer stadium for the event and were going to use a much smaller venue that would only seat about 5,000 persons. This would limit the attendance to only dance participants, their parents and their leaders. We were disappointed but determined to go ahead with our plans. We did not expect to be able to enter the temple for one of the three dedicatory sessions and made plans to view one of the sessions in a stake center in Trujillo. Both the cultural celebration and the dedication were televised by closed circuit to most of the stake centers in Peru.

We flew to Lima early Friday morning on the two motor turbo prop that carries 30 passengers. There is only one flight a day from Huaraz to Lima and it leaves at 7:05 a.m., which means the taxi picked us up at 5:30 for the 30 minute ride to the airport. Before we left, the Bejaranos, our very good friends in the ward here, said they had obtained tickets for us for the cultural event and also for the temple dedication from one of the Stake Presidents in Trujillo who is a friend of their family. As parents, they had tickets for the cultural celebration and he also got tickets for them and for us for the temple dedication. We were excited!

After a bumpy, one hour flight to Lima, we hurried to the gate for our flight to Trujillo. This was a smooth 70 minute flight on a large jet. After checking in at the hotel, we were invited to eat lunch with a former mission president and his wife (the Wards).  The fish was excellent! Then we went down to the center market to shop for shoes since Trujillo is the shoe manufacturing center for Peru. Marilyn found two pair, all leather, for U.S.$23.00 each. She said that was about half of what she would pay for them in the States.

In the lobby of the hotel we met Terry Turk, who was our Stake President in Mesa when we left for the mission in Guatemala. He was a mission president here in Trujillo when they broke ground for the temple. The next day we met Gil and Pam Greer, also from Mesa. He and I served on the High Council in the Mesa East Stake together when President Turk was the Stake President. Small world.

Here are the Greers with our Huaraz Stake President and his wife.

Early Saturday we met with Sister Handa who works with the Area Historian. She interviewed me and recorded 1 1/2 hours of the early history of the Andean Mission since I was one of the early missionaries in Peru in l958.

Later on that morning we went to the event center, el Gran Chimú Coliseo, to watch the dress rehearsals. Here are some photos of some of the groups that performed.

This is the event center and one of the groups. In the right-center of this picture is a stage with the actors that narrated the stories and history of the dances.  The costumes were very impressive.  The entire top section across from us, plus another whole section was all dancers. 

A dance group from another region.

The dancers from our Huaraz Stake. 74 youth rode the two buses for 6 hours Friday night, rehearsed on Saturday morning, performed Saturday night and then took the 6 hour bus ride back to Huaraz, arriving at 5:00 a.m. Sunday morning. Needless to say they were tired.

Since this was a rehearsal, they did not wear their white pants. The brown items on their legs are rattles that made lots of noise whenever they moved their legs, which was most of the time. The costumes were rented in Lima and arrived the day before they left for Trujillo.

The dances were in chronological order tied to a narration of the history of the country. These dances begin to reflect the early colonial period.

The marinera - A very graceful dance.

Well executed! Remember, these are all youth 12 - 18.

This number brought a lot of applause from the audience.

Another group with a different variation of the marinera and different dresses for the young women.  We are glad that we took some pictures at the rehearsal as it was harder to get good shots in the evening.  It was darker and the lighting was different.

After the rehearsal, we went to a seafood restaurant with the Bejaranos, their son, nephew, and Sister Pecho and her daughter.The three youth were part of the Huaraz dance group and were very hungry by this point.

Mauricio Bejarano, Lucy Pecho, Sister Pecho, Pilar Bejarano, and nephew Sebastian (hamming it up). Pilar is our Ward Relief Society President and Sister Pecho is in the Stake RS Presidency. Mauricio is one of Marilyn's piano students.

To be continued - Part II coming