Peru - October 24, 2021

This week marked the half-way point of the current “transfer,” which means we had the “CCM’ers” arrive on Wednesday. CCM = Centro de Capacitación Misional, or in English, Mission Training Center (MTC). Just like the MTC in Provo, the Lima CCM shut down during the pandemic, and it just opened up at the end of September. Sadly, it’s not running at full capacity, so the Peruvians come to our mission office to participate in their CCM training via ZOOM. Lane and I helped Corinne (mission pres. wife) get housing prepped, and then we welcomed the new CCM’ers bright and early Thursday morning. Usually our mission has only 2 or 3 CCM’ers, but this transfer brought 7 … 4 elders and 3 sisters. They are a great bunch of young adults!

 

Tragedy struck again as our new-ish (bought in November 2020) laptop suddenly froze up! NO!! The screen was completely black and we couldn’t do anything with it. Lane spent hours trouble-shooting on the phone with Costco, HP-USA, HP-Peru and ultimately found out that we’d have to send our laptop back to the states to get it fixed as Peru doesn’t carry our particular model of laptop, so they don’t know how to fix it. But…miracle of miracles…our laptop at this very moment is sitting on our kitchen table in Lehi, UT. How did that happen? Well…the Holy Ghost and a supportive church network definitely had a hand in this. As soon as we could see that our laptop was not working, I had a thought that I should mention this on the La Molina WhatsApp message string (the La Molina Ward Relief Society string) and ask if anyone had successfully sent packages to the US, and if so, what carrier did they use. (I had checked into FedEx and found that it would cost roughly $430 to send our laptop to the states…BOO!) One of the gals who saw my message happened to remember that we needed to get our laptop back to Utah when she was visiting with the former Area doctor and his wife who had stopped by the Area office in Lima after a trip up the Amazon River. She later told me that she was a little nervous to ask them about taking our laptop, but felt that she should. And they were happy to help! To make a long story short, the former Area doctor had meetings in Lehi, UT and actually dropped the laptop off directly to our house this evening! Our computer stopped working on Oct. 12 in Lima, Peru and 12 days later it was back in the states ready to send off to the HP tech repair center (and thanks to Tay and Izzy who packaged it up tonight!). I haven’t listed all the little amazing events that “fell” into place for us. But I have a strengthened testimony of the importance of connecting with a “church family.” I love what Dallin H. Oaks said in October’s General Conference:

 

“In church we associate with wonderful people striving to serve God. This reminds us that we are not alone ... We all need associations with others, and church associations are some of the best we can experience, for us and our companions and children.”

 

¡Que tengan una semana súper fantástica! (Have a super fantastic week!)

 

Love,

 

Lane & LeAnn 

Welcomed seven new missionaries into missionary training.  The Lima Missionary Training Center isn't open yet for these missionaries, so they begin their missionary training in our mission offices for several weeks.

Helped three of the new sister missionaries move into their apartment.

On our P-day we tried to find out what furniture and household items were put in storage when Covid began last year when the prior senior couple missionaries were forced to quickly pack up and leave.  Unfortunately, most of the boxes weren't marked, so we could't really figure out what was hidden away!

Right outside the storage unit there were men building a wall right next to a wall.... not sure what this is for!  Notice the random, dead tree in the middle of the courtyard. ??

View from the top of our mission office building.  The "U" on the hill behind us represents a local football (soccer) team.

View from our mission office.  This is the construction of a new stake center which will also be home to our mission office when completed.  Unfortunately it likely won't be completed before our mission time is up!

P-Day dinner out this weekend.  Tried something new.  The peach-juice drink was good, but they forgot the ice, so served it warm-ish which wasn't as desirable. One dish was a rice bowl with chicken, crispy noodles, and veggies. We weren't crazy about the pickled turnip. The other dish was a Hawaiian pizza with no cheese for Lane.  But Lane still prefers Ballpark hot dogs over all of it!

At the mall on P-day near our mission office.  It never ceases to amaze us how these malls are so modern compared to the rest of Lima...  It's no wonder they are completely jam packed with people in the evenings, and especially on the weekends!  

Our ward (Barrio Tahuantinsuyo) celebrated its "anniversary" of being a ward after sacrament meeting today.  They served a couple of very fancy cakes and some other little snacks that Lane wasn't willing to try since they included cheese!

These were the snacks.

For the anniversary celebration the ward had some of the original members sit in front, with some of the men standing behind.  Not sure why they wanted us in the pictures, but we couldn't say no!

After telling about our water bottle "bust" last week, we thought we'd show how we finally were able to install a new bottle without causing another catastrophe!