24 Nov 2023, Friday

Prioritized Daily Task

Bojana Jelicic Birthday

Note: Next trip use Getmyguide.com.

Breakfast at the hotel. Today, enjoy an informative and interesting city tour of Lima, including its Historic Centre and the Santo Domingo Convent. Start by exploring the districts of Miraflores and San Isidro before heading to the Historic Center. Visit the impressive Convent of Santo Domingo and walk to the Plaza de Armas to admire the exquisite colonial architecture that surrounds it. Stop in the Parque del Amor, from where you can take beautiful photos of the Peruvian coastline. Overnight stay in Lima.

*Optional visit to the Larco Museum: visit this private museum of pre-Columbian art to explore the

history and culture of Peru through an array of outstanding collections of art pieces.

**Optional dinner at Huaca Pucllana: a famous establishment in Lima ideal to enjoy the best of

Peruvian gastronomy in a one-of-a-kind setting that includes views of a pre-Inca pyramid.

***Pack of 3 optional excursions: make the most of your trip to Peru by adding to your experience a

pack of three great optional excursions that include a full day excursion to the Sacred Valley, a dinner, and an unforgettable show at Tunupa Cuzco and entrance to the Larco Museum.

City Tour of Colonial and Modern Lima

Enjoy an informative and interesting city tour of Lima,

including its Historic Centre and the Santo Domingo

Convent. Duration: 03:30h Approx. Pick up time: 09:00h Approx.

Physical rating: Light Included

Debbie and I had prayer together. We showered and went down to breakfast at the hotel. Water is not furnished in the room so I bought a couple of bottles on the street so we will have water to brush our teeth without using water from the fosic in our bathroom. Debbie sent Bojana a happy birthday greeting. While we were waiting in the hotel lobby to be picked up we met a young man from Poland. He is traveling on his own using Getmyguide.com. He is staying a week longer and spending about half of what we are spending. At 9 a.m. we went on a tour of Love Park, then to the old district, Convent of St. Sanr\to Domingo, and had lunch at Mercado (the market) in Lima. Our first stop was at Love Park located on the Cisneros boardwalk, a place that makes up the Miraflores boardwalk. The park is the location of El beso, a sculpture by Víctor Delfín. The place has a view of the Lima coastline and the Villena bridges. It was inaugurated on February 14, 1993. The park is surrounded by mosaics with phrases and poems about love in Spanish and Quechua (the main language family of the Inca Empire. It was chosen by National Geographic magazine as one of the most romantic places in the world. The next tour bus stop was the Convent of Santo Domingo. It was created in the 1530s under the patronage of Our Lady of the Rosary and is located in the Historic Centre of Lima. It houses the relics of Rose of Lima and Martin de Porres and was also where the University of San Marcos, officially the first Peruvian university and the oldest university in the Americas, began to function in the 16th century. The construction of the Convent of Santo Domingo took about 50 years. Its construction began during the foundation of Lima and concluded at the end of the 16th century. The city of Lima was built several kilometers from the coast with a bell tower in the basilica that was 46 meters or 150 feet high so if an attack came by pirates a warning could be given to the city. The tour bus dropped us off at our hotel, Ibis Lima Larco Miraflores. A group of us followed Carlos, our tour guide, to the Market, a place where the locals shop and eat. It reminded me of the market two or three blocks from our apartment in Novi Sad, Serbia. I took a few pictures today. We sampled all types of local fruit at the fruit stand. In the same area, there was an ice cream shop. I got two cups of ice cream made from local fruit, one of Lucuma and the other, of Guanabana. We made friends with Rae and his wife, Lisa. Rae is retired from the military and now does contract work for the armed services and Lisa has retired from the U.S. Department of Defense. Debbie and I rested and planned our trip for the next few days here in Peru. One of the sites we added to visit was the Rainbow Mountains. We had prayer together before going to bed. We studied some Come Follow Me in the New Testament.

model of Convent of Santo Domingo Lima, Peru

Basílica Bell Tower

Our Lady of the Rosary

Guinea pig in the picture in the plate at the Last Supper

NOTE: Martin de Porres Valazquiez, dog, cat, and mouse in harmony

Martín de Porres Velázquez (9 December 1579 – 3 November 1639) was a Peruvian lay brother of the Dominican Order who was canonized in 1962 by Pope John XXIII. He is the patron saint of mixed-race people, barbers, innkeepers, public health workers, and all those seeking racial harmony, and animals. He was noted for his work on behalf of the poor, establishing an orphanage and a children's hospital. He maintained an austere lifestyle, which included fasting and abstaining from meat. Among the many miracles attributed to him were those of levitation, bilocation, miraculous knowledge, instantaneous cures, and an ability to communicate with animals. He was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman, Don Juan de Porras y de la Peña, and Ana Velázquez, a freed slave of African and Native descent. He had a sister named Juana de Porres, born two years later in 1581. After the birth of his sister, the father abandoned the family. Ana Velázquez supported her children by taking in laundry. He grew up in poverty and, when his mother could not support him, Martin was sent to a primary school for two years, and then placed with a barber surgeon as an apprentice. He spent hours of the night in prayer, a practice which increased as he grew older.

The barber surgeon was one of the most common European medical practitioners of the Middle Ages and was generally charged with caring for soldiers during and after battle. In this era, surgery was seldom conducted by physicians, but instead by barbers, who, possessing razors and coordination indispensable to their trade, were called upon for numerous tasks ranging from cutting hair to amputating limbs. In this period, surgical mortality was very high due to blood loss and infection. Yet, since doctors thought that blood letting treated illness, barbers also applied leeches. Meanwhile, physicians considered themselves to be above surgery. Physicians mostly observed surgical patients and offered consulting, but otherwise often chose academia or working in universities. Some chose to reside in castles, where they treated the wealthy.

Under Peruvian law, descendants of Africans and Native Americans were barred from becoming full members of religious orders. The only route open to Martin was to ask the Dominicans of Holy Rosary Priory in Lima to accept him as a "donado", a volunteer who performed menial tasks in the monastery in return for the privilege of wearing the habit and living with the religious community. At the age of 15, he asked for admission to the Dominican Convent of the Rosary in Lima and was received first as a servant boy, and as his duties grew he was promoted to almoner.

Martin continued to practice his old trades of barbering and healing and was said to have performed many miraculous cures. He also took on kitchen work, laundry, and cleaning. After eight years at Holy Rosary, the prior Juan de Lorenzana decided to turn a blind eye to the law and permit Martin to take his vows as a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic. Holy Rosary was home to 300 men, not all of whom accepted the decision of De Lorenzana: one of the novices called Martin a "mulatto dog", while one of the priests mocked him for being illegitimate and descended from slaves.

When Martin was 24, he was allowed to profess religious vows as a Dominican lay brother in 1603. He is said to have several times refused this elevation in status, which may have come about due to his father's intervention, and he never became a priest. It is said that when his convent was in debt, he implored them: "I am only a poor mulatto, sell me." Martin was deeply attached to the Blessed Sacrament, and he was praying in front of it one night when the step of the altar he was kneeling on caught fire. Throughout all the confusion and chaos that followed, he remained where he was, unaware of what was happening around him.

When Martin was 34, after he had been given the religious habit of a lay brother, he was assigned to the infirmary, where he was placed in charge and would remain in service until his death at the age of 59. He was known for his care of the sick. His superiors saw in him the virtues necessary to exercise unfailing patience in this difficult role. It was not long before miracles were attributed to him. Martin also cared for the sick outside his convent, often bringing them healing with only a simple glass of water. He ministered without distinction to Spanish nobles and to slaves recently brought from Africa. One day an aged beggar, covered with ulcers and almost naked, stretched out his hand, and Martin took him to his own bed. When one of his brethren reproved him, Martin replied: "Compassion, my dear Brother, is preferable to cleanliness."

When an epidemic struck Lima, there were in this single Convent of the Rosary 60 friars who were sick, many of them novices in a distant and locked section of the convent, separated from the professed. Martin is said to have passed through the locked doors to care for them, a phenomenon which was reported in the residence more than once. The professed, too, saw him suddenly beside them without the doors having been opened. Martin continued to transport the sick to the convent until the provincial superior, alarmed by the contagion threatening the friars, forbade him to continue to do so. His sister, who lived in the country, offered her house to lodge those whom the residence of the religious could not hold. One day he found on the street a poor Indian, bleeding to death from a dagger wound, and took him to his own room until he could transport him to his sister's hospice. The prior, when he heard of this, reprimanded him for disobedience. He was extremely edified, however, by his reply: "Forgive my error, and please instruct me, for I did not know that the precept of obedience took precedence over that of charity." The prior gave him liberty thereafter to follow his inspirations in the exercise of mercy.

Martin did not eat meat. He begged for alms to procure necessities the convent could not provide. In normal times, Martin succeeded with his alms in feeding 160 poor persons every day, and distributed a remarkable sum of money every week to the indigent. Side by side with his daily work in the kitchen, laundry and infirmary, Martin's life is said to have reflected extraordinary gifts: ecstasies that lifted him into the air, light filling the room where he prayed, bilocation, miraculous knowledge, instantaneous cures and a remarkable rapport with animals. He founded a residence for orphans and abandoned children in the city of Lima.

(I don't know how much truth is in this story of Martin de Porres Valazquiez but I enjoyed reading the story.)