Wednesday, September 29, 2010

More Big News...only here 3 weeks!


Hello Family,

How are you all doing?  A few more days and it will be a month that I’ve been out in the field.  More big news!  I will only be here for three weeks.  This MTC is over capacity so they are kicking my district out
with the advanced districts who are scheduled to leave in two weeks.  We are the only North Americans here who can really talk to the natives.  Everyone else has gotten really good at sign language. 

Elder Giraldo, famous for his
President impersonations
The latino companions are all great.  They all like to make the gringos play on the same futbol team so they can dance around us.  When they play, they only call each other by the name of their country.  ¡Paselo aqui, Columbia!  They like doing impersonations of their companions.  One elder does a pretty good imitation of President Whetten.  Every night they quiz us on American pop culture. “Do you know what is Red Hot Chili Peppers?”  One meal, we all sang the Lion King songs and some songs from a few other Disney movies to each other in our respective languages.  It was really fun. 

Elder Ludlam Espinoza, Diaz, Westerberg, Heaps
All the meals here are fantastic.  The chefs really out-do themselves.  There is always a soup and a main dish that is usually a slab of meat with a bunch of rice and vegetables, but the entrées are always prepared by a gourmet chef is seems.  We still get ice cream every Wednesday and Sunday. 

Going through the temple with Elder Hernandez
Today was a really special day for Elder Hernandez.  He did not have the opportunity to receive his endowments before he left, so today was the first time he got to go to the Lima Temple and I got to be his escort.  He has been a great companion.  In Mexico, were he lived, the mission president had a system set up where the young men in the area could live with the missionaries for two months before they left for the field, so it is almost like he has been out on his mission for a while.  He got to wear a plaque and everything.  He has a good knowledge of the scriptures and can usually find one to apply to whatever we are teaching about. 

I am really enjoying my time here, but I still can’t wait to get out in the field.  The Peruvian members here truly make lots of sacrifices to help us prepare to be the best missionaries that we can be.  The teachers, the cooks, the maintenance workers are all really friendly and are more than willing to try to talk to you in English. 

I had my first adventure in the outside world today.  The .5 soles that it cost to ride the bus to the temple were certainly worth the rollercoaster ride. Every three weeks they have the money changer come to exchange dollars for soles (Peruvian currency), and they suggested everybody exchange $20. Since I will only be here for three weeks, I have $20 dollars of soles I need to spend.  If you think of any thing you would like, let me know. 

Look forward to hearing from you soon.  Love, Girndle

Thursday, September 23, 2010

I have made it to Peru!

Hello Family,

I have made it to Peru.  I was glad I got to talk to you all yesterday.  It was a pretty exciting feeling when we flew over the city of Guayaquil on the way down!  We could see the lights from the city up in the plane.  Most of the elders on my flight are going to Ecuador.  I did not know there were so many missionaries in the MTC.  We arrived in Lima at

We all made it through customs fine, but waited for an hour looking for a missing elder in our travel group.  It turns out he had actually gone home from Provo two weeks earlier but the Peru MTC was not notified (We only learned this after our bus driver had made the decision to abandon him at the airport).

Thursdays will probably be our P-day.  My new companion’s name is Elder Hernandez.  He is from Mexico, which is rare for the Peru MTC.  Most of the native elders are from no further north than Guatemala.  He already speaks pretty good English, so we have had no communication problems so far.  We have not been able to talk much because they have us split up for today.  They got to start classes while all the North American elders had to do paper work and get a hair cut.  This is the second haircut this week.  They made us get a haircut when we left the Provo MTC so now I have almost no hair.

The campus here is beautiful.  There are three main buildings.  There is the administration building, the building with our classrooms and dorms, and the cafeteria.  We have a big soccer field, a basketball court, and some foosball and pingpong tables.  There is a big courtyard in the middle of the compound connecting everything.  As we wandered around the campus today, there was some sort of celebration outside with live music.  The flutes and singing certainly added a lot to our first Peruvian experience as we explored the campus.

Our dorm room, shared with 4 other elders
The meals here are good.  So far we’ve had chicken and rice.  For every meal we have different kinds of fruit juices.  Since the names are all in Spanish, I usually can't tell what kind of juice it is.  I think that a lot of them are fruits that we don't eat a lot in the USA.  They said not to send any packages to the MTC, but you still should be able to when I get to Ecuador.

Love, Elder G

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Building up Banana Endurance--Farewell to Provo

Greetings from Provo,

Today is our last day here at the MTC.  We got back from the temple and we just finished getting checked out at the medical center before we leave for Ecuador.  Elder Heaps had to get a special flu shot because of his asthma history.  While we were waiting, the doctor came up to me and said "How about you, would you like a flu shot?"  The way he said it made it sound like he was offering me a sucker or something like they usually do at the doctor's office.  I asked him if  I would still have to pay for it and the conversation ended right there.  Anyway, we are getting all packed up and ready to leave and getting our last pictures with all our teachers and other zone members. 
District 48 C--Provo MTC: Back: Elder Brown, Elder Farrell,
Elder Heaps, Elder Olson, Elder Reeb, Elder Johnson, Yours Truly
Front: Elder Pederson, Elder Sainsbury, Elder Westerberg, Elder Mecham

I am glad to hear that you are doing well.  Don't worry about your calculus grade, Lia.  Know you can learn what it means to be ahead of the curve.  It is one of the miracles of our modern scholastic system.  You don't need to know all the material, you just need to know more of it than anyone else. 

The travel times I gave you last week are all in their respective time zones.  I don't know how long it will take to get through international security, so I may not be able to call from Georgia.  I will try and call from both places, though.  Hope I can call when everyone is there.

To answer some of your questions:
1. All the food here is excellent and in great quantities.  However, I am looking forward to all the fresh fruit at the Peru MTC.  Elder Heaps and I have been working on building up our banana endurance.  We try to eat as many as we can every meal.

2. I have only met one sister who is going to Ecuador.  I did finally meet Elder Tait yesterday, though.  He will be part of our travel group going down to Peru.
3. We do like to sing "Called to Serve" in Spanish.  I also love all of the other hymns that are not in the English hymn book.
Elder Sainsbury, my district leader
4. We do keep real busy here.  We just have one classroom, but have different teachers that come and teach us every day for two or three hours.  Usually they start with a grammar lesson and then we talk about gospel doctrines or practice teaching a lesson.  For about four or five hours a day, we have Missionary Directed Time where we can do personal study, study with our companion, and practice teaching other elders gospel principles.  The only "free" time we get is at the end of the day to write in our journal and really take in everything that we learned.  I don't know how similar it will be in Peru, but I know we'll still have teachers that teach us every day.
5. I can't wait to get to Peru.  It will be great to be immersed in a completely Spanish environment.  It will also be great to start teaching real investigators instead of just role playing with volunteers.

Mom, I gave back the Franz Liszt CD to the library.  If you want, you can put Helaman 5:12 or some other scripture on the plaque.  Thanks for writing the questions, Ava.

Love,
Elder Ludlam

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Plans for Peru & "Real" Teaching Experiences

Hello Family,

I just got your package last night.  I am glad that the little ones made something.  I did notice that Luci said her picture was of her and me playing, but I could only find one blond head in the picture. I guess that means I am too quiet when I play with her.

We got our flight plans this week.  I will be leaving SLC at 9:45am on 9/22 and arriving at Atlanta, GA at 3:40 pm and then flying to Peru at 5:05 pm.  I will get to call you at the airports so we should try and pick a time.  I will have one more P-day before I leave.  I heard that in the Peru MTC, all the missionaries from the states get paired with a native companion and you can only speak Spanish to them and they can only speak English to you.  The natives only stay for three weeks so I will probably have two different companions in Peru.  We also get to do contacts outside on Sundays and go on exchanges with the elders serving in the area. 
My District with our teacher, Hermano Finter

I met an elder from Ecuador.  His name is Elder Zambrano.  He tells me that that is popular name in Ecuador.  He grew up in the Guayaquil South area so he has been telling me about all the things the elders in Ecuador have liked.  He says that I'll like cerviche, the soup with lots of shrimp and other seafood in it.  He's never heard of it "messing up any of the missionaries stomachs."  He says that every year on New Years, they make año viejos, life-size paper mache replicas of famous or popular people that you light on fire.  He said, "Don't worry, a lot of missionaries wake up and think there is a war going on, but it is just New Years.  Elder Zambrano comes and plays soccer with our district every day so most of the other elders know him well, too.

We learned that the Bolivian missionaries will not be joining us down in Peru.  They will finish their last six weeks here in Provo.  We are all a little disappointed as we've grown close together working to learn the language and to teach with the Spirit.  We had our first teaching experience at the Teaching Resource Center.  They have volunteers from the community come and role play investigators.  You get to contact them and they come back and we teach them a whole lesson.  After we started teaching, the dynamics of our whole district changed.  Everyone got really excited and were able to focus on working towards being better teachers. For some elders, it was their first time doing real teaching.  Elder Heaps and I have also made a few appointments at the Teaching Evaluation Center.  These appointments are shorter, but you focus in depth on a particular aspect of your teaching.  We have mostly worked on contacting people.  We have learned a lot and our teaching is quickly improving.
Our other teacher, Hermano Frampton (very top)

I am grateful for the many people who have written me.  I hope I will be able to write them back soon.  They don't give you much time to write people here at the MTC.  Maybe I will get more time in Peru to write.  They are supposedly a lot more relaxed with less rules there.  There are only a hundred or so missionaries in Peru.  I hope to hear from you soon.  Make sure to ask questions about the things you want to hear about.

Love,
Elder Grant Ludlam

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

"Those elders are me!"

Hello family,

They let me send a letter to you earlier to let you know that I survived the first few days at the MTC. I'm afraid you'll get this before that gets to you, though. I'll try to give you the basics without repeating myself too much.

First of all, I'll only here for three weeks. I think I will be switching to the Lima Peru MTC. No one has bothered to tell me or my companion this yet, but every other member of my district is scheduled to leave on the 22nd.

My companion is Elder Heaps from Tooele Utah. He is very diligent and obedient. He is a good example to me. We are still working out problems with our teaching styles, but he is willing to work hard to do what ever we need to do. There are 11 elders in my district. Two companionships are going to Santa Cruz Bolivia, one companionship is going to Cuzco Peru, Elder Heaps and I are going to Ecuador, and the "tres-panionship" is going to Lima Peru North, West, and Central. The four elders going to Bolivia are having visa problems and my not make it with the rest of the district to Peru. So far it seems that no one else is having any problems with visas. The Bolivians drew a map of South America and drew an arrow to Bolivia that says "vamos aqui juntos!" Drawing the map, we learned that most of our district does not know where they are going. We had a large geographical argument.

Hermana Borgolthaus
Our teachers are Hermano Frampton, Hermano Finter and Hermana Borgolthaus. Hermano Frampton is our favorite. Hermano Finter is just back from his mission in Chile. So far we have not done too much language study. We have mostly focused on our purpose as missionaries and how to best address the needs of our investigators.

Coming to the MTC was not as overwhelming as I thought it would be. It's more grinding. When you arrive, there are literally people every five feet telling where to go next. On the first day, I realized I had very little Spanish endurance. My brain got fried quickly and I just stopped trying to think because when I did, it was in Spanish. I've found I'm very good at pretending I can speak Spanish. It kind of blows away the Spanish beginner. I can get the native speakers to raise their eyebrows when I throw in some irregular subjunctive conjugation when I don't know the right grammar. Our teachers tell us that for an intermediate level district, we all speak very good Spanish. We have a few elders who lived on the southern border and can communicate whatever they want, but have a lot of bad speaking habits and are missing a lot of the missionary vocabulary. When we walked into class, the teacher had written up on the board "No hables o entiendes ingles." We have been speaking mostly Spanish, but the teacher often repeats himself in English.

Its great to be here. Every time I see Elder Heaps and my reflection in a window, I get a little chill. I think, "Those elders are me!" This is the real deal. I can't wait to get out into the field and begin to help people come to know Christ and their Father in Heaven.

Hope to hear from you all soon,
Love Elder Girndle

Saturday, September 4, 2010

First Letter Home

Dear Mom and other family members,

They let us write this one letter before our P-day to tell our families that we survived the first few days at the MTC.  They don't really give us any time to write it though, so it may get to you later than my email [it did!].

All the elders in my district are great.  I have come to appreciate them more and more every day as we all diligently seek to learn the language and how to touch the hearts of those we teach.

My District: Elders Heaps, Brown, Westerberg, Reeb,
Paterson and Johnson

My companion is Elder Heaps.  He is a great companion.  He is more reserved like me but he has lived his life so as to be well prepared for the work.  He is very diligent.  Although he only took one semester of Spanish in high school, he has managed to get to the intermediate level  by studying the Book of Mormon in Spanish since his call.  His brother just got back from Uruaguay and so he has a nametag that says "Elder Jips" that he wears sometimes as a joke. [you pronounce Heaps in Spanish "Jips"]

Hope to hear from you soon.  I got the two letters you wrote before I even got to the MTC.  I look forward to writing you again on Tuesday.

Much love,
Elder Girndle