Peru- June 26, 2022

Hello again from Peru! I’m (LeAnn) sitting at our table wrapped in a blanket and missing central heating … it’s “winter” here and believe it or not, 61°F feels chilly when you don’t have a furnace. But we are adjusting … in fact, Lane seems to love this cooler weather. I shouldn’t complain as we do have a little heater unit that helps.

This week has been great as we have been training the new office elders. Initially, I was worried about how the training would go since my Spanish isn’t great, but these elders are so sharp. I show them something once and they seem to understand completely (plus one of my trainees is American … hehe … so that helps!). Both Lane and I have had them actually sit in the “driver’s seat” and actually “do” things. When we were trained, we just observed for weeks, which didn’t seem as effective. We didn’t actually “do” much until the prior office elders left. But none of that sitting around and just watching for these missionaries. We’re hoping they can run the office completely in a couple of weeks.

 

 

We are receiving more and more American missionaries. Many of these were originally called to our mission, but have been serving elsewhere. It’s making things here a little crazy as we have new arrivals every week instead of every 6 weeks. But this is great practice for our new office elders. They’ll get lots of practice managing the arrival procedures before we leave.

 

 

We had another “fun” surprise on Tuesday as we woke up to NO POWER in our apartment! This happened to be the day our 4 new Americans arrived and we were hoping to be to the office an hour earlier than usual. It was a wet-wipe “shower” for LeAnn and a wash-your-hair-in-the-sink shower for Lane (he was glad he’d taken a shower before bed). We didn’t have time to move our food to the office, but hoped it would be OK and that the power would be restored quickly. Everything worked out and we had power when we returned home.

 

 

This quote from Jenkins Lloyd Jones (quoted on occasion by President Hinckley) is a favorite:

 

 

 “Life is like an old-time rail journey—delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.”

 

 

¡Disfrute del viaje esta semana! (Enjoy the ride this week!)

New sister missionary from the U.S. this week that has been serving in a Cincinnati, OH until she finally received her Peruvian passport.

Three new elder missionaries from the U.S. this week that have been serving in U.S. missions until they finally received their Peruvian passports.  Now LeAnn is training the new secretaries on the process for obtaining a Peruvian identification card for the new missionaries. It can take 2-3 months to obtain the Peruvian identification card, and lots of technical steps to follow.

Crammed into their ride to head out to meet their new companions and work in their assigned areas.

Zone conferences were held this week.  We don't usually attend because we are swamped with office responsibilities, but did pop in at the end of this zone conference to help take some photos.  

This is the Tahuantinsuyo/Carabayllo/Comas Zone (and yes, that name is a mouthful!)

Lane taking photos of the zone.

The Packards always gather everyone after the conference to sing "As I Have Loved You" in both Spanish and English, while doing the hand motions connecting everyone together.  LeAnn fits right in.  Lane is incapable of remembering how to do the hand movements so has to sit out.

"As I Have Loved You"

Crammed the four office elders into our car after zone conference to quickly get back to the office to finish up some tasks before they went out proselyting.

These are our 4 new office elders we are training, plus our two assistants to the President that are often in the office.

These are the four secretaries we are training. From left to right, secretary of housing and technology, secretary of finances, LeAnn, Lane, secretary to the president, and secretary of travel and health.

The two assistants to the President.

The office elders and assistants helping LeAnn make special packets that the Packards are giving to each missionary in the mission as a final farewell message-gift.  This will be the last week for the Packards as they finish their three-year service as mission President and wife at the end of this week.  We will miss them, and it is feeling very strange to recognize the reality that they are leaving!

Moving furniture (clothes hanging rack) back to the office using plastic wrap to "tie" it to the roof of the car.  That plastic wrap works great!

The Packards have had to stay at a hotel for the last few weeks of their mission while the Area office prepares their apartment for the new mission president. We followed the Packards back to their hotel after church to drop off some documents and to pick up some items. When we arrived at the hotel we were surprised to see a group of people gathered outside. LeAnn immediately assumed they must be protesting something at the hotel (we received another notice from the embassy that there were protests scheduled for Saturday). But thankfully it wasn't anything that serious.  Apparently a Peruvian pop singer was staying at the hotel and this was a group of his fans outside the hotel waiting to adore him as he would drive in and out in his dark-tinted-windows car!

Another police check-point near our office.  They seem to randomly stop drivers, motorcycles or vehicles to check their documentation and legal status.