My South American Chemistry Students

In my 30 years of teaching chemistry, I have never had one student who wanted me to explain course material in Spanish--except this summer term. Three students in my current biochemistry class are from my former mission area, Peru and Ecuador. They feel more comfortable conversing in Spanish, and one of them frequently comes to my office for Spanish explanations of what we've covered in class.

In fact, I just barely finished a 1½-hour biochemistry lecture/help session in Spanish with two of these Spanish-speaking students, Bertha and Lorena, both from Ecuador. We covered protein structure, calculation of net charge on peptides, determination of isoelectric point, interactions between biomolecules, and other subjects that will appear on the next exam. I think I learned as much Spanish as they did biochemistry.

I know these sessions are absolutely wonderful opportunities for me to push myself in Spanish and to become more comfortable in speaking Spanish in a wide variety of different situations.

What a great blessing I've received this school term as I prepare for my mission in Peru!

Started Language Training at the MTC

Today (Thursday, April 24) was my first day of language training at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah. I live only 10 minutes away, so I met in person with my tutor, Rodrigo from Mexico City. (Senior missionaries who don't live near the MTC get tutoring via telephone.) Rodrigo is a returned missionary and a BYU student currently studying business, but he has the goal of getting into the BYU accounting program. He works part time teaching Spanish at the MTC.

We speak only Spanish during our lessons. Today we chatted for a few minutes to get to know each other, and then we started our lesson. He gave a spiritual thought and offered a prayer. Then we went over my goals and assignments, which include the following:

• Learn the five lessons. My homework assignment is to learn the first half of the first missionary lesson. As I understand it, he will present the lesson to me and then I will present it to him at our next class.
• Speak only Spanish. Our hymn, spiritual thought, prayer, and lesson are all in Spanish.
• Improve my Spanish vocabulary. We're doing a variety of activities to accomplish this goal, including assigned "tasks" (prepared lessons for a variety of different situations, such as interviews, introductions, and personal experiences), reading newspaper articles from Peru and other Spanish-speaking countries (which will force me to expand my vocabulary beyond the normal religious words), and studying the textbook on Spanish grammar.
• Improve my pronunciation. Rodrigo will help me with pronunciation when I have a problem, and will assign me "shadow listening tasks," which are written texts with an accompanying CD of native speakers' readings of the texts.

I gave the closing prayer and then asked another teacher to take our picture. We parted with a traditional "abrazo" (hug) and the normal exchange of pleasantries.

I couldn't have asked for a better tutor than Rodrigo. He's bright and friendly, speaks educated Spanish, has clear enunciation (even in casual conversation), has good experience in tutoring Spanish, and takes a spiritual approach to our lessons.

Other Observations about the Peru Lima East Mission

Here are some more observations about the Peru Lima East Mission:

• The area of our mission covers approximately the same area over which I was a zone leader back in 1965 while a young missionary serving in the Andes Mission.
• When I arrived in Peru in May 1964, missionaries were in none of the cities (except for Lima) currently inside the boundaries of the Peru Lima East Mission.
• After I had been in Peru for a while, one of the first mountain town to be opened to missionary work was Huancayo (altitude 10,600 ft), in the Region called Junín. When I was zone leader over Huancayo, it had no branch of the church, but just 6 missionaries. In September of 1965, the first branch of the church was organized there. Now (2008) there are 15 wards and two stakes there.
• The Peru Lima East Mission includes the following stakes: Cerro de Pasco, Huánuco (2 stakes), Huancayo (2 stakes), Lima Bayóvar, Lima La Molina, Lima Las Flores, Lima Rimac, Lima Campoy, Lima Vitarte, Lima Chosica, Lima Canto Grande. That's 8 stakes in Lima and five stakes in the provinces--in regions outside of Lima. The mission also includes two member districts--Tarma and Huancavelica.
• Cerro de Pasco is the highest city in the world, at an altitude of 14,200 feet above sea level, and hence it is the highest stake of Zion in the church. I've been through Cerro de Pasco six times in my travels between Lima and Huancayo.

About the Peru Lima East Mission

The Peru Lima East Mission:

• Is about 50,000 square miles in size. That is about the same size as Alabama or Louisiana. Utah is 85,000 square miles in size. The map of the mission is shown below.
• Has 15 stakes: 10 in Lima, 2 in Huanuco (which had one little branch when I left Peru 42 years ago), 2 in Huancayo (over which I was zone leader before it even had a branch), and 1 in Cerro de Pasco.
  
• Includes the Cerro de Pasco Stake, which is the highest Stake of Zion in the world, at 14,200 feet above sea level! I didn't specifically read that it was the highest stake, but I did read that Cerro de Pasco is the highest city in the world. I couldn't confirm the latter. Some online sites say that Potosi, Bolivia, is the highest city, but Cerro de Pasco is 1000 feet higher than Potosi. (BTW, there is a Bolivia Potosi Stake, which a friend of mine says has its headquarters upon on a high plateau over 1000 feet above the city center, making Potosi the highest stake in the world. Whatever.)


• Covers an area of Peru in which the rate of poverty is about 60%. I'm not sure what constitutes poverty in Peru, but I'm guessing it's lower than the poverty level in the US. And I can't even guess what the rate of poverty is among members of the church there, but I'm guessing that among active members of the church, the poverty rate is low. (I'm not saying this as a positive thing. I'm guessing that poverty-striken members don't stay active.)


• Includes all eight natural regions of Peru. the major ones of which are the coast (including Lima), la sierra (the high Andes mountainous area), the high jungle, and the low junge or rain forrest of the Amazon basin.


• Includes (on its border) the mountain Yerupajá (locally called El Carnicero, which means butcher, and refers to the sharp-edged knife shape of the mountain), which is the second-highest point in Peru, at 21,758 feet above sea level. (The highest point in Peru is El Huascarán, at 22,204 feet, but it is not in our mission.)


• Got a new mission president in July 2008. Surf around this blog for information on Pres. and Sister Leyva.

Map of Peru, with the area of the Peru Lima East Mission marked in red. Each area on the map is a Region (analogous to a state) of Peru, of which there are 25 regions. Our mission includes the regions of Huánuco, Pasco, Junín, and Huancavelica, as well as a piece of the Lima region and the city of Lima.

Timeline for Getting our Mission Call

Here's a timeline of key events in our mission:

• 1967. In the year that we were married, my wife and I decided we wanted to serve a mission together. That desire has never wavered in the 41 intervening years.
• December 2000-January 2001. My wife and I, and two of our daughters, served a humanitarian expedition to Peru. I considered this part of the preparation for our upcoming mission to Peru.
• February 1, 2008. I'm not sure about this date, but some time around here, we started filling out the LDS church's online recommendation forms, with information about almost every aspect of our lives--past church service, education, special skills (music, computers, etc.), language abilities, and medical history.
• February 15, 2008. We started to get our physical and dental checkups. We needed some shots, and we both needed dental work.
• March 7, 2008. We finished all our medical and dental checkups.
• March 9, 2008. We held our final interview with our bishop in the morning and with our stake president in the afternoon. They both completed their part of the recommendation, and turned over the recommendation process to the assistant stake clerk. We received notice, however, that our physician had left off a couple of items that I needed to obtain from him.
• March 10, 2008. In the morning, I got the needed information from our physician, sent them to our ward clerk, and he submitted the final recommendation.
• Monday, March 10, 2008, 4:00. Our papers were officially submitted, and we received the official notice of "Recommendation Papers Received."
• Thursday, March 13, 2008. We got the official notice that our recommendation had been upgraded to "Ready for Assignment." I was surprised that things went that fast, because my medical profile wasn't the best, because of my history with atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries and atrial fibrillation. But because I recently had extensive tests that showed my heart was in good shape, and because I had recently run a half marathon, I guess the medical staff at church headquarters didn't have any issues with my medical condition.
• Friday, March 28, 2008. We got the official notice that our recommendation has been upgraded to "Call letter sent," which means we'd get on official call in the mail the next Wednesday.
• Wednesday, April 2, 2008. We received our mission call letter. We had been to our weekly service as ordinance workers at the Timpanogos Temple, and stopped by on our way to work at BYU to see if the mail had come. As we pulled into our cul-de-sac, our postwoman was pulling out. We stopped her and asked if our call had come. She said yes, that she had knocked on our door to hand deliver it, but we weren't at home. We didn't open the letter at that point, but waited until our kids who live in Utah could be there with us to open the letter. We got the kids who don't live in Utah on the phone, and opened our letter at 6:30 pm Utah time. I was thrilled by the call: Peru Lima East Mission. My wife wasn't quite so thrilled because she doesn't speak Spanish, but she knows that the call comes from God.

So from the time from when we started the online recommendation form and began our physical and dental checkups to the time that we got our call in the mail was only six weeks.

Why We Decided To Serve A Mission

Ever since returning from a mission in my youth (1964-1966 in Peru), I've dreamed of returning to Latin America to serve another mission there with my wife. At the same time, even before my wife married me, she had a goal to serve a mission. Her patriarchal blessing (a special recorded, personal priesthood blessing) spoke of her serving as a missionary abroad. She had planned to go on a mission in her youth, but I convinced her to marry me instead. (She has since forgiven me, I hope.) So the question of whether or not my wife and I would go on a mission was never considered. The only question was when. About a year ago, as I was having some heart problems, we decided that now was the time to retire and go on a mission. We notified our respective department chairs and the administration at Brigham Young University, where we were both professors, that we were going to retire early--I at age 63½ and she at age 63--on July 1, 2008. We talked a lot about the kind of mission that we wanted to serve, and we soon narrowed our choices to a temple mission (where we would be full-time temple workers) or a proselyting mission (where we would preach and teach the gospel). We finally decided to request to serve a Spanish-speaking proselyting mission. My wife was apprehensive of this type of mission, because she doesn't yet speak Spanish, but she supported me in this request. After making that decision, we just needed to get the ball rolling to start the missionary recommendation process. I'll talk about that process in the next post on this blog.

Why I Started This Blog

As a senior couple missionary (starting July 2008), I want to share my experiences and feelings about my mission. My audience includes family, friends, fellow members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), those thinking about serving an LDS mission in their youth or in their senior years, and all people interested in learning more about the Mormon Church and its missionary program. My wife and I will become missionaries on Monday, July 14, 2008, as we enter the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah. After a time in Provo, learning more about missionary work, we will serve as full-time missionaries in the Peru Lima East Mission. The headquarters of the mission is in Lima, but most of the mission is in the high Andes of central Peru. This is an area where I served as a young missionary 42 years ago, 1964 to 1966, in what was then called the Andes Mission. Am I excited about returning to Peru? More than you can imagine. I hope over the course of developing this blog, you will feel that enthusiasm and understand why I am overjoyed to return to Peru to share the gospel.