Week 1 in Costa Rica

Elder Garrett, Elder Black and Elder Ramirez

Costa Rica Temple

Piano!!!

¿Como estaís?

I'm going to hurry and tell you the gist of what Costa Rica is like. Hot. Hot. HOT. and hot. I now sweat more than ever. And there are bugs everywhere, bugs all over my books, bed, clothes, food, everything. Right now is winter (the dry/hot time of the year) It's... not much fun. You get itchy from the sweat and bug bites, but hopefully I'll get used to it. Also, the water is drinkable! Yes! So I've been drinking tons of water and using the flavoring for it. Oh, and their accent is weird... when a word ends with an "R" for example "amor" they sometimes say it like "amorsh". So in our house we make fun of it a lot. And they have two main soccer teams here, La Liga, and Seprissa, and everyone wonders which you are. I am a Ligista fyi. Because the first family I visited was, and they are better supposedly.

Alright, so my companion is... there are two! I'm in a trio again! Elder Ramirez, my native companion, and legit trainer. And Elder Garrett, my white companion and assistant trainer I guess. We call our trainer our Papa, and since I have two, I call Elder Garrett my Mama. I got sent to my first area right after I got my comps. I am in the city Naranjo. We have a really big area though, it covers many other towns.  So we spend a lot of time riding the bus. One standard bus ride to another place in my zone will cost about 300 colon... for the two weeks I'm here, they had given me 4,000 colon... we take several buses a day, so I'm out already, but my comps have enough so they pay for me. We are up in the mountain area, so there are many hills, steep hills. I'm not used to this kind of walking so I've been dying this whole time, plus with the heat, it's even worse. And that's Naranjo, it's actually the place that I guessed would be my first area while I was in the MTC. Oh, and here, they expect you to eat a lot, everywhere you go you get food. So I learned to ask for a "pocito" amount of food, and I can barely eat that much.

A little about my comps. Elder Ramirez is still learning English, he's not very good. But he knows some funny phrases. He's a cool guy and I think that we'll get along well. And he's from Honduras. 

Elder Garrett is from Oklahoma.  He is a musical person, and does magic tricks... we're pretty similar too. He's cool too, so we should be good.

So my first day here we went and visited a member, Yahira, and her 3 children. One of her daughters had just passed away and we went to give them blessings.  We talked for a long time, I had my first corn coffee, and one of the girls kept pestering me because I can't speak spanish. So finally I rattled of some english and she was really confused, I thouroghly enjoyed it =) And then we proceeded to give blessings. The first girl, picked me to do it. I had never given a blessing, and couldn't speak spanish, so it was pretty bad. Then the next two daughters picked my other two comps. Then the mom picked me, she said I needed to practice spanish. I did a little bit better, but still bad. Then we went home and got ready for bed, problem was, we only have two beds, and 3 of us. So we got permission to move the beds together. Entonces, the 3 of us are sleeping on the two beds. And that day, my first day... we were late getting home, late to bed, and shared beds... 3 rules broken... =( But it hasn't happened again... except sharing beds, we still just have 2.

Ok, I have just a couple funny things that happened. First, that first day when we were contacting, I tried to, I guess, greet someone, and he (black guy) just keeps walking and says "God bless you" and that's it. Also, mom and dad, be careful with this one, I'm going to put a word in here that's... bad. Lot's of people ask what my name is, so I tell them "Black, o en Español, negro" So a lot of people, mostly just members come up to me and say, with their limited english, "What's up my nigger!?" They think it's hilarious... and so do I. And everyone thinks it's so cute that I'm trying to learn spanish. They baby me a lot.

That's about it for this week. One thing that I ate that was different. Green mango, with sugar, and that chicken powder stuff, it was actually pretty good. And they have cereal and all that down here. And I ate something called "Tritz" it's an amazing icecream sandwich. Oh and that picture of Brielle, I couldn't really tell that it was Brielle, she's already changing... And being a missionary is pretty hard, I love the kids here, but the work is hard. We have about 5 progressing investigators, all of our other work is with less actives... there are a lot of those. Anyways, love y'all have a great week!

Love,

The Best Elder Black

P.S. I'll try to send pictures next week.