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

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

"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

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