I´ve Got Scriptures and Pamphlets a-plenty

Things are going just fine here.  Last Wednesday we got to go out into downtown Lima and see some of the big cathedrals and governments buildings.  They were pretty cool looking of course and had a bunch of sweet statues and fountains.  We also got to go to a market type place where there were a bunch of small soccer jersey shops and also some shops where they sold Peruvian bags and leatherworked stuff. I got 2 nice soccer jerseys (one for Peru and a cool bright orange one that I´m honestly not sure what team they are, but I think it´s Italy) and a nice leather camera case/ holster for about 16 American dollars.  The missionary handbook says that we are never to look like a tourist at any time, but we were definitely tourists that day and it was a lot of fun.

Everybody´s humor here is gradually getting more missionary-like as we start referencing scriptures and Preach My Gospel in our jokes rather than referencing movies and songs.  Sadly, the transformation became complete for me when as I was showering as I thought of how to change the words of "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid to apply to a missionary in the MTC.  I´m not sure that I want this cheesiness posted on an internet blog, but many of you will probable enjoy it, I will type it anyway.

Look at this stuff, isn´t it neat? wouldn´t you think that my training´s complete? Wouldn´t you think that I am the Elder with everything?  I´ve got scriptures and pamphlets a-plenty, testimonies galore. You want experiences? I´ve got 20! But who cares? No big deal, I want more!

I wanna go where the people are. I wanna see investigators progessin', walkin around on those what do you call em? Pies (pronounced pee a´s Spanish for feet). Out where we´ll talk, out where we´ll teach, out where we´ll bless, baptise and preach. Proselyting, wish I could be part of that world.

What would I give if I could live outside CCM (say-say-emmay, MTC in spanish)? What would I pay to spend a day in Santa Cruz? I bet that out there that they don´t care if you head the ball in soccer.  Tired of teaching the same fake people, ready to stand.

Repeat chorus

I had some sweet pictures of Lima as well as my district all in our soccer jerseys, but I apparently lost the flashdrive that I had in my pocket with all of them. I´ve still got them on my camera, but I don´t have my camera right now, so it will have to wait until next week.

Until then, if anyone wants to write me, use dearelder.com 'cause physical mail doen´t get here.

Until next time,
 - Elder Casdorph

Avoid Pedestrians When It's Convenient

On Saturdays, my Latino companion and I, as well as a field missionary or member from the area go out for about 4 hours and teach less-active members.  My companion and the other guy honestly do most of the talking. The first time, I only understood about 1/3 of what was being said and the second time, I understood a little over half.  When people are actually home and decide to answer the door, they have always let us in and we have had a nice lesson. Many of these lessons have actually been quite powerful and the spirit has been very strong.

The city is kinda crazy. There seem to be very few driving rules other than try not to get hit and avoid pedestrians when it´s convenient.  The houses are pretty much all concrete walls and then depending on how nice the house is, it may have a legitimate ceiling or just some aluminum siding or plywood resting on top of the walls.  There are dogs about every 12 feet in the part of the city where I was.  Some of them are grossly dirty, but a lot of them look happy and friendly.  I am not allowed to touch them however because they might bite me and give me rabies.

The Latinos and experienced Americans all left yesterday, so now my group is the experienced ones.  Last night, new Latinos and Americans started pouring in, but I haven´t really had the chance to talk to them yet.

For P-day today, we get to go into downtown Lima and go to a couple soccer jersey shops and some other shops where they sell like Peruvian bags and stuff.  I´m probably gonna get a soccer jersey or two cause they are pretty cheap here and they will be nice to wear on P-days and to gym.

I hope to keep hearing from people whether by email or dearelder.com, but physical mail doesn´t really get here, so you probably shouldn´t try any of that.

Until next time,
Elder Casdorph

Usted?

I don´t have much to say this week other that life here is difficult, and there is a TON of Spanish, but it is great.

We went out into the real world on Saturday to teach less-active members.  I went with my Latino companion and an actual missionary in the field, so I definitely relied on them a LOT.  I only understood about 25% of what was said and only spoke about 10% of the time.  I can understand the Spanish-speakers here pretty well, but Spanish with an old-person accent is basically impossible to understand. People kept rambling off large amounts of Spanish and then out of nowhere just turn to me and say, "Usted?" which means "you?"  Then I would struggle through Spanish trying to answer the question that they may or may not have actually been asking, and the Latinos would resume speaking at a million miles an hour.

Despite all of this, my Latino companion says that I am the best Spanish speaker out of the Americans at the MTC, which was really nice to hear.  I will miss him when he goes out into the field in a week.

I wish I time to say more than that, but I don't, so bye.

-Elder Casdorph

Picture Updates

The four headed to Santa Cruz: at the Provo MTC, then showing off alpaca ties purchased in Lima for $5.72

(Recounted by Andrea)  When Jack called home during his layover on the way to Peru, he told me they'd invented a version of basketball that they would play in their room.  After discovering that a hole in the top of the drawer unit led conveniently to the top drawer, they used a few tennis balls someone had found to create an in-room game.

(Left to Right): with Elder Merrill - Provo MTC Companion; with Elder Casperson - wearing surprisingly similar ties; with  Elder Chronister - the recipient of about 100 fat jokes in the MTC, 70% of which were delivered by Jack

The Peru CCM

The Peru MTC, or CCM in spanish, is Awesome!  The first day was crazy, they made us all get buzz cuts, do a bunch of paperwork, and none of us could understand anything that the people in charge were saying.  I couldn´t even understand my own companion.  As the days rolled along the Americans have learned a lot more Spanish and are now actually able to understand real Spanish (except when 2 Latinos are talking to each other, cause that is still way too fast).  Now, I am able to communicate easily with my Latino companion.  He usually speaks in English and I speak in Spanish, that way we both practice the language we are trying to learn.  The Latinos are all going to Spanish speaking missions, but they are still trying to learn as much English from us as they can. I actually have one of the best English speaking companions in the whole CCM, and he says that I am the best Spanish speaker out of all of the new American missionaries, so we have a much easier time communicating than most of the companionships.

I have an American companion as well for class and for teaching "investigators", but there is nothing new about working with a white guy who speaks English, so I don´t really have anything to say about him.

The food here is actually pretty good.  I haven´t been so adventurous as to eat everything in sight, but I have eaten a lot of semi-gross-looking things that I would have never tried in America. Most of these have been pretty good and the ones that weren´t good, I ate anyway.

My favorite time of the day by far is gym time.  Usually during this time, I play soccer with the Latinos, but I have also done basketball and volleyball. As expected, the Latinos are very good at futbol. I have been able to hold my own just fine though because while almost all of them have me beat in skill, I have them beat in speed, and for the first time ever in my life, I have the upper-hand in strength and height (by upper-hand I mean that I am average strength and height for a Latino, but compared to what I´m used to, I feel like a giant).

The Latinos have a suprisingly large knowledge of American culture. They frequently sing songs such as "We are the champions" and other American songs.  They also have knowlede of "Forest Gump", "The Avengers", "Rocky", "Tarzan", "The Karate Kid", and seemingly every major American movie.

We have so much more freedom here than at Provo.  They were so many people at Provo, and it was so self enclosed that it honestly felt like a prison. Here, although we are definately sheltered from the real South America that lies just outside the walls, it feels so much more open and free.  The windows here actually open, and we are actually allowed to leave the classroom and even go outside to study.  The weather here is also fantastic. It is suposedly winter here, so it is always between 60 and 75 degrees.

Sorry, I was gonna send some pictures home, but I forgot to bring my camera into the computer lab, so no pics till next week.

ñ á é í ó ú

I arrived at the Peru MTC last night at 3 in the morning and immediately passed out on my bed. They let us sleep in until 9 which was nice. Many things are very different here. The showers aparrently only have 2 settings: freezing cold and skin melting hot. There is a faucet for cold water and a faucet for hot water, but it is impossible to get any mixture of cold and hot water at the same time.  The grass is weird, it´s hard to explain how its weird, it just is.  My fruit loops this morning tasted nothing like fruit loops, but I ate them anyway.  I am currently typing on a weird Spanish keyboard that makes it really easy to do this: ñ á é í ó ú but the punctuation is in strange places.  The climate so far is really nice.

I met my new companion; he is from Ecuador and speaks no English.  I speak very little Spanish, so we don´t talk much.  He seems like a nice guy though. I think my p-day is on Wednesdays now, but I don't know.  There seem to be just about as many white missionaries as there are Latino missionaries and most of the staff speak decent English.  I still need to learn a lot of Spanish quickly to have any idea what is going on.

I should probably write again in a week, but I don´t really know.  The computer interface here is a bit more normal, so I should be able to email pictures now, but I don´t know for sure. Sorry for the disjointedness of this email, but I don´t have much time and the keyboard is really weird, so...

Until next time
-Elder  Jack Casdorph

Con Amor

Editor's Comment:
Life in the MTC looks a
little strange and distant, too.

The second week here has gone by so much faster than the first and it's crazy to think that I will be leaving for the Peru MTC on Tuesday.  It seems like I just got here, but at the same time, life before the MTC feels strange and distant.

On Friday, my "investigator" from the first week walked into my class and started speaking English.  It turns out that he is actually the second teacher of my class.  He gave us some feedback on our lessons and told us a bit about his real self.  Although he is bilingual in English and Spanish (he's Latino), he served his mission in Mongolia.  He also said that he threw some Mongolian into our lessons just to freak-out the young missionaries who don't even know the difference between Spanish and Mongolian.  This week, both of our teachers have been playing the part of different investigators, one named "Gabriel" and the other named "Rogelio."  We have taught them every day this week.  The Spanish is slowly coming along and we are probably about 70% off-script in our lessons now, but there is still that 30% that we have to read.

The Companion

Things have been going fine with my companion and my district, although my district can get pretty crazy sometimes.  I try to get the most out of my 55 minutes of allotted fun time that I can, usually by playing beach volleyball.

Although I'm a little worried about going to Peru, it will be nice to get out of the MTC here.  I really only ever see 3 places, my room, the classroom, and the cafeteria, so I'm starting to get a pretty good case of cabin fever.  It also seems like I really only see the same 15 or 20 people even though there's like thousands of missionaries here.  On Tuesday, though, I will be in a whole new country and be begging for some familiarity.  I hope that everything is going fine in the outside word and I'm not sure when I'll be writing home next, but I do know that it will be from Peru.

Con Amor,

Elder Casdorph

Some fun pictures:

The District

There is a tree here that smells like cream soda, (I don't know how or why,
it just does) so that is why I have a picture of someone smelling a tree.

Headed to the Mexico City West Mission

Headed to Mexico City South

SANTA CRUZ!

The Truth Can Defend Itself

I always used to wonder how missionaries could learn an entire language in just 2 or 3 months in the MTC.  After spending a week here, I think I know the answer: work, work , and more work.  We spend literally all day studying and about 3/4 of that time is devoted to learning Spanish.  We speak as much Spanish as we can with each other even during the 1 hour a day that we get to play sports.  Our teacher never speaks English (he can, it's his 1st language, but he never does).  We even do all of our praying and singing in Spanish.  I can say this method works though.  I've already learned about as much Spanish as I did from 2 years of Spanish in high school (I've definately gotten some help from the spirit in learning it too).  Definitely the hardest and scariest thing that we've had to do so far is teach an investigator*...in Spanish...4 different times.  We have to read from lesson plans that we've prepared beforehand cause we're not good enough to just speak it yet.  Then the investigator* will ask us questions that will force us off-script, so we just awkwardly fumble over the words as we attempt to answer him and often fail at saying anything that actually makes sense.  It's a ridiculous emotional roller coaster here.  At one moment, you'll be thinking, "Yeah! I just learned a whole bunch of words and the spirit will help me with the rest, I'm ready to convert the world!"  Then you'll realize an hour later that all you know how to say is "the church is true" and "where's the bathroom" and start worrying about how all the native-speakers are just gonna laugh at you.  I have seen elders here who will in the same day cry out of joy and then later out of frustration. I have seen a whole bunch of people here that I know, including: Elder Casperson; Elder Zollinger; Elders Jefferson Vick, Eric Judd, Josh Haertel, Chase Noel, and Adam Mower. I have also seen Stephen Arroyo's sister who is a teacher here.  It's awesome to see people that I know looking all grown up and missionary-like.

My companion is a pretty cool guy who is from Salt Lake City and went to East High.  We are about equal in Spanish knowledge and we usually work pretty well together.  In addition to my companion, there are 2 other elders who are going to Santa Cruz and 8 others in my district who are going to Mexico City.  They are all awesome, funny guys with powerful testimonies.  It's often very difficult to study around them though because they are a pretty loud, rambunctious group.  One time, they were being particularly loud and not studying at all.  I couldn't take it anymore, so I said a quick mental prayer that they would quiet down and regain focus.  Right as I said, "amen" and opened my eyes again, my district leader stood up and told them all to quiet down and listen to the spirit because without the spirit, we wouldn't be able to learn Spanish.  After that, nobody really said a word and we did the best studying that we've ever done.

We've had some pretty awesome devotionals and firesides while we've been here. In the last one, the speaker said something that I really liked.  He said, "The truth can defend itself, just as force always equals mass times acceleration, and that will always be true, the gospel will always be true." This really hit home for me probably because he used as an example the equation that I have probably used about 500 times and never once found it to be wrong.

Please write to me because in this crazy missionary world, letters and sports are all that I have to keep me sane. I can't wait to see you all again in 2 years and tell you all of my awesome missionary experiences, but for now, I'll just keep writing home whenever I get the chance.

P.S. my p-day is Thursday, so you can expect emails and stuff on Thursdays.