A Chop Suey Thanksgiving

Happy Holidays! It´s definitely the season here. People went crazy and started decorating for Christmas at the end of October. I was able to have a decent Thanksgiving. We ate at some members´house in our district. They made chop suey, and it was delicious! We also played with their puppies. I appreciate small things like that so much more out here. I love my district. There are six of us, and they're basically my family here. I won't get the package until December 4th when we have changes meeting. I did get some letters at Multi-Zone last week, which made my life! I sent replies today to Haylee, Mika, Abby, and Thad. Just so you guys know that you can be expecting something from me, but it might take a couple weeks to get there. I also met Bronson Bushnell's cousin at Multi-Zone. Elder Petersen, from Spanish Fork. He's going home next week.

I realized that I haven't asked how Milo is doing at all in these three months. How is he? Alive? Oh yeah! I totally forgot to tell you guys about L--- and N--- because they're so perfect and progressed without any problems at all. They were a reference from our cook, and we baptized them on Saturday! I baptized N---. She's 10, and she's an innocent little angel. It was such a great feeling. I'll be trying to send a picture we took with them. My first baptism! Ah. It was exciting. The fungus has cleared up a ton, but I actually haven't even used Listerine! I realized last week that the Toe Juice I have smells quite a bit like Listerine, so I tried to use a ton of that every day to see if it would do the same thing, and it´s totally been destroying the fungus, so all is well with that!

So V---. We went to have a sober lesson with him, and it went really well. He understood our purpose and was really receptive to the gospel and the Book of Mormon. The thing is, we forgot to get his phone number, and the next time we went to teach him, he had moved somewhere without telling anyone because he's not friends with anyone in that apartment building! However, we definitely needed to meet V---. For our companionship. The things we ended up discussing because of V--- pointed out some ways we need to mega improve. This is kind of coming from Elder Baca. I was pretty sad that V--- had moved and that we had no way of contacting him, and that was kind of the whole experience for me. But Elder Baca keeps saying that seeing the way I treated V--- humbled him a ton and impacted him in a way that he otherwise couldn't have been to become a better representative of Jesus Christ. So whatever, I'll take that! As with any investigator that falls through, at least we planted a seed.

Yes, I do take a cold shower every day... We have a cheap appliance that's supposed to heat the water as it comes out, but it doesn't work. I don't really know what to do or who to talk to. We keep saying we're going to figure out one day but we never do. It's kind of some terrible mental torture every morning to find the will power to go in there and shower, but once you get the courage to step under, it´s not all that bad. It's been like 60 degrees here this week and the people are going crazy and wearing puffy coats everywhere. I guess this is their winter, haha. It feels great outside to me.

I think that's all I really have to say this week! I'm going to send some pictures and a short thing for the ward.

Almost a Month in Rica!

What a week. It's probably been the most interesting one of my mission so far. The foot fungus has only really gotten worse, so I'll for sure try the Listerine thing. I'll send you a nasty picture of how gross it is. Unfortunately, I think the mission Thanksgiving dinner was just a rumor. Maybe Christmas though. We might eat at the house of some members in another area in our district on Thursday. To answer your question, mom, there are no cell phones in the mission, so we have to make all of our phone calls from our apartment. It's pretty frustrating sometimes, like when we're trying to meet up with other companionships.

We're gonna ask President if we can use Skype for our Christmas call though. Two different members have already offered to let us use their computers for it, so that should be awesome if it works out! The language gets better every day. It still depends on the person though. There are some people that I just have to stare at blankly until I can get enough sense of the tone of what they're saying so I know if I can smile or not. I'll hopefully be able to throw something short together for the ward each month. When I can't though, thanks for being willing to put it together for me!

Some things that have made this week great: We've been putting a lot of focus on this family we call 'Los Quince.' We call them that because a Modern Family-esque array of 15 people all live under the same roof, and about ten of them listen to us every time we go over. Some of them are really starting to progress, and six of them came to church yesterday, so we're really getting excited about visiting them. Last P-day we were in the city, and we went to this fast food restaurant called Mo Joe's. I don't know if it's in the States, but it was SUPER nice for a place here. They even had a door greeter!

I'm turning into quite the city boy. I hate it when it's silent when I'm trying to sleep. It's unsettling. I like the ambience of car alarms and fighting dogs. I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but stray dogs roam the streets here like it's nothing. They're everywhere. About as common as seeing like birds on the sidewalk in the States. Some of them try to attack us sometimes, but most of those turn and run if you bend down like you're picking up a stone to throw at them. If they don't get scared, you just have to actually find a stone to pick up then throw it and they'll run.

We went to the temple on Wednesday! I was super nervous to do a session in Spanish, but it turned out to not be bad at all! There was even an option to use English headphones but I didn't use any because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it on my own, and I did. I thought I've been gaining a ton of weight here, but maybe I was just seeing all my MTC fat, because the other day the Elder's Quorum president and his wife told me I'm way skinnier than the week I got here, so that was good to hear, haha.

Mom and Dad, you guys have always told me that I'll find people that only I'll be able to help. I've actually found someone that I'm feeling that applies to! We were at the apartment of one of our investigators, and one of his neighbor/roommate people walked up and started to talking to us. His name is V---. He was telling Elder Baca and I about how Christ is the only person that's really there for him, that his woman left him for another man, and that he doesn't think his son is his. We were trying to eat dinner at this point, but V--- kept talking to me. He said he has a gift for seeing people as they truly are, and he was telling me how he sees me, that I'm really genuine and that I was listening to him with my heart.

It was true. For some reason I had this super strong desire to help this guy. He asked us to come by the next night, and said he wanted to change his life. V--- was drunk throughout this entire conversation, and I knew that, but the Spirit was telling me that I shouldn't dismiss him as just another drunk. We went over the next night when he was sober, and I learned how sad he really is. Because of his sadness though, he's ready to hear the gospel, and I have lots of hope and faith that he really can change, and I feel strongly that as long as I continue to care this much about helping him, and show him that, he's going to progress really well.

Speaking of drunk people, there's a man that lives around the corner from us that I love talking to. We don't know his name, but when we talk about him we just call him Jack Sparrow. He seriously is Captain Jack Sparrow. He looks exactly like him, seems to always be drunk, and has been wearing a shirt with a pirate skull on it for three days now. The funniest part about him is that I doubt he even knows who Jack Sparrow is. He bought us fried chicken yesterday. Anyway, I should get going. Another week ahead of hard work and cold showers. I pray for you guys every night as my family, and as individuals. I pray for individual friends every night too. I love you all and miss you! Thank you so much for putting that package together! I can't wait to receive it. You should get two pictures from me.

--Elder Hampton

Jake and Elder Baca at the temple

Some creepy doll

Rica Week 3

Hi!

Time is passing so fast and slow at the same time. Kind of the same way it has since the day I left. It´s surprising how long ago some things were, yet it feels like I´ve been out here a lot longer than three weeks. I actually did think of some things that would be nice to have in this package. Maybe if you run into any of my friends who want to write me but don´t want to figure out how to send foreign mail, you could tell them they can throw a letter in with the package! That reminds me, I hear that the DearElders just print off at the mission office, so it´s still just as free to send them! Anyway, I´ve been thinking about how much I would love to have a couple books of Sudokus to do at night. It´s a weird craving I´ve been having. I would love some chocolate, but it might melt in the whole process, so I dunno! Anything to help teach people play the piano would be so marvelous though. Thanks so much! Yeah the Heinz can drop it off at the mission office if they want. Or if they´re somehow in San Jose on a Monday I can go pick it up from them haha. Tell them thanks a bunch!

I experienced my first earthquake a few nights ago. It basically wasn´t one though. Elder Baca was just suddenly like ´´Whoa. the bed is shaking.´´ It wasn´t even that noticeable though. My feet have taken a bit of a hit this week. I think I had the beginnings of an ingrown toenail, but I was able to rescue it before it got bad. Now I have some fungus though, so that´s fun! It´s just the result of some foolish sandal habits, and I´m taking care of it. W---r... Oh, W---r... So these members had let him stay at their house the night before we found him an apartment. We talked to them a few days later, and apparently they were super nice and made him some food, but he was like ´What is this? I don´t want it.´ Then he was talking on his phone and walking in and out of the house all night. The wife said she doesn´t even believe he´s a private investigator. He told them he has 14 kids. He told us he has 5. Plus the family said they thought he had a gun. We started to think he might have just been progressing because he knew he could find some help with money and somewhere to stay. The night before his baptism, we told him we probably couldn´t do it the next day. He said that was fine. That was our last sign that he doesn´t actually care, so we´re trying to figure out what to do about all of that.

It hasn´t rained much this week. Usually when it does, though, it rains really hard for a few hours, then nothing. I still haven´t seen any cool wildlife really, haha. I held an iguana the other day! But that´s about it. We for sure get our best investigators through member referrals. A lot of people here are nice on the streets and stuff and say you can come by, but then they´re really hard to track down at their house and become really disinterested. We had 7 investigators at church this week. The church is pretty small. It´s actually two buildings. There´s the chapel building, which is maybe just a little bigger than the section with the benches in our church, and then there´s a building right next to it with classrooms and the baptismal font. There´s an outdoor basketball/soccer court/parking lot behind the buildings.

I heard a rumor that we´re eating dinner on Thanksgiving and Christmas as a whole mission! No idea if there´s anything to it though. Thanks for the thought, Dad! It was humorous, but also made a super good point. We cannot put off what the Lord has asked us to do. Definitely applies to missionary work hardcore. Glad you guys are truckin´along with LOST! Keep it up if you like it, but don´t force yourselves haha. I haven´t had any super touching, strikingly huge experiences yet. There are just little things every day that inspire me. I´ll be sure to tell you about another investigator next week. I´ll have to decide throughout the week so I don´t waste time telling you about someone else who only falls through at the end and ends up being a psycho stalker moocher. Love you all! I´m going to try to send a couple pictures from the hike.

--Elder Hampton

Here's where Jake and Elder Baca went on a hike one P-Day 

As Jake describes, this is a "weird building thing" they saw on their hike. 

Well Hi!

Sorry this is pretty late and you might be freaking out! We went on this big hike today so we´re pretty late using the internet. There´s this mountain nearby with a long steep trail going up. Along the way are three big crosses (like a crucifixion cross) with amazing overlooks of the city and things like that. The third cross at the top is huge and you can see it from pretty much all of San Jose. It was kind of a rough experience, but I guess it was cool as long as we never do it again, haha. There were lots of very LOSTy moments on the trail that I loved.

Oh, I want to say to everyone that I´ll generally only be getting mail every six weeks at changes meeting, so don´t think that I´ve abandoned you if it takes awhile to respond to letters. There aren´t really any exact rules about if I can email friends. I´m just not supposed to do anything on the internet that´s going to become a distraction from the work. I think that having all my friends email me would just create a buildup of long replies I´d have to try to rush through in a short time every week. So I´m thinking it´ll probably be better to stick to snail mail for friends, but I´ll let you know if I change my mind.

I went on divisions (splits, exchanges or whatever) with one of the zone leaders last week. They´re in San Jose Central. I didn´t even realize that part of the city existed! I thought I´d seen the cityish areas, which are kind of Downtown Provo-y. But San Jose Central is like a wannabe New York City, which was really cool to see. Tons of American things there. Even a Carl´s Jr.! I want to go there sometime. However, fast food and junk food are really expensive here, and fruits and veggies are really cheap. Kind of opposite of some stores in the states.

Halloween was fun! They don´t really celebrate it here, but it´s a day that´s pretty much an excuse for all the youngsters to cause trouble in the streets. I don´t know if it was for our mission, or probably a whole bunch, but a Seventy apparently ordered that all missionaries be in their houses by 5:00 on Halloween. We didn´t even really realize it was Halloween till we got that phone call. They didn´t even know what it was for, just that we had to be home by then. We started theorizing that it had been revelation because there was going to be a huge earthquake, or the second coming or something. Unfortunately, it seems it was just to keep us off the streets. We had four extra hours to kill, so Elder Baca and I played some serious Monopoly Deal, took the bishop up on his offer to provide us dinner on nights where we have no food (because we really didn´t), and just kind of partied and watched some material movies about temples and stuff. We may have also watched God´s Army 2 on his iPod. Don´t really know what our mission rules are on movies. It uplifted me though, and it takes place in the mission field, so I guess we´ll call it good. Excellent, if not untraditional, messages of repentance.

We had 11 investigators at church on Sunday! 6 of them were a family we´ve never met that showed up on their own... but it still felt awesome to be able to write down that number! We´re really starting to find a lot of people to teach. The one closest to baptism is named W---. He was a homeless bounty hunter who kept missing his baptismal interviews because he was finally finding some new clients. He still hasn´t been paid by those clients though, so he was still homeless till yesterday. He basically came to us with his problem of not having anywhere to sleep on Saturday night. We wanted to let him stay with us, being a little (un)inspired by God´s Army 2, haha. But obviously we didn´t do that, don´t worry.

We were just desperately praying that this situation could be solved, partly because we love him, and partly because we were tired of him putting awkward pressure on us to find him somewhere to stay. We set up for him to stay Saturday night with some super crazy generous recent converts. On Sunday, we casually stopped by one of our investigators who lives in a house apartment thing, and asked if a room was open, and she said he can live there for free until he gets paid by his clients! Prayer answered. Awkward situation destroyed. Now we just have to get him interviewed this week and we should be able to baptize him on Saturday!

I can´t remember if I mentioned last week, but I´m the ward pianist. I´m so glad to help. There are about 100 people in our ward, but almost every single one of them sing like a confused robot. Hopefully the piano carrying the song along will help them learn how to actually move their voice to different notes, then we can work from there. I´m also teaching a recent convert how to play the piano, but it´s not going too fast because all I have to teach him is pen, paper, and my pocket-sized hymn book, and he knows next to nothing about reading music. We´ll see how long that goes on for, haha. It´s really hard to teach without materials. It´s not a super official thing anyway though. They asked me yesterday to play the piano for the primary program next month, so I´ll be doing that as well. Should be a blast.

To answer some questions: Cleaning our apartment went pretty well, but it got dirty again super fast. I´m slowly getting used to that. Haven´t had turtle eggs yet! I think the guy forgot that he told us he´d buy them. We walk SO much. I get sore on the days we do a ton. The pizza here isn´t bad! There are some delicious hamburger places. I´m doing just fine with what I have. Can´t think of anything I need for Christmas! Don´t even worry about it. People set up their Christmas trees a few days before Halloween here. Crazy. I haven´t seen the president since I first got here! He´s great though. I probably don´t have time to read all the forwarded emails every week. But if you´re reading all of them beforehand, maybe you can pick one each week that´s particularly powerful? I have absolutely no idea about the time change! Our area is very suburby, I´m discovering. Love it.

I pretty much have to go. I can´t figure out how to send pictures on this computer, but next week we´ll probably go to a different place where it´s easier! Love you! Till next week.

--Elder Hampton