"That's not the language they taught me in the MTC"

HEY!

Today is my 2 month mark! I feel like its so crazy that its already been two months but also I feel like I have been here for my entire life and I will be here for the rest of my life. 

The language is coming but also its so hard. I can understand slow spanish really good but the problem is that dominicans dont pronounce anything and they speak super fast so some people I can understand ok and some people I have no idea what they are saying. Sometimes its really hard to not be able to communicate because I came on a mission to talk to people not follow around my companion. But I have learned so much in the last two months its crazy!

I saw some crazy stuff this week. There are so many stray dogs that when one dies nobody is going to bury it so there was this giant dog on this street we always walk on and it smells so bad and Im not going to describe how it looks. I saw SIX people on a moped. I realized this place we walk by everyday is a washing machine repair shop so I thought that was funny. Also everybody has up Christmas decorations and yesterday i saw a doormat that said "Let it snow" but my dominican companion has never seen snow and its hot and humid everyday haha.

I will try to send pictures next week but its really slow right now and I dont have enough time. Thanks for all your emails and sorry if I didnt respond.

Love Elder Eliason

Que lo que

Que lo que everybody!

There are all sorts of trials during a mission. Last week I thought my companion was so awesome and perfect but now I am starting to realize that nobody is perfect. He doesnt speak English and sometimes we dont get along and I cant tell him whats going on all the time because I dont speak spanish. 

We had another baptism this week! His name is Diego and he is 11 years old. He is super energetic and he is always happy. He was super excited to get baptized and be a member of the church. Sometimes Im sad and complain but at the same time I have 3 baptisms and I havent even been here for that long haha.

So the other day we were in this ghetto part of our area and there are animals everywhere. There are horses and chickens and dogs and cats everywhere. I was watching these really cute kitties and I saw that one of them was eating something. It picked it up with its mouth and IT WAS A CHICKEN HEAD!!! AHHHHH!!! what the heck! It was really gross and the other kitties were trying to take it. That was pretty gross but kind of funny at the same time too.

I think I said this before but if it werent for the other missionaries here I think I would be the only white person within a hundred miles. But everybody just yells at me in the streets because Im white. People are also really interested in my blue eyes and some people just cant even believe it haha. Almost everyday people will just be driving by on mopeds and a girl will yell something at me. I used to ask my companion what they where saying and it would always be something about a good looking white person so I just stopped asking and sometimes its kind of annoying... But also I guess there could be worse things than girls constantly telling me that Im good looking haha!

Sorry there are no pictures this week. I will try to send a lot next week.

Also I love all of your emails and pictures so thank you!

Elder Eliason

Another picture from Mom's favorite Dominican! ;)

Pics sent to Mom from Aron, an awesome member in La Vega!

2 down, 999,998 to go

hey everybody!

     i apologize in advance for the bad spelling and punctuation but i dont have time for that right now haha. so this week we got to leave the mtc and its crazy here. we got on this bus to santiago from santo domingo and we went to the mision home which was super nice. we just played basketball all day because the president had to have an interview with everybody and there were 12 of us.

     my compainion is elder mieses and if you are wondering if he is a native you are right and if you are wondering if he only speaks a little bit of english you are also right haha. but i like him a lot and he works really hard and he is always super positive which is good because sometimes its hard to think i still have more than 22 months to go. our area is called flamboyanes in la vega and i like it a lot. its one of the nicer parts but its still pretty ghetto and there is still trash everywhere. we can see the mountains from where we are and its super cool. also there are two sister missionaries in flamboyanes and they are both american but more importantly they speak english and i can understand what they say!

     the first day i asked what we were going to do and he pulls out his planner filled with appointments so we are almost always teaching. i cant understand a lot of what they are saying and sometimes elder mieses just stops talking and looks at me and i have no idea what is going on because i cant understand what they are saying but i am getting better haha.

   so... WE HAD TWO BAPTISMS THIS WEEK! its crazy that i already have two baptisms but also i take zero credit for them because they were already going to be baptized but i was there haha. the people we baptized are named jochy and marlenys. they just got married like a week ago and they are both pretty young. first elder mieses baptized jochy then i baptized marlenys IN SPANISH. i was super happy for them. when we got out of the font elder mieses pulled the phone out of his pocket and he baptized to phone too so that was pretty funny.

     thanks for all the birthday wishes. we didnt really do anything for my birthday except in the morning i said hey its my birthday but i dont really care that much.

     INTERESTING THINGS: i saw 5 people on a moped, i caught a lizard, everybody stares and me and every once in a while somebody just yells GRINGO, we j~walk across this big street everyday, everybody rides motorcycles and they just zoom like 6 inches past you, there are so many dogs, a bunch of the roads are dirt and there is trash literally everywhere, i sweat so much and its so hot, we eat breakfast and a big lunch and i drink water for dinner when we get back to the house. 

tarantula count: 0

Your Missionary Is Here

We are pleased to inform you that your missionary has arrived at the Mission Home in Santiago. They will meet their trainer and receive their area assignment tomorrow and will write you on P-day, next Monday.

Thank you,

Elder Decker

Secretario de la Misión Santiago

This place is NUTSSS

Hello everybody from the Dominican Republic!

This week was super good and it felt like forever but also I cant believe Im emailing again.

Last Friday we got to go on splits with the REAL missionaries. It was so fun. We got on a bus and drove the the stake center. The bus driver basically just did whatever he wanted on the street because hes so big. I went with Elder Clark from Houston and he was really cool. We got on the metro here which is basically the subway and there was this guy just like yelling where everybody was waiting and he was just preaching. We got of the metro and came up to this giant street. We walked over this bridge and there were just vendors that had there stuff laid out over blankets. We took this super ghetto taxi to this neighborhood. Its windshield was smashed and the whole inside was super old and we had to squish in with these two ladys so there were 7 people in a tiny toyota corolla from probably 1995.

We were going to teach this family but the parents werent there but the kids are baptized so we read the Book of Mormon with them. There were two girls and two boys and they were pretty nice. None of the houses have doors or windows so you just go in through the gate in front and there were just chickens everywhere.

All the houses are pretty ghetto and there is trash everywhere and it was SO COOL! Everybody just stares at you because you are white but I dont know if they know I can see them staring at me and they dont say anything unless you say something first. And everybody says "Saludos" to everybody. Everybody is just chilling outside because inside its so hot. We found this less active lady and she took us back in this alley into a room which was her house and it was way hot but it was really good. I didnt say a lot but I told her that reading the Book of Mormon everyday changed my life and I felt good about it. I can understand almost everything if they talk slow but everybody here talks 100mph.

Yesterday me and two other Elders went to the "doctors office" haha. It was super old creepy but we had to go for immigration stuff. They stuck this giant needle in my arm that was like 2 inches long and was super thick so it was basically a toothpick and I got kinda sick after because I hate needles but Im ok now!

Next Tuesday we leave the MTC! Finally! We get on a bus for like 2 hours I think then Ill get a new companion and get to teach real people and Ill have to speak spanish even though I dont know how yet haha. I think that we wont be able to email for a while because pday is a different day so Im not sure when that is yet.

I miss and love all of you! Its always hot here so it makes me sad to think the leaves are changing in Utah:(

Love Elder Eliason

 

Ayo! Week 4!

Hey everybody!

I dont have a lot of time but this week has been really good. Conference was super good and I learned a lot.

We finally got to do some real missionary work and we went to this university to teach people. We talked to these two girls and they seemed a little interested and first and we talked to them for a long time. We told them about the church then they asked some questions about the church then they asked some questions about us and then they asked questions about us. One of them was born on the very same day as me. They asked if we had girlfriends and we said no because we are missionaries and then they asked if we would ever date a dominican and we didnt understand and said no so I think they got kind of offended but elder durham tried to tell them that we didnt understand the first time so that was funny. We asked for their number and they asked why and we said so we could give it to the other missionaries and they said they wanted us to come instead of the other missionaries so we are pretty sure they were more interested in us instead of the Gospel but it was pretty funny and a good learning experience.

The other day President gulbrandsen came into our classroom and told me to grab my stuff and come the other room and so now im companions with elder larson. His companion went home so they ripped me away from the TRIPANIONSHIP but elder larson is a pretty cool kid and I think we will get along pretty well.

Not as much cool stuff happened this week so sorry. I dont have any pictures either but in two weeks Ill be out of here and Ill have a lot more cool stories and actually cool pictures.

I love and miss all of you and I love your emails!

Elder Eliason

Week 3!

Hey everyone! 

Sorry I didn't email last week. I couldn't figure out how to send it to everybody and I didnt have a lot of time but if you want to read last weeks or look at the pictures go here elderericeliason.blogspot.com .

Im not very good at writing these emails so Im just going to tell a bunch of funny stories and they will be all jumbled but its ok. 

So last week some of the older elders put alarm clocks in somebody else's room set for the middle of the night and they got really mad but it was funny. We were talking about it and me and my companions said "if anybody puts an alarm clock in our room then we will throw it out the window" and a few days later guess what we found??? an alarm clock. They didnt even hide it good because they set it in the window and we literally open the window every night to talk to people. We didn't want to make liars out of ourselves because we are missionaries now so we threw it out the window and it landed on this ledge next to our classroom on the second floor. So the next day they saw it because I threw it perfectly in front of the window and they got all mad. It was elder porrits alarm clock and it rained and got broken but during lunch I crawled out the window and we dried it out and put it under there bed but the batteries fell out and it didnt go off but it was still really funny. Because they just found their alarm clock in their room. haha

We were playing basketball the other day and everybody always goes super hard, I dont really know why but I was surprised nobody had gotten hurt. BUT... I knew something would happen. Me and elder guajardo went up for a rebound and he is always super aggressive and his elbow smacked me right above my eye. I started bleeding so we went inside to clean it up and it was actually a really big cut right below my eyebrow. They said they were going to have a doctor come but I wasn't about to let some dominican doctor operate on me. Nobody ever came and sister gulbransen said that it looks ok so I just tried to tape it shut that night and it looks pretty good now. 

On Sunday we finally got to leave the temple grounds to go to the park across the street and elder porrit almost got hit by a motorcycle his fifth step away from the temple and they just honk here they dont slow down. The park was pretty cool and it used to be an old zoo. We went to the store yesterday and I bought the coolest shirt ever and a bunch of snacks. The guy at the register said something to me and it was so fast and I thought he said "do you want more" in spanish but that didnt make sense but apparently he was asking if I was part of the stores club. On the way back we saw a horse in this little field in the middle of the city. Its not very nice but the older missionaries told us this is the nicest part of the DR that isnt a resort.

The older missionaries left on tuesday and that was really sad because I liked all of them a lot and we got new missionaries yesterday. There aren't very many of them so instead of having 60 missionaries at this mtc we have less than 40 probably. One of them said something about him beating us at basketball when we were going outside to play so I think we're going to have to show them how we do things around here a little bit.

Im going to try to attach some pictures but if you cant see them then go to that website. I miss all of you and I love all of you. Feel free to send me pictures because I dont want to forget what any of you look like. Also we got to go on top of the MTC and it was a super cool view.

Elder Eliason

Email Numero Dos

Hey Everyone!

Thanks for all of your letters. I dont have lot of time to write back but I read them all and I appreciate all of them:)

The CCM is a lot better than it was last week. The first days here were terrible but now Im good. First of all when we got here you would have no idea that a hurricane or anything just happened and theyre telling us that hurricane maria is coming today but its just kinda windy outside which is a pretty big disapointment but Im sure the people here are happy that their houses are not getting destroyed.

Sunday was a really good day. I got to take a nap because Elder guajardo had a meeting in the morining because hes the district leader so that was actually really nice because it doesnt feel like we get a lot of sleep here. We have some freetime on sunday too good and we walked around the temple. You can see the ocean from the front doors of the temple which is pretty cool because they never let us out of the walls here. But... GOOD NEWS! I saw the tiniest ant I have ever seen which was cool and I also saw like 5 lizards and the lizards here are like a foot long so that was awesome but theyre too fast to catch and I dont think President gulbrandsen would like that. oh well

My spanish is getting better. I learn more everyday but its still kind of stressful because i cant understand everything people say and I cant communicate as well as i would like to without taking forever to think about it. All week we just went to classes so thats not very interesting but here are some interesting things that happened this week. 

1. Every night we have to be in our rooms at 9 but at 9:30 everybody sticks their head out the tiny little windows and we dont really talk about anything interesting but its just kind of funny.

2. Presidents wife sister gulbrandsen was gone but she got here the other day. Shes super nice and the complete opposite of president so its nice to have her here. haha

3. They finally told us that we would get to go outside of the temple grounds yesterday to go to this park that is apparently an old zoo to do some service but there was a rain storm so they didnt let us go so we cleaned up the temple grounds. I dont know why. But its good that they have us to clean up the temple grounds because Im not sure if they pay a bunch of people a lot of money to come everyday and make it look super nice and trim the bushes so they look really nice and mow the lawn so it looks like a golfcourse... but we did pick up some leaves.

4. We get PIZZA every pday which is awesome because all we eat is dominican food but i do have honey bunches of oats in the morning so thats good.

5. The older missionaries are only here for one more week until they go out into the real world then we will be the "experienced" missionaries which is funny because we really looked up to the older missionaries and now we will be the older missionaries.

6. There are power outages like every other day but there have been i think 4 today because of the storm.

7. My dad gave me all these old ugly fat ties so we started making them skinny by cutting them and sewing them to make them look cool so we have this little sweatshop in our room.

8. On the bottom of the bunkbeds it says "a banana a meal makes your poops hard like steal" so im making sure to eat lots of bananas.

Email Numero Uno

Hey everybody!

I'm here at the CCM in the Dominican Republic and it's so crazy already! I flew out on Monday night to New York then we flew to Santo Domingo. There were like 15 other Elders that were on the same flight but I don't really like talking with big groups of people so I didn't say very much. 

When we landed we had to go through customs and there was this guy there to pick us up. It was so hot and humid when we got there and I started sweating a lot. We got on this old bus that took us to the CCM. I was really tired and miserable so I wasn't looking out the window the whole time but it was crazy! We drove through the city for a little bit then along the coast for a long ways. There is trash everywhere on the road and there are empty water bottles like every 5 feet. There were just like giant piles of trash in random places so it was super dirty. The first day wasn't very good so probably the highlight was when we were in the bus I saw this giant flaming pile of garbage and nobody even cared, they just drove right by it but it was like a legit fire so that was pretty cool/ghetto. 

When we got the the CCM we had an interview with the President of the CCM. He's pretty strange, he always has this smile on his face but it doesn't look genuine at all and he looks like he's just waiting for you to make a mistake so it's pretty scary being around him. They just told us to unpack our bags so we didn't do anything the first night so that sucked. We didn't go to any classes and I didn't want to be there. I missed everybody even though I had only been gone for less than a day and it sucks to think that I won't see any of you for two years.

Yesterday was a lot better. We had some classes and the food was pretty ok. We eat in this little cafeteria and there are like 40 people here. We hardly learned any Spanish and they always talk in Spanish. They just gave us these 2 papers with words and some books so I think they want us to teach ourselves which is dumb. It's pretty hard and stressful and I'm never organized but it's getting better.

My companions are Elder Durham and Elder Guajardo. I have two companions so I like that a lot and I'm really happy I'm with them instead of some other Elders I came with haha. We played basketball yesterday and I schooled some fools. We play 4 on 4 to two or three buckets so it goes fast but the rim and ball are so bouncy that only layups go in. The temple is right next to us and we went today so that was pretty fun and a good change of pace.

Here's some pictures, there's not a lot to take pictures of because we're in the same building all day long. The pictures are of my view and the temple and the CCM. It says I can only send the pictures on google drive or something so if you cant see them just imagine what it looks like. I miss all of you and I look forward to reading your emails! ​