¡Adiós,
presidente y hermana Packard, y bienvenidos, presidente y hermana Manly! (Goodbye
President and Sister Packard and Welcome President and Sister Manly!)
The mantle
has been successfully passed and we are off and running with Presidente and
Hermana Manly. We were sad to see Meredith and Corinne head home, but are so
excited for them to see their family! It has been an amazing experience working
with and learning from them. And we can already see that the Manlys will be a
great mission president couple.
We are
feeling swamped at the office. We have missionaries arriving from the USA every
Tuesday of this month, which is almost like managing a transfer every week
instead of every 6 weeks. Thank heavens for our new, in-training office elders.
They are super helpful. And it’s actually a blessing that we get to step
through this process multiple times before we leave. Originally, we were set to
have only 1 transfer before we head home.
Lane and
the new housing elder are particularly stressed … they are working to line up
housing for all these incoming missionaries – getting the landlords to send
them their payment information, writing housing contracts, purchasing new
furniture and supplies for these new houses, etc. It will be a challenge to get
all the housing arranged!
As we
studied the “Come Follow Me” curriculum this week we came across these
questions:
·
What
teachings, prophecies, or promises have you heard from living prophets?
·
What
are you doing to act in faith on those promises?
In
reviewing one of President Nelson’s recent general conference talks, we remembered
that he’s asked us to work on 5 specific things:
1. Get on the covenant path
and stay there.
2. Discover the joy of daily repentance.
3. Learn about God and how
He works.
4. Seek and expect
miracles.
5. End conflict in your
personal life.
So we are
working on these 5 actions and keeping the following in mind:
“And see
that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite
that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient
that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all
things must be done in order.” (Mosiah 4:27)
¡Que
tengan una semana fantástica! (Have a fantastic week!)
Love,
Lane &
LeAnn
P-day farewell luncheon for the Packards at Johnny Rockets in the mall with the four office secretaries we are training, the two assistants to the president, and the district leader and companion.
Johnny Rockets servers performing a little dance to music in between serving. It was so fun to hear this familiar song and see the dancing!
After lunch photo-shoot at the fountain as we prepare to leave the mall.
After the lunch, the secretaries and assistants take off to enjoy their afternoon P-day. We keep going with office responsibilities. Here we are preparing to send out the weekly packet of things requested by the district leaders and missionaries. The mission pays a local member to drive the weekly packet of all the stuff out to each district leader house that evening or each district meeting the next morning.
It was a farewell week to the Packards! Hard to believe they have finished their three-year mission and are now gone home. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be here. So grateful for their love, influence, and generosity to us, all the missionaries, and everyone.
(The guy at the upper right is our weekly packet driver. He also drives our missionaries when specifically needed by the mission.)
The north side of our mission gathered to meet our new mission president and his wife, President and Sister Manly. They come from Moses Lake, Washington.
One of the office secretaries that trained us. He started training us remotely via Zoom while we were still in Utah, then continued training us when we arrived to Peru.
Love these sisters! The one in the middle said the opening prayer for our meeting in English! Almost made me cry!
The south-side missionaries also got to meet President and Sister Manly.
It was fun being able to drive President and Sister Manly around on Saturday to help them become acquainted with the area and visit some shopping areas to stock up on a few items.
Ended the evening with the Manlys eating dinner at the hotel next door to their apartment, where the Packards stayed their last few weeks.
This family was bundled up in the back of the moto-taxi putting along on the freeway. It seems the woman in pink wasn't so happy to see us taking a photo of them because she gave us a rude finger signal as we drove by!
Another moto-taxi piled high with mattresses and other household products. Unbelievable what they can transport on those little vehicles!
A young couple that does laundry for our north-side missionaries gave us some tasty chocolate-covered crackers/cookies from Japan. The wife is Japanese, and the husband is Peruvian. They are members with young children, and are also serving a local service mission in the area teaching principles of self reliance .
This procession was outside our apartment one evening. Don't know who they were or what was their purpose. But they were carrying some kind of honorary religious statue and items and singing about Jesus.
Short clip of the religious procession.
So fun to see family celebrating the 4th of July! We miss those celebrations, the great freedoms of our country, and seeing family.
Love the smiles!
