Semana 7: Holy Culture Shock!: 8/29/16

Hola from Costa Rica everyone!

I don't have a ton of time to write this so it'll be short sorry. I'll do better next week.

This week has been one of the craziest, hardest weeks of my life but it has also been one of the most interesting, coolest weeks of my life as well.  

It all started with us sleeping through our alarms and having 20 minutes to get ready and get to the travel office to get to the travel office.  We made it barely and then we proceeded to travel with like 40 of us onto a bus, onto a train, and then onto an airplane.  We arrived in Costa Rica about 9 at night and struggled our way through customs until we found the mission president, his wife, and the assistants.  We went straight to the temple in these weird taxis and quickly found out that this is a suit mission and that we all needed to buy a suit jacket.  I luckily got one today and also a backpack which we're allowed to have instead of a sidebag. 

We slept in a mission home with all the elders and then the next day we had a little bit of training in Spanish and then got our companions.  My companion's name is Elder Batres and he is from El Salvador.  He does not speak any English and so this week has been pretty difficult haha.  We then went to get finger printing done and then after we got on a bus and headed to our area.  Our area is called Puriscal and it is about an hour west of San Jose.  It is higher up, in the mountains, and it is pretty cool.  It is almost always sunny in the morning, and then super cloudy/foggy in the afternoon and night.  It also rains almost everyday.  Not quite the weather I was expecting but it is actually super great temperature wise.  

The hardest thing has been the language for sure.  I cannot understand hardly anything anyone is saying and so a lot of the time I just sit there and listen to my companion and the people talk.  I usually say one thing every lesson and that's about it. I know the language will come with time though so for now, I'll just continue to follow my companion blindly and see what happens every day haha.  It's hard, but it's an adventure each and every day.  I can't wait to speak Spanish though.  This is a Mormon reference but I feel like that one Elder in the "Best Two Years" who gets to his mission and is like, this isn't the language they taught me in the MTC haha.  They speak super fast and with a different accent with words I'm unfamiliar with so it's been a challenge but it's been super cool at the same time.  

Elder Millward is in my district though and so we will see each other every week for the next 12 weeks which is a huge tender mercy.  Whenever we see each other it's so nice just to de-stress by speaking English with each other.  

Wish I had more time to tell you everything  (we committed 4 people to baptism this week) but I hope you all have a great week this week and I miss you all!

Pura Vida!

Elder Smith

P.s. I forgot my camera cord so I can't upload any pictures from my camera, sorry.  But here is a picture of all the new missionaries with their trainers and the president and his wife.  ​

Semana 6! Voy a COSTA RICA manaña!: 8/22/16

Hola everyone!

I leave for Costa Rica tomorrow so today is technically my p day for this week and probably will be for the rest of my mission.  Half of my district left this morning already so today it's just me and the four other people in my district that are going to Costa Rica here today.  It feels a lot more real today so I'm feeling pretty nervous, but also excited don't worry.  

This week wasn't too eventful unfortunately.  It was a little harder to stay focused this week since we were all getting ready to leave, but it was still really good.  It was really hard to say goodbye to our teachers and the rest of our district.  It's so weird that we're not all going to be together for 2 years since the last 6 weeks we were together pretty much every day, 24 hours a day (at least me and the other elders).  

We had in-field orientation on Friday and it was super boring for the most part but did have some good parts. It lasted pretty much all morning and afternoon so I was pretty tired by the end.  We also had our second lesson with a member of the church through skype this week.  You don't know who you're going to teach until you walk in so it's a little hard to prepare a 30 minute lesson for them since you don't know anything about them.  Me and Elder Millward could see the profile picture of the guy we were supposed to teach but he looked like he was a return missionary from Utah (who is basically the kind of person we taught last week) so we looked for a latino looking person instead and tried skyping them and it worked!  He was a return missionary as well but he is from and lives in Ecuador and me and Elder Millward could barely understand anything he was saying haha.  It was a super cool experience though and definitely a humbling experience for my Spanish skills.  

Other than that nothing else too exciting happened.  We had Nashville Tribute Band come last night for the devotional (this is the 2nd time they have come since I've been here) and it was good!  Not my favorite kind of music but I'll take any I can get.  

I hope everyone has a great week this week and next time you get an email from me it'll be from Costa Rica!!

Love,

Elder Smith

Pics: Our whole district with our teachers Hermano Santillan and Hermana Guerrero our last day of class, Me and Elder Millward with our teachers

Semana 5: 8/16/16

Hola!

Another week done in the MTC!  This week was a really good week and the best part?  I got my travel plans on Friday!! A group of 8 of us leave for Costa Rica on August 23rd (a week from today)!!  I'm so excited but also really sad to leave the MTC.  I have had so many great experiences here and it'll be really weird to finally be a "real missionary".  

Last Tuesday we had another apostle come and speak to us!! Elder Neil L. Anderson.  It was such a good talk and message.  One part that I really liked was that he said we should always keep "the flame" of our faith burning.  If we do this we are promised to have the Lord with us and we will be able to find the elect of God in our missions, no matter the mission.  I might not have worded that exactly right but that just really stuck out to me as a missionary that I need to always be working my hardest and have faith so that I will be blessed and guided to find and help those people that are ready to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ in their lives.  

Also... Something else I really enjoyed this week is that I heard one of my favorite songs ever ("Time" from the Inception soundtrack). Our teacher, Hermano Santillan had us listen to a message from President Monson about missionary work and Time was playing in the background.  I LOVED IT!  That song is so awesome and it was so powerful with President Monson's message.  If you want to look it up it's on "wordsoftheprophets.bandcamp.com" and it's the first track on CD 3.  It also reminded me a lot of home so I guess I understand why we're not allowed to listen to certain music on our missions.  

Also another cool thing.  I got In n Out today!! Our teacher got it for us because he made a secret deal with just me and Elder Clark.  He said he would get us pizza if we went a whole day without speaking any English.  We then realized that we can have pizza in the MTC so the next day we handed him our in n out orders haha. It was really hard but it was so worth it.  

Last, but not least, we had our last lesson with our investigator Brian this week.  We never committed him to baptism but the last two lessons especially I noticed a change in him and his attitude towards the lessons and gospel and that was so cool for me to see.  He might not feel ready yet but I think if he stays on the path he's on now, he will definitely get baptized one day.  

I love and miss you all and sorry for the long email but I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a representative of Jesus Christ and serve Him and the people of Costa Rica for two years.

Love, 

Elder Smith

P.s. Thank you all so much for all the packages but stop sending me food please! I'm going to get fat haha! And I leave in a week so I won't be able to bring any of it with me.  I very much appreciate it though!

Pics: Those in our district who got in n out, Proof that I still fall asleep all the time, Elder Millward and I with Brian and a member (Brian is in between me and Elder Millward, Our district at the sand volleyball courts, and me and Elder Clark with our in n out

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Semana 4: 8/9/16

Hola everyone!  Another week down in the MTC.  4 down, 2 to go. 

I believe we get our travel plans on friday for Costa Rica so that's really exciting. Everyone is really excited to leave but I'm still just trying to enjoy the MTC because I'm sure I'll miss it.  It's definitely bittersweet.  This week was a little bit different than usual because... Me and Elder Millward got to leave the MTC!!  Elder Millward got a filling done on his tooth right before he came into the MTC but it has been bothering him so he had to go back to the dentist to get it fixed.  We ended up having to go twice (the first time just see if he needed a new filling, and the second time to actually do the filling).  It was pretty boring honestly since i just had to sit there but it was just funny cuz we were so excited to go to the dentist haha.  That's what the MTC does to you... Everyone in our district was so jealous of us but it was literally just a 5 minute drive away from the MTC.  It was really cool and weird to drive past BYU and around Provo where I was living just a few months ago for college. 

We ended up missing 2 lessons with our investigator Brian though which was sad.  So we hardly taught this last week which was really weird.  We only have 2 more lessons with him and Elder Millward won't be there for our lesson with him tomorrow because we are going on exchanges for the day with another district that one of our teacher teaches. Other than that nothing too exciting has happened.  I'm not the district leader anymore :( .  They switch district leaders halfway through the MTC so i got released on Sunday and now my companion Elder Millward is the new district leader.  I thought it would be kind of nice not to have as much responsibility but i miss it.  Our district is now the oldest district in our zone because no district came into our zone the week before ours did and so the next oldest district just left today.  

The MTC has been such a great experience for me so far and I have learned so much and have never felt closer to Christ before in my life.  It's weird to think about where you are sometimes and that you feel so closed off from the rest of the world, but there's a reason for it. Without the distractions of the world (phone, netflix, music, school, internet, etc.) I've been able to really focus on studying the gospel, learning the language, and serving others and the Lord.  Before my mission it always felt kind of hard to do those things, but now it feels so easy and I look forward to doing those things each and every day. I hope you all have a great week this week!

Love,

Elder Smith

P.s. Sorry for the late response.  The computers suddenly stopped working near the end of my email time so I couldn't send it til now.  Apparently all the computers at the MTC and BYU went down for a period of time today.

Pictures: Our whole zone last week, elders in our district during class, "Christmas" plan, our whole district with our teacher Hermana Guerrero, and drawing plans for four square.

Semana 3!: 8/2/16

Hola everyone!  

I'm officially halfway through the MTC and I'm super excited about that.  I cannot wait to get to Costa Rica but I know these next 3 weeks will be super helpful to me for when I get there. 

So it turns out our investigator Brian actually is a real investigator apparently.  We had a member volunteer to help teach with us for one of our lessons and her husband knew him from outside the MTC and told us he was a real member.  So that's really cool!  We've had 4 lessons with him and they still haven't gone quite as well as I would like but I think he's progressing little by little and hopefully we can continue to help him.   

I didn't leave a whole lot of time to write this so it'll be a little short so sorry about that, but i do have pictures so hopefully that'll make up for it.  We discovered we could play four square this week for exercise time and that has been our new favorite thing.  It kind of causes contention sometimes because we get so into it but it's just too fun to stop playing.  We tried playing volleyball again but it wasn't nearly as fun so we went back to four square (cuatro cuadro in spanish! at least i think...)  

And for those of you who don't know, today is Christmas!! Or at least it is to us here in the MTC haha.  One of the elders in our district (Elder Clark) always says the most random things so I have like an Elder Clark quote of the day in my journal every day haha.  Anyways he always referred to our p days (preparation days) as holidays so we called it Christmas because it's the one day of the week we can just kind of do whatever we want.  Our first Christmas we decorated our classroom chalkboard and we hung stockings in our room and we woke up to jolly ranchers in our stockings haha.  

I'm loving the MTC although it is hard sometimes.  Our teachers are awesome although they get frustrated with us sometimes haha.  One of our teachers told us we're one of the hardest districts he's ever had to teach because we get distracted so easily... Oops.  We're doing better though and everything's going good.

Also I almost forgot... I saw my sister on my walk to the temple on Sunday!!  It was so great to see her.

Thank you so much to everyone who has sent me packages and dear elders!! They really make my day.  I hope you're all doing well and have a great week this week!

Elder Smith 

Pics: Me and Chelsea, Me and the other elders in my district, Me and Elder Kimberling (he left yesterday :( )