New Mission Presidency and Apartment Photos

This week Presidente Chipman set apart two new counselors in the Mission Presidency.  Presidente Caceras as 1st Counselor and Presidente Sheely as 2nd Counselor.  Presidente Caceras is Peruvian and lives in Mollendo west of us on the coast.  We met him and his wife this week when they came out for the first presidency meeting.  They were very nice and seemed very capable.  Presidente Sheely is a gringo who lives in Arequipa with is family.  His wife is Mexican and is going to help me with English Connect, since she speaks English and Spanish.  Tim was assigned to be the Executive Secretary, or as Presidente Chipman likes to call him, the Chief of Staff.  

Peru Arequipa Mission Presidency

So last week we worked mainly on administrative stuff, trying to get organized.  I did more research into English Connect and presented that at the presidency meeting.  Transfers happen next week which will shake everything up, so I'm hoping to be ready when everything settles down.  

Highlights of the week:

We take a lot of taxis to get around which are easy to find and very cheap, but they don't ever have change.  So we stopped by a bank last week to break 100 soles, but the bank couldn't give us anything less than 20 soles, which the drivers don't have change for either.  So we find we have to go to the tiendas and buy something so we can pay for our taxi rides.  We can only get 100 soles from the ATM's.

100 soles is about the equivelent of $25.00

We went to dinner with the Chipmans and they ended up having to deal with an emergency - an American missionary was in the emergency room with abdominal pain.  The doctors were convinced he had appendicitis without confirmation and wanted to do surgery.  It was crazy!  Long story short - they didn't do the surgery.

This morning we went down to Interpol as the next step in getting our Peruvian ID card.  All things considered it went pretty smoothly despite the hardcore lady there.  The young office missionaries took us down along with 3 newish Elders.  The office missionaries lead us along every step of the way.  We had to carefully fill out a couple of forms.  Any mistakes and you had start over on a new form - I'm looking at you Tim.  Then they photographed us, and took an insane amount of fingerprints.  Then they had us lay down on this retro looking dentist chair and examined our teeth.  Apparently, they do this so they can identify the bodies. Yikes!  I was hoping I could just give them the name of my dentist. 

Last but not least, I finally took photos of our apartment:

View when we walk in

Kitchen with small fridge.  There is a filter hooked up to the sink that works very well.

Laundry Room in the back of the kitchen - washer and very small dryer

1 of 3 bedrooms - we use it as our office

Our bedroom

One of 2 1/2 bathrooms.  We each have our own bathroom because they are very small

View from our apartment.  Nice garden area right next to a construction site.

And here is a sample of the food we've been eating when we go out.  The food has been super good and very inexpensive.  We have seen guinea pig on the menu, but will not be ordering it.  One of the Elders this morning showed us a picture of a bunch of live guniea pigs running around in their pensionista's yard.  He said the pensionista just has them pick one out and they cook it up.  Another Elder there said they were teaching someone in their home and a women chases and catches a chicken right in front of them and then wrings its neck.

Lots of avocados which I love!