These two photos are of the Conroe college. Probably one of the smallest colleges on the planet, I thought that was funny. I'll send one more email in the next 8 mintues with more pictures then I'll have to log in again and send the real e-mail.
Conroe College
These two photos are of the Conroe college. Probably one of the smallest colleges on the planet, I thought that was funny. I'll send one more email in the next 8 mintues with more pictures then I'll have to log in again and send the real e-mail.
More Photos
-The Conroe Water Tower, it's the center of Conroe and is next to the railway. The tracks divide conroe in half. One on side is the white country folk, and on the other side is the ghetto where all of the hispanics live.
-Elder Astin and I on the shores of Lake Conroe, it's a nice looking lake. I'm told that Conroe is to Houston as Park City is to us. Or at least the parts around the lake, lots of golf courses and whatnot it's a get-away place for people that live in houston.
whoah snap out of time. I forgot what the 3rd one I just attached was anyway. I'll send another e-mail in a little bit.
Choke Sermon
November 23, 2009
Choke Sermon
Okay this is the real e-mail this time.
So it's a new transfer now. Our district was totally changed up and just as predicted we were scattered upon the four winds and only Elder Brown and I remain in the Conroe district, we got 7 new missionaries here. Well not new but new as in never been in Conroe before. 4 Elders and 3 sisters. My new companion is Elder Porter, he's a nice guy, very focused and very hard working but slightly insane, actually very insane, he's one of those brainwashed missionary types, singing hymns every spare moment and quoting scripture. Anyway he sent a letter to you, when I saw that there was a letter by the door that was addressed to you and from Elder Porter I was like "what the freak?" I asked him and he said that he was writing to you all and that he's done that with all of his previous companions. I asked him how he got my family's address and he had gone through the trash or something to find the discarded envelopes from the letters you all have sent me.... Yeah.... Didn't even ask me if it was okay... Not that I have a problem with it. Not really... Just to make to make sure there's not anthrax or anything like that in there.
So it's been another long week. We've done a lot of tracting. Our teaching pool was getting rather low at the end of the last transfer and when Elder Porter got here he set about to fix that and pretty much for three days straight we roamed up and down trailer parks knocking on doors. Heh, this one time, at night, when it was dark we were walking down a road in the middle of this ghetto and we see a man in his driveway are putting his trash in his trash can. Elder Porter says: "This one's yours Rice." I say okay, and walk toward him and said from 20 feet away: "HEY HERMANO!" The guy jumped and in the same motion flipped around and drew a gun from his pocket and pointed it at me. I froze and I noticed that Elder Porter quickly scuttled behind a fence out of the line of fire. I was saying: Whoah! Hang on a minute man!, when I noticed that he didn’t have a gun at all. He was just holding his hand like it was a gun. Then the guy busted up laughing and so did I, and when Elder Porter poked his head out and realized what had happened he busted up laughing too. So we talked to the guy, he was real funny and was interested. In fact I found out later that Elder Porter had signed us up to teach a Bible study class at the church this guy went to... Oh snap... It'll be a week from this coming thursday... Well Elder Porter will have fun with that. He always tells me that we would give one of his arms to bible bash with a J-Dub or whomever... I'm not so keen on that. The thing about Elder Porter is that he likes to pick fights, when we were teaching this crazy old woman he complemented her many pictures of Jesus that were plastered all over the inside this lady's trailer but then said that he didn't like the picture of the virgin Mary. And then he went into a long argument about why we shouldn't pray to Mary nor any other saint and blah blah blah. In the last few days he's argued with like 6 different people about Mary and all of this nonsense... I'm just there for the ride when these sorts of things happen. He also gets into arguments with members too...
Another amusing anecdote. So Elder Brown and his new companion Elder Lopez were out in Cut N' Shoot one day with the ar (that little red-neck town that I spoke of before) when they ran over a homemade spike strip which put holes in all of the tires. Luckily they were close to a member's home and they patched them all up and made it back. But they didn't tell us and left the hub-caps in the trunk. So when Elder Porter and I got back that night Elder Brown came outside and he said: "Hey... where's our hub-caps?" Elder Porter and I turned and looked and saw that indeed there were no hub-caps on our car. We concluded that some loser had stolen them. The next day was our car day and as we backed up we noticed that the front right tire was flat. Again we concluded that the same loser that stole our hubcaps had also let the air out of the front right tire. So we changed the tire and when we opened the trunk to get the spare we found the hub-caps. So when I went back into the apartment to wash my hands when Elder Porter was finishing up putting the hub-caps back on Elder Brown told me what had happened and he told me not to tell Porter. And I didn't so we went to fill up the tire at a gas station. We did, and then found the hole so we went to a tire place to get a patch job. They said the job would only take 15 minutes but it ended up taking two hours. During which we sat in the waiting room thing. Elder Porter was fuming during that whole time, that man does not like to waste a minute. I was okay though, there was a TV and it was the G4 channel and we watched 2 hours of old COPS re-runs, that was fun. COPS is lame but I like seeing the commercials, just to see what's going on the world, also since G4 is a gaming channel I got to see a few updates on what's going on the video game world.
Yesterday on Sunday we had a baptism. Well not really us. The Spanish sister missionaries in our zone had a baptism and the little 9 year old girl they had been teaching wanted me to baptize her, for whatever odd reason. Now Elder Porter wanted to go back to his old area in Brian that same time for a baptism of one of his investigators. So we had to go on splits with the members. I went with Pedro Ortiz, one of the ward missionaries who's like 22 and is leaving on his mission in a month to Oklahoma. So we went to the baptism and all went well. I was afraid that I wouldn't remember how to say it in spanish but I did and the girl, Leslie Batalla didn't have to get baptized in the Mormon church twice like Aidan did. So it was a mostly good night, though I'm getting tired of some of the ward members treating me like I'm stupid just because I can't fully communicate with them yet. Really some of them treat like I'm a retard and in special education or something... Whatever, I will endure.
Well that's all I got for today. Remember to send me my jacket and a flash drive. Oh and thanks Grandma for the cash, that will be put to good use. Okay, peace out. Love y'all, bye.
Choke Sermon
Okay this is the real e-mail this time.
So it's a new transfer now. Our district was totally changed up and just as predicted we were scattered upon the four winds and only Elder Brown and I remain in the Conroe district, we got 7 new missionaries here. Well not new but new as in never been in Conroe before. 4 Elders and 3 sisters. My new companion is Elder Porter, he's a nice guy, very focused and very hard working but slightly insane, actually very insane, he's one of those brainwashed missionary types, singing hymns every spare moment and quoting scripture. Anyway he sent a letter to you, when I saw that there was a letter by the door that was addressed to you and from Elder Porter I was like "what the freak?" I asked him and he said that he was writing to you all and that he's done that with all of his previous companions. I asked him how he got my family's address and he had gone through the trash or something to find the discarded envelopes from the letters you all have sent me.... Yeah.... Didn't even ask me if it was okay... Not that I have a problem with it. Not really... Just to make to make sure there's not anthrax or anything like that in there.
So it's been another long week. We've done a lot of tracting. Our teaching pool was getting rather low at the end of the last transfer and when Elder Porter got here he set about to fix that and pretty much for three days straight we roamed up and down trailer parks knocking on doors. Heh, this one time, at night, when it was dark we were walking down a road in the middle of this ghetto and we see a man in his driveway are putting his trash in his trash can. Elder Porter says: "This one's yours Rice." I say okay, and walk toward him and said from 20 feet away: "HEY HERMANO!" The guy jumped and in the same motion flipped around and drew a gun from his pocket and pointed it at me. I froze and I noticed that Elder Porter quickly scuttled behind a fence out of the line of fire. I was saying: Whoah! Hang on a minute man!, when I noticed that he didn’t have a gun at all. He was just holding his hand like it was a gun. Then the guy busted up laughing and so did I, and when Elder Porter poked his head out and realized what had happened he busted up laughing too. So we talked to the guy, he was real funny and was interested. In fact I found out later that Elder Porter had signed us up to teach a Bible study class at the church this guy went to... Oh snap... It'll be a week from this coming thursday... Well Elder Porter will have fun with that. He always tells me that we would give one of his arms to bible bash with a J-Dub or whomever... I'm not so keen on that. The thing about Elder Porter is that he likes to pick fights, when we were teaching this crazy old woman he complemented her many pictures of Jesus that were plastered all over the inside this lady's trailer but then said that he didn't like the picture of the virgin Mary. And then he went into a long argument about why we shouldn't pray to Mary nor any other saint and blah blah blah. In the last few days he's argued with like 6 different people about Mary and all of this nonsense... I'm just there for the ride when these sorts of things happen. He also gets into arguments with members too...
Another amusing anecdote. So Elder Brown and his new companion Elder Lopez were out in Cut N' Shoot one day with the ar (that little red-neck town that I spoke of before) when they ran over a homemade spike strip which put holes in all of the tires. Luckily they were close to a member's home and they patched them all up and made it back. But they didn't tell us and left the hub-caps in the trunk. So when Elder Porter and I got back that night Elder Brown came outside and he said: "Hey... where's our hub-caps?" Elder Porter and I turned and looked and saw that indeed there were no hub-caps on our car. We concluded that some loser had stolen them. The next day was our car day and as we backed up we noticed that the front right tire was flat. Again we concluded that the same loser that stole our hubcaps had also let the air out of the front right tire. So we changed the tire and when we opened the trunk to get the spare we found the hub-caps. So when I went back into the apartment to wash my hands when Elder Porter was finishing up putting the hub-caps back on Elder Brown told me what had happened and he told me not to tell Porter. And I didn't so we went to fill up the tire at a gas station. We did, and then found the hole so we went to a tire place to get a patch job. They said the job would only take 15 minutes but it ended up taking two hours. During which we sat in the waiting room thing. Elder Porter was fuming during that whole time, that man does not like to waste a minute. I was okay though, there was a TV and it was the G4 channel and we watched 2 hours of old COPS re-runs, that was fun. COPS is lame but I like seeing the commercials, just to see what's going on the world, also since G4 is a gaming channel I got to see a few updates on what's going on the video game world.
Yesterday on Sunday we had a baptism. Well not really us. The Spanish sister missionaries in our zone had a baptism and the little 9 year old girl they had been teaching wanted me to baptize her, for whatever odd reason. Now Elder Porter wanted to go back to his old area in Brian that same time for a baptism of one of his investigators. So we had to go on splits with the members. I went with Pedro Ortiz, one of the ward missionaries who's like 22 and is leaving on his mission in a month to Oklahoma. So we went to the baptism and all went well. I was afraid that I wouldn't remember how to say it in spanish but I did and the girl, Leslie Batalla didn't have to get baptized in the Mormon church twice like Aidan did. So it was a mostly good night, though I'm getting tired of some of the ward members treating me like I'm stupid just because I can't fully communicate with them yet. Really some of them treat like I'm a retard and in special education or something... Whatever, I will endure.
Well that's all I got for today. Remember to send me my jacket and a flash drive. Oh and thanks Grandma for the cash, that will be put to good use. Okay, peace out. Love y'all, bye.
Seek and Destroy
Hopefully the proceeding email with this weeks photos got to you already.
Anyway, it's been another long week, as they always are. So as you can see we had our 3rd baptism this transfer. Sergio Del Agula, it was yesterday but unlike our others it was done in Baring, which is close to downtown Houston in the stake center there because Sergio's cousin, Alex Del Agula, was leaving the following day to the MTC and he was getting set apart as a missionary. So that was nice and all.
Saturday was a rather stressful day, for it was transfer call day. Now after all of that nonsense that I spoke of a couple weeks ago we were pretty certain that there would be a lot of changes, it was just a question of who. So throughout the whole day everyone was stressed. The zone leaders finally called our district leader at like 9:45 pm with the info. Elder Astin is getting transferred to one of the downtown Houston Zones, he's not happy at all about that, I'm staying here and my new companion will be Elder Porter, I've only met him once at our last zone conference, he seems like a nice guy but also like a preachy wind-bag as he was the guy that sat front row and center and was making preachy comments every 5 seconds during zone conference. He's also pretty hard core from what I here, that he won't waste a second, so I guess I'll be tracting a lot during this upcoming transfer which will start on Wednesday. Elder Nelson is to be leaving as well and will be replaced with a new missionary, so I won't be the newbie in the district anymore. Elder Pitts is going home, his time is up, and Elder Dexter is going somewhere and they're to be replaced by Elder Beck, who I think played on BYU's football team, he's a Polynesian who was an AP for a while, and he will be training another new missionary.
Hmm... Other things that happened this week. We did quite a bit of service this week. On Tuesday we went with the english elders to a member's ranch at like 7 AM and fed their dozen or so horses and then spent the next five hours splitting logs. I'm still tired from that but it was fun. Then on saturday we went out to some red-neck country and helped a member put up a fence for several hours, we dug holes, put logs in them and packed them in, all around his several acres of property. It was rather fun and also rather back breaking.
Well that's about it. Oh I also thought of a few more things you could get me for christmas. You get me a calender, preferably a two year one, with a cool theme like medieval or Napoleonic battles or something like that. And you get me some electronic clippers and electronic shaving device, of which I know nothing about, so good luck with that. Maybe also a new camel back, this dog was chewing on the straps and plastic buckles the other day and the thing in general is only just holding together but it can hold out for the rest of this year so no worries.
Well that's all I got for today.
-- Elder Rice
November 09' Pics
A house where one of our investigators lives. Is was not hard for me to imagine dad cringing if he were there.
November 09' Pics
Some Texas long-horn cattle we saw when we were biking one day. They're huge, and they weren't very friendly towards us, the Lord's representatives either.
November 09' Pics
The first photo is of my district. In the center is our district leader, Elder Dexter, to the right is his companion Elder Pitts, behind him me and Elder Nelson. Behind me, my companion Elder Astin. Sister Dubuos and sister Cook on the left and Elder Brown above them.
The second is just of our zone milling around in front of the temple. I didn't really get a good picture of the Houston temple so you won't being seeing one this time. Nor will you see the picture that was taken of me and elder Astin because it looks dumb and I'll have to wait till we go to the temple agian this month to get a better picture.
Elders Brown and Nelson
Elders Brown and Nelson (share the apartment with Alex and Elder Astin in Conroe)
If I have to eat another tortilla...
I never want to eat another tortilla or tamale again....
Howdy family, I am still alive here in Texas, just so you know. This past week has been a long one, and we've been stuffed to the point of death by members. One day we had two dinner appointments with members, I don't know how we scheduled such a thing but it sufficeth me to say that when we got home that night I never wanted to eat another tamale or tortilla or whatever again. At the first one we also had this nasty cinnamon drink, I forget what it was called but it had the consistency of elmer's glue and tasted vaguely like cinnamon. I found out later it was made from plums and other things, but yeah it was like drinking warm glue.
So I had my first baptism this week! I brought my camera today so I can send pictures, and I did find out how to change the size of the pictures, but after I had taken these so these photos I send today will be huge but next time they won't. So like I said we had a baptism. The new convert's name is Petra, she's 20 something from somewhere in Mexico and her younger sister is a member, we taught her for a long time before she finally wanted to get baptized. I, just attached the picture, she's the one in white, her sister Celene, in the red shirt and green hoodie, my companion Elder Astin in his baptismal clothes on the left and me on the right with a freakish smile on my face. I was trying to get my eyes open since when I smile for pictures my eyes close.
So that was on friday. The next day saturday was interesting, our district leader, Elder Dexter (who by the way, is from Rancho Cucamonga CA, and I think Elder Paxman is serving in his very ward right now) had to go with Elder Astin to give a baptismal interview to one of our investigators, Sergio. Elder Dexter is an English Elder, but Sergio speaks good english so thus Elder Dexter could interview him. Before when Petra got her interview we had to get another missionary all the way down in Houston to come up and interview her. Since when there is an interview it has to be done by a zone or district leader, and since Elder Astin and I are the only two Spanish Elders in our zone, and we're not any kind of leader so we had to get a leader-elder that spoke spanish to come up.
Anyway the point of all that is that I went with Elder Dexter's companion, Elder Pitts and the other two english missionaries for a service assignment. It was an interesting experience. We went with their ward's elder's quorum president, a man in his 40's that has the demeanor of a teenager, out to 'Cut n' Shoot' that's what the town is called. Cut n' Shoot, Texas. It was real redneck country. Trailers, garbage and chickens everywhere. Abandoned household appliances such as toilets, sinks, and rubber tires strewn across the land. Every here and there old Southern Confederate Battle Flags flying from flagpoles and clotheslines. The geological strata was very interesting, the lowermost layer was mud, then crushed beer cans, then matted grass. That will make an interesting formation in a few million years.
So what we did is we "hung siding". Which basically was putting wooden walls on a trailer home, and cutting them to fit around the windows and notches. The locals who were supposedly members had real thick funny accents. It was an interesting experience, and I got to hear about 5 minutes of Slipknot, one of their 15 year old sons was playing his music nearby and that made the whole trip worth it.
Hmm... Not many other epic things happened. We have a baptism lined up for next sunday. So that will make 3 baptisms for my first transfer. Not bad eh? 3 because we had the one that sort of counted. I think in a previous email I mentioned Lupita, a hispanic woman who was married to a member, and not just any member but a returned missionary at that. She technically was our first baptism this transfer but she was baptized somewhere else and we didn't get to go it and she had already been taught everything before. We had just made sure she was up to date with everything.
Now then, in response to your letters and whatnot. I found Alyssa's letter amusing. Welcome to learning another language, it's difficult but after a while it goes rather easy. It was interesting also that Latin has so many cases, German has only 5 and that was more than enough for me. And Latin has how many again? Like 7? Phew, that's a lot. Did you know that Finnish has 15 cases? That's incredible, so just imagine that you could be learning Finnish and that will make those 7 cases seem easy. Spanish doesn't have cases, luckily, it's a relatively simple language. Thanks for the art stuff. The dragon is brutal, the winged dogs were just funny. And as for ideas for your art thing I have no idea. The first thing that came to my mind was a depth charge but I don't know how you'd make a character out of that.
So if you all want to send me stuff all you have to do is send cash. That always works, no packaging involved. Easy and simple. And you all want to know what I want for Christmas huh? Well that's easy, there's not much I need/want, being a missionary and all. But the following would be useful:
-money
-a few ties, wearing the same eight gets old real fast (make sure they're 100% polyester, silk ties get destroyed by this humid climate as a I have discovered) -my own pan. The pots and pan's we have are degenerate and corroded lumps of rust. If had my own stainless steel pan thing for my use alone I would be most grateful. And maybe my own nice spatula too.
-more money
That's about all I'd want for Christmas, I don't need much. And that's about all I have to write today. I'll send some more pictures in a moment. Until next week then!
-- Elder Rice
One Gun Salute
November 2, 2009
Family:
I got the big package, thanks for all the food and stuff, that was great I really needed a lot of that stuff. I've not yet received the clothes yet but I hope it will come eventually.
So things in Texas are going well. I forgot to bring my camera today, I've taken some more epic pictures but that can wait till next week. Oh, so those last pictures I've sent. I laughed when you asked me who was the elder that was "praying over the washing machine". That was Elder Pitts, and you may not be able to tell but you will notice in that picture that the kitchen floor is rather reflective, because it's under 2 inches of water. Elder Pitts was on the chair, out of the water and finishing his laundry. He was the one who flooded out apartment and in that picture he's doing it while our apartment is flooded, he didn't care about the flooding he just wanted to get his laundry done. I'll do the names of the people in the pictures some other time when I have it with me.
So the work is going well, we have 4 baptisms lined up, but only two of which are for sure, we think. It's rather miraculous how this happens, our best investigator was one that just came out of nowhere and just showed up to church one day and said he wanted to be baptized and we started teaching him. It's astonishing to me that people actually want to know about this stuff, I always try to put myself in the shoes of the people we teach and I think I would be bored out of my mind if a couple of guys were telling me this mysterious stuff. Maybe that's just something unique about Texas and other such places, people are still concerned about religious matters and not all that secular as the modern world is.
Oh and an interesting thing Dad, there are no native spanish speakers in this mission. I found that out and was rather shocked but that's indeed the situation. Which is odd but whatever. We do have one missionary here from Mongolia, I haven't met him but most people like him, and think he's weird, he's an english missionary though so I don't know if I'll run into him. Areas like mine are mixed english and spanish, but mostly english. Down the Houston Zones, that are actually in Houston itself they are entirely spanish zones, that would be nice except that it's in the ghetto. It's bad enough here, I hate that dank grimey smell of the nasty little trailers that hispanics live in, it'll be a hundred times worse down in those Houston Zones. They tell me horrid tales of multitudes of fleas, roaches, and bed bugs. Not looking forward to that but whatever. It's not too bad up here. Did I mention our bed-bug infestation in my last e-mail? Well we had one, we think we've gotten them all and we've finally gotten some zip up mattress covers. But now we think we have fleas, Elder Astin saw one jump off his arm yesterday. And we killed this HUGE cockroach the other day. It was a monster, I was hoping to send pictures of it today but you can look forward to those next week.
Hmm.... Anything else interesting? Oh, I'm learning how to crochet. My whole district does it and one day when we had this huge thunderstorm that kept us in all day they taught me and I got my own yarn and hook and I'm making a hat right now... Yeah... It's kind of fun but rather mind-numbing. The others do it to send back to the girls they're writing at home, I don't have any such reason so I just do it just because.
Yeah.... Well that's all I got today. I love y'all. Peace out.
-Elder Rice
Family:
I got the big package, thanks for all the food and stuff, that was great I really needed a lot of that stuff. I've not yet received the clothes yet but I hope it will come eventually.
So things in Texas are going well. I forgot to bring my camera today, I've taken some more epic pictures but that can wait till next week. Oh, so those last pictures I've sent. I laughed when you asked me who was the elder that was "praying over the washing machine". That was Elder Pitts, and you may not be able to tell but you will notice in that picture that the kitchen floor is rather reflective, because it's under 2 inches of water. Elder Pitts was on the chair, out of the water and finishing his laundry. He was the one who flooded out apartment and in that picture he's doing it while our apartment is flooded, he didn't care about the flooding he just wanted to get his laundry done. I'll do the names of the people in the pictures some other time when I have it with me.
So the work is going well, we have 4 baptisms lined up, but only two of which are for sure, we think. It's rather miraculous how this happens, our best investigator was one that just came out of nowhere and just showed up to church one day and said he wanted to be baptized and we started teaching him. It's astonishing to me that people actually want to know about this stuff, I always try to put myself in the shoes of the people we teach and I think I would be bored out of my mind if a couple of guys were telling me this mysterious stuff. Maybe that's just something unique about Texas and other such places, people are still concerned about religious matters and not all that secular as the modern world is.
Oh and an interesting thing Dad, there are no native spanish speakers in this mission. I found that out and was rather shocked but that's indeed the situation. Which is odd but whatever. We do have one missionary here from Mongolia, I haven't met him but most people like him, and think he's weird, he's an english missionary though so I don't know if I'll run into him. Areas like mine are mixed english and spanish, but mostly english. Down the Houston Zones, that are actually in Houston itself they are entirely spanish zones, that would be nice except that it's in the ghetto. It's bad enough here, I hate that dank grimey smell of the nasty little trailers that hispanics live in, it'll be a hundred times worse down in those Houston Zones. They tell me horrid tales of multitudes of fleas, roaches, and bed bugs. Not looking forward to that but whatever. It's not too bad up here. Did I mention our bed-bug infestation in my last e-mail? Well we had one, we think we've gotten them all and we've finally gotten some zip up mattress covers. But now we think we have fleas, Elder Astin saw one jump off his arm yesterday. And we killed this HUGE cockroach the other day. It was a monster, I was hoping to send pictures of it today but you can look forward to those next week.
Hmm.... Anything else interesting? Oh, I'm learning how to crochet. My whole district does it and one day when we had this huge thunderstorm that kept us in all day they taught me and I got my own yarn and hook and I'm making a hat right now... Yeah... It's kind of fun but rather mind-numbing. The others do it to send back to the girls they're writing at home, I don't have any such reason so I just do it just because.
Yeah.... Well that's all I got today. I love y'all. Peace out.
-Elder Rice
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