Of Mate and Dogs

I guess I'll begin with mate.  Mate is a tea that they commonly drink in South America (especially Argentina).  It's very bitter and it has caffeine, but it is sanctioned by the church. My companion likes it a lot, but I haven't drank it much for a few reasons.  I don't know enough about it for one thing.  It's also more of a communal drink.  You drink it with a special straw with a filter called a bombillo out of a cup called a mateo and pass it around. That doesn't really appeal to me, but people drink it alone too.

Dogs.  There are dogs everywhere out here.  Cualquier dog.  I don't know a good translation for cualquier.  The dictionary says "any" and I guess that's the best translation but it's not really what the word means.  Literally, every where you look in the streets, there will be at least one dog.  Most of them are pretty nice looking dogs and they're almost all friendly. They don't appear to emphasize spaying and neutering here which is probably why they have the problem.  They also don't have any kind of dog shelter as far as I understand.  

My companion and I received callings this week.  In the LDS Church, every member has a calling- teachers, leaders, clerks, secretaries, etc.  Right now my primary calling is as a missionary, but I now have the secondary calling of counselor to the young men's program. I am in charge of the teachers (14-15 years old) and my companion, the deacons (12-13). I'm really excited to work with the young men.

My companion and I are in what's called a whitewash.  It means we are both new to the area.  That means we spend most of our time walking, because we don't have many people to teach.  We did find a mother and her son one day though and they became our first investigators of the church.  We taught them the first lesson, about the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ, and when I shared the first vision, she cried.  The room was filled with a wonderful feeling.  I won't be surprised if she and her son are the first people I baptize.  They make all the hard work worth it.  I have more to share, but I'm out of time for the week.  Until next week, Éxito!

No pictures again, we were looking forward to seeing the shower.  Maybe next week....  Ben will be able to Skype with us on Christmas and we are really looking forward to that. He also shared with us that members of the church usually feed them lunch, which is the big meal there, and it usually consists of pasta with meat sauce or chicken and rice. He says they eat a lot of tomatoes and avocadoes, neither of which he really liked here but they are growing on him.

El Bosque

I'm finally in the mission field.  I live in a residential area of Santiago called El Bosque.  It's a relatively nice area.  I've spent most of my time walking around with my companion getting to know the people in the church.  We walk constantly and its very hot down here.  I've already lost five pounds.  I'm constantly exhausted but the work is good. 

I live in a very small house (all of the houses are small here) with my companion, Elder Cabrera, another gringo missionary, Elder Jarrett, and his companion, Elder Guevara, another Latino.  LDS missionaries are paired together for safety reasons, both physical and spiritual.  They don't want us getting into trouble.  Elder Cabrera hardly speaks English.  My Spanish far excedes his English, but it is still very difficult to communicate.  Although, it is easier to communicate with him than the Chileans because he is Peruvian.  Peruvians speak clearer and slower than Chileans.  Chileans speak the fastest out of all of Latin America, drop endings of words, and change pronunciations.  For example they say "Cómo estai" in place of "Cómo está."

Our house is very, very humble to put it nicely.  It was quite dirty when Elder Jarrett and I first arrived from the Misionary Training Center, but we've done a lot of work.  When we arrived, the mission president's wife, Sister Cook, told us that we need to shower every day.  At first I thought it was kind of funny that she would need to say that.  Who wouldn't shower every day? Then I saw the shower.  And then I found out we didn't have hot wáter.  We didn't just not have hot wáter -  we exclusively had ice cold wáter.  Now I understand why people don't shower every day.  We have since bought gas, so we have hot showers now.  The shower itself is still very humble...I'll stick with that Word- humble. 

All four of us sleep in one small room on bunk beds.  Several days ago, Elder Jarrett's bed collapsed on top of Elder Guevara.  It was hilarious, but now I'm afraid to sleep beneath Elder Cabrera, who is much heavier than Elder Jarrett.  Every week there's the fierro.  Vendors line the streets and sell fruit, vegetables, fish, eggs, and odds and ends.  Some of the displays appear to be whatever the vendor stole that week.  The fruit is amazingly cheep.  I bought two kilos of strawberries for one mil.  Or about four and a half pounds for two dollars.  Elder Jarrett and I are getting very good at making smoothies. 

I´m doing my best to work my hardest and become the best man I can be.  I spend each day serving and preaching the Gospel.  I try to talk to everyone I see, but I have to be more careful.  I said "buenas noches" to a pair of men in the middle of a drug deal my first day.  I didn't notice them handing off money until after I said it, but they didn't give us any trouble.  All in all, I'm doing great.  I love serving and I love furthering my knowledge of the Gospel.  I know that it's true. 

Please forgive my spelling,  I'm using spanish autocorrect.* Buenaventura everyone! Hasta la próxima semana.

*That's why he has an editor! He promises pictures next week. You can type in "El Bosque"on Google maps and see the area Ben is in. He also said he'll send his actual address next week, and that reminds me that we have updated his mailing address on the "Contact Ben" tab (the mission office now has a post office box).

El Campo Misional (The Mission Field)

UPDATE: We got this picture via email today from the mission office. With Ben are President and Sister Cook.

Ben is finished with the training center and is in the field. We weren't sure if we were going to hear from him at all this week, but we did get a quick note which we are sharing below:

I'm only allowed to send a quick email in an internet café.  My companion is Latino so I'm going to learn Spanish fast I guess.  He speaks less English than I speak Spanish.  Our house is small and very humble to put it nicely.  I'll send pictures next week hopefully.  I met President Cook* and was surprised to find that he remembers me.  He told me you got a nor'easter this week.  Maybe you'll have a White Christmas.  Well I guess that's all I have time for.  I'll write you on Monday.

 *Ben's mission president, David Cook, is from the Rochester area and previously served as a regional leader of the church in the Northeast. Ben had briefly met him at a church meeting in Owego a couple years ago.  President Cook began his tenure as mission president in July. We don't know where the nor'easter news came from, maybe last week's storm. I think Rochester got more snow than we did from that episode.

Last Full Week at the MTC

We went street contacting twice this week.  The first time my companion and I were pretty unsuccessful.  We talked to a couple guys who really liked their marijuana.  They really liked us and they were fun to talk to but I don´t think our message got through.  Our second time was great though.  After getting rejected over and over we talked to an older lady who had a Mormon friend.  We made small talk and then told her a little about the Book of Mormon.  I told her it would bring her happiness and bring her closer to Christ.  She said she believed us so I asked her if she had one.  She said she didn't and we gave her one and committed her to read.  Then she gave us her contact information so we could send missionaries.  It was a perfect contact.  Hopefully I have a lot of success like that in the field.

I had McDonalds today.  It was just about the same here as anywhere in the states and it´s easy to order because a Big Mac is still called a Big Mac.  It was good to get some American food after having nothing but rice, potatoes and pasta with the sauce of the day.  Next week, I leave the training center and enter the field.

That's all Ben wrote for the blog, but he did tell us a couple of things in his email to us we don't mind sharing. Last week he said he had been sick and had been to the doctor (the church has doctors there). He is better now. He had mentioned some about the food in his blog last week and we asked him about the blood sausage. He replied: "Blood sausage is disgusting.  Actually the taste isn't that bad but the consistency and the knowledge of what it is makes it gross.  I didn't try the stomach.  I saw sauce with fatty looking strings of meat and decided I didn't want to try it.  I found out later it was [cow] stomach."

Ben leaves the training center Tuesday, Dec. 3, so we're not sure what his ability to write will be next week. We'll post anything we get from him! We updated his address on the Contact Ben tab, but don't worry if you sent something to the MTC that he may not have gotten yet because he says they will forward it.

MTC Week Four

The food here is getting really dull really fast.  I used to work in the cafeteria at the Provo MTC.  The food is not even comparable.  They have cookies, and pizza, and hamburgers, sweet and sour chicken, tacos, ice cream.... We have rice, potatoes or pasta with some kind of sauce and occasionally meat.  The meat is usually ckicken but we will occasionanlly have pork, beef, or blood sausage.  The sauce could have anything - an assortment of vegetables, ground beef, or on one occasion, strips of cow stomach.  There are a few redeeming qualities though, like manjar.  Manjar literally means delicacy, but they use it as the name for a spreadable caramel that they put on everything.  It´s good stuff.

Shopping out here is a little different.  We have been cautioned to use our debit cards as little as possible because some places have been known to steal your information.  They have sales tax here, but they fix it into the price of the item before you buy it which makes so much more sense.  Why doesn´t America do that?  I haven´t spent a lot of money down here, but I´ve bought a few things.  I got a haircut last week for 4,000 pesos or a little under $8.  The lady recognized be as a missionary and instead of asking what I wanted she simply asked ¨Como Beckham o como Clooney?¨ There was a picture of each of them on the window.  I got the como Beckham.  If only I could play soccer como Beckham I´d be all set out here.  I also bought a coke out here because I heard they tasted better.  It´s true that they use real sugar but I couldn´t taste the difference. 

My typical schedule in the CCM or Centro de Capitación Misional (I think) is as follows:

6:50- Wake up and get ready

7:10- Personal Scripture Study

8:00- Breakfast

8:30- Exercise

9:30- Prepare for the day

10:00- Practice Teaching

11:00- Study Spanish

12:00- Learn about how to teach better

13:00- Lunch

14:00- TALL (Technology Assisted Language Learning)

15:00- Learn about how to teach

16:00- Practice teaching and study

18:30- Dinner

19:30- Practice teaching and study

21:30- Plan for the next day

22:00- Personal time

23:00 Lights out

 

It´s a lot of class and a lot of structure.  It reminds me of my time in ROTC.  I´ll have to conclude because I´m out of time.  Hasta luego.

MTC Halfway Point (with pictures)

It´s election time down here although I don´t know what they´re voting for.  We can hear protests every now and then.  Sometimes we see police cars covered in armor too.  It´s apparently very common to cut the faces out of people´s posters if you don´t like them.  They take politics pretty seriously. 

My Spanish is really improving.  I´m getting to the point where I´m starting to speak Spanish exclusively.  For the most part, that means I´m always looking in the dictionary or not talking, but at least my grammar is solid.  I´m a little worried about how quickly people talk down here though, even some of the Latinos can´t understand Chileans because they talk so fast.  Fortunately, a lot of Latinos know English.  An amazing number learn English through video games and even more learn English from watching American movies.

Other than that, this week was pretty miraculous.  For one thing, the Gringos beat the Latinos in soccer!!  The new group of Latinos aren't very good and we´re improving fast.  And Elder Jeffrey R. Holland came and spoke to the missionaries in the CCM (Mission Training Center but in Spanish).  For those of you who are not Mormon, our church has a current prophet and twelve apostles just like the prophet in the Bible.  For a Mormon, being within a few feet of Elder Holland is comparable to being within a few feet of Peter, James or John.  It´s a big deal.  He is very, very passionate about missionary work and he´s very inspiring.  It was an amazing opportunity considering there are only about 90 missionaries in this training center compared to Utah´s three or four thousand.  He got us all pumped.  In fact, I´m so pumped, I´m going to dare anyone who reads this to read the Book of Mormon and sincerely ask God if it is true.  See if you can tell me it isn't.  I dare you.

 This is the main entrance to the church office building in Santiago where Ben has his classes.  He lives in a nearby building.

We assume Ben sent this picture to show the parrots. The dog in the background is likely a "neighborhood" dog, loose dogs are very common in Santiago

The court where Ben plays soccer most days (and where the Gringos apparently had a big victory this week) during his physical exercise time

This is a screenshot from Google Maps. The Santiago Temple is bottom left (with the pointer). Ben lives in the building in the upper left and has classes in the building in the lower right (picture above). The soccer court is the paler green area upper center. There is also a park nearby where they sometimes go.

Editor's note: We'll try to get Ben to send a picture or two that he might actually be in. In our personal email he said he wanted us to be sure people know how to write him. His address is on the "Contact Ben" tab in the black bar at the top of the page. Just for good measure, I'll put it here to. To send Ben a letter via airmail (we haven't done this):

Elder Benjamin Hoose

Chile Missionary Training Center

Pedro de Valdiva 1423

Providencia

Santiago Region Metropolitano

Chile

To send him a letter via pouch:

Elder Benjamin Hoose

Chile Missionary Training Center

PO Box 30150

Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0150

We have sent mail via pouch. He got the letter today (Nov. 13) that we mailed on Oct. 28. These letters have to be in Salt Lake by Friday to go out that next week, so this method took a little over two weeks, but there seem to be variables (getting to SLC by Friday, and perhaps when his p-day is). These letters have to be a single sheet, folded in thirds (top to bottom), taped with a couple small pieces of tape on the long end and addressed on the blank side. Nothing can be included in the letter (no pictures, etc.) and they require regular US postage since technically they're only being mailed to Salt Lake.

So P-Day Changes Week to Week....

It´s hard to organize my thoughts when I write these posts because I only get one hour to email everyone and post on the blog every week.

• This morning, all of the Latino missionaries left.  They only stay two weeks because they don´t have to learn a new language.  Two of them were my roommates.
• One of my now former roommates, Elder Helio Ferreira, played soccer professionally for Atletico Paranaense in Brazil.
• We play soccer almost every day here.  Sometimes we play Latinos vs. North Americans.  Guess who wins?!  Every time!  It´s actually not that bad.  The gringos usually score a couple.  I´m really glad I played soccer in the States.  I´ve earned the respect of a lot of Latinos on the court.
• They play soccer on courts here.  There are basketball hoops on the courts too, but they´re rarely used.  It´s kind of funny, they´re shorter than the baskets in the US.
• Everything here is fenced in and almost all of the fences have spikes. 
• The people are incredibly loving.  There are Latinos that left today that I hardly knew and yet that embraced me with eyes full of tears as they left.  I hope that they are a good representation of the majority of the people I run into when I´m in the field.
• It´s really hot here and it´s still spring.  They say the sun feels hotter because of the hole in the ozone layer.  
• Every single meal has rice, potatoes, or pasta.  It´s an incredible amount of carbs.
• I went to the tallest building in South America today.  It´s a giant mall.  Malls aren´t exactly my thing, but it was really cool.  I´ve been to another mall down here.  We call it the ´Ghetto Mall´.  It´s a little more adventurous than the giant one and it´s closer.
• There was an earthquake last week, but I didn´t feel it.  They´re very common down here on the “Ring of Fire¨
• There used to be a gang in South Santiago called Los Mormónes.  They dressed up as missionaries and stole cars!

I guess that´s about it for this week.  I´m enjoying my stay down here and I´m learning Spanish quickly.  I can’t wait to go out and serve the people of Chile.  I´ll have pictures posted one of these weeks.  I keep forgetting the cord to my camera.  Hasta luego!
 
Editor's (AKA Dad) note: Please pardon the formatting issues. For some reason it's not as simple as just cutting and pasting or formatting in Word and pasting.... I blame Google and to a lesser extent my own meager HTML skills.