¡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.
Tuesday night at the CCM there was a live broadcast to all MTC's and missionaries in the world. This is the room where the American CCM missionaries listened to the broadcast in English. In another auditorium the Latin missionaries listened in Spanish. We were able to attend and hear Elder Stevenson and his wife speak; it was awesome! (We couldn't get the entire group in one photo, so here's the left half of the room.)
And here's the right half of the room. The missionary sitting in the front row, second from the left (with the striped tie) reminds us so much of one of our nephews. Any of you Simmons relatives want to venture a guess as to which nephew?
We ran into these missionaries on their way up to their dorm rooms after the broadcast. The 2 on the right enter our mission on Tuesday!
6:30am traffic gridlock on the way to Interpol in Lima. The American missionaries that arrive have to go to Interpol to have their fingerprints taken and fill out other documentation in order to apply for the Peru identification as a foreigner.
On the way to Interpol.
At Interpol. We arrived at about 7:15am, almost an hour before it opened, and were the first in line, in order to be sure to be the first processed. It all went fairly smoothly, until afterward, when we had returned back to the mission office, our Area contact called and said we needed to go back to Interpol because they had lost some of the missionaries' paperwork. Long story short, we asked them to keep looking, and after about an hour they found the paperwork, so we didn't have to go back down to the station.
Loading up the car with household supplies. We are opening up four new apartments with the recent incomings of several U.S. missionaries as well as several new Peruvians, and need to stock the apartments with the basics for the missionaries to start living there.
Just had to snap a shot of this cashier spraying and wiping down the conveyer belt and grocery bagging area at the supermarket. We love seeing this! We seem to see it more here than in the States.
Granddaughter having a blast being tossed and up and down and flipped over in the air by her father Jaron -- like flipping a pancake. She would giggle and giggle and kept saying do it again using her sign language!
Two of Audrey's kids had soccer games on Saturday ... and it was cold in Rexburg! Both of them did great and scored goals for their teams. Tinley loves it and is looking forward to the next game, but Ryder says he's "never playing again!" We'll see what happens next week!
Packards had a former missionary and his parents visit them this week and they offered to bring items down to us! WooHoo! Got stocked up on our favorites!
Christmas in April!
Don't know if this video will load, but merchants like these blast their megaphones full volume through our neighborhood nearly every morning.
