¡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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