¡Feliz cumpleaños al presidente Packard! (Happy birthday to
President Packard!)
Today is our mission president’s birthday, and it’s been fun
to watch the assistants during the past 3 weeks as they worked on President
Packard’s birthday gift (a Peruvian flag signed by all the missionaries). It
was no small feat getting the flag sent around the mission and signed by
everyone … but they did it!
The big events of our week included the following:
- The arrival of an American sister … YAY! We’ve
been receiving Americans mid-transfer for the past few months now.
- A couple of overnight stays at the Lima CCM. We
sleep on-sight as the designated “adults” and then leave at 6:30am to get back
to our mission. We love seeing the CCM’ers. They have all been at the Lima CCM
beyond their required 6 weeks and are patiently waiting for their paperwork to
process. However, things are moving in the migrations office and we’re down to
about 33 Americans at the Lima CCM now.
- A trip to Interpol with the 6 missionaries that have
arrived to our mission since March 15. These missionaries were originally
assigned to our mission, but were reassigned to the States. They have to go to
Interpol to start the application for a Peruvian ID card. Lane drove the
missionaries down and back and I filled out the small mountain of associated
paperwork (which of course arrived at 5pm the day before the appointment and
had to be filled in by hand).
We love this story from Kevin S. Hamilton’s recent general
conference talk:
“During the 1940s and 1950s, [Warden Duffy] was well known for his efforts to rehabilitate the men in his prison. Said one critic, ‘You should know that leopards don’t change their spots!’
“Replied Warden Duffy, ‘You should know I don’t work with
leopards. I work with men, and men change every day.’”
¡Que tengan una gran semana llena de cambios positivos! (Have
a great week full of positive changes!)
Love,
Lane & LeAnn
On Monday, this cute sister arrived from the U.S. She had been temporarily assigned to Portland, OR while waiting for her Peru visa to issue.
Heading out with her new companion to their new teaching area.
7:30 pm traffic gridlock on the way to the CCM to spend the night again while the CCM President and his wife were at a mission president conference.
¡Feliz Pascua! (Happy Easter!)
Easter here in Lima is different than in the States. We
haven’t seen any Easter candy or treats in the grocery stores, but schools and
lots of businesses closed down on Thursday and Friday. Then everything picked
back up on Saturday. From what we’ve heard from others here in Lima, most wards
don’t have any sort of Easter sacrament meeting program. We have friends who
are in Cusco this weekend and they texted and said that there was no mention of
Easter/Christ’s Atonement and Resurrection in sacrament meeting, and they
didn’t even sing the Easter hymns for the opening and closing songs. Very
different from what we’re used to. However, we did have a wonderful
Christ-center sacrament meeting at the Lima CCM today.
Our English-speaking branch at the CCM is dwindling in size
as the missionary department has stopped sending Americans to Peru until they
have a VISA in hand. The migrations office here in Peru has been extremely slow
to change the missionaries’ status from tourist to religious, and as a result,
we have some young missionaries stuck in the Lima CCM for over 19 weeks (the
CCM program is only 6 weeks!). But they are slowly getting their visas. Last week nine received their visas and were
able to go to their mission assignments.
We expect nine more to receive their visas this week and head out to
their mission assignment. So … we’ll see
what happens for the rest.
As far as office work goes … nothing really new … we have a
couple of missionaries with knee problems that we are addressing, and Corinne and
Lane are working on finding and contracting more houses to rent as we have more
missionaries entering our mission. Yay!
Today in Relief Society, the trio that taught the lesson
wanted to give out Easter candy, but realized that they had no way to purchase
Easter candy (and there really isn’t any Easter candy in Lima anyway!). So
instead, they decorated individual cards for everyone and included a scripture
inside that reminded them of the sister they were giving the card to. That was
a sweet Easter surprise! Here’s the scripture they included in mine:
“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power,
and of love, and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7)
Little did they know that this happens to be a favorite
verse of mine!
¡Que tengan una buena semana! (Have a great week!)
Love,
Lane & LeAnn
LeAnn teaching English to one of our missionaries via remote video call. LeAnn is working with 2 elders right now and they are both so diligent! English is a tricky language!
We enjoyed an Easter weekend taco-bar dinner hosted by President Becerra, a counselor in the Area Presidency, and attended by the Area President (Zeballos) and several mission presidents and wives. Interestingly, Mexican food is not real common in Lima (we have a tough time finding good tortillas), so this taco bar was refreshingly delicious and fun!
Also celebrated President Packard's birthday at the dinner.
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¡Feliz Domingo de Ramos! (Happy Palm Sunday!)
This week sped by in a blur … lots going on!
Tuesday morning, around 3:15am, we received a call from
President Packard informing us that due to the transportation strike and
protests here in Lima, they wouldn’t be able to go to the airport to pick up
our incoming elders from the US. Instead, the Area Office sent a driver (who
lived much closer to the airport) to pick up our elders and bring them directly
to our home. The elders were scheduled to arrive at 5:35am. Thankfully,
everything went smoothly and they arrived at our house around 7:30am.
As far as the protests and city “lockdown” went … we
received an email from the US Embassy in Lima at 4:19pm on Monday stating that
we should avoid the protest areas on Tuesday (mostly downtown near the
government offices). The first we heard of the “lockdown” was when President
Packard called us early Tuesday morning. We didn’t receive the official word
from the US Embassy that we were in lockdown until just before 8:30am on
Tuesday … the day of the lockdown! The Government of Peru issued its “Supreme
Decree” on Monday which imposed a “22-hour lockdown for Metropolitan Lima and
the Constitutional Province of Callao, from 2:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.”
This wreaked havoc with people who had flights to catch and
business to conduct. There were 22 missionaries in the Lima CCM who had
FINALLY, after months of waiting, received their VISAs and were scheduled to
fly to their missions on Tuesday. Most of those flights had to be rescheduled!
But they have now all arrived in their assigned fields of labor.
As for us, Tuesday was pretty much business as usual. We
walk to the office, so no worries about getting stopped by the policia for us.
President and Sister Packard braved the drive to the mission office and arrived
without trouble before 9am. The only real issue was that we had to change our
lunch plan for the missionaries. The pizza shop we usually use for these
training days was closed. So Lane went out scouring our area for
restaurants/shops that were open where we could buy lunch. Again, if we had had
advance warning we could have planned accordingly. It’s insane to shut down a
city with NO NOTICE! Luckily, Lane found some sandwiches, empanadas, and chips
for lunch.
Our 2 new elders were true troopers! We had laid out air
mattresses in the office for them to sleep on between activities, but I don’t
think either of them really got any sleep. In the end, I think they were up for
probably about 41-hours straight, with a couple of catnaps on their flight and
in the office. They stayed at our apartment Monday night, and headed out to
their areas Tuesday morning.
We don’t keep up with Peruvian politics, but we hope the
government unrest and protests are resolved quickly and without further
violence. We haven’t seen any protests in our part of the city … everyone is
just going about their lives.
As we think of Jesus Christ this week with Easter
approaching, we love this scripture:
“And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto
you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of
his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your
faith in him according to the promise.” (Moroni 7:41)
¡Que tenga una bendita Semana Santa! (Have a blessed Holy
Week!)
Love,
Lane & LeAnn
A fun aspect about the hill are the rainbow-colored stairs that start in the housing areas around the hill and lead to the top of the hill.
Cross at the top of the hill.
With its shrine.
A worker was washing away the dust when we arrived, thus the wet, drippy look.
Corinne and LeAnn
Colorful murals painted in the housing district. With plenty of dogs.
