Elder Holland

September, 17, 2009

Howdy y'all.


So..... Not much to say this time. Not a lot happens that much anymore. Actually something amazing did happen. On Tuesday Elder Holland and his wife came and spoke to us. It was epic. Elder Holland is brutal, he totally destroyed us, waving his hands around and just bringing down the hammer on us. It was great, I could have sat there forever and listened to him screaming in my face. The gist of it all was that we had better not waste a single moment of our mission, not a single moment, he told us that we will regret wasting our time on our missions because we only we get to do this once. Well once as young missionaries anyway, it's probably not quite the same for senior missionaries. In fact, here at the MTC the senior missionaries get like an hour or two of nap time after lunch. I wish we had nap time, we need it more than they do. So yeah, it was epic. We were hoping for something, since we heard that President Monson was speaking at BYU for the devotional on Tuesday so we hoped that he'd just come across the street and speak to us that night. We weren't disappointed though, we got Elder Holland, he's brutal.

Speaking of nap times, yeah it's hard for me to sleep. But I sleep a lot better now, not only cause of the medication but probably because I'm finally used to the stupid mattress and cheap blankets, that and by the end of every day I'm exhausted just from doing what we usually do. Perhaps I'm working hard, which is what we should be doing.

Spanish is still coming along. It doesn’t feel like I've learned much but when I look back and when I'm teaching a lesson I realize how much I know, which still isn't much but huge compared to what I knew before. Yeah..... It's good....

Oh okay, I got something else to talk about. On Monday Elder Wood was wounded playing basketball, someone stepped on his foot or something while he turned or something and he got a real nasty sprained ankle. It's kinda funny, he's like 6'5, the tallest guy on the court and somebody steps on him? Harhar. He couldn't walk on it, so he spent two days on crutches and one day on a single crutch and today he doesn't need any and he limps along just fine. He recovered quickly but those first few days were miserable not only for him but for me as well. He was virtually helpless so I had to help him do everything short of helping him change his clothes and using the bathroom. I also had to wrap and unwrap his foot a lot. Which I dreaded the most, I think I mentioned before that Elder Wood has the nastiest smelling feet on the face of the planet. So yeah...... I should get a medal or something, I'm good enough to be a battlefield surgeon by now. Elder Wood still thinks I'm nuts, that other day when we got that nice thunderstorm, much to his displeasure I went outside in the pouring rain and ran around in circles roaring with delight. Cause I just love thunderstorms and rain, I'll probably be sick of rain by the end of my mission but out here in the wastes of Utah I love them, so yeah.

Anyway, that's pretty much all I have to say. And I only have like 3 weeks left.... pretty scary.... I'm actually eager to get out to field though, I'm tired of rotting in this prison, I want to teach actual people rather than volunteers pretending they are investigadores. Sooooo...... yeah. That's all I have to say for now. Oh I started another epic letter to answer all your questions and whatnot so if you have questions and stuff for me, send them now.

--Elder Rice