A Titanic of Converts (Women and Children First)

Back in the days of Ventana, I had a constant supply of Oreos. I've fallen back into the habit here in Rica. It's kind of comforting sometimes, except I've almost forgotten the way Oreos are sold in the states. Here, you can't buy a pack of cookies lined in a plastic tray. You can only buy packs of a bunch of individually wrapped 4-pack Oreos. There are so many things like that here. They almost remind me of home, but there's just a weird twist that remind me more than anything else that I'm in a foreign land.

 

The other day we were walking across the central park thing of our area and a huge flock of pigeons suddenly descended and landed all around us. I started laughing wondering what Morgan would do if she were there. People here do the whole light hug with a kiss on the cheek thing to greet each other here. Occasionally, someone (who's meeting us as missionaries for a second time and doesn't understand that we have rules about that stuff) tries to greet us like that and we have to awkwardly reject it. Totally happened to me with this middle-aged lady the other day. I just stood there and she was like ''...no?'' It took us a good five minutes to recover from it socially and get the awkwardness out of the air.

 

I was wondering the other day about the Joseph Smith Building at Temple Square. Do they still show the Restoration movie there, or is that a tradition long past? I think I must be getting pretty subconsciously well-focused on the mission! The majority of my dreams are literally about teaching lessons and having baptisms and seeing people make changes in their lives.

 

So yeah the single mom and one of her seven children are getting baptized this week! I'm baptizing her, and Elder Gutierrez is baptizing her 10 year old daughter. I'm kind of nervous because I've never baptized an adult before, just teens and kids. And I'm already awkward enough doing those baptisms. We'll see how it goes. There are also two 13 year old twins, boys, that should be getting baptized a couple weeks later if they're willing to change their punk attitudes a little more. All the kids in that family love the missionaries. They're obsessed with that tie trick where you tell someone to blow on it and you make it look like the tie is melting. They make me do it every time I go, and every time they jump up and down and shout like it's the first time. they're gonna be a great, huge family of members.

 

Yesterday, as sacrament meeting was about to start, none of our investigators had shown up. I then realized that the 16 year-old boy we baptized the week before was sitting up on the stand, ready to bless the sacrament for the first time. It filled me with such joy to see him already being able to receive and excercise the priesthood. That was just the beginning of a beautiful chain of events. After, our biggest investigator family showed up just in time for the meeting. They're usually about 30 minutes late. The boys in that family had brought a friend of theirs to introduce him to the church.
 

A bit into the meeting, a man walked in and sat down a couple rows ahead of me. It was a man we've been visiting who'd been inactive for twenty years and was returning this Sunday for the first time. Then even further into the meeting, an ''eternal investigator'' who'd basically dropped us a couple weeks earlier also walked in and sat down. We had a total of seven of our investigators in church, which was the most I think I've had in this area! This area is considered one of the hardest, if not the hardest in the mission. I got teary eyed as I watched everything come together so perfectly and ponder on the mighty change the Lord is working here in Cartago. I know that no matter what circumstances we're given, if we're obedient and give it our all, we will see miracles in our lives and recognize the blessings the Lord has given us.

 

This probably won't make much sense to you guys, but to people who like Pokemon, it'll be hilarious maybe. There's this member here that has decided I'm a Pokemon, and when he greets me he always goes ''Hampton Hamp!'' in this voice that sounds like it'd be a pokemon shouting its name. I'm a fire type. He asked me what Mom's maiden name is, and said that means that I evolve into Kitchen, with more powerful oven burning attacks. Only nerds are gonna like this paragraph of the email, but leave it in.

 

Glad that Syd made it to Florida okay! I still love living in a house of 4 missionaries. I didn't find Tazorac but I've been trying a Mexican brand of stuff they sell in the pharmacies here. It may or may not be working decently. Still no news on Mother's Day. I'll know next week for sure, and send a quick message as soon as I start Internet to let you know when I can do the call and all the info, so you guys can reply in that same 90 minutes that I'm using internet.

 

We probably won't get to go to the temple again for at least a couple months... But yeah! Have a great week! Love you guys!

--Elder Hampton

Being Myself

There are three sisters from Orem in our zone, and I have connections with all of them! One of them knows the Sopers, one of them knows the Reeves, and one of them is the sister of a girl I went to EFY with. Weird. I love our zone though. There's an Elder that's also pretty determined to make music someday, and he can't believe that I'm in a band that's already finished and released one album, and always treats me like a celebrity and shakes my hand with two hands and announces to everyone in the room that I'm a great man. Fun times. I'm making so many friends in the mission, and it's pretty useful that Utah is all Ziony meaning that a lot of missionaries will end up there after the mission at some point and we'll totally hang out.

Obama is coming here on May 3. Wonder what kind of ruckus he's gonna cause. Just kidding, I've never been enough into politics to have a strong opinion about the president. What's up with Korea? Aren't they threatening the states or something? J---s asked me to baptize him yesterday, which made me super happy but I'm also stressed now because nobody is going to do anything about the font problems and I'm going to have to scramble to figure out how to get it full. But yeah, he's getting baptized this Saturday. If everything goes absolutely perfectly, we could baptize at least one person every weekend of this month! J----n did indeed get confirmed yesterday. I'm so happy that he is a member. The first thing he said to me when we were changing after the baptism ordinance was ''Just one more year till I can wear a plaque that says Elder G------s.'' He's gonna be an awesome missionary.

I'm not necessarily overwhelmed as District Leader. There are eight missionaries in our district, including my companionship. I just have to get everyone's numbers each week, do baptismal interviews, and teach District Meeting each week. I teach my first one tomorrow, but I feel prepared and fine about it. I still don't have any details about the Skype call! I'll let you know as soon as I know. Well, the Monday after I find out haha. Tell Alex I say congrats on his call! That's so awesome. Leaving basically exactly a year after I did! He's gonna be great. I totally dig the carpet in the family room. I'll definitely lay on it first thing when I walk in the door one day. I miss carpet. It's super rare here. We actually have it in our bedrooms in our house right now, but it's the hard, classroom type of carpet that hardly counts.

I'm really happy to be here. I think I was a little occupied before trying to figure out how to be a missionary, and losing part of me. Now I know how to be a missionary, but instead of being a missionary called Jacob Hampton... I'm Jacob Hampton, a missionary. I don't know, this probably all sounds stupid. I'm just happier because I know how to be myself and a missionary at the same time now. Maybe that wasn't a balance I shouldn't have ever had to try to find, but I did it, and I'm glad. I also think in my first area, the struggle to understand people and sometimes to speak caused people to kind of write me off as the serious, quiet type. But in this area, I can finally show people my personality, and they actually want to talk to me! It's been a self-esteem booster.

Hope you guys are having an awesome week! Getting close with LOST? Love you all!

--Elder Hampton

"Finally, here's the baptism picture from last week. I realized I don't have any photos with Elder Gutierrez. We'll have to take one for next week haha. "

The Four Baptisms.

So there I was, walking down a dirty city street, shivering in the brisk Cartago breeze because all of my clothes were wet, lugging along another big bag full of other wet clothes, starving from fasting all day, and feeling slightly embarrassed and inadequate... yet it was all okay, because I got to be part of helping someone take a huge step toward the Celestial Kingdom. How did I get to such a position? Let's rewind to a few days earlier. We told J----n that he would have to wait a week between his baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost because he had to be presented in sacrament meeting, so we invited him to be baptized on the 13th with J---s. He said no. He couldn't wait, and still wanted to be baptized on Sunday.

Suddenly we had a baptism to throw together. Meanwhile, Elder Velazquez was leaving the area and had other things to worry about. I struggled for a couple days to contact our mission leader and make a program without success, which left me scrambling to find last-minute speakers the night before the baptism. Sunday arrived, and I felt that things weren't quite planned out well enough. Oh how right I was. Where did things begin to go wrong? I believe with the font. We turned the water on about three hours later to give it plenty of time to fill. Things seemed to be going fine so we left the font alone and watched conference. An hour later, we checked the water level and were filled with horror to see that there's no way it was working normally. Water must have been escaping somehow, because there was nowhere near an hour's worth of water.

The bishop had the idea of finding a big stone outside, and putting it on top of the drain in case that was the problem. We did that, and it worked a little bit. But only a little bit. Fast forward to the scheduled start time of the service, and we're looking at a water level about knee high. We tried postponing as much as we could. The member J----n had chosen to baptize him was all ready and dressed in white. At this point we decided to take photos. About five minutes after the photo was taken, the bishop saw the member ready to baptize and freaked out. He said he had to make some phone calls, then talk to the member. Meanwhile, everyone kept approaching me all expectedly and asking when we were going to start, or wanting to do pointless things that were stressing me out. I hated it. I got so overwhelmed.

The bishop finally came up to me and told me the member couldn't baptize J----n. I said... ''I can do it.'' I don't know why, the words just came out. I had to go break the news to J----n that the member couldn't baptize him, then checked to see who he wanted to do it. He said it was fine if I did. I wasn't planning on baptizing yesterday, so I didn't bring a change of clothes. We'd brought white pants for the member, so at least I was able to use those. I had to keep my same garments and white shirt though. Meanwhile, the font hadn't really made any progress. The speakers did a great job, and the time for the ordinance came. We decided to do the baptism with J----n and I kneeling. It was awkward though, and I almost fell over with him. I was like what is this? Mosiah 18:14? That was only the first time though. I had to do it three more times. Once because he didn't get all the way under the first time, and two times because I said the prayer wrong. It was humiliating. But at the same time I didn't care, because J----n was finally baptized.

Elder Baca and I got a kick out of the fact that there was a twitter thing in the corner during confernce. #ldsconf. ''Mr. Jones'' by the Counting Crows plays ridiculously often in every business of any kind in Costa Rica. I hear it at least four times a week. Oh yeah! I was so into telling the baptism story that I forgot to mention changes! My new companion's name is Elder Gutierrez. Also from Mexico! Monterrey. He's always been a member. He came to the country with Elder Velazquez, so he has ten months. I did get my package at changes! I love it! Thank you so much for sending it!!! Oh yeah, I don't know if they showed the same in between conference things on TV as the internet broadcast, but Saturday between sessions they talked about D. Todd Christofferson in Central America and showed a couple of shots of him shaking hands with Elders in our mission. Guess that's why they filmed us!

Can you believe we get to talk on Skype again in just a month? I don't know which day exactly I get go talk, but we'll have to coordinate as soon as I find out! Unfortunately, J---s couldn't come to any conference because he was working. People have to come to church three times before they can get baptized, so we'll have to postpone his baptism till the 20th. That's a bummer that Grandma and Grandpa can't go to Sweden anymore, but I'm so glad they still get to serve! You guys are going to finish LOST so fast! Definitely be sad. The journey suddenly feels so short when it's over. I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Sorry that this email is so lopsided and mostly taken up by that baptismal story. Oh yeah! I'm also Senior Companion and District Leader now! Weird. It has me kind of freaked and stressed out, but I was fasting yesterday to be able to do a good job. We'll see how it all goes! Anyway, gotta go. Love you guys!

--Elder Hampton

This Is No Prison

I'm alive again this week! P-Day is today because changes are tomorrow... and the results are... I'm not training this change. Elder Velazquez does have changes though, so I'll be getting a new companion tomorrow. I'm also hoping that my package has arrived so I can get it at changes. I'm assuming they have them in the states since it's an English word, but Taco Bell came out with these new types of burritos called Grillers, and I'm absolutely addicted to them. We eat there way, way too often. I don't even want to say how often because it's so embarrassing. In other awesome news, J---s is going to be baptized on April 13! That's not all, someone else is getting baptized that day. Someone who has been condemned by countless missionaries and members as an eternal investigator who has hit a permanent wall. Shame on all of them, because J-----n is getting baptized on April 13, and I couldn't be more happy about it.

There's actually a fun story behind that. Last Saturday, we had a lesson with him in the house of his friend who's a member, and we had planned it as the last shabang. We wanted to discuss all his problems and give him a final, direct invitation to be baptized. I went into that lesson with such earnest prayer for guidance and the present of the Spirit. He knew what was coming. After chatting for a few minutes, we were able to get an opening prayer in and begin to discuss why he's been going to church for a year without baptism. I did my best to be patient and follow the Spirit. However, everyone in the room was not doing that, and the conversation kept getting blown away into little side topics that didn't matter, mostly by the member's family (who aren't members). Eventually, I felt that I should just speak up a little louder and more directly, and told J----n that we're only so persistent because we love him and want him to have all the blessings of the gospel, then told him we'd ask him one very last time: ''Will you be baptized?''

...he said ''Let me ask.'' Meaning he wanted to keep praying about it. Like he always says. I felt let down. We finished the lesson, and I was almost even to the point of feeling silly for thinking anything was going to happen. Before leaving, we made plans to meet up with them that night for dinner. We went about the day, and a bunch of other things happened and built up, and by the time we met up with them for dinner, I was completely sad and angry, and it was hard to act all happy and social. Once we were inside KFC, I found myself alone at the table with J----n while everyone else was up getting food and drinks and what not. I didn't really know what to say to him. Luckily, he spoke up first. ''Can one be baptized on a Sunday?'' I was a little taken aback, but didn't really think about it much before telling him ''Yes.'' ''Okay then, plan my baptism for April 7.'' I didn't even know how to react. I shouted that I wanted to hug him. That moment turned around the whole night for me. I didn't care about any of the stuff that had happened earlier, because in that moment I felt my missionary-purpose meter just overflowing. That is the joy of this work. Since then, we've changed the date till the 13th because of conference, but still! He told us later, ''So many missionaries have tried to get me to do this, but somehow you guys were the ones who finally did it.''

I'm glad we had the highlights of setting two baptismal dates this past week, because Holy Week is pretty lame with the way everything shuts down and everyone goes on vacation. Holy Week ends with Easter Sunday, but it's not really anything more than the end of Holy Week. They don't celebrate Easter with anything remotely similar to the way we celebrate it. At least not that I noticed. I'm glad you guys had a great time in Moab! I really will have to go there someday. That's way too high-end that Sydney got to sing ''Some Nights'' for choir. I'm super jealous and wish I could have heard it. The only April Fools stuff that happened to me here was Elder Baca and Elder Lundberg dragging me out of my top bunk, swinging me around, and throwing me on the floor. I wasn't really fooled though, just attacked. Anyway, I don't think April Fools is celebrated in Latin America since nobody else did anything.

We don't do much on P-Days here. Maybe this next change I'll go to the Irazu Volcano, which is apparently super famous. I think it's the one the Grants told us about. I've heard from other missionaries though that it's kind of expensive to go and isn't all that cool. There's a cool big mall nearby that we went to a couple times already. I like having relaxing P-Days though. I don't like long stressful days of a boring activity where we don't even get to use Internet by the end because it took so long. Conference will be broadcast in our chapel, but I think we might be watching it somewhere else as gringos. Elder Velazquez is the only one in our house that has changes, leaving us three gringos and whoever my new companion is. We'll see what happens, but I know I'll get to see it in English somehow. We're on the same time as you guys now, because they announced the sessions as being broadcast at 10 and 2!

It's been a great week. You'll hear from me again on Monday when I have my new comp and all. Love you!

--Elder Hampton