Mason's Mission in Costa Rica : 8-25-14 First letter from Costa Rica

Ahh hello world.

Im typing you all from a internet cafe in the central of San Roque. it has air conditioning in here, i think i might try to type slowly so i can stay here longer. you are all probably curious about what costa rica is like and whats happened, so ill start with a day to day basis and then add on the extra details after.

so i took the flight out of provo monday morning, taking delta airlines to georgia atlanta in coach, and then for some reason 10 out of the 28 people got free first class on the second flight, from georgia to costa rica. so i was lucky enough to get that flight, first class is reaaaalllyy nice, except the food is probably microwaved, that discovery ruined my day for a 10 seconds =P i should have taken the free blanket with me from the airplane, since you really dont have any bedding here, but ill describe that latter.

i took some pictures while in the airplane since the sky was soo awesome. if i ever get rich i want to fly in airplanes just so i can see the sky and the sunsets.

arrived in costa rica, and no the humidity didn't hit me like a wall. probably because i hit half of the humidity in georgia and the other half in costa rica. honestly, it just felt nice to breathe, probably because i was at sea level though, not the humidity. we arrived at night and so i couldnt see much of the city. but the one thing i will tell you all, is that costa rica isn't some super poor place like i thought it was. its nicer than that, but ill explain later. driving here is scary, and that is in turn due to the countries famous phrase

'pura vida' in spanish means pure life. for the people here, you can say pura vida for kinda like a whats up, or a, im doing good type phrase. thats the connotation of it, but for the past 50 years of costa rica its taken the meaning, and i cant think of any other way to describe it in english, but do what you want. if it doesnt hurt you, then its fine if i do it. that being said the driving and the roads are scary here. stops signs dont mean stop, as they are only slight suggestions, so everyone drives full speed past them and arround corners. about 1 in every 10 or 20 cars is a motorcycle or dirt bike, and so they just drive around every other vehicle in the road. at a 4 way stop for example, if the east west is backed up through the intersection and you want to go north west, you park in the middle of the road trying to cut people of. a good defensive driver here is one that drives fast and cuts people off well. its weird a know, but if you are curtious for others, you well get in a car crash immediately. an example of pura vida is if you leave your bike outside over night, and i still it, its not my fault that it was stolen, its yours because you left it out overnight. that being said, every house, building, window or anything public is barred of with thick 1 inch rails , gates, or chunks of sheet metal.

so we met with president and the APs and secretaries first day filling out paperwork and then we were assigned our companions at a lunch. For that lunch we had chocolate chip pancakes, eggs, and gallo pinto. So i dont get to eat gallo pinto very much, but maybe thats just my area. gallo pinto is essentially the left over rice and black beans from the days before stirred together and they throw on extra butter and this stuff thats kinda a mix between butter and sour cream to give it flavour. ill talk more about food later.

So my first zone is guanacaste, so we took a bus to liberia, which is about 4 to 5 hours away from the mission office. one of those tickets is 8,000 colones. so the money system here is simple, you just have to wrap your head around it. to convert to dollars, times the colones by 2, and take off three zeros. so for example,the ticket was 8,000 colones, so 16,000 and without 3 zeros its 16. so 16 dollars. the conversion ratio here is about 1=550, but we just say 1=500. the easiest way to do it is count everything by mils (1 mil = 1000 colones) and double it. so a meal costing 2 mil is 4 dollars.

so we arrive at guanacaste, and i have my new companion Elder Soy. he is from guatamala and only speaks spanish, and only a few words in english. so its always speaking spanish and trying to figure out what he says. ok lesson for you all about some spanish words here. mae and mob both have the connotation of bro, webon is kind of like a more negative connotation of bro, pura vida means whats up, buenas is how you greet everyone, derived from (BUENOS dias, BUENAS tardes, and BUENAS noche) he knows some english words, but he always uses those slang words, or not good english words. whenever he is talking to some of the other missionaries, he always says 'whats up my nigga.' i tried to explain to him that wasnt a good thing to say, but he does it anyways.

besides that he is a great companion. he is very social and so lessons are great with the people. i can't talk or understand very much, so i mostly just bear my testimony at the end of the lesson. because we can't communicate, we cant practice very in depth for companion study either. he also likes to dink around so any spanish i want to learn is by my self. ive asked him to correct me if i say something gramatically wrong, but he understands enough english that he can comprehend what im saying, even if its bad grammer and doesn't correct me. meh ill get use to it. the way i think of it, a baby can learn a ton of english between 2 and 4 years old, and so for my, i just need to keep hearing people talk and practicing myself and ill get the hang of it eventually. The problem is no one annunciates their words here. its kind of like in english when someone says whats up, they normally say wassup. or if your saying good night, normally just night, it sounds like a soft n and ite. that being said spanish here is hard to understand, especially Elder Soy, because nothing is annunciated, and they talk super fast. if they talk slow, which occassionally some people do, i can understand about 60 to 80 percent, but if they talk normal speed i can only understand about 30 to 70 percent. that 70 percent sounds good, but i miss out big chunks, so i still am lost with what they are saying, even if i know half of the words they are using.

The people here. There are Costa Ricans, nicaraguans, and others. nicaraguans are super dark and almost look like a african/latin mix. costa ricans are lighter skinned, and id say they would look like a tan american, except for they all have dirtier faces, and have dark eyes. everyone here has dark eyes, so id doesnt matter if i would be tan, because i have green/blue eyes, i instantly as classified as a gringo. everyonce and a while i get called a cracker. the people here super straight forward with what they think and do. if you look weird they will call you out on the street and say it. its super useful in lessons though. when you are asking people questions, they will be completely honest with you.

we dont eat a lot of food here. we have about 1 to 2 eggs a day, if that for breakfast, and only bread if we have the money to spend. there are fresh bakeries all over the place we can buy bread for about $1.50, and its great for a meal. we get about $400 every money, or 200 mil, which is more than i thought. i only got a partial since i wasnt here for all of august, but next month ill get the 200 mil. some things are super cheap here, but we are using my full $400 we send to the mission every month. out of the 200 mil, about 50 goes for the apparentment, by the way we are getting a new one next week, it is crazy nice, and about 40 mil for a cocinera who makes us lunch every day except for mondays. lunch here always has white rice and black beans for about 2/3 of the plate. luckily, it tastes good. the other 1/3 of the plate and possibly side is some random other thing. normally its platanos which are like a fried banana of a sort. they really dont have any flavor and so they are kinda hard to choke down. A lot of the people here have a little bag about 4 ounces with this stuff thats inbetween vanilla frosting and milk. its super plain and kinda nasty, i dont like it, but people use it on anything that doesnt have flavor. for example, elder soy uses it on his platanos. meh i dont understand. they have salads, and so far i havent had to put fry sauce on a salad. they give you these really bitter limons and you squeeze them on the salad, but they really really taste bitter. a lot of people down here like bitter things, like little candy containers full of limon flavored sugar or something, and its nasty to take. i havent had any meat or chicken since ive been here, but ill keep you posted. in guanacaste, no one every makes us dinner, and we cant go to members houses for meals here, so we just pretty much have 1 or 2 eggs in the morning, maybe 8 inches by 2 inches by 1 inch or bread if we have the extra cash, lunch which is filling, and no dinner. maybe it will change in the new appartment,

The biggest shock is that the country here isnt as tropical rainforest as everyone thinks. there are still palm trees and stuff, and its super hot, but not like tropical rainforest. the closest way i can think to explain it would be california in the gettos in summer. guanacaste is super super hot, on the top left corner of costa rica. the whole west cost is super touristy, even though the east cost has the cruise ships. it rained a ton and super hard in san jose, but here in san rocque ( guanacaste is the zone, liberia is the area, and san roque is the city, i think) it never rains. so its just super hot all day every day. sun rises at about 6am and closes at about 6 pm,

we end up with about 3 to 5 lessons a day, and so far we havent talked to anyone new. one thing i will say though is costa rica has the highest baptism count in latin america. out of the 250 missionaries we have, we have about 125 baptisms a month. so the average is 1 baptism per companionship per month. we'll see how that goes. we have these things here called LPAs which basically means a random person you talk to, share a gospel message, and ask for any references. the standard of excellence here is 20 lpas a day, but me and my companion only get about 8 so far. Soy has been doing really well lately though, this is his 2nd time in this area, and the last couple months he averaged 3 to 5 baptisms a month.

Our area has one chapel, a really nice chapel, and 2 branches that go in it. each branch having anywhere from 75 to 150 people who attend. The goal for san roque is to get a stake, not sure the qualifications for that, but i do know we need more members and more tithing money to support it.

so i do get to use my parkour skills here. all the time people are playing soccer on the streets and us as missionaries will join them for 5 to 15 minutes. its super hot afterwards as there are almost never any clouds on san roque, and all the time they will ask us to do a trick. elder soy can juggle for 50 plus times and do the trick where you are juggling with your foot and swing your foot all the way around the ball and keep juggling. whenever they ask me to do something, i just do a backflip and they all go wild. some of the kids here call me el gringo. good times. so i do an average of three flips a day, normally only a back or a side flip, but its still fun.

there are a lot of american stuff here. we have mcdonalds, kfc, and papa johns, which are the normal 5 to 12 dollars for meals, but the other stores like walmart are in san jose and the bigger cities. so liberia doesnt have much american stuffs. i like the stuffs here though, so its not really a problem. clothing is super cheap here. i dont really want to buy any trinkets here, only clothes, so im planning on buying a jersey from every area im at, plus more. at san jose, prices are cheap so you can get a jersey top from almost any team in the world and a couple of the teams in costa rica for 3 mil or 6 dollars for a normal, and 10 mil or 20 bucks for a really nice one. the majority of mine will be the cheap ones, but ill want some nice jerseys to. food is also a hit or a miss. you can get a full sized burger with fries for 2 mil, 4 bucks, but other things cost like 4 mil, or 8 bucks, to buy a big bag of cereal, ya things are offset here.

country still is beautiful though, sorry i couldnt find my charger till this morning so i didnt get very many pictures, but ill try to get some more for next week. the first couple pictures of the plane ride, so beatiful, and the others are of the bus ride to liberia. it was really jungly, so thats what half of costa rica is like, but i dont have any of san rocque, that will be next week.

san rocque doesnt really have any of the freekishly big bugs like you see on google. there are random stray dogs EVERYWHERE, like 1 for every 8 houses, but not many. we dont have cocroaches or other bugs in our house, but thats because we are in this miny appartment complex thing. the majority oft he jungly forest and exotic animals are near the panama border, which is deathly hot. if i get sent there, ill be sure to show you all the crazy animals. here though, no big animals, just lots of puny ants.

houses are really small. probably 10 feet tall by 30 by 30 at max, with a yard about the same depth behind them. everyone has a television, normally a nice one, and lots of people have phones. id say about half are smart phones, half are brick phones. ive only seen 3 houses have a computer, and those were laptops. not a lot of internet here, only place you can get it is like here, in the internet cafes.

umm what else. its not like adams mission in mexico, there are no fields to work on or anything. its all just dirt rodes and houses, and so no manual labor is required. even if there were fields here, the pura vida lifestyle makes everyone super lazy to do anything. i really am curious what these people do here if they aren't working.

so im probably forgetting a lot of stuff to talk about since there is so much to mention, so if i have forgotten anything major or you want to know more about something, let me know and ill mention it in the next letter.

holding up great though, spanish is coming slowly, and im learning and understanding a little bit more every day. ps don't send packages unless you want to spend a lot of money. you have to detail everything in the package when shipping to costa rica and if its medicinal or hygenic stuff, normally they take it out. food to they normally take out. also fed ex doesnt work here, and it costs about $50 to send, so ya id say dont send any packages. if you really want, instead give mom some cash to put on here card so i can use it here to buy some dinner or something, other ways i can hold up.

lifes great, missionary work is different, but ill get use to it.

Nos Vemos

Elder Campbell