Lightroom on Ipad

Thank you. I figured it out. There is a tab on the album that allows you to download to local device 

When photos are imported into Lightroom Mobile they stay as Original Full Resolution within the application until Lightroom automatically replaces that Original locally with a proxy file (Smart Preview or Preview) to save space, the Original still being held in the Cloud.

You can Store Albums locally if you are editing Offline (this will download the Originals for that Album) but although Originals are required for some tools, Smart Previews are suffice for many edits.

Especially on photos that haven't been accessed for a while (and which just have a Preview), a Smart Preview is required for editing. It may take a second for the Smart Preview to download (at least it does on my IPad). If there isn't connection to the internet however and the Preview cannot be replaced, they editing won't be possible.

I think the behaviour you are experiencing is probably expected although when you mentioned importing, are you referring to the initial import into the iPad? 

I'm not following your first sentence. When you "import" pictures to LrMobile on the iPad they are initially stored in the local app space on the device, i.e. they are immediately available for you to work on. Once imported, however, LrMobile will then start uploading those new imports to the Adobe Cloud. Sometime after that (could be days or weeks) the locally stored copy may be removed from the iPad, which means that a subsequent attempt to edit the image on the iPad could incure a delay while the original is downloaded from the cloud (and may be impossible if the iPad is not connected to the internet at that time).

There are various ways around this, however....one way to do that would be to set things up so that there's always a smart preview of the originals stored locally on the iPad, which allows you to work on the images even when you are offline. That's what I do, i.e. all my cloud-stored images are automatically downloaded to my iDevices in smart preview form, thus are always available if the iDevice is offline. 

On the "Cloud Storage & Sync" tab of the LrMobile settings I have "Only download smart previews" enabled. Then in the main album page, I have individually set ALL my albums to "Store Locally", which thus automatically downloads the smart previews for the album content (and downloads any new smart previews if you add more images to that album). You don't have to download all albums of course, but if you know you're going to be offline you could first download the smart previews for just the album(s) you want to work on.