Another Great Week!

Hello mother. I just came from san jose and picked up my package! Thank you so much! Those books look great. I’m super excited to read em and holy smokes there was a lot of candy in there!

As for mother’s day I still don’t really know. I’m sure we can call. I will call you on Saturday night to tell you when I will call Sunday since I got the phone cards. I will try and wait to be able to call after 2 but I don’t know if I will be able to. There are 2 others in the house that will call so I will put it in agreement with them.

Yeah! I heard he died (Osama Bin Laden) this morning! That’s fantastic. How great would it be to be the guy that finally took him out? I can’t believe I have officially missed an entire blazers season. It’s actually pretty sad.

Yes, the bishops wife does our laundry for us. The food’s fine. it’s always kinda weird and drenched in weird sauces. I ate oysters. I don’t really know if that’s interesting but I had never eaten them. It’s goin fine with Garcia. There’s really nothing I can do but try and enjoy the time with him.

Roberto and Andrea are great. She’s 20 and he’s 24 and they’ve lived together since she was 14 and he was 18. And this is super super weird, but Yanet has a friend that we we’re teaching named jeffery and we put a baptismal date with him for the 14th. I called him the other night to ask him how he was and said that he was super happy because his brother was getting baptized too and I said in what church? He said the Mormon church too and I said wait your brother is Robert?? and so we were teaching and getting ready to baptize 2 brothers who we met from 2 completely different sources and they’re getting baptized now together the 21st. Pretty weird.

Today we have to clean the house. President comes tomorrow to do interviews and inspect our house. We went to San Jose in the morning and went tie shopping.

But a funny thing happened the other day and it made me think of dad. Dad always told me the story from his mission of the little dog that chased him then died. Well the roads here are surrounded on each side by FATTY ditches everywhere so the streets don’t flood. And we were walking up a fatty hill toward the mountains and on each side there are like basically cliffs. This dog came running toward us barking annoyingly and I wasn’t going to but I played like I was gonna kick it and it got scared and fell back and went into a fatty ditch. I thought it was pretty funny and was similar to dad’s story.

What every you want to send is always welcome. jerky is always great and ticos are fascinated by it and have no idea what kind of black magic was used to create it. Other than that whatever is great.

Is Bernie still cute?

okkkk I’m out of here. I love you. Thanks again for the package! And for ordering the new camera.

pura vida elder graham

Wonderful Baptisms!!

Baptism of Yamilet and Jaime

Ervin and Mavel Baptism

Elder Cabrera, Jaime, Yamilet, Elder Graham, Ervin and Mavel

Ervin and Mavel's Wedding

Hello mother.. This weekend was pretty good. I didn’t get changes but one of the elders in my house did so we’re pretty excited about that.
The baptisms went well. I enjoyed it a lot. All were baptized other then Justine, the teenage girl. Saturday morning she called us and told us that she didn’t want to get baptized because she wasn’t ready. But everyone else was and we have put her new date for the 7th. At the baptism Elder Palmer played his ukulele and we sang “love is spoken here” It was recorded and you will get it someday when I send you the memory card.

We are teaching a new family that is the daughter of a less active and we put the tentative date for the 21st for them to get married and baptized. They’re Andrea and Roberto. I’m having a hard time with Elder Garcia. If I didn’t have elder palmer in my house to talk to and have someone sane I would probably go nuts. I’m not sure what’s up with calling home on mother’s day. I didn’t realize it was so close. I’ll figure it out this week. ohhh and I’m not really sure what to do but my camera broke...

Sooo last week I had maybe the craziest experience of my life. It would feel weird explaining it over an e mail. But it has to do with Justine. Since she was 7 her grandma taught her witchcraft and has practiced it ever since and her house was full of demons. That is far far from a joke and the most nuts thing that has ever happened to me. Someday I will get to explain it. We had to call president and he took it super super seriously and was gonna come straight there to help us but he was in the other side of the country. But he called our bishop and he came with us to their house. The things I saw in that house you would never believe me. But we blessed the house and they all left. I don’t really want to get into more detail over e mail but president told us that we need to be careful because they could follow us because we are helping that family and we’re messengers of the truth. I have hardly been able to sleep at night since then.

ok i gotta go. I love you. thanks for what you do. pura vida
elder graham

"Be The Kind Of Missionary Your Mom Thinks You Are"

Yanet, her kids, her mom and Elder Graham and Elder Cabrera

Hey there. Today isn’t p day but we get to use internet anyway. There is a huge holiday week here called Semana Santa which is holy week and I really have no idea what it’s for but no one will be home Friday so that’s our p day.

Things are going good here. We will have the wedding and 5 baptisms on Saturday. Ervin and Mavel, as well as that girl I told you lost her baby and her mom and her little sister. Yamilet is the mom, Justine is the teenager and Jamie is the 11 year old. They are all super awesome. With Ervin and Mavel, I really feel like they are the reason I’m here in this area and they will be baptized this weekend. Changes are the next Wednesday so even though I’ve been here so little I already feel like I’ve done what I came to do so I feel like I might have changes.

Elder Garcia is ok. He really doesn’t have much respect for me as senior comp and thinks because he speaks perfect Spanish and has a little more time in the country he is better than me and won’t listen to me. But it’s a little tough. The other elders are pretty good. I’ve gotten to be pretty good friends with Elder Palmer. He’s pretty tight. But his comp you would never believe how bad he is if I explained him to you. He’s 27 and I honestly don’t believe it because he acts like he’s 10. He doesn’t follow a single rule or have respect for anybody and I have no idea why he’s here. He just plays his psp all day and won’t leave the house.

This Thursday I think we are going to the temple with Ervin and Mavel. It’s pretty far we have to take 2 buses there. It’s like an hour and a half or so.

Elder Hinckley was awesome. Silliest guy. He is exactly like his dad. He just talked to us about normal missionary stuff. Being obedient. How to teach better. How to find. Normal mission stuff that would be boring for you. It was a multi zone conference and we were with atlantica so i got to see everyone from my old zone and talk to the Elder that came into Cariari and how good all my converts are doing there, which was good to hear.

Does everyone have their rip city playoff tickets?
I have been sick with a paracite, and had to go to the clinic and get medicine. I was sick for 2 ½ weeks, but I am well now.

There was a quote from Elder Hinckley that I really liked. He said ¨ be the type of missionary that your mom thinks you are.¨ I thought about my mom and thought of how perfect she thought I was. I thought it was pretty good.
ok i gotta go. I love you.

pura vida
elder graham

Another New Companion!

Well mother, Last Tuesday morning president Galvez called Elder Cabrera and told him that he had e changes again. I promise that e changes are not common in any way but they keep happening. So he left to Puntarenas (luckkyy). My new comp is Elder Garcia another from El Salvador. I promise that the mission isn’t filled with kids from El Salvador either. I just keep getting them. He has the exact same amount of time as me but has one more change then me in the country because I had more time in the mtc. He’s pretty good. Really goofy. I’m still just searching for that companion that I have heard that every missionary has had that was just their best friend. But I know he’s coming.

The Abnormal booth looks pretty snazzy I gotta say. That’s pretty tight that Luke got to come up. Are you guys doing anything tight for Allison’s bday?
That’s what I’m talking about rip city. Taking care of the chumps. Who is in 3rd place right now? who’s it lookin like we will play in the 1st round?
That sounds like a pretty good class you taught i want to get a hold of parts of those talks to watch with families here.

This Thursday we have a zone conference with Elder Hinckley, the one that came when I was in the mtc. He is in charge of missionary work for the whole church. The whole mission is pretty excited about it.

I officially have found my favorite people in Costa Rica. There’s a younger family that we’re teaching named Ervin and Mavel and they have 2 little girls 7 and a year and a half and they’re the cutest little girls ever. I can’t explain how much I love this family. We are gonna have their wedding and baptism on the 23rd. I talked to President Galvez and we got permission to take them one day to the temple so they can see it. Next weekend the day before their wedding/baptism we’re gonna take a trip there to get them excited about it. Should be pretty good.

Alright I’m out. Love you pura vida

elder graham

General Conference: the Superbowl of Mission Life

Gringo's Room for Watching General Conference

Hello mother. I loved conference just so you know! It was by far the best I can ever remember. Every talk was fantastic. Here in the mission, conference is like the Super Bowl and we all count down the days for it. The gringo room was the funnest thing ever. I wish there was a video camera watching us because it would have been funny to go back and see. We were all cheering and snapping our fingers together.. that’s what all the missionaries do.. You would think we were actually watching the super bowl. When someone would do ¨head chopping¨ which is what they always say in spanish we would start cheering and you should have seen us when they announced Elder Holland as the last speaker! We were all so worried that he wasn’t going to speak, and they announced every speaker and then him and we all jumped to our feet freaking out with excitement. We were worried he wasn’t going to. It was pretty great. Yeah, I thought that Elder Holland’s bedlamites was pretty funny and I completely pictured Jeffer, Gwen and Cohen running around in family home evenings when he said that.

The priesthood session was soo good! In between sessions we went to lunch and before the priesthood session we played soccer with little kids outside.

As for the ensign I get all of them so I won’t be needing them but thanks for the thought!

I sent a birthday letter for Allison and Jeff last Monday so hopefully they should be there soon enough.

We went to Pricemart this the morning, which is Costco. It’s all American stuff. Our bishop took us there to make our April purchases. I bought a case of cup of noodles and a fatty box of Oreos and a 10 lb bag of marshmallow maties among with some other treats.. All the products are in English and it’s exactly like Costco. It’s pretty cheap.

Alright mom I’m leaving. I love you.

pura vida
Elder Graham

Blessings of the Plan of Salvation

Saturday was the inaugauration of the new national stadium of Costa Rica and you have no idea how nuts this place went. It was 100% impossible to work. They played against China for the first game and all day there was coverage of the new stadium and no one would let us into their house. And these silly kids about freaked out when they saw my jersey and scarf.

Wow I didn’t even realize that I hit 8 months today. That’s already a third of the mission. That went by pretty fast. I feel pretty good about what I’ve done but there’s a lot more I want to do and a huge chunk of my mission is already done. I still feel brand new in the mission but in my 6 elder district there’s only one elder with more time than me. Its elder palmer and he only has one change more than me. So I guess I’m expected to know how to be a missionary at this point and I still feel lost most of the time.

That’s sooo sweet that Allison is all ready to go! I did the math and she has to leave before June 25 so that she only misses one Christmas! I don’t want to get home and have Christmas without her! Tell bishop to figure it out so that she can go right then!

What did Nick Hess think about church? Did the missionaries find him? That is their job and if they didn’t they’re lazy but Allison should have gotten on it too!

I’m super excited about general conference! I’ll be able to watch it in a different room with the gringos in English. It’s in the stake center in Purral. It’s super close. It’s like a kilo from our church.

We live super close to our church but our area doesn’t include the church so we have to take a bus everyday to our area and then we walk a lot. Our area is huge and includes some places super far that we have to take several buses to. But there are 2 different members who own “microbuses” and their jobs are transporting kids to school. So they help us out sometimes going to the far places.

As far as investigators it’s been super tough. We’ve had to start knocking doors. Last week we found a family and they have a 17 year old girl that just had a baby. It died when she was giving birth and she had just gotten out of the hospital earlier that day and she was really depressed about it. She had been Catholic and people told her that her baby was going to hell because it wasn’t baptized. We explained a little about the plan of salvation and showed her in the Book of Mormon when it explains in Moroni what happens to those babies. It was cool. We really came at the perfect time for that family and we will see what happens with them.

I need to go. I love you
Elder Graham

Baptism of Yanet and Her Family

Yanet's Entire Family

Baptism of Yanet and her 3 oldest children

These are the greatest silliest little twins ever. Last week, it was their 6th birthday so I gave them hacky sacks. Silliest funniest little guys ever!

P DAY. Soccer with the new district and thats ¨Napo¨ a youth next to me

Taco Bell with the Elders I live with

Well mother, the baptism was beautiful. The new kid in the house is Elder Palmer and he plays the ukulele so we sang “Teach Me to Walk in the Light” at the baptism and it was pretty beautiful.

We haven’t been doing much different or exciting since Wednesday, just doing the Lord’s work.

That’s unfortunate that everyone’s been sick. Right now in my house it’s me, Cabrera, Hernandez and Palmer. Palmer’s from Houston and the others are from el Salvador. Pretty good guys.

Today we went and played soccer as a district in my area and invited all the youth but only one showed up. We just got back from taco bell. I’ve got a few pics to send this week.

Well mother, I must depart at this moment. I love you.

pura vida
Elder Graham