Chapter 6: Stress

This week has been stressful, but a good week. It started out hard, but got a whole ton better. My Monday was a huge bowl of stress and the stress moved into Tuesday and I was in a huge bowl if discouragement. But I know that my friends and family are praying for me and helping me and that helped a lot to get over the beginning of the week and move on.

Spiritual de-stress - The help that a good long prayer can give is very helpful. It was a mix of that and all the prayers that came from you all in Gringolandia that gave me the boost this week that I needed.

Oh crap stress - One of our great investigators is getting visited by another church, but they want to give him physical food to convert him and all we give is spiritual nourishment. It´ll be a hard battle, but I think the true gospel will overcome the false doctrine of Satan.

Funny thing (bust a gut stress) - I am laughing really hard with Elder Hoover, we have a ton of inside jokes among which are the tea shop, Elder Pratt quotes, and a few others. They really make a guy laugh and I´ll remember them for life. :)

Food stress - I ate a giant bag of Takis fuego. They are my new favorite chip. They are chips in the shape of tubes and they are super spicy, but the best thing. :)

Christmas stress - we already have trees up in the office (not my idea, dad).

I really am doing well and I hope to hear from all of you soon. Also remember Proverbs 25:25 ;) (As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.)

Love,

Elder VanderMeyden

Chapter 5: Plata

This week was Halloween and we got dressed up. :)  This is a picture of our costumes for Halloween, note the ties- Silver is Spanish is Plata, which in Costa Rica just means money, signifying the financial secretary. Gold is oro, and it stands for the gold medal that the Migration secretary has in Costa Rica for being one of 2 countries 100% legals. Costa Rica has been there longer though, so we still have the record. ;)So about halloween, we don't really celebrate it much down here :P A few years ago there were some children kidnapped and then sacrificed in the forest. That put a huge damper on the Halloween spirit and they only do personal gatherings here. We did pass by a few bars that had decorations up but we avoided them for the most part because we know the problems the world has with Modesty. We did not have to stay inside the house.

Spiritual moment this week: We have two investigators that I feel can get baptized this month and I´m hoping that one that has been an eternal investigator can join those two. The two that I´m talking about haven´t been to church but it wasn´t all their faults, one didn´t go because the member we sent never showed up at his house. He called us after the first meeting and said that no one showed up to get him but that he had been waiting, ready for an hour. :( I was so sad about that and frustrated that he could be one step closer but a member messed it up. :( The other one is progressing really fast and should be coming this week too.

Oh crap moment this week: So we heard gunshots last week. The gunshots were heard in the most dangerous part of our area and I just happened to be in the area for the first time that day. I was in no danger but it was a good story to tell. No more gun shots but I do like the countryside more than the city, but it´s not all that different, just the people make the difference. I feel safer in the campo of Guanacaste (Limon is dangerous).

Funny thing this week: I played a mean joke on one of the sister training leaders with the fake cockroaches, it made her and her companion scream and it made everyone laugh. She pretended to Trick or treat at our secretary door because she saw I had candy so I gave her the cockroach secretly and then she freaked out when she saw it. I gave it to her as a gift and then I gave her candy. She was a good sport. :)

I was able to laugh a whole bunch w¿this week and I will laugh so much more with Elder H. :)

Solo in the office is fine, I survived the worst week. :) Not all that lonely, 4 was really a crowd, a fun crowd but a crowd none the less. There were two early morning trips that I made this week and both of them have gone by very well. We have a third this upcoming week and I am not excited. Elder Hoover and I made a deal, he drives there and I drive back. He gets more tired on the way back, but once I´m awake I´m awake until I hit the end of the line.

I am fantasterrific! I´m excited to be able to get out into the field more this week and get this area going. I´m getting along really well Elder Hoover and he´s a bunch of fun. We have personalities that fit well and even when tired we haven´t had a fight. :) My English is getting back to normal but my Spanish is falling a bit :( I´m going to fix that with study this week. :)

Love you,

Elder VanderMeyden

Chapter 4: Ticket

So there are so many different meanings for the word ticket. You can buy a ticket to go to a museum or a play or you can use a ticket to go to another country through a plane. You can get a ticket for parking in a bad place or speeding. Tickets range in Hallelujah amazing to the worst thing you can think off (like that one time I put 25 cents into a weight machine here and it gave me a ticket with my weight and I learned that I am fat :P  ). I actually had 3 different types of tickets in this last week. The first one we used was the ticket to send a sick missionary home. It´s one of the saddest things that I´m going to have to do as a secretary. The second was a parking ticket because we didn´t talk to one guy on the side of the street just because we were on our own (meaning our trainers weren´t with us to tell us what to do)(don´t worry, it´s not that big a deal and I get to keep my drivers license). The Third is that we used tickets to go inside a museum for Preparation day today. It rocked and I loved the Children's museum in San Jose. I´ll send pictures next week though.

Funny moment this week- This is weird that I laughed about this, but I laugh when I am nervous and stressed, so I´ve been laughing a ton this last week, which is funny because Elder Hoover thinks I´m crazy. He knows now that I´m not but it was funny. :P

Spiritual moment this week- Being able to pray to Heavenly Father when I was really down on myself one day for missing an exit twice, and missing my companion´s appointment with migration.Prayer really helped me because I was down and I asked to forget my pain and work, so he made the work fun and beautiful. I came home with a smile that I couldn´t even have imagined just a few hours earlier in the day. I love the Lord and I love the Spirit. :)

Oh Crap moment this week- I am going to be in the office solo this time on monday. It just sunk in this week. :P

Chapter 3: A Little Addition

This week has been more and more math and we´ve have quite a bit of addition to do- First of all with my asignación and secondly with a new companion. His name is Elder Black and he is AWESOME. He had cambios de emergencias halfway. He can´t go to his old area, but we´re waiting the one week to the actual cambios to send him back out. :) We´re having a ton of fun with him singing oldies music as well as more modern and his ukulele is a great addition to my harmonica and the electric Keyboard that we have at the house. It´s so fun to break into song and have a backup of beat boxing and harmonies as only band or choir boys from the USA can do. ;)

We are having great success with some people, There is a guy named Anthony that is a Golden investigator that has been progressing really fast. In the time that Elder Pratt met him he´s read the pamphlet, prayed to know if it was true, quit a job so he can come to church, found a new job through the power of prayer, and will come with us tomorrow! :D He´s our #1 and he speaks English! We give lessons in mostly english, but I like to talk in spanish so it is cool. :) That was my Spiritual thing this week: it was when we taught Anthony this week. It was the first time I met him but the spirit was SOOO strong in that house and I loved it. :)

I'm adding on pounds, unfortunately. Now that I can get food from an american store, I eat a bunch of cereal and doughnuts and pizza from PriceSmart. It´s so gross and I have to do a bunch of exercixse. :P I just have to get the time to buy the good food like we did today. :) I am also well fed by the members. :P

Funny thing is a bunch of people here in the ward and other missionaries are saying that I look like the Elder from "The Best Two Years" even though I´ve never seen it. I´m like a celebrity somehow but it´s really funny. :P  another funny thing that happened is that today a girl came up to us and thought that we were Jehovah´s Witnesses (a common thing actually). We think she was French because her accent in Spanish was French but she also spoke perfect English. She left us (we were at PriceSmart) but then as we were exiting she came up to Elder Black and asked if we went to parties. It was amazingly hard not to start laughing because I think she was infatuated by him. We did a great contact and left our number with her and we´ll see where it goes. :)

Oh Crap thing is getting trapped at PriceSmart today. It was a clear sky when we left, but as we bought everything and we got ready to leave the rain fell like I remember it did in the Virginia hurricanes.

(my mom asked me to put one spiritual, one funny, and one oh crap moment in so you can see what life is like - hope you enjoy it.)

Elder VanderMeyden

Fun Photos from the Office!!

Chapter 2: Super

Superpowers. So, I am taking a cue from my uncle. He loves all things superheroes. Recently, he wrote to me about how everybody has superpowers, usually personality traits or things we are good at. Super powers like these are amazing. It is part of our divine inheritance. It makes sense that our Heavenly Father has passed down these amazing abilities to us. I want to find my "Super Power" too and I´ll be searching for it every day.

Superbusy. Things in the office are always superbusy. I solved 3 big problems on the same day and I got my drivers license. I´m getting used to the fact that I´m here and I´m actually solving a ton of problems that I´ve found through sheer curiosity. I know that they say that curiousity killed the cat, but it also saved the Costa Rica, San Jose mission quite a bit of $$ from the looks of it. I don´t say this to brag, but I do say thank you to God for this little gift that I´ve found. I´ve also been going a little bit insane on some days in the office. Not crazy murderer, but unfocused yet super-focused secretary me. I am not working in the same way as before because now, over half my day is in the office and stuff. There are some amazing things here but I won´t let them go to my head. :)

super-missionaries. I have 3 companions right now. Elder Lewis is my main companion for this month, but Elder Hoover will be my only companion after that. Elder Pratt is also in this companionship and he is crazy. :P Elder Lewis is a ton like me but more sporty and Elder Hoover is really fun and I´ll get to know him really well. :) I am doing amazing and we love the 70s and 80s songs in our companionship. am the best with using Spanish in the office, just because the older 2 have been used to speaking English for 4 months and Elder Hoover likes to sing the English 70s songs so much. :)

Super-families. We actually have more progressing here than we had in Siquirres 2, 5 of which weren't progressing before I came but started to afterwards. It´s not because of me that they started progressing, but we taught a really powerful lesson when I first got there. It rocked. :) With Luck and the Lord we´ll have more than 1 baptism this month, which doesn´t normally happen with Secretaries. :)

Super-ancestry. I also did a bunch of Family history work today and found a date at -451 (as in BC) and taught Elder Hoover too. I´m also working with Family search from out here and I found a bunch of things that need to be reserved. It´s exciting that I finally found something :D

Super-city. We have a McDonalds, Subway, Carls Jr. and others, but I haven´t eaten there yet. (you can send gift cards, I don't mind ;) ) We don´t eat out too much, we make our own food, have a laundry machine and dryer. So no more cook or laundress here in the city. It will be different.

Superfun! The mission is great. I really got a boost of animo from my mission president and I am rockin´ and rollin´ ;)

Peace out,

oh - the pictures are of us in the office. We are working hard :)

Chapter 1: Stuck? NOPE

So last week we went to the temple and while we were inside they closed the pass to Siquirres, we thought we were stuck in San Jose for the night and made plans. However, they opened a bus route that went through turrialba so we weren´t stuck, but we had to take a 4.5 hour bus ride home. :P

I also thought that I was going to stick around in Siquirres this cambio but it turns out that the Lord had different plans for me. I am not "Stuck" with my old companion either, but I have been put into a huge place of responsibility.

You may say that I´ve been stuck in the offices because I am the Secretary of finances. It´s not a position that I thought I would have but I´m learning a whole bunch and I am where the Lord needs me. I´ve already solved a major problem in financing and I am able to learn a ton from my current trainer, Elder Lewis. My new Preparation day is Saturday (SUPER Weird :P ), but I don´t have much time because of the conference today that I´ve watched in 100% Spanish (and I loved the talk that happened in Spanish too :D ).

I heard that my old companion, Elder Gonzalez, is with a great missionary, Elder Gonzalez. The new one is from Mexico, and my old companion is from Guatemala. I´ve already received news that the Mexican is laying down the law and is really strict. I know that it´ll be really good for the Guatemalan. :)

I want to thank all of you who emailed me about hope last week. The hope and faith as active principles are fundamental to the missionary and their teachings and for everyone else too. Those emails have been awesome to read and have helped me a lot. I wanted to share this poem I wrote.

Trials come and trials go,
It´s your choice to hate or grow.

Truths are sudden and sometimes sad
But I´d be something else if I never had
These blessed packets of "growing pains"
If I don´t think on it, the hurt wains.
I´ll never forget the past I say
But I´ll live in the present, that means today.

Conference was awesome today. I loved Elder Neal L Andersen's challenge to "gain a personal witness of the Prophet Joseph Smith” by letting our “voice help fulfill Moroni’s prophetic words to speak good of the Prophet.” He said to do this by finding scriptures in the Book of Mormon that we feel and know are absolutely true. He encouraged us to then share the scriptures we found.

I took the Elder Anderson Challenge to find and share scriptures from the Book of Mormon that are 100% true, so here they are Mosiah 2:17, Helaman 5:12, Ether 12:27, and 2Nephi 26: 23-24.

I actually realized this last week that I wasn´t smiling all that much and that I needed to begin to do that again. I applied a quote from Brigham Young to make it more me. He says that if you don´t feel like praying, get down on your knees and pray until you do. My quote is "if you don´t feel like smiling, just smile until you do" ;)

Have a great week, guys.

Remember, my new p-day is Saturdays, so make sure you write me before then so I can get your emails. Also, I am super behind in my emails, so if you haven't heard from me, and you wrote me personally, I haven't forgotten, I just haven't had much time. I will get back to you! Stay safe and enjoy conference!

Love,
Elder VanderMeyden