¡Hola a Todos! (Hello All!)
Highlights
of the Week:
Apartment checks: We started
off the week doing more apartment checks. It’s really quite amazing that we can
video-call missionaries in Lima, Peru and they can “show us around” their
homes. The calls have been pretty clear – decent internet connection – for the
most part. But there have been a couple of times when the call drops. These
calls have been a great way for us to start to get to know some of the
missionaries.
Zoom trainings with the office elders:
We love our Zoom calls with the office elders. Each day they show us what they
are working on and help us understand the process. We’ve watched as they record
financial transactions, deal with the migration office, arrange incoming and
outgoing missionary travel, pull together the weekly packets for all the
missionaries, arrange for temple visits for the new missionaries (it looks like
the Lima Temple will be opening up March 29 at 20% capacity), … Lane is doing
great with the language!
Tracking down lost orders:
The pandemic has slowed down some of our mission’s supply orders, and I (LeAnn)
spent a bit of time trying to figure out where things were. This was one
assignment I was happy to help with since I was able to speak English with the
church’s online store!
Hearing Audrey speak in her sacrament meeting:
Our daughter Audrey did a wonderful job speaking in her sacrament meeting this
week on the topic of following the prophet. We were able to watch her
remotely…that’s one upside of having “home” church and technology that allows
us to virtually attend meetings.
Thoughts: On
Monday, we received word that a loved one had suffered a severe and shocking
loss. This loss was not like last-week’s-broken-watch loss, but a real
devastating, irreplaceable loss. We struggle
to understand why this event occurred, but find wisdom in Jeffrey Holland’s
article in the April Liahona
magazine:
“Life will challenge you. Difficulties will come.
Heartbreaks will strike. Loved ones will die. So, wherever you are going, make
your way to Jesus Christ first. Remember that His suffering and Resurrection
make possible our victory over difficulty and death. Make your covenants with
Him and keep them as you journey on.”
¡Feliz Semana Santa! (Happy Easter Week!)
Love,
Lane & LeAnn
Daughter, Audrey Fuller, talking about following the prophet in her Sacrament Meeting in Rexburg, ID
Screenshot from one of our virtual tours of missionary housing. These sisters had a very neat and tidy apartment! Lane and LeAnn look a little idiotic and should have posed better for the screen capture!
Full moon over a clear evening sky, feeling like a window to heaven
For some reason Lane's white shirt always likes to eat food too, so he wore a protective jacket
Fun visit with Lane's siblings Denae and Craig
Neal, the Lambert's foreign exchange student, was able to snap this photo for us
¡Hola a Todos! (Hello All!)
Highlights
of the Week:
Doing apartment checks via WhatsApp: The
mission president and his wife want to ensure that the missionaries have
everything that they need, and that broken items – desks, wardrobes, fans, etc.
– are fixed or replaced. To this end, we will be video-chatting with each
companionship in the mission and having them show us around their apartment so
that we can see what needs to be fixed. We started this process on Monday and
had a fun time meeting with six companionships. We try to keep the calls brief
so we don’t suck up too much of their p-day time.
Attending Zoom meetings discussing social media
tools: Our missionaries are doing a fantastic job using Facebook to
share messages and find those interested in learning more about the gospel. On
Wednesday we attended (by Zoom) an area meeting where a church technology rep
in SLC discussed how to more effectively use social media in missionary work.
We’re not sure exactly what countries/missions are included in our area, but we
heard from missionaries in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia, as well as Peru. The
technology that allows us to share ideas and connect with others is amazing!
Seeing parents and family: My
(LeAnn’s) niece had her bridal shower on Saturday, and Taylia and I planned to
stop in quickly to drop off a gift. (I left my coat on the entire time thinking
that we were only going to stay a few minutes.) However, we ended up staying
the entire time and loved visiting with lots of family members. My parents even
made the trip to Utah at the last minute and it was so good to see them and
everyone else!
Thoughts: I (LeAnn) had a bit of a
disaster when my beloved watch slipped off the bathroom counter and fell onto
the tile floor – face down! Boo! I loved my watch and had had it for many
years. It’s the 1st thing I put on in the morning after my shower
and I feel naked without it. It wasn’t fancy or expensive, but I was attached
to it. I found myself glancing at my “watch wrist” all week, and would
experience a pang of sadness. It makes me realize how small habits – like
looking at my wrist for the time – can become almost unconscious behaviors. I
love this statement made by Becky Craven in October’s general conference:
“We can adjust our habits, alter our thoughts, and refine our
character to become more like Him.”
¡Que Tengan una buena semana! (Have
a great week!)
Love,
Lane & LeAnn
Beautiful west-mountains with snow and a glimmer of sun on the weekend
Majestic east-mountains peaking through the weekend snow storm clouds
Zoom call with representatives from different missions discussing using social media
Fun short visit with Alair & Josh's son
Jaron & Elizabeth's daughter trying out her new ankle/foot braces
Taylia & Israel (Izzy) with his hand taped to his cell phone playing an
internet competition to see who could "keep-your-thumb-on-the-screen" the longest
Jaron & Elizabeth making Sunday "Reese's" treats
Mahler family visiting with Melody and her baby daughter
Bridal shower for LeAnn's niece
LeAnn and Taylia with bride-to-be (Taylia's cousin)
Short visit by LeAnn's parents
Birthday granddaughter (Audrey's daughter)
Grandson (Audrey's son) just having fun at the granddaughter's birthday party
Helping Elise and Alex move out of their home
Pretending to help Elise and Alex clean up to move out
The broken watch
14 March 2021
Our second week of remote mission service (serving from home
until we can get to Peru) has provided us with plenty of learning and growth opportunities,
as well as related learning struggles – more than we ever imagined. LeAnn loves the learning. Lane says he’s feeling his age in not being
able to keep up!
The big news for this week was that we were able to get our 1st Covid vaccination (Pfizer). Hopefully this will get us closer to going to Peru. We’re scheduled for the second dose March 30.
It was also good to hear this week that Lima opened up just a
little bit, relative to the Covid quarantine they’ve been having, and is now
allowing 20% in-person church attendance.
Every day this week we virtually video met, via Zoom, with the elders responsible for running
the mission office. They patiently walk
us through their different responsibilities and how they accomplish their tasks. The Zoom meetings usually last about 2-3
hours each day. Then after the Zoom meetings,
we spend another couple of hours reviewing together ourselves (without the office
elders) what we learned, including many new Spanish words, in an effort to better
understand what the elders showed us. And finally, we have our individual
assignments and language study.
Since our training sessions with the office elders are almost entirely incomprehensible to LeAnn (I pick up a word or two here and there), she is especially excited to inject her “good-bye” in Spanish at the end of each call. However, on Thursday when we were finishing up our Zoom call, LeAnn blurted out, “¡Hola!” instead of “¡Adios!” (Insert eye roll…even Lane had a good laugh!)
Sunday we were able to “Zoom” into Lane’s brother’s (Craig’s) ward
in Spokane to hear him, his wife (Nicole), and our nephew (Rylan) speak in
their sacrament meeting. Rylan has been called to serve in the Santiago Chile
mission and will be starting his remote MTC training soon. Hearing them speak
about the Plan of Salvation was inspiring.
We love this scripture reminder:
“For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet
God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.”
~Alma 34:32
¡Tengan una buena semana! (Have a
great week!)
Love,
Lane & LeAnn
Waiting for 15 minutes, after receiving the 1st does of the Covid-19 vaccination, to ensure we don't zombify...
Lane pretending to study... don't you love those missionary shoes and posture?
Alex, Posh, & Elise moving out of their Orem home and hoping to move to Japan soon.
Sunday family dinner.
¡Hola a Todos! (Hello All!)
Well…we suppose the big question in everyone’s mind may be,
“What are you going to do now that you have completed your MTC training and
don’t have travel plans for Peru yet?” We were wondering the same thing, but it
turns out that there is a lot of work that we can do remotely. This week we
started “Zooming” with the mission office elders in Lima and they began
training us on their office procedures.
Highlights:
Meeting and working with the office elders: Lane and
I were both pretty apprehensive and wondered how well remote training would
actually work. We weren’t just worried about being trained over Zoom, but also
knew that our Spanish language skills would pose a significant challenge.
Luckily, Lane’s Spanish skills proved sufficient (Yay for his mission to
Bolivia and his mad translating skills!) and we were able to start learning the
mission office processes. The two elders that we are working with are
fantastic…so patient, enthusiastic, and willing to talk slow and repeat things!
Reconnecting with MTC Language Tutors: While Lane is able to study Spanish independently, I have been very thankful that the MTC language tutors are available to help me one-on-one. My tutor is fantastic!
Scheduling our Covid vaccinations: Our
state opened up the Covid vaccines to those ages 50+ and we are now scheduled to
receive the vaccine. Although we feel somewhat like guinea pigs in this
process, it’s going to be necessary to get the vaccine to go to Peru.
Lane’s broken tooth update: He had
his broken tooth extracted and the implant process started…and he’s still alive!
Visiting Utah Lake: On
p-day, we decided to do something a little more adventurous after we did our
Saturday cleaning, so we hit the donut shop and drove to a park that borders
the north side of Utah Lake. We walked out to the lake’s shore and along the
sidewalk that borders the lake. We’ve never really been “down to the lake” in
the 5+ years we’ve been here.
Thoughts: We hit a bit of a snag this week when our internet went down on Wednesday. Apparently a construction crew accidentally cut the cable that services our neighborhood. We are so dependent on having a good internet connection that it becomes a real problem when things don’t work. We are thankful that we don’t have to rely on an internet cable when we need to communicate with Heaven. If we keep our side of the “prayer line” open and in good repair, we can always access God.
“Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all
things shall work together for your good, if ye walk uprightly and remember the
covenant wherewith ye have covenanted one with another.”
~D&C 90:24
¡Tengan una buena semana! (Have a
great week!)
Love,
Lane & LeAnn
Zoom meeting with Presidente y Hermana Packard and Office Elders
Zoom with awesome MTC Spanish tutor!
Walk down to Utah lake on P-Day.
Utah Lake northern shore on P-Day, looking east toward Orem and Provo mountains.
Utah Lake northern shore looking south.
Beautiful warm weather for early March!
Making banana nut bread after Sunday dinner!
Hola!
Our second week of virtual MTC training was a little more intense
than the first. We logged into the “Zoom” video conferencing application at 8am
each morning and finished at 5pm, with an hour break for lunch (although sometimes
the morning sessions ran long!). We are formally called as mission “office
specialists” and the focus of this second week at the MTC was office training.
There are typically four areas of responsibility in a mission
office: mission secretary, financial secretary, housing, and vehicles. Since
the Peru Lima North Mission doesn’t use cars or bicycles, we didn’t need to
learn the “vehicle” information. Although it sounds like our mission may also
have technology and social media assignments, we didn’t receive any training in
those areas.
Highlights:
Working with a new set of MTC trainers: Once
again the MTC trainers were stellar young adults who were very knowledgeable
and patient as they introduced us to the details of working in a mission office.
Learning IMOS: IMOS stands for Internet
Missionary Office System and it is basically the “brain” of the mission. The
way the system is set up is genius as we are able to log-in to a “practice”
version of the Peru Lima North Mission’s actual IMOS, which is basically a copy
of what was going on in Lima 2 weeks ago. This 2-week-old version of IMOS allowed
us to enter data, assign new housing, make financial payments, and move around
missionaries on the virtual transfer board without actually causing changes.
This practicing is so helpful! Lane and I had some classes together and some
separate. Lane focused on learning the financial responsibilities while I
focused on the mission secretary and correspondence responsibilities, and we
both learned about housing responsibilities.
Reconnecting with our mentors: In
January, we were each assigned personal mentors who introduced us to IMOS (in
meetings over Zoom) and began teaching us how the system works. Then, each day
during our MTC training we would again “meet” individually with our mentors who
would review what we had learned in the previous training session. They quizzed
us by having us complete certain tasks – finding and modifying reports, making
payments, writing correspondence, interacting with the transfer board, and the
like. So, we didn’t just watch while the trainers and mentors demonstrated
tasks, we had the opportunity to actually do things (in a virtual setting where
we weren’t actually messing anything up!).
Watching a Lima stake conference:
Corinne, Lane’s sister, sent us the Zoom link for a stake conference at which
she and Meredith (President Packard) were speaking. It was so fun to see them
speak – they radiated enthusiasm and joy – and even if I (LeAnn) didn’t understand
everything, I was able to catch words and phrases here and there, and Lane
translated the rest for me.
Thoughts: Before beginning our studies each morning and afternoon, we
took turns sharing an inspirational thought, and one sister in our district
shared a thought from Steven Covey’s book, The
Divine Center. We don’t have the book, so this isn’t a direct quote, but we
loved the idea: All people have Christ-like potential. Divinely-centered people
are always learning, curious, growing, humble, upbeat, and cheerful. They aren’t
judgmental; they don’t carry grudges. They keep up on current affairs and are
active in the community. They have a sense of humor, and learn from all good
books. The 13th Article of Faith aptly describes them: “We believe
in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all
men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all
things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to
endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or
praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”
¡Tengan una buena semana!
(Have a great week!)
Love,
Lane & LeAnn
Completed our virtual MTC training! Mapping our assignments in Utah and Peru!
LeAnn doing her personal MTC IMOS training in the office.
Lane doing his personal MTC IMOS training in a separate room.
MTC virtual Zoom training with our district and morning instructors.
MTC virtual Zoom training with our district and afternoon instructors.
Watching President and Sister Packard speaking at a virtual Zoom stake conference in Peru.
One perk of being a virtual “Senior” missionary couple is enjoying a little evening time after MTC training with nearby grandkids! LeAnn with Finley (Jaron and Elizabeth’s daughter).
Lane with Kaladin (Alair and Josh’s son).
To “break-up” the MTC training activities, Lane’s crowned tooth broke off! No fun. It’s a good thing President Packard is a dentist/orthodontist!
Hello Friends and Family!
We officially started our mission on Sunday, February 14, 2021, with our stake president setting us apart in our home.
We both knew that serving a mission would require some changing of habits as we’ve both become very spoiled with regard to setting our own schedules. This past week has been a good “break-in” week as we only had formal training meetings (all on Zoom) in the afternoon (from 1pm-5pm). Our mornings (8am-12pm) were designated as “Personal Study, Companionship Study, and Class-time Preparation.”
Highlights:
Working with the MTC trainers: They were all young returned missionaries attending school and working at the MTC. We ended up learning from six amazing trainers.
Meeting the other missionary couples: There were three other couples in our group (district) and it was crazy to hear how everyone’s path has been impacted by Covid. One couple who lives in Middleton, ID originally received their mission call in January 2020 to serve in Tahiti (And no, that wasn’t a typo…they have been on hold for over a year!). Their mission kept getting postponed so they finally decided to approach the Boise Mission Office to ask if they needed any help (this is one of the options given when your call is postponed). Sure enough, they will now be serving in the Idaho Boise Mission. One of the other couples will be serving in Botswana, Africa (this is their 4th mission!) and the other couple will be serving in England on the church’s farmland reserve (this is their 2nd mission). The church is requiring senior couples serving internationally to receive the Covid vaccine, and all these couples have received the vaccine. We’re having a struggle getting the vaccine since we don’t fall in any of the eligible categories yet.
Studying and learning from Preach My Gospel: From Monday to Thursday our training focused on some of the key aspects of missionary work. To be honest, I (LeAnn) was very apprehensive about this as I suspected that we would be “invited” to leave our comfort zone. In the past, I have had some less-than-ideal missionary experiences and I may have used the word “dread” when discussing this with Lane. But, thankfully, everything went well.
Participating in the “Safety and Security Training”: This occurred on Friday afternoon, and was eye-opening. We also watched the church-produced “Safety Zone” videos, which we highly recommend. These videos document real safety-related experiences of missionaries serving in the field, and you can find these on the churchofjesuschrist.org website. Just search under “Safety Zone.” These would be great for older children and teens (may be too graphic/disturbing for littles).
After surviving this first week, both of us are feeling VERY grateful for our incredibly wonderful parents who set a stellar example for us and are so supportive of all that we do. We testify with Nephi that we have “been born of goodly parents.” Our parents are the best!
¡Tengan una buena semana! (Have a great week! Yes, we’re working on our Spanish!)
Love,
Lane & LeAnn
Setting Apart
Studying
Day 1 Done – Notice how fast Lane changed out of his white shirt and tie!
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