Elder Cameron Hardy: Missionary Monday - First area from Paramaribo, Suriname

Hey all you kiddies! Finally out in the field and I can definitely feel the difference. My first week being official started with having to wake up pretty early in the morning. We made it to SLC Airport pretty early. After getting situated with all of our plans we were able to make on our flight to Houston than Trinidad. After I got to Trinidad I was able to talk to a woman as we were all walking to the next terminal. She asked us about who we all were (since we were all dressed up nice) and I explained to her, pretty cool to start it off! We then flew to Trinidad and were able to make it the mission home, it was pretty nice! President and Sister Egbert are really awesome! Sister Egbert even fixed some problems with my bag. The humidity in Trinidad was pretty bad but it's worse here in Suriname! The flight from Trinidad to Suriname was about an hour so it was pretty nice, I split the front of my pants during customs so that was awkward! On the plane I had my BvM (boek van mormon) sticking out and I was talking to this one flight attendant from Holland but lived in Suriname, she was really cool and had tons of faith and after talking with her I gave her it with some commitments and my testimony on the inside, we also got her information! My first few days here were pretty interesting, I almost crashed my bike a couple days ago thanks to a car that came a little close and a puddle that went down pretty far (there are tons of holes in the roads here) also, my inner tube "Binnenband" got popped. We were pretty far from the Rez so we had to walk for about an hour to get there but we managed to talk to a Brother Simon and a guy named Roy who talked to us about my sad situation but hey, we gave him a BvM so that's cool! It's been raining a lot today even though it's the dry season but it never stops raining here in Suriname! I also learned my first day that all of the W's in Dutch are pronounced like a W, sounds easy but when you've been conditioned to make a V sound, it's annoying. The accent plus the speed at which they talk is certainly interesting. Sorry about the long email, fijne dag!

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Goede Morgen! Mom & Dad, I miss you a bunch but this place is pretty awesome! My first day in Suriname was technically a night since we flew in, I also gave out my first book of mormon on the flight into Suriname to a flight attendant from Holland who lived in Suriname (hopefully aunt ma doesn't mind) When we got to Suriname we were greeted by a bunch of missionaries who wanted to meet us, quite a few Elders and a couple Sisters. They were really cool and one of them is an Elder by the name of Van De Herik which I thought was cool. We first flew out of Trinidad and spent a couple of days there just doing little, nothing very productive. I tried this pizza from mario's...Trinidad isn't very good at pizza! Suriname is so cool (hot) I think the only time I haven't sweated is when there is a fan on me and even then... My first actual day was cool, I have a pretty awesome bike and it was awesome riding through the country. It started on a on a Thursday so we did daily planning so that was for a while and then we met with an investigator. We had just gotten off our bikes and inside her house when it started pouring like nuts! It was super hard to understand her with the accent and speed she had but I kind of managed, I could talk to her about Joseph Smith though. Yesterday I introduced myself during sacrament and I corrected myself up there (they laughed a bit but that's okay) but it was fine, I've given up saying how I'm from Colorado and Las Vegas so now I just say Las Vegas since you live there now! I miss America! The culture here is so different, even Mcdonalds is expensive! I finally got the chance to get my mission funds and the money is really cool, they got rid of things like pennies so everything just goes in intervals of 5, plus they don't have tax on things, the price you see is the price you pay. My third day was hard near the end because my bike is really high up, even for me, so I have to sit near the edge of the seat to extend my legs fully while pedaling. This makes for some uncomfortable numbness. Earlier in the day while we had just started going through the city, I had the prompting to start singing, having questioned this for a total of one second, I bursted out into song, more specifically "Called to Serve" Later on in the day when I was having back pain, hunger pains and numbness, I prayed for a little bit of help while riding. I remembered me singing called to serve and how happy I was when I did it, the memory got a song in my head and energy in my back, then we got some snacks and I felt wayyyy better. This experience has been pretty humbling already and I'm curious as to how this will affect me in the end, one thing I miss already, not having ants everywhere and not seeing a cockroach my first day in the shower! Yep...a cockroach...you had better believe that I kept my eye on him the entire time! It rains here quite a lot but I've stopped caring about getting wet, the amount of sweat I emit makes me have to. Elder Cooper is my first companion here and he's really awesome, he's really good at Dutch and an all around awesome guy, he fixed my bike tire even! Couple of days ago we had pasta with chicken nuggets in sauce as "meatballs" it wasn't bad! My first night here a member's son in law took us and two other groups of Elder's out to eat at a sketchy looking chinese place, also, there are a ton of chinese people here, a lot of signs here have it on as well and it seems as if all the winkels (shops) here seem to be run by them, they pretty much only know Taki Taki and Chinese but money is a good enough language for people. I have so many bug bites it feels as if I have a target painted on me! Hopefully I'll get used to the bites soon! I've also named my bike Holy Roller (I need to learn how to translate roller)! My first day I met a man named Georgio, his legs don't work but he's pretty funny, when we were leaving and he was going through a space in the cars he went through earlier he said, "Sorry Elders, it seems in the space of our meeting I've gotten fatter" he likes to say funny stuff that if you don't catch and call him on it, he won't even act like anything happened. For beld:"I'm sorry, it's my fault" "Yes, yes, it is your fault"

Well I love you so very much, I'm currently sending this via an internet cafe (computers in a mall that we have to pay time for) Also, feel free to post this on the blog if you want! Love you lots,

Elder Hardy