Runtu I was in Bolivia, three zones in La Paz USA

Runtu : The zone / http://proza.ru/2023/11/17/1232  / leaders were another story; they were polar opposites from each other… the USA

When I was / http://proza.ru/2023/11/17/1232  /  in Bolivia, about 270 missionaries were working in the country, mostly in and around the cities, but in a few small towns also.

2023 - Runtu: / http://proza.ru/2023/11/13/216  / Vintage Runtu : Book of Mormon Evidence … the USA 2008

2020 :Photo :  Юри Мэттью Рюнтю: p. 1949 ( born 1949 : Russia}: Yuri Ryuntyu, Uri Runtu: Iouri Runtu: Washington DC : the USA

2023 автор / http://proza.ru/2006/04/14-339 / Рюнтю Юри 17 Лeт 2006-2023 на Проза. Pу / http://proza.ru/2023/11/02/800 / Англо - Франко и Pусско-язычный писатель и журналист : Юрий Рюнтю / Uri Runtu / Yuri Ryuntyu / Canberra ACT : Australia /  Media TV Radio /    / 2023

2006 - 2024 / http://proza.ru/2023/10/30/1600 / Проза. ру - это Грандиозное и Единственное на планете Земля - Явление в Мировой Культурологии из России - / http://www.proza.ru/2013/05/10/1461 / Media TV Radio : 2024

Этo учит : распознавать гнев до его превращения в насилие.
Этo учит : обуздывать ярость, если она вспыхивает

    2006 © Photo : St.-Petersburg : Russia 2006 / http://proza.ru/2023/08/26/1174 /. Я - Юри Мэттью Рюнтю: p. 1949 ( born 1949 : Yuri Ryuntyu, Uri Runtu: Iouri Runtu: Canberra ACT Australia) и Сергей Некрасов: p.1947 ( born 1947 : Dr. Sergei Nekrasov : D.Sc., Ph.D. Moscow Russia). Mой кристально честный русский друг - Директор Всероссийского Музея А.С. Пушкина / b. Moscow 1799-1837 d. St.-Petersburg, Russia /, кто принял - ДАР - для Главного Музея России - " МИРОВОЕ ИНТЕЛЛЕКТУАЛЬНОЕ НАСЛЕДИЕ РУДОЛЬФА НУРЕЕВА : РОССИЯ - ХХ ВЕК ": DVD-1 и DVD-2: 1-35 books: 15 000 pages: 4 000 photos: St.-Petersburg, Russia / http://proza.ru/avtor/yuri2008 / 2006

About Runtu: writer in Russia: USA: Australia: journalist in Australia and Russia and France: educator: ballet critic in Australia and Russia: theatre critic in Australia : playwright in Australia and Russia:


2023 © 18+ : Все права принадлежат авторам, 2000-2023. Портал работает под эгидой Российского союза писателей. Интеллектуальная Элита Демократической России : 18+ Russia 2023.


2023 : Telegram : Runtu, Uri TikTok : Юри Рюнтю : " The general purpose of PROSE is to preserve language as it is spoken by the people. Language is the key to expressing civilization itself. The most complicated and mature language embodies the highest level of civilizations across time and history. It is how we view and remember events, a lingo to record the world around us. Here we stand for the history of Russian literature in Australia. This prose represents Australian citizens who still enjoy writing in the mother tongue of their Russian heritage. Anyway, this Russian-speaking literature belongs to Australian Modern Culture and flourishes equally alongside its Anglo-Saxon counterpart. The previous background of writers is pleasantly mixed with the new style of life they experience in Australia ". / http://www.proza.ru/diary/yuri2008/2020-01-11 / Iouri Runtu: French : Rudolf Noureev : La Mort a Paris / Юри Рюнтю : Russian / Uri Runtu: English Yuri Ryuntyu / Celebrities RU : the Neo-transcendental theatre : 2022.

‘ Back from the dead ’/ Denmark : Runtu Uri / Runtu / English : Ryuntyu Yuri / French : Iouri Runtu / Russian :  Рюнтю Юри / Australia Canberra ACT / Bolivia : Mormon Missionary: USA : Washington D.C. / the USA / USA / US

Runtu: Not much to tell. I’m now in my 70s, have way too many kids, and live in the Washington, DC, area. I write for a living, but unless you consider technical writing creative, this is the only creative writing I do. Recently, I published an article in The Human Prospect and a book chronicling my experiences as a Mormon missionary in Bolivia.

2023 : Telegram : Runtu, Uri TikTok : " Why do we need these? " - Rudolf Nureyev asked. "Because we need life experience from these people and only on the basis of life experience can we make predictions for the future without states self-destruction and international wars..." - he underlined. "I wish good luck for Russia, but I would like to know the true colure of the future for such a great civilization with over one thousand year’s historical record. Please remember..." - he said. "We have in Russia two-hundred-year-old theaters, two hundred and fifty years of ballet and music as well as a great and the most fascinating literature and poetry to be found in the world which is over five hundred years old. Think about and be proud to keep this tradition well and fruitful from the beginning to the end of such a fascinating cultural project. I wish you good luck and God be with you." This Rudolf Nureyev said to me in Armidale ( NSW : Australia ) on November 23, 1991 " / http://www.proza.ru/diary/yuri2008/2017-02-23 / Iouri Runtu: French : Rudolf Noureev : La Mort a Paris / Юри Рюнтю : Russian / Uri Runtu: English Yuri Ryuntyu / Celebrities RU : Hео-трансцендентальный театр : 2022.




Runtu : The zone / http://proza.ru/2023/11/17/1232  / leaders were another story; they were polar opposites from each other… the USA

When I was / http://proza.ru/2023/11/17/1232  /  in Bolivia, about 270 missionaries were working in the country, mostly in and around the cities, but in a few small towns also.

Probably 80% of the missionaries were non-Bolivians, mostly from the US and Canada, but a few from such far-flung places as Germany, New Zealand, and Zimbabwe. Missionaries were organized into zones: three zones in La Paz, two each in Cochabamba and Santa Cruz.

 There were about 20-25 missionaries in each zone, and then the zones were further divided into districts of 8-10 missionaries. Because the zones were geographically small, we usually had zone meetings every week after preparation day (P-day), where the zone leaders would give us any mission news or instructions and then usually try to get us to work harder.

After we reported our goals and accomplishments, we separated ourselves into district meetings, where the district leader would ask how things were with each companionship.

When I got to Bolivia, Beck was our district leader, so district meetings were usually laid-back and informal, just like his personality. The zone leaders were another story; they were polar opposites from each other.

Elder Ford was what missionaries called a “red hot,” meaning he went by the rules always and worked harder than most; he may even have been a “white hot,” a term reserved for only the most extremely dedicated missionaries. His companion, Barrett, was a “fry,” meaning he was burned out on missionary work and wasn’t interested in doing much of anything but “tuning,” or listening to prohibited music.

Barrett, one of those awful Californians I’d heard of, enjoyed telling people that, shortly before his missionary farewell, his entire bishopric had been excommunicated for “wife swapping.” No, that couldn’t possibly have happened, could it? It was clear that Barrett had made zone leader because of his friendship with one of the president’s assistants. Ford told me that at this point, President Barrientos wasn’t involved in daily missionary work at all; he was leaving things to his assistants. It was obvious the two zone leaders didn’t get along.

Barrett abruptly got a transfer, so our new zone leader was a Bolivian, Elder Velazquez. He was kind of a red hot, I thought, but he was mostly a schmoozer. He wanted to be everyone’s friend and leader, and he just oozed self-confidence.

One zone meeting he announced that we were going to take a trip to Tiwanaku, the famous pre-Incan ruins not far from Lake Titicaca. If everyone paid $10, we’d have enough to rent a micro to take us up there and hire a tour guide from one of the tourist agencies in La Paz.

We would need to be in the city early on P-day, so several missionaries decided to do the traditional “P-day Eve”: we left for the city on Sunday afternoon (P-day was Monday) and checked in to the Hotel Gloria, which was a relatively new hotel. At $5 a night, it was quite a bargain.

 We carried our bags to the elevator, noticing a few hookers in the Incan-themed lobby, which was done in bright oranges, yellows, and browns. Upstairs in our room, I took my shoes off and walked around, enjoying the feeling of carpet on my feet. Things had changed a lot for me in three months if carpet was now an exotic luxury. Beck called the bathroom first, and he was probably in there an hour, enjoying the first hot bath either of us had taken in a long time.

Ever the dedicated missionary, I cracked open my scriptures and began reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish. I was in Mosiah at that point. I kept a small spiral notebook in my shirt pocket, and I would write down unfamiliar words and then look up the definition in the dictionary. By this time I had three or four pages of words, all of which I had memorized.

Usually, I’d just see words on signs or in the newspaper, and I’d write them down for later. But the scriptures were full of the unfamiliar; I suspected that the intentionally archaic language of the Book of Mormon might even be foreign to most Bolivians.

Finally, Beck came out of the bathroom. A layer of fine sand lined the bottom of the tub. We were that dirty. I rinsed the tub out as well as I could and then got in, savouring the hot, steamy water. I had parasites and had been pretty sick, but this felt like heaven. I don’t know how long I soaked in the tub, but I kept adding hot water until there was no more. I felt clean, and when I put on some clean garments, I felt like I was going to survive, after all.

When I got out of the bathroom, Beck was watching Rocky III on the room’s TV. This wasn’t too out of character for him; we often watched dubbed American sitcoms (Los Beverly Ricos and Aqui Esta Lucy were on every night) or the Mexican skit show El Chavo del Ocho while we ate our dinner. But that was pretty much as far as our rule-breaking extended. I slept well in that comfortable bed, and we got up early for the excursion.

At 7:00 we met the rest of the zone in the lobby. You could tell which ones had stayed in the hotel: they were clean and awake. The others looked dirty and still a little drowsy. We piled into the bus and headed up the autopista.

Past the airport and well beyond anyone’s work area we rode, until there wasn’t much but a wide expanse of altiplano and a few isolated adobe homes. We saw very little vegetation, just some yellowed patches of grass here and there and a few cactuses. There was something unsettling about being in a desert that was so cold. The same dry dusty feeling of La Paz prevailed here, but it lacked the smell of burning trash so common in the city.

On the bus, most people chatted, but a lot were listening to music on headphones. I looked back and noted how tired and sunburned everyone looked. A couple of the missionaries had been called originally to Brazil, but because of visa trouble had ended up for a month or so in Houston until they were unceremoniously dumped in Bolivia, a country they knew nothing about and whose language they didn’t speak. I sat next to Elder Charlton, who was from the stake next to mine in California. He had been one of these Brazilian missionaries, but he was pretty philosophical about it. His body was emaciated from the harsh conditions in Bolivia, but he still had a spark of humor in his eyes. He told me he’d visit my parents when he got home and tell them how I was doing. I told him to lie and tell them I was healthy.

At length we arrived at Tiwanaku. This was going to be cool; I just knew it. Dating to a time around 600 BC (not coincidentally the same time the Book of Mormon account begins), Tiwanaku was solid evidence that the great Nephite civilization of the Book of Mormon really did exist. The tour guide began by showing us the “semisubterranean temple,” a dug-out plaza about 30 meters square, with carved faces protruding from the walls.

The tour guide said that the faces represented two races, one light-skinned and one dark-skinned. That I couldn’t see it didn’t mean that it wasn’t true. We walked through the massive Kalasasya Temple, where someone pointed out holes carved through some of the walls. Soon people were whispering that this might be the place where the Nephites whispered their key words to enter the temple, Finally, we saw the Puerta del Sol (Gateway of the Sun), which depicted the Incan god Wiraqocha . What looked like hundreds of warriors bowed to Wiraqocha.

 Obviously, this was a reference to the appearance of the Savior in the Americas.
After the tour, I asked the guide if she gave the same information to other tourists and wondered how non-Mormons responded. She laughed and said that she had taken many groups of Mormon missionaries to the site, so she had altered her presentation to “make it more meaningful to them.”

We had our lunches (packed sandwiches and bananas), and then got back on the bus and headed toward Copacabana, a town on Lake Titicaca that housed the Virgen de Copacabana, perhaps the holiest Catholic shrine in all of Bolivia. The virgin was housed in a massive cathedral constructed with stones from Tiwanaku ruins. A friar dressed in traditional brown robes gave us a tour of the cathedral, which culminated in the ornate chapel where the virgin stood against a backdrop of gold and jewels. A couple of the missionaries made some derogatory jokes about the virgin until the friar informed us that he spoke fluent English.

We walked up the hill overlooking the town and the lake, noting the stations of the cross as we passed them. Each year, Bolivian pilgrims would walk from La Paz to Copacabana, a distance of perhaps 75 miles, to recreate the stations of the cross on this hill. As we descended, I had a bathroom emergency, and not having my campo kit, we ran back to the town to find a toilet.

We found a public pay toilet in an allow off the main market. We paid our 500 pesos, the attendant gave us some toilet paper, and we entered the dirtiest bathroom I have ever seen.

Not much more than an outhouse, the walls, floor, and toilet (such as it was) were covered with human filth. I squatted, trying not to touch anything, and then when I was done got out of there as quickly as I could.

On the bus ride home, the driver pulled into a small store out on the altiplano, as some of the missionaries wanted to stop and get sodas.

As we slowed to maybe 30 miles an hour, Elder Velazquez suddenly stepped out of the open bus door and rolled over and over on the dirt road.

 Bloodied and a little dazed, he spent the rest of the trip watching a couple of the welfare missionaries pick gravel out of his hand and forehead with tweezers.

We skipped zone meeting but turned in our weekly reports when we got to Ciudad Satelite.

We hadn’t done anything remotely like missionary work all day, and it felt pretty good.

Runtu : The zone / http://proza.ru/2023/11/17/1232  / leaders were another story; they were polar opposites from each other… the USA

When I was / http://proza.ru/2023/11/17/1232  /  in Bolivia, about 270 missionaries were working in the country, mostly in and around the cities, but in a few small towns also.

2023 : Telegram : Runtu, Uri TikTok :статья : ' 20 лет - писал 62 книги и 16 лет выводил свои тексты на Проза-Ру. / http://www.proza.ru/2017/10/31/1114 / Рюнтю Юри / Yuri Ryuntyu / Москва Россия / Journalism refers to the production and distribution of reports on recent events. The word journalism applies to the occupation, the methods of gathering information and organising literary styles / writer journalist / Media TV Radio Ryuntyu, Yuri Matthew / Canberra ACT Australia / Iouri Runtu: French : Rudolf Noureev : La Mort a Paris / Юри Рюнтю : Russian / Uri Runtu: English : Hео-трансцендентальный театр : 2022.

2023 : Telegram : Runtu, Uri TikTok : Журналистика : Англо - Франко и Pусско - язычный писатель и журналист - и 227 322 - Читателей из Великой России и - 7 764 - текстов автора : Юрий Рюнтю / Uri Runtu / Yuri Ryuntyu / Canberra ACT : Australia / Проза. ру - это Грандиозное и Единственное на планете Земля - Явление в Мировой Культурологии из России - / http://www.proza.ru/2013/05/10/1461 / Media TV Radio : Общение и Опыт жизни этих личностей - помог мне прожить счастливую жизнь на Западе и в России : Margot Fonteyn (1919-1991), Patrick White (1912-1990), Robert Helpmann (1909-1986), Nora Kaye (1920-1987), Herbert Ross (1927-2001), Janet Karin (1938), Frederik Ashton (1904-1988), Laurence Olivier (1907-1989), Vali Myers (1930-2003), Jean Babillee-Gutmann (1923-2014), Pina Bausch (1940-2009), Josephine Baker (1906-1975), Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978) and Laurel Martyn (1916-2013)/ Celebrities Russia / Canberra ACT Australia / Iouri Runtu: French : Rudolf Noureev : La Mort a Paris / Юри Рюнтю : Russian / Uri Runtu : English : Hео-трансцендентальный театр : 2022.

2023 : Iouri Runtu, Uri : Автор о ЕДИНСТВЕННОМ ДРУГЕ - на ВСЮ ЖИЗНЬ - и это о Рудольфе Нурееве - / http://proza.ru/2022/04/24/76 / : КНИГА - ' Смерть в Париже : Рудольф Нуреев : 10 000 друзей и 400 интервью : Rudolf Noureev : Rudi Nureyev' / Первое издание / - О последнем годе жизни день за днем - за 400 дней - Великого гения России - Рудольфа Нуреева во Франции : страниц: 1-685 RUDOLF NUREYEV NOUREEV RUDOLF: 400 Interviews 10 000 Friends : ' THE DEATH IN PARIS: RUDOLF NUREYEV : Iouri Runtu : La mort a Paris: Rudolf Noureev ' : French / http://proza.ru/2022/02/25/130 / Celebrities RU / ISBN 978-1-925278-11-8 Australia 2016 - 2019 / Yuri Ryuntyu / Australia / Россия - Австралия / Media TV Radio Russia / http://proza.ru/2021/06/23/339 / Canberra ACT Australia / Uri Runtu : Hео-трансцендентальный театр : 2022.

© 18+ : Все права принадлежат авторам, 2000-2022. Портал работает под эгидой Российского союза писателей. Интеллектуальная Элита Демократической России : 18+ Russia 2023.

Фото: Aвтор и Леоновa Маринa : Дар ИЗ 62 КНИГ для Библиотеки Московской Государственной Академии Хореографии, лично передано - профессору Леоновой Марине Константиновна - Россия, Москва. Academician Yuri Matthew RYUNTYU in Russia. From art collection by Ryuntyu family (Australia) / http://proza.ru/2008/07/14/62 / BOOK : Iouri Runtu : Rudolf Noureev : La Mort a Paris 2004.