Chicken Bones

With this Monday came transfers! I'm still in Costa Rica. Elder Brassard left to Culiacàn, and I am now with Elder Merrell from Parker, Colorado. He seems really funny; I was immediately impressed by the way he works as we stepped of the bus to Costa Rica. He was greeting everyone, and we talked to a few people in a hair salon, and he had them laughing in a few seconds. So, I'm really excited to work with him for this transfer.

A missionary who is just leaving the MTC will be Elder Richins' companion (a missionary who currently living with us). Elder Richins and Elder Merrell will be at Concilio (I don't know what that is in English) for Tuesday and Wednesday, so during those two days, I'll be training the new companion. I'm pretty excited, but I'm honestly pretty nervous. Mostly it's going to be really fun, and involve a lot of "¿Cómo? ¿Cómo? ¿Qué dijo?" unless he's just a Spanish whiz.

We had a baptismal service for Fernando on Saturday. His mom is a member, but has been less active in the last few years. Their family has come to church every week since we met them, and there are always a few neighbor kids tagging along. We had 13 people in the van that we brought by to give them a ride to the baptismal service! His mom, Hermana Luísa, is seriously a referral master. She usually won't even let us start teaching until she has brought some of her neighbors over, and we have found a lot of new investigators that way. Fernando's baptism was really neat. He is impressively mature, being the man of the house at 12 years old. Him and his younger sister, Yadira, are total jokesters. Their favorite joke is just to tell us that our pen fell, and then yelling "Made you look!" It never gets old! A lot of members and friends and investigators came to the baptism. Those services are like magic for investigators who are considering getting baptized.

Dad, I think you need to reconvince me why motorcycles are dangerous. The more time I spend in Mexico, the more I want one. Also, is there any health reason not to eat chicken bones?

Love,

Elder Tingey

"One, two, three" in English, French and German

Lupita and Luis

Elder Davis, Elder Tingey, Luis, Elder Brassard

Hello!

Today we had our last district meeting for this transfer. Things sure happen quickly. Elder Brassard and I have had a lot of success here in Costa Rica II. This past Saturday, Luís was baptized, which was really fun. His girlfriend, Lupita, bore her testimony before the ordinance; it was powerful. She said how worried she was about her family members that are becoming less active, and they all ended up coming to church yesterday when Luís was confirmed.

Next week, Fernando will be baptized. His mom, Luísa, is member who has been less active in recent years, but is now super active after the two weeks that we have been teaching. She's the queen of referrals; I'm convinced that all of her neighbors will be active members in a few months. We teach at their house nearly every day, and everytime there are various neighbors there. We taught the ten commandments a week ago to 9 kids that had gathered in the house, using hand symbols to remember each commandment. Every scripture all the kids yell, "No, I want to read it!" "No, me!" and they all fight over who gets to pray at the end.

We always sing at the beginning of the lesson, and someone always counts to three to start us off. I think I've taught a good portion of the city how to count to three in English, French and German. I want to learn how to count to three in some other languages so I don't run out of creative ways to start off.

Lots of kids in the street like to practice English or learn new words, so they always yell at us, "¿Habla Inglés?" It's actually been a cool way to find families to teach, once we have the kids show us where they live. Earlier in the week, some kids asked if I speak English, and I just yelled, "¡No, solamente Alemans!" (Only German!) They all started yelling and chased after us. I guess word spread pretty quickly and now a lot of kids in that colony call me "the German." (El Aleman). I feel like Marcus Arelius in Gladiator.

We found a woman, Amalia, on Saturday. She has definitely been divinely prepared to hear from us. We talked to her in the street, gave her a pamphlet about the Restoration, and set up an appointment. A few hours later, we had extra time so we went to her house to teach her, and she had already read the pamphlet and loved it. She essentially challenged us to baptize her. Her mom, Marguerita, is this tiny woman in a wheelchair who is really sassy and hilarious when she knows what's going on. Amalia is really silly and funny and had the whole Gospel Principles class laughing in church on Sunday. She's living with Cándido, who as it turns out was baptized, but never went back to church afterwards, not even to be confirmed. But they are planning on getting married later this week, and Elder Brassard and I are going to be witnesses for that! So, they will probably be married and baptized and active members in two weeks. We taught the Plan of Salvation last night, and she was just in tears for most of the lesson. The Spirit was testifying very strongly as we explained what is happening to her father, who passed away recently, and how they can be an eternal family.

The amount of les active members here in Costa Rica is sad. We're trying to help the members realize the impact they can have, especially in supporting the less active membvers and helping them come to church. We find a lot of them, but we really don't have the capacity to fellowship everyone. When the members of the chuch have friends visiting them or accompanying them to church, they stay strong.

Things are going very well here in Mexico. Thanks for the support!

Love,

Elder Tingey

Special Musical Number

The Warriors - This is for David Bybee and Dylan Self. When I saw this I laughed and laughed.

El Dorado Zone Conference

We've had a really fun a complicated week. Last week we had a conference all of the zones near Culiacán. President Cantú gave us a lot of counsel. It was a lot about having faith. The missionaries who are having yhe most success in the mission have the most faith that their investigators will get baptized, demonstrated by the fact that they have always set goals for baptism during the first lesson. We've been changing the way we teach by following this counsel: we challenge new investigators to be baptized during the first lesson, and if they're not interested, we invite them to church, but don't really spend more time teaching them. We spend our time finding those who are prepared to be taught and to really gain testimonies.

Elder Larkin and Elder Pearson (missionaries from the MTC district) and I sang a special musical number for the conference, which was extremely fun. I miss singing with them. It was strange to see how much they've changed just in the amount of time that we've been here in Mexico. It makes me wonder how much I have changed.

Love, Elder Tingey

Elder Brassard and my cliche mexican wedding photo without smile.

Lots of Pasta

Angie's Family

If you want to send Spencer a letter: spencer.tingey@myldsmail.net

March 7, 2011:

It is so cool to hear about what's going on with everyone. I can't believe these mission calls! Hearing about Tyler going to London and Dillon going to Brazil makes me so excited! My guess for Oliver is Paris, the one in France.

I love getting letters from people in the ward. I'm so grateful to read them and have that support. Thanks to Sister Young's class! I've gotten a couple from Sisters in the ward. It's difficult to respond to everyone, but I really enjoy them. Thank you!

Packages should go to the mission office. Everything goes to the mission office. I can always do with more ties and food. Oh man... I was really hungry and I started thinking about Extreme Air Heads recently... that was bad. I'm really enjoying living as cheaply as possible right now. I just bought a bunch of fruit and eggs for this entire last week. Tomatoes are one peso! Can you believe it?

Dad, Elder Brassard reminds me a lot of you in the way the he doesn't go halfway with anything. Uncle Chad told me about how he recommended a brand of beef jerky to you, and you bought one of every flavor to find the best one, which was a ton of jerky. I made some pasta for Elder Brassard and he said, "This is SO good! And cheap!" and the next Preparation Day he bought 12 bags of pasta. I believe he now has 10.5 bags of pasta.

We're teaching two brothers, Noe (Noah) and Noel, whose older brother, Alfredo, is a recent convert. They remind me a lot of myself, Jacob and Ben, if we were constantly in a really frivolous mood. They're insane. We met them while looking for Alfredo, and then taught them about the restoration of the Gospel. They are both really excited to get baptized. We left a part of the Book of Mormon for them to read. When we came back the next day, Noel had read the chapter we left, and then hid the book so Noe wouldn't be able to answer any of the questions about the reading! Aside from that, they're really smart. Noel was quoting parts of 3 Nephi 11 to us after having read it just once. People usually don't really understand everything the first time reading it.

We are also teaching Luís, who is dating Lupita, who is a member. I think young women in the church attribute to about 75% of missionary work in the world. They're awesome. Luís is really fun to teach. We challenged him to be baptized and he accepted.

Costa Rica is awesome. Why didn't anyone tell me how much fun missions are? We're really enjoying ourselves and helping a lot of families by bringing them the message of the Gospel!

Love,

Elder Tingey

Joel

Joel's Family

If you want to send Elder Tingey a letter send it to : spencer.tingey@myldsmail.net

February 28, 2011:

Things are going really well here. A mission is a very strange break from the rest your life, and it really gives you time to think about, well, everything, but I've been thinking a lot about how my life has gone and what I'd like to improve, and setting a lot of goals for what I'd like to do after. It's funny, I've heard quite a few missionaries mention how much they want to read when they get back. We don't realize how good things, such as culture, are until we're outside of them. But there's a whole lot of other stuff filling that time that we could be sitting on a couch watching Lost.

We set up a baptism for an 8-year old kid whose mom is a member on Sunday. It was really fun, and we had some of our investigators stay after church to see how a baptismal service is. The kid that was baptized, Joel, was completely crazy. He came into Priesthood meeting about half an hour earlier and said something like, "Are we ready to baptism me? My class already finished, so I'm ready." He was jumping up and down in the font and I had to kind of fight him to get him in the water because he was so excited. He wouldn't plug his nose, so once he came out of the water, he said, "I almost died!" I mentioned Angie in an earlier e-mail, we've been teaching her in English for two weeks, which has been very strange. She was at the baptism of Joel, and as it was starting she came up to us and asked if she could get baptized! That was a really cool experience. She's left to Phoenix today, so we told her that it would be a lot better if she gets baptized there. She was pretty bummed, but it is a lot better for her this way. Her family will give her a really hard time, so she wanted to just get baptized here without them influencing her. Now, she'll have to be a lot stronger if she wants to follow through and be baptized, which will make her a much stronger member in the end. And she'll get to know the members and the missionaries there a lot better.

Greetings,

Elder Tingey

Elder Tingey Update - Lots of Music

Hi. First thing, I don't think I ever remembered to mention that USPS is supposedly the safest for sending packages.

Also, hi! Elder Brassard and I have been working really hard for the last week. I definitely learned how extremely important it is to be organized in our agendas. We spent a day meeting lots of new people, and both of us assumed the other one was writing all of the addresses and appointment information down. We ended up spending some time trying to find the houses again

(and I've hopefully attached a picture of this neighborhood, in which all of the houses look exactly the same). So from now on, I'm all about writing everything down.

I've been very surprised by the amount of musical stuff I've been doing. We sing at the majority of the lessons we teach. I now play piano for both branches in Costa Rica. I prepared a choir for a ward conference, which was really complicated in Spanish since I know very limited musical vocab. I also got to prepare a special number on guitar for our baptismal service this week. It's been fun.

We are currently teaching a girl named Angie, who lives with her cousins here in Costa Rica who are less active members. When we first met her, we taught her for a few minutes, and I asked her to read a scripture. She said, "I can't read very well in Spanish," in English. We both sat kind of shocked for a few seconds, and I just asked, "Is English your first language?" Turns out she's American and is from Phoenix. So we have been teaching her in English which is SO fun. And hard. We stumble around the language trying to translate back out of Spanish. So that was really strange. But she's been super excited about learning what we're teaching and came to church with us yesterday.

Dillon's going to Brazil?! That is so cool. There are some family members who I'm sure will have lots of advice about the country and about Portuguese. Congratulations Dillon! I will try to send some advice next week when I have more time. I ended up spending a good portion of my e-mail time trying to figure out how to send pictures, so I've now run out of time. I've got it down now, so I should be able to send more of the pictures I wanted to and send a fuller e-mail next time. I don't know which pictures Elder Davis sent through his mom, so I'm probably sending some repeats.

Love, Elder Tingey

Elder Tingey Contacted a Moving Vehicle

Hello, hello, hello.

First of all, I think the easiest way for me to recieve letters is just through this e-mail account! Dear Elder is complicated, and I don't know why Pony Express style mail exists anymore. I can recieve pictures and anyone is allowed to e-mail me through here!

We recieved changes and I am now with Elder Brassard in the other area of Costa Rica! Elder Sanvicente finished his mission and went home to Mexico, and Elder Richins is Elder Davis's (Davis'?) new companion. We all still live together for the time being. I worked with Elder Brassard in Culiacán for my first couple of days in Mexico. He is a really cool Elder who is a convert from Texas. He went to BYU Idaho, and used to work for American Airlines, so he would get free flights everywhere, and one time was in Orlando for twenty seconds because his arriving flight had been delayed and his arriving flight was leaving really quickly.

I contacted a moving vehicle yesterday. That was interesting. Lots of people yell, "Where are you from?" or "White boys!" or for some reason "What's crack-alackin'?" I think I heard that about twice in America, but about 6 people have yelled it at me since I got here. Anyways, we were riding bikes in Costa Rica, and a truck was driving by me when the passenger yelled, "Wherd ard jyou from?!" So I pulled my bike over and grabbed onto the side of the truck and talked to him for a while while the driver continued through the city.

Mom, that was neat the you mentioned The Family: A Proclamation to the World. We've been sharing that with lots of families lately. I hadn't read it for a while before my mission, but it is a really cool document. I like that it mentions the importance of work and recreational activities. Families are pretty important. We often start off a lesson and we say something like, "What is the most important for you?" Everyone says, "Pues, mi familia." I don't know if everyone would give that same answer in America, but here, it's very easy for people to see the blessings that they can recieve through the Gospel because all of them apply to families. The Gospel blesses families in so many ways. The Gospel is primarily knowledge. It is sometimes defined as Heavenly Father's plan for us and sometimes and the teachings of Jesus Christ, but these are essentially the same. The Savior taught that through faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end, we are able to return to live in the presence of our Heavenly Father after this life, and our families can be together for eternity. The knowledge of these essential truths apply to our everyday lives, and create unity in families.

We're having a lot of fun! For the last week we've hardly had time to to contact or try to find new people because we currently have so many people to visit.

I'm out of time.

Love,

Elder Tingey