Did you go on a mission? If so, where and when? What do you most remember about it? Did you learn a foreign language?
Did you go on a mission?
Yes, I did.
If so, where and when?
I served in the Bolivia Mission. I spent March and April of 1971 at the Language Training Mission on the BYU campus, in Provo, Utah. I learned Spanish there. I left there for La Paz, Bolivia late in April and was there until March of 1973.
What do you most remember about it?
- I spent most of my time on the Altiplano, a very high...averaging 13,000 feet elevation...dry plain.
The altitude makes the sky seem huge, but close. There is no light pollution or air pollution, so the moon is very bright and crisp. I could see many more stars there than I have anywhere else that I've traveled.
The weather is intense. When the sky is clear, the sun pounds down and sunburn is inevitable. During rainy season, it rains every day, sometimes in an absolute deluge. It's never really warm on the altiplano. The sun might be stunningly bright and burn your nose and the back of your neck, but the air never feels warm because it is so thin and so dry. Clouds seem low, because they are, relatively.
The difference between light and shadow is stark, because the thin air doesn't diffuse light. You can see great distances, because the air is so clear and so thin.
- It takes a couple of months to really get acclimated to the altitude. Some missionaries never did, and suffered from altitude sickness. They could be moved to assignments at lower elevations in the country, and many were happy to go. Life was generally easier there, in wealthier towns with gentler climates.
- The altiplano is covered with ancient agricultural terraces and stone lined irrigation channels. There aren't nearly enough people living there now to have done that monumental work. Every hillside is terraced for miles and miles. Only a small fraction of them are in use today. The local farmers don't know how to build such terraces. I don't believe they've been studied. So nobody knows where they came from or when.
- The altiplano of Bolivia is a relatively unknown place. In our wanderings as missionaries, we found stone ruins, pot shards, arrowheads, and large areas covered with bone chips. They were just out on the ground beside a footpath, or in layers where the roads cut through hillsides.
- It was a fairly lawless and violent place. The police, customs agents, and local officials were uniformly corrupt. We even had to bribe the postman to get our mail. I did not realize how exposed and unsafe I might have been. That's probably a good thing. If I'd thought about it very much, I might have been too afraid to do my work.
- Most of the people we worked with were very poor and illiterate. They had one room adobe houses with thatched or corrugated metal roofs, dirt floors and maybe one or two wooden chairs. The kitchens were separate, much smaller buildings. Guinea pigs, lived on the floors of the kitchen and ate scraps from cooking. The guinea pigs were an important food source.
Subsistence farming was the primary occupation, with the entire family pitching in. Beginning at age eight or nine, children would tend the family's sheep and llamas (rarely more then ten or twenty animals). Everyone who was strong enough, worked in the fields (maybe one or up to ten acres per family) raising potatoes, onions, fava beans, quinoa, barley and corn.
- We were pretty successful in teaching the gospel. The mission average was one baptism per missionary per month. About 20% of the missionaries did about 80% of the work (not a very encouraging statistic, but true. As a result, if you were a good missionary, you could expect to baptize four or more people per month).
Unlike people in most modern, developed societies, men generally were the first to take an interest in our message. We rarely baptized only part of a family, because fathers were first to take an interest, and they strongly encouraged their wives and children to join with them.
- In addition to the usual missionary lessons, we also taught literacy and hygiene classes. In most cases, a missionary was branch president. Very often there were only two missionaries in a district, because our areas were so remote from each other. The most experienced missionary would be branch president and his junior companion would have the title of district leader...over a district that included a single companionship.
Did you learn a foreign language?
-I learned Aymara in addition to Spanish. Language learning was relatively easy for me. Missionaries who had exceptional language skill and who were confident Spanish speakers within their first six months, could volunteer for that Aymara language program. I volunteered and was selected.
Volunteering to learn and teach the gospel in Aymara was equivalent to volunteering for hardships. Aymara speaking elders served in areas without plumbing, electricity, or access to any packaged foods. We lived in adobe huts and used kerosene for cooking and light. We had no heat in our houses and were cold most of the time. During rainy season, our clothes were often wet for weeks at a time. In many areas, we only got a hot bath once a month.
Learning a language so different in structure and sound from English is a wonderfully valuable experience. It opens up new ways of thinking, even more than it does new ways of talking. Learning Aymara has changed my life in many surprising ways. It was one of the greatest blessings of my mission.
Living in very difficult and challenging circumstances was one of the great blessings of my mission. I learned about how to live a hard life and be happy. I learned that physical discomfort can be ignored and finally overcome.
