9-15-14 lots of great photos

Al Mundo!

As always, i want to talk to you about a couple of stuffs i learned, but i want to be more personal in this letter with how im doing, ill update those things at the end though. 

first up. moved into our new appartment a few weeks ago, just clarifying that up if anyone is still confused. keep in mind, this is a really really really really good appartment. it is better than the zone leaders and the secretaries to the president. this was newly built, and it 260mil for the 4 of us. so 520 dollars a month for the place. we do have to pay electricity and water after, so it will probably be another 40 dollars, but we did luck out with this. just wait tell my next transfer, and my living conditions will stink.

i realized, or at least i think ive realized, why there isnt any chocolate down here in costa rica. All chocolate melts in warm conditions like your hand, right? i saw a toblerone bar here in the store and freaked out, because its sweet and nothing here tastes sweet besides bread and sugar, so i bought 3 of them. turned out they were all somewhat melted, and they were kept in a store that was air conditioned. So ya, chocolate is hard to keep solid here.

I tend to get along with kids. Members of my family know this, that im good with kids, but i really can see it here. Ya i can connect with adults and youth, and trying to learn to connect with investigadors to, but in reality its the kids 12 and under that i really connect with. I can play with them, and im actually happy with them. Ill talk a bit more about happiness later, but its one of the few times, when im playing ball with the little kids, that im actually happy. I dont really know why i was given that gift, but i hope sometime in my future ill be able to find out. might not be in my mission, possibly not till i have kids of my own, but the lord gives us talents for a reason, and i just havent discovered that reason.

Any meal ideas for what i can buy. Its down to a egg sandwhich every morning, and sometimes a hotdog sandwhich (bread with mayo, mustard, and ketchup, with two hot dogs cut in half) for dinner about once every 3 days. so im finally getting to the point where im eating, but they dont fill me up at all. i cant buy too many things down here, resources are limited, but i can be creative when i have the money for next month. so send me all sorts of meal ideas that are possibly for a college student type situation, but with less resources and skills.

being starved with everything, you learn what your desires are. ive learned i miss music a ton. i always listened to music before, with homework, driving, parkour, everything basically except sleep and scripture study, so i really miss music. i also miss school. studying was really a nice work out for my mind. i mean ya i can study spanish, but i mean knowledge type stuff, science, mathematics, literature, memorizing words in spanish isnt really the same. 

everyone hates cats here. and its not like in america where people just generally dont like cats and like dogs better. but they hate cats. their are always stray animals, normally people just shew away dogs or kick at them if they get to close, but there are less cats here and people throw rocks at them. if a house has a cat, the kids will kick and chase after it to smack it with something. poor cats. ill still love you, even if the world doesnt respect you. 

Football is awesome, american that is. i enjoyed it in america, wasnt a huge fan but i enjoyed it. but here since everything is normal football, a football americano is awesome, and i actually have the skill to throw and catch it, unlike a soccerball. i love throwing the little nerf sized footballs with the kids. wish i had a mini plastic football of myown, but they dont send those here. pssh football americanos in costa rica, who would sell such a thing?

food is food. i use to hate brownies, everyone can attest to that, but constantly being starved, it doesnt matter what you put on my plate, ill eat it. so i love brownies now, dont love onions, but ill eat them, and all other kinds of stuff. i can understand how peoples tastes changed post mission. ohh and bread. bread here is super airy. i thing im going to pull a cj when i get home and make fresh wheat bread when i get back. that sounds so amazing. and i love bread. good times.

okay, my emotional levels. for the past 3 weeks or so my emotion levels have been really fluctuating. last week, i was getting to the point where i didnt know if i wanted to be in the mission anymore. It was just hard coping with all the demands on my body and my mind, and i wasnt able to understand the language either. i knew that the mission would require much out of me, but my emotions just wouldnt listen to the logic, i understood the concept of turning outward like christ when things get hard, which i was, but i was still depressed. when things got hard i would just work and serve harder, but my emotions were still low. i got to the point where i made a list of all the things that made me happy, and all the things that were making me sad, as well as reasons to go home, and reasons to stay. with one more category of what i would actually do when i got home compared to here. basically what i learned from that, was that the only things that were really digging at me here was that i missed listening to music, and missed playing board games with my family or games on the computer. when i got home, really all i could think of that i would actually do is listen to music, play games, work as a lifeguard since its in the middle of a school semester, and thats about it. nothing productive. on the other hand, being here is super productive, im learning plenty of life lessons, and i know that the gospel is true, so everything im doing progresses the lords work, after that, everything started to get easier for me. my emotions started to get better, and i was finding joy in my depression here because i knew it was all for a better cause. keep in mind this was a week ago. and every day after that just got better and better. 

yesterday i was blessed with an increase in understanding with the language to. what i mean by that is i was thinking to myself, wow, i can actually understand a lot of the language. im about at the point of my understanding as i was at the end of the mtc, but mtc people spoke clearer and slower. so my emotions are much better now, and its great because i can focus harder on what is most important here in the mission and not worry about my self since im over that hump.

we also had the 1 month meeting with president today, and that just helped strengthen my motivation to be here and my happiness. I also found out today that my mtc companion went home last week, he couldnt take it, that was sad to here, but i was feeling the same way just a few weeks ago. 

Hope i can continue to feel good being here. i know its where i want to be, i want to serve a two year mission, but ya missions are hard. and for those of you who havent served a mission, i mean hard as in your mind is your worst enemy. you physical desires get pulled to the limits, and then on top of that lessons and progress from investigators can be really slow sometimes and it feels like you arent doing any progress, but you have to remember everything is in the lords time. 

but ya, as of now, loving the mission, actually mean it this time, and doing good. i guess you could say what i was having homesickness, and i still have a little, but im trying to put my focus on my mission, and not myself. anyways, tell next time

Elder Campbell


PHOTOS



Really there is only McDonald's and overpriced pizza hut here, so we took 5 of the youth in our area and bought them McDonald's. stuffed all of us in the same taxi, good times.

So we were giving service to this one lady, and she had us help dig her a whole for poop basically. The whole was about 1 1/2 meters when we got there, and we dug another 1 meter, the video and the pictures are at about 2 meters give or take. And since it was so far down, it was hard to dig. we basically used a 30 pound metal rod to break up the dirt, shovel it in a bucket, and lift it above our heads to our companion. Nearly impossible after 2 meters when soy was in the ground, because he had to jump to give me the bucket. so i basically shoveled the last half meter, that was wretched! 

So basically liberia is the city, for what you would consider a city in the outskirts of costa rica, and san roque is the houses outside the city. In our house in Utah. we have the house, a back yard, and behind the backyard is a park. here. we have investigators homes, their puny backyard, i have pictures, and then a jungle, pictures are as follows

we have also been working on building a fence for a service project here. Everything in guanacaste is brick or cement walls, dirt or cement floor, and lamina for roof, lamina is like tin sheets. For the fences you find a random stick in the woods, bring it to the house, dig a whole for it, and nail some nails in the wood to some lamina, the following are the pictures, and i also sent a video. we didnt build the shed, but we put all the fence on

this is a super light rain in guanacaste. Its still raining often, almost daily, which is still super rare, dont know what it means, but probably not a hurricane or something. the picture with the water in the road is 5 minutes after a rain storm. camera died after that

appartment pictures! keep in mind, this is a really really really really good appartment. it is better than the zone leaders and the secretaries to the president. this was newly built, and it 260mil for the 4 of us. so 520 dollars a month for the place. we do have to pay electricity and water after, so it will probably be another 40 dollars, but we did luck out with this. just wait tell my next transfer, and my living conditions will stink

the only patch of grass in san roque. dangit i want to go tricking and do flip,s by the way not sure if i said it earlier, but president wilkinson gave me permission to do flips anytime anywhere, even in church attire. so i only do sideflips and backflips elsewhere. i would do more but there isnt any grass, so im not comfortable. sad panda, guanacaste

walking with some of the members after one of the youth received the aaronic priesthood. and then a picture of a football field. normally people play in the streets, but this is a really nice field we found, the equivalent of gangs hang around this field, but less violent then the american connotation. but this field is where you can buy drugs, but also where you can watch some mean field soccer taking place!

Dear Mom, 

Thanks for the care package, hope it comes sometime soon, as in the next 4 weeks. 

 i miss rasberry jam. things that are sweet are super expensive here. for example, the same size rasberry jam jar here is 12 dollars. ridiculous i know, its a luxury to have a pbj&J

 i miss little kids from utah. little kids here still play, but its with dirt and cochroaches, i miss good old clean play, like pillow fights. ill talk a bit more about kids in my letter to the world.

and yes things will be different when i return, i can already feel my desires change, i hope i dont play as many computer games or stay on the computer as long. after seeing what a family means here, im so glad i have my family back home, and ill want to connect with them more.

Well, more details are in the world letter, this one will be long and personal. Until next week

Elder Campbell