Phew!
It has been a little crazy, let me tell you. So we leave the MTC Sunday night at 8:00 and jump on a bus to head to the airport. It was very surreal just to be in the outside world and see things like billboards and freeway signs I recognized. We got to
the airport for our 11:00 flight when the following story occurred:
So, I being a foolish young man who has flown very few times packed not one, but THREE leatherman tools with knife blades in my carry-on. You might see where this is heading. We went through security and the alarm goes off on my bag. I realize my mistake
by now and am kicking myself but cannot do anything. The security guard calls me over and opens up the suitcase and asks if anything sharp or dangerous is inside. I had to give a reluctant yes and was very frustrated about losing the leatherman tools. They
were kind of special and I wanted to have them for later. Two from Dad and one from Devin. The guard looks around a gives a little "Whoah!" and tells me I can´t have the knives. Or my toothpaste. He said I could normally mail them home, but it was almost midnight
so the mail place was closed. My options were have them confisticated or pay to have the bag as checked luggage. I went back downstairs to try and check my bag, but I only find out that I can´t check any more. So I return to security and wait in line again.
I waited for the alarm to go off, but my bag goes through without a sound. They hand it to me and I am a little stunned and look around to see if anyone is going to stop me. Nope. So I head on over to my plane. That was a cool little experience for me. I felt
like it was a tender mercy and Heavenly Father watching out for me. They never checked me again at our layover in Atlanta or arriving in El Salvador, so I smuggled three knives and a tube of toothpaste on an international flight in my carry on. Beat that,
haha.
Also, four apostles got off the plane we got on in SLC! I didn´t actually see them, but one of the guys in our district waved to Elder Renlund. Would have been cool to see. Another guy sat next to a Catholic minister in full ministerial garb the whole
flight. A little funny. I love the feeling of take off in a plane and had a perfect view. I couldn´t help but feel a little like Walter Mitty taking off on a big adventure and not really knowing what´s in store. 15 hours of sleepless travel later I felt a
little less so.
After leaving Sunday night at 8, we finally arrived at about noon in El Salvador. Phew. A little crazy. We circled out over the ocean and pulled in above a jungle of trees onto the runway. It´s sooo pretty here. 10 gringos navigating through baggage claim,
customs, and immigration in a Spanish airport was a little crazy, let me tell you. We finally got outside though. We then climbed in a rickety old van with all our stuff and a ton of missionaries driven by the bishop and drive for about another two hours to
Soyapongo, where we have the mission headquarters. That was my home for the first two days. Supposedly it is one of the more dangerous parts of our mission, but I think El Salvador´s new president has done a lot of work cleaning things up, which is good for
us. Man I was tired, though. I think I went about 30 hours without sleep,
I´ll insert my little bit about El Salvador now, but it has been garnered from arrival until now. It is so crazy green here. The jungle is really everywhere a house is not. I love it. Crazy plants and trees everywhere. Another thing I love is the buildings.
Everything is painted crazy, bright colors and is super chaotic and fun. Every spare wall is painted with some sort of mural or picture. Also, all the houses have a little locked off front porch part outside with the house behind. Hard to explain, but kind
of interesting. It is crazy hot here. Well maybe just normal hot, but there isn´t air conditioning everywhere, so you just never really cool off. The chapels usually have pretty good fans, which is nice. The streets are crazy too. There are lots of normal
residential sized roads but with the houses right up next to the sidewalk. The roads twist and turn everywhere and are full of semi trucks, crazy painted buses with spoilers, pedestrians, bikes, bikes with laundry basket things on front loaded up with bread,
three wheeled moto-taxis, cattle carts, normal cars, old crazy beat up cars, trucks loaded up with coconuts and people lying on top, etc etc. If there are traffic laws here, I have no idea what they are. It is kind of fend for yourself no matter what type
of road you are on. Also, there´s normal sort of cement roads, dirt roads, cobblestone roads, and actual stone roads. There are also stray dogs everywhere. Loads and loads of them. Also chickens and ducks and what have you wandering around. The food is very
different. I do looove pupusas though. Very very good. The week one pupusa count is 14. Other than that lots of rice and lots of other stuff. I have probably eaten more vegetables this week than every other time in my life combined. Not a joke. Dead serious.
They talk about the gift of tongues, but I think the gift of stomachs is real too. Luckily, though, we aren´t allowed to eat the cabbage stuff they sometimes put on pupusas! We get parasites if we do. Oh, here is one thing I loooove about El Salvador, the
fruit juices! At home, apple and orange juices were good. Here they are heaven though. De La Valle orange juice or Cascado Piña y Coco, oh man. So good. I also love Kolashanpan! Just like the kind we had back home when dad made Empanadas. Very good. Too many
generous Latino women are trying to feed me. The other thing that is super great is when we see a familiar food. They have fanta soda and Chips Ahoy sometimes. I´ve also had Cheetos Puffs, which was great. The puffs were like the size of a normal cheeto though,
so a little different. People here live in very humble circumstances. We are very blessed in the states. Most people have tile floors, but we have taught lots of people with dirt floors too. Everyone has hammocks everywhere. Also, somehow everyone has crazy
cool motorcycles. Also, people point with there lips, not fingers.
Anyway, now I will continue chronologically. We slept the first night with the secretaries. They had a room with like 6 bunkbeds all pushed together and you had to crawl in from the side. I took my first bucket shower! That was an adventure. I have since
taken a couple more, but usually we have water. (With an on or off knob, no temperature control, haha. No showerhead either, just a pipe out the wall. It is pretty good though.) We mostly messed around the first day and then went and tried handing out pass
along cards. The second day we met the mission president. I like him a lot. He is funny and he and his wife care about us a lot. No english though. The mosquitos are not actually too bad. We do have mosquito nets over our beds, which helps. I enjoy the little
lizards that run around, but there are these tiny, harmless bugs that run around that drive me crazy. Anyways, day three we met our comps and went to our areas. I am in a little town in oriente (means far, not the big city parts) called Jucuapa. I like it
a lot. A little slower than Soyapango and the people are very nice. My comp is Elder Peck. He is also from Texas, like my last comp, so it must be destiny that I am with Texans, haha. He is very nice and I like him.
Spanish is hard. I am doing okay, but people just slam all the words together and don´t annunciate like your teachers in the MTC. Very fast. The first day I literally understood just about nothing. However, every day gets a little better. The people tell
me I can speak well, which is nice. Just have to practice understanding so I know what to say. Usually I understand when people say things like he´s tall, a gringo, or does he speak spanish. Then I say yes and they ask a follow up question that I don´t understand.
Thankfully my comp speaks very well.
Also, we have what is called a pila. A cement box with water that we use for washing clothes and hands and whatever else. We have a fish that lives in it to eat mosquitos. I like it. We named it Flojo, because it does nada, if you catch the joke, haha.
Sorry, I have a million unread emails and have no more time. Love you all and see you later. Pictured are me with my first El Salvadoranean haircut, volcano, and some more. Also, almost all our water is in bags! Kind of fun. We just drink little ziploc
bag things of water. Also had a bag of juice the other day.
Elder Harris
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