News From The Mission Field

Hermano Elder(my nephew) sent this in his weekly report. I promised I would blog it for family , friends and any one who wants to read it on my blog:P


**I have deleted/changed names because "P day" isn't until next Monday when he will email again with permission.

Hermano Elder

So we determined that our MTC training wasn't sufficient for *real* missionary work on the streets of . So we decided to get attacked by dogs, a real missionary talent that is not part of the standard MTC curriculum. It so happens to be that there is someone in our stake that is an personal defense (attack) dog trainer, and the English Elders set it up so that we could all come by on P-Day and get eaten. So this morning we got there and met the guy. He mainly breeds and trains Dobermans. His specialty is training dogs to be attack dogs but also to be family dogs as well. He first asked for the person who was most afraid of dogs to volunteer. He gave him a suit and then let a dog loose on him. It was a lot of fun to watch. Then we all eventually got a turn. And then he went in and had four dogs let loose on him.
1 This is my companion about to be bitten
2 This is **Elder APPLE just using an arm guard
3 This is **Elder POT PIE, who was my MTC companion, being attacked by two dogs.
4 This is the trainer. He has the dogs in what is called guard mode, which means they are to lay down unless the subject moves. This is really cool. One of the other missionaries was being guarded and he would would flinch the suit just a little and the dogs would get jumpy.
5 This is what happens when you move
6 You get attacked
7 Until you are down
8 This is just a really cool picture.

There are unfortunately no pictures of me. The guy I gave the camera to decided to take video, so I'll try and figure a way to send that your way.

In all of the pictures of us, we are wearing a big blue/gray suit. It's very thick and usually when the dogs are biting us they are just biting the suit. The trainer when he went in was wearing the red suit, which was protective, but not quite as thick, and when they would bite it would actually be biting him. In dog training they slowly grade it down and try and get the dogs used to biting flesh, because when they first start out they won't really attack anyone unless they have a suit on. Another interesting thing, attack dogs are usually trained in German. The tip we were given is if we were being charged by a trained attack dog, is to face it directly, square your shoulders and close your stance, and yell in a mean and loud voice "sitz" which is the command for sit or stop. We tried it a few times and it worked every time. Although the likelihood of being attacked by a trained attack dog is next to none, unless your harass it or the owner commands it to. He also gave tips on how to deal with just random street dogs.

He has a website, I think it is or something like that. By next week he is going to have the video of the whole thing up and I'll send you the link.

By the way, I still have all of my limbs and digits.

I hope all is well.

Love,
**Hermano Elder









I may have messed up the picture order but I don't have time to sort it all out now