Family History Fair in Huaraz -

The Huaraz Stake held its first ever FH Fair on May 1, a holiday here. The total attendance surpassed 100. The missionaries received over 70 referrals due to the large attendance of non-members. As in other parts of the world, the non-members seem to show more interest in their genealogy than the members. We need to work with the members in the stake to motivate and train them in family history.

We were able to enroll several members and non-members in FamilySearch, which of course costs nothing. Many more could have been enrolled if the Internet had been functioning properly in the chapel. It often took over 30 minutes just to enter a person in LDS.org/FamilySearch. This severely limited the number of people we could enroll.

Hopefully there will be a surge of interest in FH now in the area.  The Stake FH Center does not have adequate Internet access and we believe correcting this roadblock should be a top priority.

The full-time missionaries were outstanding and assisted in many areas. Brother Teófilo Roncal from Lima was most helpful in organizing and focusing the planning. I offered some suggestions based on the FH fairs we organized in Mesa. It was a good beginning and we all learned a lot about planning and communications prior to the Fair.

The Stake is planning another FH fair in October/November in the Caraz/Carhuaz wards, who, due to the distance, were not involved in the fair. Sister Oxborrow and I will be going to Caraz on May 24 to help train leaders and members there in family history and FamilySearch.

Here are a few photos from the event. We would have liked to have taken more but were too busy helping folks.

The entrance as seen from the street. The chapel has two buildings with a covered breezeway between them. Note the sister missionary handing out an invitation to a passerby.

Another view of the classroom side of the chapel with the two sister missionaries passing out invitations on the sidewalk.

The nice poster sign at the entrance.

"Grand Fair of Family History" Sister missionary ready to handle the registration.

Sister Winters, one of the six sister missionaries in the Stake. She is from Utah.

Sister O. helping a member enroll in FamilySearch. A returned missionary who just came home is working on my laptop.

Free magazines and literature helped get many folks in to the Fair. From left, Sister Solis - Paraguay, Sister Winters - Utah, Sister McIntosh - Panama and Sister Bills - Arizona.

The great missionary crew who helped. From left the zone leaders, Elder Crozier - Utah and Elder Chub - Guatemala. Plus the four sisters. These are a great bunch of missionaries and they were sooo... helpful.

You will notice the absence of photos of the visitors who came. As mentioned earlier, when it really got busy we were too busy to take pictures. This will give a little flavor of the event.

A milestone at the archives -

Since we posted the original blog on the archives, some have asked for more details on the kinds of records we are working with.

Last week we finished the death records for the city of Chimbote, Peru, which is located on the coast but part of this province.. Since Huaraz is the capital of the Province of Ancash, the records of many towns and villages are stored here. We have taken 32,509 digital photos in the 7 weeks we have been working on these records since our arrival in Huaraz. There were 113 books, dating from mid 1960 to 1994, in this group. Prior records were already photographed by Juan, our trainer.

This means that there will be over 32,000 additional names of deceased relatives who passed away in Chimbote that will be available for indexing and eventual research on the Internet at FamilySearch.org in about 4 - 5 months. Hopefully, these records will help many people find their deceased ancestors and learn more about them. Most death records list the cause of death, the age of the deceased, the area he/she is from and his/her father and mother.

To date, we have only had 3 photos that we had to retake, which according to Juan is outstanding for a beginning camera crew. All our photos are audited in Salt Lake City from the hard disk that we send up every two weeks. They check for lighting, focus, blurred images, hands and other articles in the photos, etc. We are sure we will have some returned in the future but we feel this is a great start.

We have now started doing the death records of Huaraz. The first book was dated 1891 and we are currently working with 1916. We are excited to finally be doing the records for the city in which we live and serve. These early books are very fragile and it takes us some time to set them up and to photograph each page. Consequently our production has dropped considerably the past week.

We have included some photos of the different shapes and sizes of the books we deal with.

Here is a stack of birth records from a small village that Juan is working on.

Another group of different birth records showing the diversity of sizes and shapes of records.

Here is one of the larger books from Chimbote. Being death records, almost every page had a doctor's certificate indicating the cause of death. It is the small paper attached by glue to the top of the document. Once we shoot the main page, with the doctor's certificate folded up out of the way, we then photograph the certificate with a separate template that shows only the certificate, thus each page requires two takes.

This gives you an idea of the size of this book.

An old book without a cover. There are two death records on each page.

A large and small book. They come in all sizes.

We were fascinated by the fancy signatures from these early records (1901). El Alcalde is the mayor, El Jefe de la Seccion is the Section Chief, Testigo is witness and Declarante is the person who gave the death information to the registrar.

More fancy signatures.

How about these beauties from 1902?

Here are the early books from Huaraz for the years 1891 to 1904.

A Peruvian Wedding -

Here is the account of another Peruvian adventure--well, at least an experience. Not long after we arrived, a young couple asked us to speak at their wedding, which was set for Saturday, April 26. We agreed and then the novio (groom) asked if I (Marilyn) would accompany two young violinists to play the bridal march and another piece. I agreed and began to regret is immediately. I practiced with the kids (ages 9 and 12) for a number of times in which half of the time was spent with them trying to get their violins in tune. Finally we felt like we were OK.

Marilyn and the violinists practicing before anyone arrived.

The wedding announcement said 10:00 a.m. "exacta", so we left the house at 9:45 and arrived at 10:00 since the wedding was at an outdoor facility about 15 minutes out of Huaraz. The only people there were the caterers and decorators--not one guest and no sign of the wedding party. We waited for over an hour before anyone else arrived. About 12:30 they finally started. As you can see in the pictures, it was very elegant and very nicely done.

The covered area for the guests.

The outdoor setting. Very nice.

 

Even the outdoor bathroom facilities were very nice by Peruvian standards, flush toilets with seats, TP and washbasins with running water.

 

The kitchen was located below the gazebo and here you can see the corn waiting to be cooked and the meats and potatoes cooking. Notice the wood stoves.

 
The background on the bride and groom is that she is a recent convert and so 
they couldn't go to the temple yet. Plus, her family are all very active evangelical members, so they wanted the wedding to be comfortable for everyone. Actually, it was a wedding and reception combined. Peru only recognizes civil wedding ceremonies so they are generally performed by the mayor of the locality.

 

The father escorts the bride down the red carpet. The groom is waiting with his mother.

The violinists and I played "A Thousand Years" as the bride walked down the red carpet. I guess it sounded OK--nothing sounds really great on a keyboard, especially outdoors. We really didn't know what we were to do until five minutes before it started--they are great improvisers.

Once the bride and groom were seated in the gazebo, the program began.

Bride and groom waiting for the program to begin.

The first speaker was the evangelical minister and he spoke for at least 30 minutes, giving them lots of good counsel--just too long. The the mayor came and he gave them more counsel and finally married them after having all the applicable sections of the civil statutes read by his clerk--another 30 minutes or so.

Then Elder Oxborrow spoke, but not for very long. I had written out some thoughts but was coughing a lot, besides the program was already too long. (Tony had been sick all week with a nasty head cold and I started not feeling well the night before the wedding--we said we share everything, but he could have kept his cold.)

The wedding cakes, which we never got to eat as we left when the rain came.

The appetizers. They only brought one tray around so we didn't get to sample the others. Notice the two carved watermelons. Pretty clever.

The other musical group.

After that, they had the bride and groom dance, then with their parents and then with anyone who wanted to dance with them. This took quite a awhile. The music was provided by the young group from the other church, with the minister (not shown above) singing the lead--very loudly! This was followed by activities like throwing the bouquet to the single women, the groom throwing a flower to the single men to determine who would marry next, and lighting candles together--which we didn't fully understand.

The young man with the candle.

About 2:00 they stared serving dinner. The appetizer was a piece of boiled potato, some beef heart on a skewer (anticuchos), some sliced cooked tripe (cow stomach - I cannot stomach it, Tony ate all his), and a piece of corn on the cob. We thought that was the main plate as you can see from the size of the serving in the photo below.

The appetizer!

Then it really started to rain hard and the plastic sheets did not stop the water so everyone quickly moved their chairs up to the gazebo (where all the activities had taken place) or to the area with a roof where the cakes were located.

The main course was then served and consisted of two very large boiled potatoes, corn on the cob, a little onion salad and a piece of lamb. We thought it very interesting that the appetizer and the main plate were basically the same, only the serving size was a little different. We left before they cut the cakes--after almost six hours we were ready to go home.

We never did play the second song. I said to the twelve year old violinist; "aren't we glad we practiced all those hours for nothing!"  Oh well, maybe we will play it in church or at at talent night sometime.

Some stylish ladies with their hats.

Semana Santa - Part II, Yungay

Descending down the winding dirt road from the lakes of Llangunuco, we arrived at the site of the avalanche of May 31, 1970, which totally covered the village of Yungay (yune-guy), elevation 8,200 ft. The landslide was triggered by a magnitude 8.0 earthquake that struck the Peruvian departments of Ancash and La Libertad. Yungay is approximately 35 miles from Huaraz.

The quake destabilized the northern wall of Mt. Huascarán, which is only 9 miles from Yungay, causing a rock, ice and snow avalanche that buried the towns of Yungay and Ranrahirca. "The avalanche started as a sliding mass of glacial ice and rock about 3,000 feet wide and one mile long. It advanced to the village of Yungay at an average speed of 170 - 200 miles per hour. The fast-moving mass picked up glacial deposits and by the time it reached Yungay, it is estimated to have consisted of more than 28 million tons of water, mud, and rock."

It was a Sunday, at 3.23 local time, while most were tuned in to the Italy-Brazil World Cup Match, when the earthquake struck.  Approximately 3 - 4 minutes after the earthquake, a wall of snow, ice, boulders, trees, and debris hit the village of Yungay, giving the townspeople literally no time to prepare and totally burying most of the village. It is estimated that 20,000 people were buried alive in the town. It is considered to be the world's deadliest avalanche. 

There was a circus in town and several hundred children were at the carnival, which was located on the soccer field near a small hill. Many were able to run up the hill as the sound and sight of the advancing 60 ft. high wall engulfed the town. Most were left orphans since their parents and families were buried in the village. They were adopted out to families in many countries. 

Being Sunday, a few people were at the cemetery and also saw the advancing menace. They climbed steps of a small hill at the edge of the cemetery as the landslide banged against the bottom of the hill and finally stopped. They also survived the onslaught and were witnesses to the massive destruction of their homes. It is estimated that the total number of people who survived the avalanche was approximately 350. 

Jorge Flores Garcia, a survivor, remembers: "I looked up and saw a cloud of ice dust, like smoke, on the face of Huascarán. I ran toward the hill to the north of town. [I looked and] Yungay wasn't there. A few minutes earlier there was a city, and now there was nothing!"

The reported death toll from what came to be known as Peru's Great Earthquake totaled more than 74,000 people. Another 25,600 were declared missing, over 143,000 were injured and more than one million left homeless. The city of Huaraz was rubble, the valley buried in mud as the majority of the buildings were of adobe, and about half of the 30,000 inhabitants of Huaraz died and 90% of the buildings were destroyed.

The Peruvian government has declared the site in Yungay a national memorial to those who died and has prohibited the building or excavation of any of the ruins that lay below the 20+ feet of earth and rubble that buried the town. Some crosses and signs mark the spots where homes once stood, engraved with the names of those never found. Extensive landscaping has been installed and grass, trees and flowers planted. We walked through a large portion of the site and climbed the cemetery hill that survived the destruction. Very sobering.
Our photo narrative follows.

The entrance to "Campo Santo" (Holy Field) of Yungay.

The view toward Mt. Huascarán, the source of the avalanche. Part of the landscaped grounds covering the buried city.

One of many markers with the names of a family that is buried below.

A partial view of the site. Too large to include in one photo.

The remains of part of a building.

A large boulder carried by the avalanche.

The remains of a bus that was crushed and thrust up to the surface.

The remains of the top of the Catholic Church of Yungay.

Four palm trees survived the landslide. Three have since died and their bare trunks can be seen in the background. The lone survivor is the tall one in the center. It is at least 50 years old. All the other palms have been planted since.

Looking toward the hill at the bottom of the cemetery with its statue of Christ.

Approaching the hill to which some of the survivors fled who were visiting the cemetery when the avalanche struck.

The burial niches that survived.

"Wall of Remembrance" with names of some those whose tombs were destroyed in the lower part of the hill.

We climbed to the top of the hill to view the Christ and the surrounding countryside. This is the part of the hill that provided safety for those few in the cemetery that were able to climb here in time.

Looking back toward Mt. Huascarán from the top of the cemetery hill. The avalanche came through the low place between the two hills.

Every tourist site must have its vendors. We came across these entrepreneurs selling their shaved ice. Reminded us of the Smith's Snowy in SLC. (Well, a little bit.)

Snowcones and sunglasses.

This looked like a little more prosperous stand. The sign says: "Snow cone" above and "Natural Ice" below. (Is there any other kind of ice?)

Epilogue: At the Family History Fair this past week I was speaking with Brother Rodriguez, who was a survivor of the earthquake here in Huaraz. He was 12 at the time and standing in the small plaza in front of the Catholic Church near the El Tumi Hotel that we stayed in for three weeks. When the quake stopped he headed toward his home which was only two blocks away, but the dust cloud was so strong that he could not make out the street to take. When it finally cleared a little, he headed for what remained of a tall building which he remembered was by his home. When he got there, he discovered that one of his twin sisters had been crushed, but the rest of his family were OK.

He learned that his parents had run to the small interior patio and were not injured. His three sisters, believing that they would be safer in the street, ran down the open corridor that led to the street. At the end of the corridor there was a arch over the doorway. As they ran under, it started to crumble and one of the twins threw herself on her two sisters as the arch came down. She was killed but saved her two sisters.