Adam - September 7, 2010

Hello friends and family,

This week has been quite a good one. I did a lot of traveling. I went to Orotina, where our District Leader is serving and did an exchange there, and went to San Jose because we were having money issues. So this week has been a little stressful and busy. The best news that I have is that we have a Babtism this saturday, and hopefully three more this month. That´s huge and it makes me excited to finally speak the language and teach some lessons. On tuesday, we got a call from the Secretaries saying that a woman contacted them asking to take the lessons. She had the missionaries over in 1995 and just started reading the Book of Mormon again. She said that she is ready and willing to be baptized. So now we just have to go over all the lessons with her and her two kids and get her to come to church 3 times. She came on Sunday, so we´re getting closer.
So I want to try to answer everyone´s questions:

Living Conditions:
Not too bad, but a little dirty. We live in a tiny house that has 3 small rooms. I do have a mattress mom, it´s a little old and there are a few spots that you can kinda fall into, but for the most part, it´s pretty comfy. We have a fridge and a small stove that is electric and sits on our counter.

My Area:
I live in a city called Juanita Mora. But it´s really small. I´d tell people that I live in Barranca, or in Puntarenas. It´s really poor, and everyone has really small houses and rides bikes EVERYWHERE! It rains a lot, but it´s not as consistent as somewhere towards the middle of the country like San Jose. The beach makes the weather a different everyday. I live about 20 minutes from an ugly beach that nobody is ever on. It smells pretty funky too. We have a really big branch, almost 90 or 100 active members, and we recieve a lot of references. So we don´t tract a lot. Mostly we are running from house to house teaching lessons.

PriceSmart:
This is my favorite place in Costa Rica. They only have a few and they are all in San Jose. We went there yesterday and I loved it. What it is is.... COSTCO! It´s Costa Rica´s version of Costco. It´s a members only store that sells things in bulk. It´s set up almost exactly like costco with the electronics on the left right when you walk in and the clothes in the middle. It´s a little smaller than the average Utah Costco so it´s a little different. The absolute best part though is that it has AMERICAN FOOD! It´s like walking back into Utah. I loved it. I can´t wait to go back in a few weeks and just reminice of the good ol days at home. Well, I bought a few things to keep me from starving. I bought a 10 lbs bag of Pancake mix (Krusties of course), Syrup, chocolate chips, peanut butter, and jelly. All are from the US and I love eating them. Definitely the highlight of our week.

Well, all is well in Costa Rica. Mom, I don´t think you should get the ring. Thats a super long time and it´s not that important. You can buy them here... I think. But thanks anyways. I love you all and I know this gospel is true. It´s such an amazing feeling to show someone the blessings that the gospel can bring into their life. Actually seeing a change in their thoughts and actions. The work is hard and long, but when you recieve those results you´ve been working for, it´s so worth every minute. I´ve realized that the church can do so much for a person if they accept things with humility and are willing to change their lives. I love you all so much and know you love me. Can´t wait to talk to you all next week!

Con Amor,
Elder Adam Paulsen


P.S. These are pictures of my house, my roommate and I, the scenery on the bus rides, the jungle, and I think I had one of a monkey that we saw last week in Monte Verde.

John - September 5, 2010

Hello, family!
Well things are going well here, we had 4 of our investigators come to church this sunday, which is kinda a let down, because the people we have been teaching have been swayed to not come to church and its frustrating at times. Their salvation is on the line. But things are good, always having a good time with Elder Brotherson. we play this little game, when we are walking, its whoever can kick little rocks or crushed bottles, really anything, through eachothers legs Gets a goal.
well it rained a lot this week, we talked (ha well E. Brotherson talked i just tried to listen) to a construction worker and he said it was becuse there was a hurricane that hit on the gulf side, So i was wondering if adam got any rain like we did. Speaking of raining, when it does rain my comp and i just bring out our umbrellas, which works awesome. He says it has not rained as hard as it usually does, but yeah. So what im getting at is, that if i had a rain coat i would not use it! Umbrellas work great.
So our for our investigators this week, we have one woman who should get baptised this sunday morning, because she works on saturdays, so that is why it is on sunday morning. Anyway, she has two younger daughters, but they are not progressing as she is. Like she was the only one who went to church this sunday out of the three of them. Hopefully she does get baptised this sunday, she it seems like it could. When we teach her, we have to teach extremely simply, because she does not know how to read and is not very smart, to be honest. So we just have to repeat a lot of things with her. But she is progressing so that is good!
Oh so for my plaque thinger, i want to use the scripture i used in my farewell talk. Matt 5;16 i believe. ´´Let your light so shine before men´´ so yeah i would like that one. Right so the name of the town we are in is called zacatacoluca, area is nonualco. There are 8 missionaries in the town total. We are a little west of the main part of town. If you can find a fast food place called Biggest, then we are west of that and across the bridge, across the street. In a little colonial there. There is an intersection really close that is a four way, but its kinda like a three way. Well its cool there are two volcanoes to the north of us. And just over those volcanoes is San Salvador.
What Brayden is getting his call! wow thats way awesome! Make sure to tell me where he is going when you find out! Thats way sweet
I will tell you about this one story, this happened just yesterday, So I knocked this door, and the door had a picture of christ on it, so we knew that these people were going to be very religious. Well E. brotherson started talking to him, and he brought up the point of why catholics baptise when they are babies: And this man had said he believes in this. So we were about to bust out this scripture that totally destroys this belief, Duet 24:16 and there are like 4 others that say the same thing, Then this guy says that he wants to hear some thing new, from the new testiment. E. Brotherson got really frustrated because says he is catholic but does not belief in the old testiment? Like What? thats retarted. Anyway we did not have any sucess there, but there is one story for you. Also while i have been here i have seen two naked little boys walking on the side walk with their mom. Hah so thats kinda funny.
Well other than spanish things are going good, I can not complain. No Puedo Quejarme
Love you all -Elder John Paulsen

Adam - August 31, 2010

Hello family and Friends!

All is going well in Costa Rica. It´s still really hot, and rains a lot! Everything is going really well. I´ll start off with the cool experience I had this week.

So today is Tuesday, P-Day was yesterday and we had quite the experience. It started off at around 7:15. We got a phone call from our district leader, Elder Sorensen (The cousin of Justin Sorensen, and he played football at BYU), saying that we wanted to go to Monte Verde as a District. We didn´t have a lot of money left over because it was the end of the month, but we heard that the secretaries added all the money to our accounts that day for the month of September. We quickly went to the bank to check, but my new card didn´t work. I ended up using my personal card and took out 20,000 colones (40 bucks) and we headed back to the house. The other Elders showed up at our house at about 8:15 and we all headed out to the bus stop to Monte Verde, but right when we got out the door, the bus we needed left. We asked some of the Ticos when the next bus comes and they said not for another 3 hours or something, so we got a taxi and tried to catch it at the next stop. Yet again, another fail. We missed the bus again. We sat there for a while letting out our frustrations, when another bus came by... what the? We jumped on it and headed for the wonderful Monte Verde.

Monte Verde is a big tourist attraction in Costa Rica. It´s high up in the mountains, and has lots of rainforests and cool things like that. We took our 2 hour bus ride up through hills and mountains. All I can say is that I felt like I was riding in a Safari Jeep. The bus was rocking and bumping the whole time. We finally made it and when we got off the bus got horded by tourist company people. I couldn´t understand anything though because i was so distracted by how cool ( temperature-wise) it was there. I loved it! We followed one of the guys and he convinced us to do a ¨jungle hike thing¨. We took a taxi and got off at our destination. We started our journey through the crazy jungle. It was nuts, unlike anything I´ve ever seen in my life! There were huge trees with vines and moss and leaves everywhere. It was so GREEN! I hope i can send you some pictures. Our hike took about 2.5 hours, but we didn´t see much animal life. We saw a few bugs, catepillars, and spiders. But they were all pretty small and not too different than what i can see in the street. So we were all a little disappointed cause we didn´t see much, when.... we found some monkeys!!!!! MONKEYS!!! Thats what i´ve been waiting for! It was sweet. they were so high in the trees and we couldn´t see them that good, but they just jumped from treetop to treetop. What a cool experience. I don´t think i´ll ever forget it.

Well, we took the bus home, and didn´t make it back until about 5:15 so we didn´t have time to email. That´s why i´m sending it today.

Spanish is going pretty great. It gets pretty frustrating at times, but it´s slowing getting better and better. I can say pretty much whatever I need to, but it´s in a really weird way and I have a feeling that the people can barely understand me.

So everyone should be super proud of me. On sunday, we had lunch with an investigator and we had FISH. but get this, it wasn´t just some ordinary fish.... it was a deep-fried, skin, bones, fins, and tail. I ate most of it, until i had to eat around the spine. That grossed me out a little bit. I still don´t like fish though. ha ha

Everything is good, if i had to say i was craving anything, it´d be ranch. I miss ranch! and maybe some chocolate. These first two weeks have been hard because i haven´t been able to buy a lot of things. We didn´t get a lot of money, but now that I do, I´ll get to buy more things. I was talking with Elder Bateman from Copper Hills, and he said that his mom sends him mac n´cheese. That sounds so good right now. It´s such a simple thing, but they don´t have it here. The food is good though. Today I ate the most delicious steak I´ve ever had in my entire life! And we always eat rice and beans... Always. It´s growing on me.

Well, all is well. I had to give a preisthood blessing yesterday. I didn´t know how to annoint in spanish, but my companion helped me out luckily. It was cool. Well love you all. I love the work. It´s really hard, and results come really slowly. But I love it. love you all

Elder Adam Paulsen

P.S. I tried to send some pictures but the computer is really slow. Next week i´ll start it sooner. Sorry. Love you all!

John - August 30, 2010

well hello family,
this week has been pretty good. I mean as far as understanding about half of what they are saying goes. This last saturday i baptised José Luiz, he was one of our investigators that the missionaries had before us. But they never gave him a baptism commitment, so our fist meeting with him we gave him a baptismal date. He acepted and boom there we are. ha it was funny i didn´t know i was baptising him untill the night before. I guess they had said it in spanish to eachother and i must have missed that part. Anyway it went smoothly, i had to do it two times, because i didn´t get his whole left hand under the water. Then that sunday, yesterday he recieved the gift of the holy ghost. it was kinda a little bit of a scare, because he didn´t show up till like 15 minutes till the end of sacrament! but its okay, all is well. So this Saturday i baptised one and our branch president baptised another. So two baptisms.
It is wierd how some days i can understand the conversation that they are having, and then other times i am totally out of it, and not understanding anything. I think it has a lot to do with what they are talking about though. But spanish is coming along, It won´t come to me in a click, but with time. I always say to my comp, con tiempo. Which means with time.
ha dad its funny you should say the things about ¨free meal!¨ because that is not how it is at all here. There aren´t any places that are like that. Oh and i am getting your emails and everything just fine. For breakfast i usually have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Then for lunch we go to our cook´s place for some good food. Then usually we don´t eat anything for dinner, because it is a prime time for doing lessons and stuff. so i´m suprised that im not starving here. But things are good. Also so we read a lot of scriptures down here. I don´t know if you have an impression that we don´t read much, because I am learning so much right now!
Mom I´m glad that your knee scope went well, good to hear that things are healing up good. Oh yeah about the package. I would really worry about sending most of that stuff. You can send it, but we don´t have to worry about wet wipes down here our toliets are pretty good. I´m just glad that we have running water all the time in our house. So another thing that would be nice would be if you could send beef jerky down here. They don´t have any of that here.
Well thats about all i have to report for this week. Oh so the place we are at is called Nonualco. That is our area. Right now I´m in San Vincente in an internet cafe. So about letters i think there will be a two week delay between letters, I don´t have a ton of time to write letters, so i might just stick to emails. well i gotta go. i love you all, i hope you all are enoying life, because im enjoying it here, Because im in the service of our lord and bringing people unto their salvation! -Elder John Paulsen

Adam - August 23, 2010

Well, I´ve had quite the interesting week. It´s been pretty intense with the whole culture shock thing. I´ll start with my first day here. We can pretty much call it my first day of the mission because... I´ll explain.

So we got to the Mission Office at around 10:30 and we were all exhausted from the crazy-ness of traveling. Well, we got there and had to fill out a few forms and take a picture and finally got to go back to where the AP´s were staying. They had a really nice house. It had a big garage and 3 floors with at least 4 bathrooms. Well, after a little bit of unpacking (enough to change our clothes for the next day) we got to sleep at around 12:30. We had to wake up at 5:45 for breakfast with the president, then we went downtown to get fingerprints for our visas. We got back to the office, had 2 hours of lessons about money, mission rules, etc., and had interviews with the mission president. President Gálvez is a great guy, so is his wife. They don´t speak spanish, but I could tell they had a genuine love for us. Anyways, the trainers all started showing up at the office, we got paired up, and left for our areas. My companion is Elder Portillo. He is about 6 feet tall, and definitely native. He´s from El Salvador, and is... I dunno... different than me. He has a lot of different views on how to work, maybe thats because he´s been in the mission for 9 months, but I was ready to get to work. I guess the President told the trainers to take it easy on us for the first weeks so that we don´t want to go home. But I was completely opposite. I hated going and visiting the members for an hour and a half and waking up really slow, barely studying anything in our four hours of study time. Well, he told me that he was doing that on purpose yesterday and that now we are going to work hard.

So the reason that I said we should call this my first week in the mission is because I couldn´t understand anything that was going on. I could barely pick up on the conversation, and when people ask me a question, I just look at them. Thinking to myself ¨What in the world did they just say?¨ I thought I could understand Spanish pretty good, but with natives it´s another story. Well, luckily Elder Portillo can speak pretty good English and can help me out a lot. Right now, after a full week with the natives, I still can´t understand what´s going on. I don´t even understand why we go to the MTC, it doesn´t help. Well, I´m here, and I´m trying, so that´s all that matters.

My area is called Puntarenas. It´s a pretty big area, so they might put the name on the map. I live in a little crap-hole city called Juanita Mora. It looks like i like in Mexico. I took a picture of the street, but I don´t know how to send it just yet, so next week you´ll be recieving visual confirmation of the place they call a city. Well, my house is tiny, and smells so bad. Elder Portillo said that the apartment is cursed. It stinks and they can´t do anything about it. There are 4 rooms. One is the kitchen/living room where we have desks and a sink. Then there is a small room that is maybe 10x10 for our closet. We have two tables that we have our bags on and live out of. I don´t have anything to hang my shirts up or pants so I just try to fold things nicely. Then we have our bathroom. This is the source of our stench. It REAKS!!!!! I try to hold my breath when I shower, but I end up running out of air and giving in to breathing. Get this, a cockroach died in there on maybe Thursday, and it´s still in the shower. Just sitting there ha ha ha. We don´t have anymore toilet paper, so I´ve been holding it in for a couple of days.... ha ha. Well, the last room is our bedroom. It´s barely big enough for 2 beds and a desk inbetween them. It´s my favorite room in the house because it has a fan.

Well, the weather is pretty good I guess. It´s SO hot in Puntarenas. I´d guess about 90 in the middle of the day. And it is so humid that you start sweating when you sit down to study at 8. Yesterday was the worst day of rain. It rained for about 2 hours and the road turned into a river. We tried riding some member´s bikes home to not get our feet wet, but we aren´t the most coordinated bikers and both of us fell over and got our feet wet. The water was so deep that our feet were getting wet while pedaling the bike though.

All is well family. I´m doing good, feel good, a little homesick, but that´s life. I love you all so much and can´t wait for this next week. I´m hoping my spanish gets better, and the days have more work in them. Love you all so much.

Elder Adam Paulsen

P.S. This guy in our Branch came up to me on sunday and was wondering if you could sent him a HLJ (CTR in Spanish) ring from Deseret book. He said he was a 9 or something. He didn´t care what it looked like, but that it was in spanish. I also would like a ring if you are sending something. I´m a 10.5 and I want a cool CTR ring. It doesn´t need to be in spanish. I told him to pay me when it gets here. If that´s a lot of work, or it´s really expensive (over 20 or 30 bucks) don´t do it. In other words, tell me how expensive it would be to send a ring or two here and I´ll let you know if i think it´s worth it. He´s a little crazy so whatever. And you can send it to the mission office. It´s the address that I sent you. We don´t have and address, I don´t know how you could send a letter to my house. Love you!

John - August 23, 2010

nice thats good to hear that lana got a promotion. Alright well today is my P-Day! Monday. well let me start from the beggining, we got off the airplane when it was raining. We went through outside to meet our mission president, He is an awesome man. and very patient with all of our spanish hah. So he speaks some english and his wife does too. Our first dinner we went into a restaurant and had some little taco things. It was good. it would be like chiles in the states. I think i heard the whole dinner was like 20 bucks maybe. and we had about 18 people with us there. The mission president´s Assistants were there, Elder Evans and Elder Brotherson. He told us that he would be training one of us. He was an AP for 8 months. So we stayed at the AP´s appartment, if you can call that an apartment. hah it we slept on the floor those two nights, with pads, so it wasn´t terrible. But it was way hot! and hummid!
so then our second night here we had dinner at the mission presidents house. and wow is it nice! way nice, he has three daughters i think, the oldest is 14 or something. anyway that was way nice.
Okay so we Then had to wake up at 4 to get ready to go on the bus. 5 of us that were the new incoming missionaries are in my area. But only one Elder, Elder Hyde is in my zone, and a sister, Hermana Wilkes, its kinda funny adam would know her, because she was in his district back in the MTC for 3 weeks. anyway i found out that my comp was Elder Brotherson! crazy. He has said that the president never puts new gringos with a gringo trainer. But with our whole district he has put all of us with gringo comps. So we got onto the bus, and left my companion, Elder Harvey, ha good-bye Elder Harvey and Hello Elder Brotherson. I like this change. Ha sad but true. Elder Brotherson is the bomb, i like him a lot. He is way funny. anyway we got into our room around 6 that night. the place was a mess. Lets just say the living standards are a little lower than in the US hah. Its okay though. we are doing good in the area. We have two people set for baptism for the 28th of this month. Ha i can´t really say that its my baptism because in the lesson, i don´t talk much. Since I´ve gotten here I´ve realized how much spanish i don´t know. HA . Yeah but its getting better already. The first day i got in here i could not understand a word the people were saying. But last lesson we were in i was picking up on a lot of what they were saying. Oh and those two people for baptism were already people the Elders were working on before we got here. So they aren´t really ours to begin with. but thats okay.
So the people here are really humble. They have a ton of problems with marrige and getting divorces. In this country its really hard to get a divorce. Right now we are working with a family who the parents need to get married. Get this the dad is like 70 and the mom is like 36 gross right? wierd. Well anyway they live in one big shack that has like 8 beds in it with a table in the middle. They live in humble circumstances, lets say. Its wierd most people here have like tvs and stuff but there housed are crap. I think they have their priorities a little mixed up. hah but the people are willing to listen so thats cool. well its about time i got off.
Right well if you had to send a package, i would send it to the mission office, and fill it with wet wipes, cristal light, and life savers. Hah yeah thats about the only thing that i need. Don´t send it to our house, because i don´t even know the address to our house. so i don´t know how you would send it there. Its okay to send it to the mission office, because the mail system here in El Salvador is pretty secure, its just getting it through mexico that might be the problem. So put some pictures of Jesus on it, and it should be fine.
If you want to look at where i am, The main city that is closest is San Vinceti or something like that. The house is about an hour bus right away from that. Our area is called nonualco, or something close to that.
Well i´ve got to get off and write a letter to the mission president. Bye Love you all. -Elder John Paulsen

Adam - August 17, 2010

made it here!!!

Costa Rica is a beautiful place i just wanted to say that I made it here safely. I love this country already... except for driving! It´s nuts and I feel like I´m going to die whenever I get in the car. There are barely any rules and people just weave in and out while speeding down the street. We even saw a 4-wheeler driving along.

So last night was not too bad. We arrived at around 10 and got back to the mission home/office at around 10:30. We had our first Costa Rican meal... Taco Bell! It was quite heavenly! We had to fill out a few forms, and take a picture or two, then we went back to the Area President´s and house and slept there. We didn´t get to bed until around 12:30 though. I´m crazy tired today!

President Galves is awesome! And so is his Wife. They met us at the airport with this huge banner that said "Bien Venidos Misioneros del Mundo" which means welcome missionaries of the world. They gave us a big hug and we headed home. They don´t speak much english so it was a pretty quiet car ride. I feel so lost with the spanish! I feel like I´m back to week #3 in the MTC. Everyone speaks so fast and I can barely pick up on a few words. I feel really dumb when I have to answer a question because I don´t really know what they are asking. In the MTC, we could try in Spanish, and if we fail just say it in English. But here, you can´t do that. You just have to try and not sound too stupid. Luckily, the missionaries in the Office speak english and are really friendly. They don´t speak too much spanish in front of us ha ha.

So I found out that Kirk is a Zone Leader, so there isn´t really a chance he could train me, but I have about a 50% chance of him being my Zone Leader. That way I would still be able to see him. That´d be really cool. Later today we go to our areas and get our new companions. We don´t know who they are yet, but it sounds like it´s going to be way fun!

Well, I love you all! Just wanted to let you know that all is going well. I love Costa Rica and the people here are awesome! P-Days are mondays so I´ll give you an update on my life then. I know the church is true and I´m doing the right thing!

Always, Elder Adam Paulsen

P.S. Costa Rica is pretty cool. I haven´t gotten out of San José so I haven´t seen any amazing beautiful things. Mostly, it´s just dirty! Ha ha. Love you All!