Mission Stuff

I served a mission for the LDS Church from September 1992- September 1994. I drew upon those 2 years of experience nearly every day for a decade after I returned home. Here are a few fun little things about my mission to Ecuador.

1. Ecuador was hot and humid. We're talking 108 Fahrenheit and 80-100% humidity all the time. Like hot-tubbing? Just go to Ecuador. Like hell? Ecuador. You get the picture.

2. The heat I experienced on my mission is the reason I LOVE the cold now. It took many winters to finally begin to appreciate any sort of warmth again. "Appreciate" may be too strong a word. Tolerate?

3. People get the impression that I served in the jungle. I only experienced the jungle for 2 months during those 2 years. The rest were spent in large cities with millions of people.

4. Thunder in Ecuador is about the loudest thing I've ever heard. It's not ear-splitting...it's head-splitting.

5. In an Ecuadorian rain storm if you had to run across the street, you'd be drenched to your underwear lickety-split.

6. Spiders. [shudder] 'Nuff said.

7. Bananas are delicious. Dole run's their largest plants out of Ecuador and it is the country's largest export, I think. I ate a banana almost every day and still love them.

8. An Ecuadorian will not consider something a meal unless there are copious amounts of rice available. They do not consider a hamburger, fries, and a Coke a meal. Nay. I ate at least 1 pound of rice per day and still love rice to this day.

9. You know those green plantains you see in the foreign food section of the grocery store? When they are green you can fry them in oil and they have a potato-ish taste and texture. When they ripen and get yellow, they turn sweeter, but still only vaguely taste like a normal banana.

10. Every single person that cut my hair (with one exception) was a cross-dressing homosexual. Not sure, but that's just how it is in Ecuador.

11. I never drank water straight from any tap in Ecuador. All water had to be boiled or treated with bleach. That is why the first thing I did when I got home was to take a huge drink out of the hose in our front yard. MMMMMMM.

12. I got sick on my mission, like clock-work, every 2 months. And every 6 months we took a series of pills called "La Bomba" or "The Bomb". They were supposed to clear our digestive tracts of all nasty bugs and then build up the good "flora" once again. I received a Bomb as I stepped onto the plane to go home with instructions to begin taking it as soon as my feet hit North American soil.

13. I still remember the names of every companion and every place I served.

14. I don't think I would ever go back to Ecuador again. It might be nice to see some of the other parts of the country, and I loved serving, but it's just not a vacation spot, you know?

15. I had a companion that looked at his white bible (missionary handbook) each day and purposefully said "Which rule should I break today?" He got tuberculosis and got sent home.

16. Only once did I experience any sort of cool-ish temperature in those 2 years. It was a magical moment that I will always remember.

17. Ecuador has some seriously cool beaches, but they were not in the areas I served. We once took a 2 hour bus ride to one of those beaches on our P-Day. It was like something straight out of National Geographic. It was called Montanita.

18. I only trained one greenie. A greenie is a missionary who is brand-spankin' new. Elder Beal was a potato farmer from Mountain Home, Idaho. Most humble guy ever.

19. In one of my apartments the spiders were so abundant we had a corner of one room where we'd leave all their dead bodies encased in wax from hot candles. It was gross but so cool. Like a spider wax museum.

20. I still have about 7 rolls of undeveloped 35mm film from my mission. Think they'll survive the processing?

21. Every few months a companion and I would make what we called "Super Juice". We'd go to the market and spend 5 bucks on every bit of fruit we could find. Mangoes, maracuya (passion fruit), papaya, oranges, lemons, limes, bananas, and pineapples. We'd blend it all up and sip on the results for about 3 days. Ecuador has GREAT fruit! You could buy 5 pineapples for 50 cents.

22. In Ecuador they have a lot of street vendors. Guys that walk down the street holding about 30 brooms yelling "Escobas!" Or guys walking down the street with book shelves (yes, plural) on their 2 shoulders yelling "Book shelves!" You name it, bread, ice cream, bananas, pineapples....everything under the sun. The only person that does that here in Utah is the ice cream man. It was cool.

23. Milk in Ecuador came in a one-liter bag. And it's not pasteurized. I remember puking a liter of milk once when we were on a service project to clean up a cemetery. Blech.

24. You could buy American groceries from certain stores, but the prices were outrageous. A gallon of American milk back then was like $5. Snickers were about $1. Not too bad, but I'd only splurge once or twice a year.

25. My favorite Ecuadorian candy was called a Manicho. It was like a Mr. Goodbar...chocolate and nuts.