Advice from Elder Ramirez...

Dear Brother Fisher,

How wonderful to hear of your mission to the Lima Peru Temple. May I first tell you that we have loved our mission. With all our hearts we wish that we were going to be here to serve with you. We are sad to say that our mission ends in June. Since we live only a couple of hours north of you and do come to the Salt Lake often, maybe we will be able to meet you before you enter the MTC to answer any questions you have.

But first let me answer the questions you have asked. We do not live on the temple grounds. There has been a combination guest house and missionary apartment authorized for the Lima Temple grounds. Unfortunately, problems keep coming up to delay
beginning of construction so now President Bowman is hoping and praying that he can have construction started before he completes his term as temple president in November.

We live 3 and a half blocks from the temple and walk to and from the temple everyday. We have never felt endangered in anyway in traversing to and from the temple, even when we have came home late at night. The security in the neighborhoods in La Molina is quite good. Most streets have security guards posted on them and they close the gates on many street so cars cannot pass through. Most apartments I have seen are like ours. It takes 3 different keys all for deadbolt locks and each key has to be turned 3 times to open the door. My big worry has never been about someone breaking in. My worry is how long would it take to get out of the apartment in an emergency. No, we leave our laptop out on the desk all the time. I am not
worried about thieves breaking into our apartment.

We work in the temple 5 days a week. The temple is open by 6:15 AM for prayer meetings etc. each day. Tuesday through Thursday, our first session begins at 7:30 am and we run a session every hour on the half our but have an extra session at 7 pm which is our last session. On Friday the schedule is normally that same except we are running a trial right now where we are
having sessions every half our from 6:30 to 9 pm. By time you arrive the temple president and area president will decide whether or not to make that a permanent expansion of the schedule. Saturday we begin at 7:30 am and run a session every half hour until 7:00 pm.

However, you will only work about an eight hour schedule each day. Right now there are two shifts each day. The first has a 6:45 am prayer meeting and normally leaves the temple between 2 and 2:30 pm. The second shift has their prayer meeting at 1:15 pm and we normally leave the temple between 9 and 9:30 pm.

The local transportation is by either bus or cab. Both are extremely reasonable. The currency exchange is approximately S/. 3 (3 soles) to $1. To go to church which is about a half mile away, it costs us one/half sole each which is the equivalent of about 17 cents each. If we want to take a taxi, it is normally S/. 4 or about $1.35. Believe me, the taxis and busses are plentiful. If we have to wait five minutes for a bus, we are surprised.

During the two weeks the temple is closed, we have taken trips to see Peru. Mission rules say you can't leave your mission boundaries, so some other couples we have invited on our little excursions have not been able to go with us because their mission boundaries are smaller. But for the temple missionaries, our mission boundaries are all of Peru so you can go anywhere except leave the country. We have taken the money we have saved on living expenses and have traveled Peru from the north to the south from the coast and islands off the coast called the Ballestras (or the Galapagos Islands of Peru) to the jungles of the upper Amazon and the floating islands of Lake Titicaca. There have been no problems with traveling. I have seen no anti-American sentiment, in fact, quite the opposite. They love Americans in Peru. We have always had English speaking guides and the accommodations in 3 star hotels are quite comfortable. We can give you the name of our travel company if you would like.

Oh, one thing that we have found as a problem is that all electricity here is 220V so you either have to have 220V appliances or a transformer. With the weight of transformers I would suggest you buy them here rather than try to carry them but anything you can bring that uses 220V is useful. I did bring a power strip for my computer and printer. Someone suggested that we bring an electric blanket which we did (there are no furnaces), but the first time we used it we burned up the controls even though we thought we had a proper transformer, but with blankets and a bedspread, we haven't had any problems sleeping.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Elder Ron Ramirez