Raining Blood?
(From the mom: My Disclaimer- I have no idea where Alex gets his titles for his letters. He also sent me a bunch of pictures with no names or what is going on, so I won't post them except for one. If you really want me to post pics he took of horses in Halloween Costumes let me know.)
October 26, 2009
I just typed up a whole thing and it all got deleted because the server expired or some other nonsense, so I'm gonna start sending pictures. More e-mails will follow hopefully.
Never mind the photos then. If I can only send two pictures per email it's not worth the effort.
So I'm going to summarize what happened since this stupid myldsmail thing is retarded and I don't want to type up everything all over again.
It's been a long week, we' taught a lot, have 3 investigators lined up for baptism. We had a bed bug infestation, and the mission office still won't relocate us out of our apartment to another even after the flooding, the wet mildew carpet smell, the bed bugs, and the general state of crappiness. But they did relocate some sisters, one, the sole reason of them having to carry their bikes down some stairs every day. Lame...
On Saturday we did some service and were horse judges for a riding school that a member ran. The riding students, about 7 or so 14-15 year old girls dressed up their horses in for Halloween and the 6 of us missionaries were judges, so we spent about 5 hours doing that, food and games, setting up and taking down stuff. It was some good "service". We're required to do like 4 hours a week and that did the trick.
We had zone conference in College Station, there I met a Sister Magby, who went to Louisiana Tech with you, dad. And had apparently also seen you recently at education week. Or so she says and told me that I look exactly like you and whatnot, and that you were a crazy kid back then. I didn't believe her.
I'm out of time, it's a short entry but like I said I already typed a whole bunch of stuff only to have the server expire. Stupid thing. I'll try to send more pictures. Peace out.
--Elder Rice
Wherever I May Roam
October 19, 2009
Wherever I May Roam
Well.... I guess we get to e-mail again today... We had nothing else to do right now while it's still P-Day and we all got in the car and showed up here at the library so I guess we're here to e-mail again...
Anyway I guess I could tell you about other things. Last Week one of the English Elders who lives in another apartment a couple blocks away from us, Elder Pitts, was doing his laundry in ours because they don't have a washer or Dryer I guess, and he flooded our apartment somehow. We were just sitting in the front room talking when Elder Astin got up to go into the kitchen when he noticed that it was underwater. Well almost underwater, like 1 inch of water on the floor and it was spreading fast under the carpet. He panicked and all of this commotion starts, one of the bathrooms flooded too, and the carpet in our room and in the sitting room was soaked. It was a nightmare, but I was just laughing the whole time. We had to move all the furniture and we spent all night cleaning that up as best we could. We're not exactly sure what caused the flooding, if it was the washer that overflowed or something else but the apartment people tell us that it is the washer and the next they came and tore up the apartment the remove the soaked pads underneath and they're supposed to replace them tomorrow. So we've spent about a week with our furniture stacked in a corner or outside of the apartment in a little shelter thing. So yeah it's pretty annoying.
Oh let me tell you about my first real tracting. So we rode our bikes out to this ghetto trailer park where one of our appointments were, she wasn't there, as usual. So instead of riding all the way back we decided to tract the place. And we did, it was a little scary. We spent most of our time warding off mangy dogs by bending down as if we were picking up rocks to throw at them. Turns out that everyone living there was from Honduras, we talked to this one guy who had gray eyes and sounded like Dracula speaking spanish, we talked to another lady who was washing her dishes in a little stream that ran behind her trailer. And in a driveway there were like 6 guys sitting around with lot of beer and whatnot, drinking and they had their car playing Lady In Red really loud. That was funny, we went up talk to them and I accidentally knocked over one of their half full bottles that was on the ground while I was trying to shake everyone's hand. I hastily tried to apologize but they were cool with it, they were pretty chill in general and they actually wanted to hear our message (another time). Then we went to another trailer and this time we actually got let in and we taught the first lesson about the restoration. Which was neat, it's not often that tracting actually gets any results, Elder Astin was telling me that 1 out of every 600 converts are found through tracting. I'm not sure where he got that statistic from but it seems pretty accurate to me after doing all that tracting. That lesson went well, it was some guy who was 19, was going to school and his two sisters that went to High School, they spoke good english and preferred to be taught in english, which was a blessing. They were really interested and wanted us to come back and teach them again. Which is what we will do this week. Elder Astin said that teaching young people are the best because they are "uncorrupted by the traditions of their fathers" which seemed true.
So today was P-Day, we kinda just drove to the mall with the english Elders and wandered around and then went to random places like sports centers and wandered around looking at stuff in them. That's what both of our P-Days have been so far, which is fine with me. It's nice to be out in the real world and seeing normal people. The first time it was really weird because I had been the MTC for two months and been around people in only white shirts and ties the whole time. Now we're supposed to go around in our proselyting clothes all the time but nobody ever does, so it was nice to wander around in jeans and a T-shirt. Speaking of which can you send me a couple of my T-shirts? I don't care which ones, the ones I brought the MTC were lost in mysterious ways. I even lost my Scotland shirt there, I was devastated, that was my favorite shirt. I'm still convinced that someone stole it. And could you send me another pair of my jeans? That would be nice, the ones I brought are the baggy beaten pair for service that I still haven't done yet. We're supposed to get in like 4 hours of service a week but we haven't done any. I don't know why, I still don't know how things work in the mission.
Today we're to have exchanges, exchanges are dumb. I don't know why we do them, it's just when you spend a day with another missionary, so I have to pack a few things and I'm going to spend this evening through tomorrow morning with one of the Zone Leaders down in this place called Glenloch. It's a dumb idea of you ask me, lots of inconvenience when it comes to plans and whatnot. We just did one a few days ago and I went on an exchange with Elder Pitts, which was pretty pointless, we didn't do much. At not only is it inconvenient that but the Zone Leaders are english missionaries! So whatever it is that we will be doing tonight and tomorrow won't involve me teaching hispanics. How am I going to learn spanish when I keep going on these dumb exchanges with english missionaries all the time? Lame... Whatever...
Well I still got 30 minutes what else could I share? Oh I know, how about something more spiritual? We have one investigator name Rey De Paz, he's a nice guy and his family is really nice too. He reads a lot from the Book of Mormon and every time we go over he has a billion questions. Well on Wednesday we went with the ward mission leader. And as usual he had lots of questions about things he had read. I didn't say much, or anything at all, I was just trying to figure out what was going on. But after an hour or so the discussion got rather heated. From what I can tell they were talking about interpretations of scriptures and that Rey thought that a certain scripture meant something inconsistent with our doctrine and blah blah blah. So like I said the discussion was rather heated and I was wondering what we should do. We as missionaries are not there to discuss doctrinal issues with people, we're to teach them a few simple things and help them build their faith and lead them to baptism. Anyway I think the spirit was nudging me to say something about how the discussion at hand wasn't important. I was thinking of what to say and then how to say it in spanish when Elder Astin bore his testimony about the truth of the Book of Mormon and something else that I didn't quite get. It was a powerful testimony, and in the pause that followed I decided to pitch in. In my best broken spanish I told Rey that there are a lot things in the scriptures that we don't understand right away, there are things in life we don't understand. I then turned to 1st Nephi, the part where the angel shows Nephi all that stuff about Lehi's dream. I shared with him the scripture where the Angel asks Nephi if he knows about the condescension of God, and Nephi replies that he knows that God loves his children but he didn't know the meaning of all things. Then I said that I am like Nephi, I don't the meaning of all things, Heck, I don't know much about anything at all. But if there is one I do know, it's that God loves us, that's why he created his plan for us and even though I may not understand everything in scriptures very well the knowledge that God loves us is all that I need to know. I told him that and felt the spirit really strong, I think Rey did too, we ended there and he said the closing prayer and again I felt the spirit rather strong, he started crying in the middle of the prayer he was saying. So I guess we did good, we made a return appointment an parted on good terms.
Whoah out of time.
--Elder Rice
Wherever I May Roam
Well.... I guess we get to e-mail again today... We had nothing else to do right now while it's still P-Day and we all got in the car and showed up here at the library so I guess we're here to e-mail again...
Anyway I guess I could tell you about other things. Last Week one of the English Elders who lives in another apartment a couple blocks away from us, Elder Pitts, was doing his laundry in ours because they don't have a washer or Dryer I guess, and he flooded our apartment somehow. We were just sitting in the front room talking when Elder Astin got up to go into the kitchen when he noticed that it was underwater. Well almost underwater, like 1 inch of water on the floor and it was spreading fast under the carpet. He panicked and all of this commotion starts, one of the bathrooms flooded too, and the carpet in our room and in the sitting room was soaked. It was a nightmare, but I was just laughing the whole time. We had to move all the furniture and we spent all night cleaning that up as best we could. We're not exactly sure what caused the flooding, if it was the washer that overflowed or something else but the apartment people tell us that it is the washer and the next they came and tore up the apartment the remove the soaked pads underneath and they're supposed to replace them tomorrow. So we've spent about a week with our furniture stacked in a corner or outside of the apartment in a little shelter thing. So yeah it's pretty annoying.
Oh let me tell you about my first real tracting. So we rode our bikes out to this ghetto trailer park where one of our appointments were, she wasn't there, as usual. So instead of riding all the way back we decided to tract the place. And we did, it was a little scary. We spent most of our time warding off mangy dogs by bending down as if we were picking up rocks to throw at them. Turns out that everyone living there was from Honduras, we talked to this one guy who had gray eyes and sounded like Dracula speaking spanish, we talked to another lady who was washing her dishes in a little stream that ran behind her trailer. And in a driveway there were like 6 guys sitting around with lot of beer and whatnot, drinking and they had their car playing Lady In Red really loud. That was funny, we went up talk to them and I accidentally knocked over one of their half full bottles that was on the ground while I was trying to shake everyone's hand. I hastily tried to apologize but they were cool with it, they were pretty chill in general and they actually wanted to hear our message (another time). Then we went to another trailer and this time we actually got let in and we taught the first lesson about the restoration. Which was neat, it's not often that tracting actually gets any results, Elder Astin was telling me that 1 out of every 600 converts are found through tracting. I'm not sure where he got that statistic from but it seems pretty accurate to me after doing all that tracting. That lesson went well, it was some guy who was 19, was going to school and his two sisters that went to High School, they spoke good english and preferred to be taught in english, which was a blessing. They were really interested and wanted us to come back and teach them again. Which is what we will do this week. Elder Astin said that teaching young people are the best because they are "uncorrupted by the traditions of their fathers" which seemed true.
So today was P-Day, we kinda just drove to the mall with the english Elders and wandered around and then went to random places like sports centers and wandered around looking at stuff in them. That's what both of our P-Days have been so far, which is fine with me. It's nice to be out in the real world and seeing normal people. The first time it was really weird because I had been the MTC for two months and been around people in only white shirts and ties the whole time. Now we're supposed to go around in our proselyting clothes all the time but nobody ever does, so it was nice to wander around in jeans and a T-shirt. Speaking of which can you send me a couple of my T-shirts? I don't care which ones, the ones I brought the MTC were lost in mysterious ways. I even lost my Scotland shirt there, I was devastated, that was my favorite shirt. I'm still convinced that someone stole it. And could you send me another pair of my jeans? That would be nice, the ones I brought are the baggy beaten pair for service that I still haven't done yet. We're supposed to get in like 4 hours of service a week but we haven't done any. I don't know why, I still don't know how things work in the mission.
Today we're to have exchanges, exchanges are dumb. I don't know why we do them, it's just when you spend a day with another missionary, so I have to pack a few things and I'm going to spend this evening through tomorrow morning with one of the Zone Leaders down in this place called Glenloch. It's a dumb idea of you ask me, lots of inconvenience when it comes to plans and whatnot. We just did one a few days ago and I went on an exchange with Elder Pitts, which was pretty pointless, we didn't do much. At not only is it inconvenient that but the Zone Leaders are english missionaries! So whatever it is that we will be doing tonight and tomorrow won't involve me teaching hispanics. How am I going to learn spanish when I keep going on these dumb exchanges with english missionaries all the time? Lame... Whatever...
Well I still got 30 minutes what else could I share? Oh I know, how about something more spiritual? We have one investigator name Rey De Paz, he's a nice guy and his family is really nice too. He reads a lot from the Book of Mormon and every time we go over he has a billion questions. Well on Wednesday we went with the ward mission leader. And as usual he had lots of questions about things he had read. I didn't say much, or anything at all, I was just trying to figure out what was going on. But after an hour or so the discussion got rather heated. From what I can tell they were talking about interpretations of scriptures and that Rey thought that a certain scripture meant something inconsistent with our doctrine and blah blah blah. So like I said the discussion was rather heated and I was wondering what we should do. We as missionaries are not there to discuss doctrinal issues with people, we're to teach them a few simple things and help them build their faith and lead them to baptism. Anyway I think the spirit was nudging me to say something about how the discussion at hand wasn't important. I was thinking of what to say and then how to say it in spanish when Elder Astin bore his testimony about the truth of the Book of Mormon and something else that I didn't quite get. It was a powerful testimony, and in the pause that followed I decided to pitch in. In my best broken spanish I told Rey that there are a lot things in the scriptures that we don't understand right away, there are things in life we don't understand. I then turned to 1st Nephi, the part where the angel shows Nephi all that stuff about Lehi's dream. I shared with him the scripture where the Angel asks Nephi if he knows about the condescension of God, and Nephi replies that he knows that God loves his children but he didn't know the meaning of all things. Then I said that I am like Nephi, I don't the meaning of all things, Heck, I don't know much about anything at all. But if there is one I do know, it's that God loves us, that's why he created his plan for us and even though I may not understand everything in scriptures very well the knowledge that God loves us is all that I need to know. I told him that and felt the spirit really strong, I think Rey did too, we ended there and he said the closing prayer and again I felt the spirit rather strong, he started crying in the middle of the prayer he was saying. So I guess we did good, we made a return appointment an parted on good terms.
Whoah out of time.
--Elder Rice
Revenge of the Gringo
October 19, 2009
So I guess I didn't get to send another E-mail. Oh well, I was going to give a play-by-play description of what happened my first week but there is no time for that, that's what I'll use the tapes for.
So... I hope you all have gotten a thingy to play the tapes on and hopefully record your own. And I hope that you sent that stuff I needed cause I still haven't gotten it yet. So Texas is an interesting place. There is a church on every corner, if I had a nickel for every church in Texas I'd be stinking rich. There are so many of all varieties. The most I've seen are Baptist churches, and just about everything else is there, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican, Catholic, and some weird ones like the Fellowship of the Woodlands, the Path of Grace, The Ark, and my personal favorite: The Church of Christ Scientist. We ride by it every day and there's always a different message on it's message board, things like: NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF PRAYER and whatnot, I've gotten a few pictures of it. I think next Monday I will try to send some pictures, I don't have much that yet, there's not a lot of time to take pictures of things.
So things are pretty good, we have a car but we have to share it with the English Elders so we will be on bikes one day and have the car the next. I was so tired and sore the first week from all the biking we did, especially since we're in a shirt and tie with dress shoes, honestly who came up with that? It's really stupid, we don't even get to wear sun glasses, so when dust and stuff get in my eyes in my contacts when biking I just have to hope I can blink it out. Most of our investigators live in these ghettos, I hate ghettos, they smell bad and there's always these mangy dogs that will try to attack you. We've outrun them on our bikes every time but Elder Astin told me that you just have to kick them in the face, I've not yet had the chance to do it but I'm rather looking forward to it, I've been out only a couple weeks and I hate dogs, they're always after us, there was this one time when a couple of chiuawas (or however you spell it) came out into the road and I thought one of them was about to throw itself into the spokes of my back wheel, it didn't. I was too fast for it. And then there was this one time when were biking along this road, a fast road out in the country and we hear this barking and these two dogs, rather big dogs bolt of this drive way and ran at us howling like wolves, luckily a UPS truck was barreling down the road at 50 mph, the bigger dog stopped just in the time but the smaller one kept going and just barely missed being hit the UPS truck. I wanted it to get hit, stupid dog. But the UPS truck was enough to allow us to escape.
My roughest days so far have been at Church, Sundays are by far the worst days. Spanish wards are really quite dysfunctional, they're all nice people but they won't leave me alone. They absolutely love talking to me and me not understanding a single word they're saying, then someone else will say something and they all laugh and I have no idea what they're saying about me. Ugh, that and a lot of them are always telling me that I need to learn spanish better and what ways I can improve. The worst by far is the Ward Mission Leader, he doesn’t like me at all. The first sunday for the correlation meeting I didn't say anything, I was just trying to figure out what was going on, and at the end of the meeting the WML asks me a question which I did not understand at all. I think I can get the gist of what's going on when other people are talking to others but as soon as someone says something to me, my mind goes blank and I have no idea what they just said. Anyway, before I had a chance to even think about what he just said to me, he starts talking to me in english and starts asking me: "How much time each do day do you spend studying spanish?" "Are you reading your Book of Mormon?" and blah blah blah. He seemed genuinely pissed at my inability to speak spanish. And then he turns to my companion, Elder Astin and tells him in spanish what he should be doing to help me, I actually understood quite a bit of what he was saying to Elder Astin, and he was talking about me as if I weren't there. Now this was irritating enough. But this was in front of everyone at the meeting, his assistant, and two sister missionaries, who are the only other two spanish missionaries in our zone. And then both of them gave me "advice" on what I should be doing to learn spanish. Oh I was ready to kill them, but I held by tongue. And after word Elder Astin told me not to worry about them, and to ignore them in fact, and that I'm right where I should be. According to others, it takes about 3 months before you start getting into it. Ugh, I was fed up with the WML, I wanted to wring his little neck. That's another thing. It's also weird to be the tallest person in sacrament meeting, and I'm not even that tall, the next tallest person is Elder Astin. It's odd.
So I have 13 mintues left so I'll share what I call, revenge of the Gringo. So after all of this time of being berated and lectured and being confused about everything spanish. We had dinner at a member's house one day. The Pinedas. They're a nice family, they're less actives and won't come to church but they love the missionaries and want to have us over all the time. So we were over there eating, it was really good food, tortillas, rice, beans, and this egg-bacon mix of something, goat cheese and this real mexican sour cream, it was so good. They were all talking and laughing and as usual making fun of my spanish, but it wasn't like a mean jesting, I was laughing along too. Anyway they bring out the chili peppers, some jalapenos and some tiny little unidentifiable chilis and other such things. So they start teasing me with them, as if white boys like me had never even tasted something so spicy. I play along and they were daring me to eat one raw as if I didn't know what they were, I was playing along and acting as if I was afraid (Latins get a huge kick out of watching white people eat spicy food). So they're all laughing and teasing me and I'm nodding and laughing and then unexpectedly I grab the biggest, juiciest pepper off the plate and take a big bite out of it, all the way up to the stem, chewed it for a little bit and swallowed it, and continued eating as if nothing happened. They were shocked, they even gasped, even Elder Astin was speechless. I then grabbed another and started squeezing the juice over my food and whatnot. And I didn't tear up or turn red or anything. They were flabbergasted. HA! That's right, I destroyed them, they just got owned. Who's Mr. Gringo now eh? Who can eat your food BETTER THAN YOU CAN, HUH? So yeah, I owned them. Then in my best broken spanish I explained to them that I've been eating chili's all my life and back home in our garden we grew habaneras and even made jelly out of them and ate them in sandwiches. They were utterly shocked that anyone would even do that. And then with Elder Astin's helped I told them about the chemical properties of capsicum, the chemical in chili's that makes them spicy.
So yeah, it was the revenge of the gringo. Victory for me. Well I'm out of time, I hope you all are doing well and please send me food and letters cause I'm getting bored of re-reading the same ones over again. So yeah, Love y'all, peace out.
Elder Rice
So I guess I didn't get to send another E-mail. Oh well, I was going to give a play-by-play description of what happened my first week but there is no time for that, that's what I'll use the tapes for.
So... I hope you all have gotten a thingy to play the tapes on and hopefully record your own. And I hope that you sent that stuff I needed cause I still haven't gotten it yet. So Texas is an interesting place. There is a church on every corner, if I had a nickel for every church in Texas I'd be stinking rich. There are so many of all varieties. The most I've seen are Baptist churches, and just about everything else is there, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican, Catholic, and some weird ones like the Fellowship of the Woodlands, the Path of Grace, The Ark, and my personal favorite: The Church of Christ Scientist. We ride by it every day and there's always a different message on it's message board, things like: NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF PRAYER and whatnot, I've gotten a few pictures of it. I think next Monday I will try to send some pictures, I don't have much that yet, there's not a lot of time to take pictures of things.
So things are pretty good, we have a car but we have to share it with the English Elders so we will be on bikes one day and have the car the next. I was so tired and sore the first week from all the biking we did, especially since we're in a shirt and tie with dress shoes, honestly who came up with that? It's really stupid, we don't even get to wear sun glasses, so when dust and stuff get in my eyes in my contacts when biking I just have to hope I can blink it out. Most of our investigators live in these ghettos, I hate ghettos, they smell bad and there's always these mangy dogs that will try to attack you. We've outrun them on our bikes every time but Elder Astin told me that you just have to kick them in the face, I've not yet had the chance to do it but I'm rather looking forward to it, I've been out only a couple weeks and I hate dogs, they're always after us, there was this one time when a couple of chiuawas (or however you spell it) came out into the road and I thought one of them was about to throw itself into the spokes of my back wheel, it didn't. I was too fast for it. And then there was this one time when were biking along this road, a fast road out in the country and we hear this barking and these two dogs, rather big dogs bolt of this drive way and ran at us howling like wolves, luckily a UPS truck was barreling down the road at 50 mph, the bigger dog stopped just in the time but the smaller one kept going and just barely missed being hit the UPS truck. I wanted it to get hit, stupid dog. But the UPS truck was enough to allow us to escape.
My roughest days so far have been at Church, Sundays are by far the worst days. Spanish wards are really quite dysfunctional, they're all nice people but they won't leave me alone. They absolutely love talking to me and me not understanding a single word they're saying, then someone else will say something and they all laugh and I have no idea what they're saying about me. Ugh, that and a lot of them are always telling me that I need to learn spanish better and what ways I can improve. The worst by far is the Ward Mission Leader, he doesn’t like me at all. The first sunday for the correlation meeting I didn't say anything, I was just trying to figure out what was going on, and at the end of the meeting the WML asks me a question which I did not understand at all. I think I can get the gist of what's going on when other people are talking to others but as soon as someone says something to me, my mind goes blank and I have no idea what they just said. Anyway, before I had a chance to even think about what he just said to me, he starts talking to me in english and starts asking me: "How much time each do day do you spend studying spanish?" "Are you reading your Book of Mormon?" and blah blah blah. He seemed genuinely pissed at my inability to speak spanish. And then he turns to my companion, Elder Astin and tells him in spanish what he should be doing to help me, I actually understood quite a bit of what he was saying to Elder Astin, and he was talking about me as if I weren't there. Now this was irritating enough. But this was in front of everyone at the meeting, his assistant, and two sister missionaries, who are the only other two spanish missionaries in our zone. And then both of them gave me "advice" on what I should be doing to learn spanish. Oh I was ready to kill them, but I held by tongue. And after word Elder Astin told me not to worry about them, and to ignore them in fact, and that I'm right where I should be. According to others, it takes about 3 months before you start getting into it. Ugh, I was fed up with the WML, I wanted to wring his little neck. That's another thing. It's also weird to be the tallest person in sacrament meeting, and I'm not even that tall, the next tallest person is Elder Astin. It's odd.
So I have 13 mintues left so I'll share what I call, revenge of the Gringo. So after all of this time of being berated and lectured and being confused about everything spanish. We had dinner at a member's house one day. The Pinedas. They're a nice family, they're less actives and won't come to church but they love the missionaries and want to have us over all the time. So we were over there eating, it was really good food, tortillas, rice, beans, and this egg-bacon mix of something, goat cheese and this real mexican sour cream, it was so good. They were all talking and laughing and as usual making fun of my spanish, but it wasn't like a mean jesting, I was laughing along too. Anyway they bring out the chili peppers, some jalapenos and some tiny little unidentifiable chilis and other such things. So they start teasing me with them, as if white boys like me had never even tasted something so spicy. I play along and they were daring me to eat one raw as if I didn't know what they were, I was playing along and acting as if I was afraid (Latins get a huge kick out of watching white people eat spicy food). So they're all laughing and teasing me and I'm nodding and laughing and then unexpectedly I grab the biggest, juiciest pepper off the plate and take a big bite out of it, all the way up to the stem, chewed it for a little bit and swallowed it, and continued eating as if nothing happened. They were shocked, they even gasped, even Elder Astin was speechless. I then grabbed another and started squeezing the juice over my food and whatnot. And I didn't tear up or turn red or anything. They were flabbergasted. HA! That's right, I destroyed them, they just got owned. Who's Mr. Gringo now eh? Who can eat your food BETTER THAN YOU CAN, HUH? So yeah, I owned them. Then in my best broken spanish I explained to them that I've been eating chili's all my life and back home in our garden we grew habaneras and even made jelly out of them and ate them in sandwiches. They were utterly shocked that anyone would even do that. And then with Elder Astin's helped I told them about the chemical properties of capsicum, the chemical in chili's that makes them spicy.
So yeah, it was the revenge of the gringo. Victory for me. Well I'm out of time, I hope you all are doing well and please send me food and letters cause I'm getting bored of re-reading the same ones over again. So yeah, Love y'all, peace out.
Elder Rice
Welcome to Houston
I made it
Well I made it out here to the field, my first week was brutal and strenuous but lots of fun. First off here is my address of where I am now so you can start sending food and stuff to me:
1101 Wilson Road #509
Conroe TX 77301
The mission is divided up into about 5 or 6 areas. My area is the Woodlands area which is quite a ways north of Houston. My proselyting area is this city called Conroe. It's almost the size of Orem, I think. Demographically it's a lot like Orem but population wise not as much I think. Anyway, it's pretty diverse, lots of hispanics, whites with their thick Texan accents and lots of Blacks too. It's an interesting place. Oh and I found out that this mission, the Houston Texas mission is pretty much one of the best missions. Do you want to know why? Well I think Austin will especially like this but Chuck Norris lives in our mission. That's right, no joke, he lives somewhere north of here in the College Station area, but yeah, isn't that neat? Chuck Norris lives in our mission. I'm gonna go baptize him eventually.
So anyway let me talk about what's happened. And I have pretty much all the time I want to e-mail so that's good. So the flight was okay, it the smallest plane I had ever been on. Only four seats wide, we flew in through some rain and finally landed. There were about 14 of us, 7 were spanish elders and the others were English Elders, one of them was Ryan Shaw, who I went to high school with. Anyway we met President and Sister Hanson along with the AP's (assistants to the president, meaning two missionaries who assist the president). President and Sister Hanson are real nice, I like them. So we left the airport and the moment I stepped outside the humidity hit me like a wet towel, it wasn't that bad, in fact it reminded me a lot of Georgia, only a little bit hotter. We piled into numerous vehicles with our luggage and went to the mission office which is somewhere south of where I am now in another area. We met the senior missionary couples who run the office and they gave us a little introduction and run down of things go around here. Then we went across the street to a chapel to eat. Some member owns some BBQ restaurant and he brought some food and after 9 weeks of MTC gruel it was the nicest food I'd ever eaten. It was some BBQ brisket with potato salad and baked beans. It was delicious. Oh! And guess what they had for dessert? Go ahead and guess...... Texas Sheet cake. I'm serious, they had Texas Sheet cake. I was incredulous at first, I remember when I had asked you, dad, if they actually had Texas Sheet cake in Texas, and you didn't think so. Well they do. And it was really good, I couldn't decided if it was better than Mom's or not, it was more moist, that's for sure but I still couldn't decide.
So then it was like 7:00 and a bunch of veteran missionaries came to go on splits with us to go do appointments and tracting and whatnot. I was a little nervous, we were finally going to do the real thing now, no more fake investigators, we were going to see actual people. So Elder Manship and I went with 3 elders, Elders Frost, Barret, and someone else. As we were driving there we stopped at this one intersection and I looked around and noticed that there were thousands of crows, on the power lines, the signs, the buildings, everywhere. It looked just like that Alfred Hitchcock movie with all those birds, though fortunately they were all squawking to each other, rather than sitting there silently, that was kinda creepy.
So we got to this apartment complex place and we split up and went a tracting. We knocked on doors and talked to all sorts of people, mostly hispanics, some blacks, and even one white person. Since there were 5 of us we split in 3 and two, and I was one of the 3 so I didn't have to do much but it was still a little nerve wracking. I did some of them to, in english and spanish, I'd say the little spiel and then they'd ask me something and I'd look at one of my companions and they'd take it from there.
It was kind of fun. Anyway, the english missionaries went back to the office for the night and us spanish missionaries got to spend the night at President Hanson's home. That was nice, after 9 weeks on a lumpy MTC bed of rocks, sleeping on a real mattress, a real CLEAN mattress was great, I fell asleep almost instantly.
The next we had a big breakfast in the President's home and then the companionships were announced. My trainer is Elder Astin, he's from Salt Lake, and has been out about 15 months now. He's a good trainer, speaks spanish fluently and always knows what to do. Then we went to the Houston Temple to do a session. That was neat, the Houston Temple looks a lot cooler than the Provo Temple, like castle. It's a lot smaller but looks a lot more new.
Then we had a training meeting thing in a chapel where we had some chili and cornbread, made by the same guy from the day before. It was also really good. Anyway during the training meeting I was sitting there and noticed a pass along card on a piano, it had the salt lake temple on it and I remembered that on the night before when were tracting we had given out lots of pass along cards and stuck them in people doors and what not so I grabbed it and put it in my pocket.
So the meeting ended and we were off to go to our area. We were picked up by Elder Brown and Elder Nelson, two english elders who we share our apartment with. Then we went to a place called bike world to get a bike. Dad, if you've been keeping on top of my bank account you will notice that about $400 and a bit more are no longer there. I bought the cheapest bike in the store, a black and white mountain bike and a helmet. So yeah, keep on top of that checking account.
Uh oh, I have like 8 minutes left. We are in a library and you get like an hour to each computer session but I think I can just log back in again so there should hopefully be another email directly after this one. So I got the bike, we went shopping so I could get some food. So I found out how the whole money thing works. We have our own little credit card things. At the beginning of each month we get $100 from the mission put onto our card. That represents our food for that month. I got a few things, I was afraid to spend to much. So anyway, Mom, this is your area of expertise, so if you want to mail me some ideas on food and stuff I can make that's really cheap but will keep me healthy that would be great.
Woah, two minutes left, so in case I can't do another e-mail here is some stuff I need:
-my camel back, if it's still intact, and I don't need the actual water sack thing, just the bag. (my backpack isn't the most biking friendly bag)
- my bike chain, I think one of the boys has it.
-hair gel (my hair is coming back)
- a sharpie (the other elders are very territorial over who's food is who's so we all label our food)
30 seconds. Love y'all, bye. I should hopefully get to do another one in a minute.
1101 Wilson Road #509
Conroe TX 77301
The mission is divided up into about 5 or 6 areas. My area is the Woodlands area which is quite a ways north of Houston. My proselyting area is this city called Conroe. It's almost the size of Orem, I think. Demographically it's a lot like Orem but population wise not as much I think. Anyway, it's pretty diverse, lots of hispanics, whites with their thick Texan accents and lots of Blacks too. It's an interesting place. Oh and I found out that this mission, the Houston Texas mission is pretty much one of the best missions. Do you want to know why? Well I think Austin will especially like this but Chuck Norris lives in our mission. That's right, no joke, he lives somewhere north of here in the College Station area, but yeah, isn't that neat? Chuck Norris lives in our mission. I'm gonna go baptize him eventually.
So anyway let me talk about what's happened. And I have pretty much all the time I want to e-mail so that's good. So the flight was okay, it the smallest plane I had ever been on. Only four seats wide, we flew in through some rain and finally landed. There were about 14 of us, 7 were spanish elders and the others were English Elders, one of them was Ryan Shaw, who I went to high school with. Anyway we met President and Sister Hanson along with the AP's (assistants to the president, meaning two missionaries who assist the president). President and Sister Hanson are real nice, I like them. So we left the airport and the moment I stepped outside the humidity hit me like a wet towel, it wasn't that bad, in fact it reminded me a lot of Georgia, only a little bit hotter. We piled into numerous vehicles with our luggage and went to the mission office which is somewhere south of where I am now in another area. We met the senior missionary couples who run the office and they gave us a little introduction and run down of things go around here. Then we went across the street to a chapel to eat. Some member owns some BBQ restaurant and he brought some food and after 9 weeks of MTC gruel it was the nicest food I'd ever eaten. It was some BBQ brisket with potato salad and baked beans. It was delicious. Oh! And guess what they had for dessert? Go ahead and guess...... Texas Sheet cake. I'm serious, they had Texas Sheet cake. I was incredulous at first, I remember when I had asked you, dad, if they actually had Texas Sheet cake in Texas, and you didn't think so. Well they do. And it was really good, I couldn't decided if it was better than Mom's or not, it was more moist, that's for sure but I still couldn't decide.
So then it was like 7:00 and a bunch of veteran missionaries came to go on splits with us to go do appointments and tracting and whatnot. I was a little nervous, we were finally going to do the real thing now, no more fake investigators, we were going to see actual people. So Elder Manship and I went with 3 elders, Elders Frost, Barret, and someone else. As we were driving there we stopped at this one intersection and I looked around and noticed that there were thousands of crows, on the power lines, the signs, the buildings, everywhere. It looked just like that Alfred Hitchcock movie with all those birds, though fortunately they were all squawking to each other, rather than sitting there silently, that was kinda creepy.
So we got to this apartment complex place and we split up and went a tracting. We knocked on doors and talked to all sorts of people, mostly hispanics, some blacks, and even one white person. Since there were 5 of us we split in 3 and two, and I was one of the 3 so I didn't have to do much but it was still a little nerve wracking. I did some of them to, in english and spanish, I'd say the little spiel and then they'd ask me something and I'd look at one of my companions and they'd take it from there.
It was kind of fun. Anyway, the english missionaries went back to the office for the night and us spanish missionaries got to spend the night at President Hanson's home. That was nice, after 9 weeks on a lumpy MTC bed of rocks, sleeping on a real mattress, a real CLEAN mattress was great, I fell asleep almost instantly.
The next we had a big breakfast in the President's home and then the companionships were announced. My trainer is Elder Astin, he's from Salt Lake, and has been out about 15 months now. He's a good trainer, speaks spanish fluently and always knows what to do. Then we went to the Houston Temple to do a session. That was neat, the Houston Temple looks a lot cooler than the Provo Temple, like castle. It's a lot smaller but looks a lot more new.
Then we had a training meeting thing in a chapel where we had some chili and cornbread, made by the same guy from the day before. It was also really good. Anyway during the training meeting I was sitting there and noticed a pass along card on a piano, it had the salt lake temple on it and I remembered that on the night before when were tracting we had given out lots of pass along cards and stuck them in people doors and what not so I grabbed it and put it in my pocket.
So the meeting ended and we were off to go to our area. We were picked up by Elder Brown and Elder Nelson, two english elders who we share our apartment with. Then we went to a place called bike world to get a bike. Dad, if you've been keeping on top of my bank account you will notice that about $400 and a bit more are no longer there. I bought the cheapest bike in the store, a black and white mountain bike and a helmet. So yeah, keep on top of that checking account.
Uh oh, I have like 8 minutes left. We are in a library and you get like an hour to each computer session but I think I can just log back in again so there should hopefully be another email directly after this one. So I got the bike, we went shopping so I could get some food. So I found out how the whole money thing works. We have our own little credit card things. At the beginning of each month we get $100 from the mission put onto our card. That represents our food for that month. I got a few things, I was afraid to spend to much. So anyway, Mom, this is your area of expertise, so if you want to mail me some ideas on food and stuff I can make that's really cheap but will keep me healthy that would be great.
Woah, two minutes left, so in case I can't do another e-mail here is some stuff I need:
-my camel back, if it's still intact, and I don't need the actual water sack thing, just the bag. (my backpack isn't the most biking friendly bag)
- my bike chain, I think one of the boys has it.
-hair gel (my hair is coming back)
- a sharpie (the other elders are very territorial over who's food is who's so we all label our food)
30 seconds. Love y'all, bye. I should hopefully get to do another one in a minute.
At the Airport
Alex called me this morning while he was waiting for his plane to Houston. We got to talk for about a half hour. It was really good to hear his voice. He sounds so much older, he really does. We just chatted about everyone and everything it was great! When he gets settled he will let me know his new address and I will leave it here on this blog.
Disposable Heroes
October 1, 2009
Howdy, family
This will be my last e-mail from the MTC. Pretty amazing huh? My last P-day in here, we, or rather I, call P-day 'El Santa Dia' which means the holy day. Cause that's what it is. It's a holy day. So... Again I don't have too much to say, the MTC is boring. I'm glad to get out of here. Oh, okay, I got something. So on Wednesday, which was yesterday our district had the assignment, along with many others to be host missionaries, which means we get to help the new missionaries like on the day when I was dropped off. It was kinda fun, watching these families drop their sons off and bawling, it was hilarious. I saw the Ebmeyers, I didn't get a chance to talk to Elder Ebmeyer as he was whisked away by the other host missionaries but I did get to talk to Bro. and Sis. Ebmeyer and their other son whose name I can't remember... Trevon or something.... I can't remember anything anymore except churchy spanish stuff having to do with the mission.
Thanks for the phone card thing, I had never heard that we get to call home when in the airport, actually I think I did hear it but I thought it was a rumor or something or that it was for missionaries going international, I don't know. Someone will tell us, but I'll definitely try to call on Wednesday when we're in the airport. The 4 missionaries in my district who are going to Chile leave on Monday while the rest of us 6 Texicans leave Wednesday morning.
So conference will be this week, it will be pretty intense, probably the first time I'll have ever watched conference in sunday clothes, without a pillow or blanket, and without the crash of someone digging through the lego box. So yeah, it'll be good.
And Dad you didn't tell me how to say the joke with the brain sucker that hispanics don't get. I suppose I could figure it out myself though... Oh and Alyssa I want to know how your Latin is going with Dr. Lillian, I would guess that you've learned nothing at all, either because you've dropped the class or the fact that it's Dr. Lillian and she's crazy.
Well that's all I got to say, I've got a surprise for y'all on the way, you might get it on Monday or Tuesday, depending on when I get around to sending it. Oh and I need a couple things. My flip flops and some stamps. That'd be great if you could send that stuff. Okay, Paz Suerte. Which means 'peace out'. Though I don't think hispanics actually say that, in fact I'm sure they don't actually say that, we have a lot of random things like that, sayings we have in english that we translate into spanish but that no hispanic would ever say. They're funny.
-Elder Rice
Howdy, family
This will be my last e-mail from the MTC. Pretty amazing huh? My last P-day in here, we, or rather I, call P-day 'El Santa Dia' which means the holy day. Cause that's what it is. It's a holy day. So... Again I don't have too much to say, the MTC is boring. I'm glad to get out of here. Oh, okay, I got something. So on Wednesday, which was yesterday our district had the assignment, along with many others to be host missionaries, which means we get to help the new missionaries like on the day when I was dropped off. It was kinda fun, watching these families drop their sons off and bawling, it was hilarious. I saw the Ebmeyers, I didn't get a chance to talk to Elder Ebmeyer as he was whisked away by the other host missionaries but I did get to talk to Bro. and Sis. Ebmeyer and their other son whose name I can't remember... Trevon or something.... I can't remember anything anymore except churchy spanish stuff having to do with the mission.
Thanks for the phone card thing, I had never heard that we get to call home when in the airport, actually I think I did hear it but I thought it was a rumor or something or that it was for missionaries going international, I don't know. Someone will tell us, but I'll definitely try to call on Wednesday when we're in the airport. The 4 missionaries in my district who are going to Chile leave on Monday while the rest of us 6 Texicans leave Wednesday morning.
So conference will be this week, it will be pretty intense, probably the first time I'll have ever watched conference in sunday clothes, without a pillow or blanket, and without the crash of someone digging through the lego box. So yeah, it'll be good.
And Dad you didn't tell me how to say the joke with the brain sucker that hispanics don't get. I suppose I could figure it out myself though... Oh and Alyssa I want to know how your Latin is going with Dr. Lillian, I would guess that you've learned nothing at all, either because you've dropped the class or the fact that it's Dr. Lillian and she's crazy.
Well that's all I got to say, I've got a surprise for y'all on the way, you might get it on Monday or Tuesday, depending on when I get around to sending it. Oh and I need a couple things. My flip flops and some stamps. That'd be great if you could send that stuff. Okay, Paz Suerte. Which means 'peace out'. Though I don't think hispanics actually say that, in fact I'm sure they don't actually say that, we have a lot of random things like that, sayings we have in english that we translate into spanish but that no hispanic would ever say. They're funny.
-Elder Rice
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