Season's in the Abyss

August 27, 2009

Dear family and other people.

Well I'm now officially 1/3rd of the way through my imprisonment, er, I mean experience in the MTC. It's actually quite odd, on one hand I feel as though I've just gotten here and time has flown by, but on the other hand I feel like I've spent my entire life here. That, and that it's hard to remember what life was like before the MTC, one of the elders in my district commented that a veil has been placed over our minds separating our life now and that of before. Really, it's almost like that.

Anyway, this last week was pretty epic. On Tuesday for our devotional Elder Richard G. Scott made a "surprise" visit and that was our devotional for the night. It was epic, at first it was rather dull, he was using a power point and I was like: "What?! We have an apostle speaking to us and he's using a powerpoint!? Of the all things he could say to us, he uses a power point to demonstrate what we've been hearing in every devotional for the past 3 weeks, namely teaching by the spirit. And I guess he picked up on that cause about 15 minutes in to that he just stopped, said he was going to change his talk at a whim and discard his powerpoint presentation. And then he did a couple of epic things. First of all, in his words he "used his apostolic power" to give all of us there in the room who were going on foreign speaking missions, to confirm upon us the gift of tongues. That was epic, I'd never heard of any general authority doing that to hundreds of people at once, and he also confirmed upon us a shield of protection, for the sisters in particular. So yeah, it was pretty epic. And then he told us awesome stories from his days as a missionary in South America and how the spirit led him to dodge drug smugglers and revolutionaries like Che Guerva running guns through jungles and whatnot. So yeah, it was pretty cool. I'd say more but I don't have the paper with me from which I took notes on during his talk.

Oh and on Sunday we did the Oquirrh Mountain Temple dedication, which was okay, though I very nearly fell asleep during the hour or so before it actually started, and my companion Elder Wood says he saw angels during it. Now there's something of interest, Elder Wood has been getting weirder and weirder lately. The other day we're in the Referral Center (RC) where we make calls and do chats on computers with investigators and whatnot, I'll be more specific with what the RC in my huge family letter that I'm working on. Anyway, we were in the RC on our computers and mine was taking along time to log in. I was sitting there patiently waiting for the computer to load when Elder Wood said something about a prayer for the computer to work, I was only half listening and I thought he was joking, but he launched right into a prayer, in Spanish, asking God for my computer to work. At first I stared at him with the "are you freaking serious?" look on my face. The prayer was short, and afterwards he looked up, saw it was still loading and then slapped his forehead and said that he used the incorrect tense and conjugation of 'trabajar'. So he started praying again, using the correct conjugation I presume, this time I bowed my head respectfully. And when he finished lo and behold my computer finished loading.... Yeah he's insane. He then praised the lord and chastened me for my lack of faith. I was still staring at him like he was an idiot, and if that prayer hadn't worked he probably would have wanted to give my computer a priesthood blessing.

By the way mom, back when we were in San Diego Elder Wood's last lame was 'Wilde' or maybe Wildewood' or something like that. His parents have separated since. So maybe that'll help you. Oh and I made the comment about not being able to read Arabic because, mom and aunt Becky, your handwriting is so loopy and cursive-y that it looks like Hebrew or Arabic or something. And definitely not something using the Latin alphabet.

Spanish is coming along better, in PMG there is this excerpt from the 1st vision that we are to memorize. You know the part with "I looked up and beheld two personages.... This is my beloved son, hear Him." And all that. Well I memorized it first in English and now I have it down in Spanish too, which I thought was amazing cause it's like two whole paragraphs and I have the memory of a small mammal and can't remember what happened 5 minutes ago, something that Elder Wood tells me all the time, and he's right. Har har.

Okay so not much else of importance has happened. I'm still working on letters for y'all, it takes mucho tiempo and Yo no tengo mucho tiempo por escribir. So be patient, it will be epic and rather detailed.

Ummm.... What else? I've got five more minutes of e-mail time. I need to come up with a subject line too. I think I will use song titles from my gentile music that I no longer have and miss very much. Hymns have gotten real old real fast, even in Spanish. So today it's gonna be “Seasons in the Abyss”, like I wanted the blog to be called.

Again, thanks for all the letters and stuff, my whole district thinks it's unreal how many letters I get, I tell them they're from my chicas back home, har har~! And for the stuff. Speaking of stuff, I could use a lint brush, I know you said I wouldn't need one dad but you should see my pants when the come out of these nasty dryers. Oh and could you get me Adam's address too? That'd be great. So that's all for today, don't get into my stuff and have fun with school. Oh and Austin I was laughing so hard when mom told me she signed you up for ballroom dance. BWAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!


Elder Rice