This week one of the elders who is preparing for his oral English exam asked, “Sister Simmons, how do you pronounce this word: F-U-L-L?” After I said the word a couple of times and explained the concept of “full,” he asked, “How do you say:
F-A-L-L?” And then he finally asked, “How do you say:
F-O-O-L?” Learning a new language is tricky, and pronunciation is just one
piece of the puzzle. It’s amazing to me that with all the intricacies of
language, we can communicate anything very clearly, let alone communicate
across languages. And yet, truth moves forward under the direction of the
Spirit:
“… for the Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not.
Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they
really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the
salvation of our souls. But behold, we are not witnesses alone in these things;
for God also spake them unto prophets of old.” (Jacob 4:13)
WARNING: Lengthy story to follow. If you want the short
version here it is: we lost power in our apartment twice this week, and once at
the office, all of which was not fun. Now you can skip to the end!
We’ve had the “opportunity” to practice our resourcefulness
this week as our power went out in our apartment … twice … Aack! And to make
things more exciting, both times it went off, we both happened to be showering
(not in the same shower … in different showers, but at the same time … so … no
more showering concurrently!). I’m getting very weary of cold water rinses!
The first outage occurred Monday morning and Lane, who is
very handy with these sorts of things, checked out our power box but couldn’t
see anything wrong. As he investigated, he found that our apartment wasn’t the
only one in our building without power. So he promptly called our landlord who
said that he would “get his guy over to take a look.” We naively went off to
the office thinking the situation would be resolved within an hour or two. At
lunch, Lane checked back in with our landlord and was a little more concerned
to hear that the “electrician(?)” could be to our apartment at 4:00pm.
In the meantime, Lane decided to call a handyman who helps
with electrical and other theissues in our mission and met him at our apartment
around 1:00pm. After assessing the situation (and nearly getting electrocuted)
they could see it was beyond the scope of our apartment; we’d have to wait for
the landlord’s guy. Now I was beginning to think about all the food in our
fridge and freezer.
We arrived back home around 5:30pm to a rapidly darkening
apartment. At 5:45pm the electrician texted to say he was “near.” As a side
note, I’m not entirely sure how Lane seemed to become the contact person for
the entire apartment building, but he largely took charge of the communication.
The electrician (who ended up being an older gentleman with a knee brace) finally
arrived around 6:20pm riding a bicycle! … not a motorcycle, but an old,
dilapidated bicycle! And he had no tools … just an electrical testing device in
his small backpack. Things did not look good!
During this time, the Packards had been texting us for
updates and Corinne mentioned that we could take our fridge and freezer stuff
over to the mission office fridge. We’re a five-minute walk from the office …
and I was kicking myself that I hadn’t thought of this earlier. So, after Lane
talked with the guy and followed him around for a bit (I felt so bad for him
having to climb all the stairs in our 5-floor building) we packed up the
fridge/freezer and ultimately walked all the food there in two trips.
It was after 9:00pm when we ended up eating a dinner of
canned chili (which cannot be found here in Peru … but which Adria and Elzada
brought to us from the states when they visited in September – Thank You!),
fruit salad (which we prepped in our dark apartment before we left – big
shout-out to Lane and his flashlight fettish – they literally saved the day!),
and toast at the office using the microwave and toaster there.
Corinne mentioned that we could sleep at the office if we
wanted to, but we opted to walk back home where we had water (even if it was
only cold) and a bed. We arrived back at our apartment just before 11:00pm and
while we were enroute, the electrician texted saying the power was back on! Hallelujah!
We hauled all our food back the next morning.
So … on Thursday morning when my shower turned cold again, I
was not amused (in this apartment we have what are called “rapid duchas” which
are basically instant hot water heaters – but these ones aren’t as sketchy as the
jimmy-rigged ones of yester-year). And I was mildly pining for the 5-gallon
termas in our prior apartment (at least we’d still have hot water if the power
went out during a shower). Anyway, this time we packed up our fridge and
freezer and took all the food to the office fridge first thing in the morning.
Thankfully, the power was only off ‘til around 11:00am this time.
These experiences did give us 2 unexpected upsides:
1.
We were able to meet our neighbors and engage a
little more than we had in the past.
2.
During our walk back and forth to the office
with our fridge/freezer food, we discovered a lovely, scented vine/plant that
only “blooms” or emits it’s fragrance at night. It smelled so good and reminded
me of honeysuckle. But when I tried to catch a whiff of it the next day, it was
gone. We’ve never seen/smelled anything quite like it.
Almost unbelievably, the power also went out in our mission
office Friday afternoon. Luckily we were able to get a repairman there quickly
and he was able to fix the situation, but we lost a good chunk of computer/administrative
office processing time.
Well, that’s it for this week. We’ll have to update you on
how we ended up speaking in sacrament meeting on-the-fly in the pictures below,
or next week!
¡Que tengan una semana fantástica! (Have a fantastic week!)
Love,
Lane & LeAnn
Summer is here. We love walking past this beautifully-bloomed tree on our way to the office each day.
The relatively few green plants we see around our area seem so out-of-place compared to the dry, barren mountain landscape-setting that surrounds Lima.
We met one sister there that is actually from an area in our Lima North mission, but is called to serve in another Peru city.
This map in the admin building of the CCM shows the missions in our South America North-West Area. The countries include Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Columbia, and Venezuela. If you zoom in and look closely, at the photos of the mission presidents, you can see President and Sister Packard of our Lima North mission. They are the ones with the straightest teeth and perfect orthodontic smiles! 🤣
