¡Hola a Todos! (Hello All!)
To begin…Happy 88th Birthday to my amazing
father! He is the best dad in the world and my hero. He is intelligent, spiritual,
rational, generous, calm, and a life-long-curious learner. I gained my love for
peanut butter, mathematics, and reading from my dad. He and my mom would read
us scriptures and books before bed, and it was the best.
Our week went well…a lot of Zooming with the office elders
and observing the procedures needed to get incoming missionaries set-up. It’s
quite a process: Arrange pick-up and travel from the airport (often the mission
president and his wife do this – especially the 1:00am pick-ups!), arrange
appointments for each missionary to meet with government officials to receive
their Peru ID card and to receive a residency extension (since the incoming
American missionaries’ VISAs will expire soon after arrival), pay the necessary
processing fees (a different site than the government residency site), file the
necessary paperwork for all of this, and now with the pandemic, set up appointments
for Covid antigen testing within 24-48 hours of arrival in Lima. It’s a little
crazy and the government “rules/requirements” seem to change from day to day.
The good news is that two more American missionaries were
able to return to Peru to finish their missions after being evacuated because
of Covid-19 in 2020.
The bad news is that Peru is going into another “lock-down”
from Monday, April 19 to Sunday, May 9. Hopefully, this will help get the Covid
numbers under control a little more.
This week in my (LeAnn’s) Spanish tutoring session, my tutor suggested that keeping a gratitude journal – where I list (in Spanish) 3 things to be grateful for – may be a good exercise. And it is! Acknowledging my blessings in a written format helps me feel better. It’s not “toxic positivity;” it’s a reality check for me.
As the song says:
“So amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged; God is over all.
Count your many blessings, angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.”
¡Que tengan una buena
semana! (Have
a great week!)
Love,
Lane & LeAnn
LeAnn's family ~1983. My dad didn't waste money at home or at work. He would pack soda crackers and a jar of peanut butter in his suitcase to eat while on work trips. He worked for the federal government and didn't want to waste taxpayer money on his meals, even though he had a food allowance. Occasionally he would splurge and buy a McDonald’s hamburger!
