Twas' much fun talking to y'all on Friday, that was probably the shortest hour that I've ever experienced. Shorter even than P-Day hours.
So, not much to say since I talked you y'all on Friday. Transfer calls came Saturday night and my companion Elder Porter is being transferred to the Houston Zone to be a zone leader there. And Elder Woodruff (I don't think I've met him) is coming up here to Conroe to be my companion. That and a new area is being opened up here in Conroe, another spanish area which is good. Technically it's not a new area since they're just splitting our area in half. Which is really good since our area is huge and most of it we've never even set foot in, cities like Montgomery, Cut N' Shoot, Willis, and such places that we've never even been in. So that will be good. However I am moving into a new apartment in this area, they're going to get a 4 man to move us and the new spanish Elders into. That will be excellent, since I'll be living with all spanish elders it will be much easier to learn spanish, unlike these last two transfers living with english elders. Also cool, is that fact that one of those elders that will be opening a new area will be a new missionary fresh out of the MTC, also in the zone we're getting a new spanish sister missionary fresh from the MTC so that means that in Church I won't be the dumbest one in there anymore.
My spanish is actually getting along pretty well, slowly but steadily, oh I was gonna share this on Friday over the phone but I forgot. There are lots of different hispanic accents and the one that I'm trying to develop is the Argentinean accent, which is my favorite because it sounds a little harsher like French. The j's make a german sounding "arcsh" sound and the ll's and y's make a "sho" sound. It's sounds way cooler than mexican spanish. And we actually have a lot of Argentinians in the ward here so I am able to hear it quite a bit. However they have this thing called the "voz" which is some sort of alternate conjugation or something for the "tu" form. I have not yet figured out what in the world that is but eventually I will.
Well... That's about all I got for today, not much new has happened so peace out until next monday.
-- Elder Rice
All Nightmare Long
December 21, 2009
All Nightmare Long
Buenos tadres, familia.
Thanks for Christmas box, I did get it and Austin can’t wrap things very well so I saw what it was immediately and Austin if you even think for one second that I’m gonna use that then you’re wrong! Sending things to the mission home only delays them for a day, it’s not too bad. But it’s still better to send things to the mission home for a multitude of reasons. Sounds like some… interesting… things have been going on back home, I’m kind of glad that I’m out here and don’t have to worry about such things. Though it’s funny that you mentioned that because this week we’ve had a bunch of ward meetings and I think I’m starting to realize how much it stinks to be a bishop. Especially in a Hispanic ward, every week in Elders quorum there’s always some big debate about some doctrinal something, it’s hard when a good portion of the members are converts and don’t know all that much, there’s always some false doctrine taught in Sunday school as well. Also one of the members, Pedro Ortiz went on his mission and at his little going away party thing there was all this drama because his family didn’t want him to go (of his immediate and extended family he and his older brother are the only members and the family is hostile to the church) and the Bishop sort of had to get things back under control. I feel sorry for the poor guy, and I never want to be a bishop.
Elder Law sounds like he’s having fun in Africa, he was already really skinny, I would guess that if he was to shave his head now he’d look like a holocaust victim or something har har. No,I really do hope he’s doing well. Man, that sounds tough. I don’t have any problem with getting enough to eat, in fact my problem is that I’m getting too much to eat, which is a problem since my companion won’t go the gym like we did last transfer but on the other hand we are biking a lot more and not as many members will feed us anymore since they don’t like my companion. So all is well with that. Oh and I don’t know what it is you are trying to end in these e-mails but it ends up not working and there’s a big empty white box with a little red X in the corner. And something is wrong with Grandma Benham’s email’s too. All of the text comes out as gibberish in symbols and whatnot. MyLDSmail apparently is not that great. Kent tells me that the church is working with Google to make a new e-mail thing and soon myldsmail will work like G-mail. Which will be really useful.
This week has been a really long week. Our teaching pool has been getting low for multiple reasons, so we needed some new people to teach, we didn’t have any referrals so we tracted. We’ve tracted every day this week and we must of beat down the doors of half a dozen trailer parks. I absolutely hate it, but it’s just something that needs to be done, sort of. President Hansen says that “finding” is the heavy lifting of missionary work. Though he himself says that tracting is a less than useful manner of finding, he tells us that in his mission he didn’t have any success at all tracting and the reason we do it is to show our dedication to the Lord’s work if nothing else. Okay. It also rained like all that week and it was a little chilly. But this week it’s supposed to get back up to 70, even today we’re all in our short sleeved shirts. It doesn’t feel like Christmas at all with everything still green and warm.
Hmmm…. I’m trying to think of some amusing stories that have happened. Every Friday morning at about 9:45ish before we go to district meeting this cat comes up to our door and starts meowing and we let it in. It’s someone’s cat, it’s too clean to be a stray but it doesn’t have a collar or anything, anyway the first thing she does is go under the coffee table (always with a “clunk” cause she always hits her head on it). Stand there for a minute and then jump into someone’s lap to be petted. So this time Elder Brown picked her up went over to the bathroom while Elder Lopez was taking a shower, opened up the door and tossed the cat in. The next 10 minutes were quite hilarious, I think you can imagine what it sounded like in there. Elder Lopez freaking out and the cat screeching, stuff being knocked over. I was laughing my guts out.
Hmm… I can’t really think of anything else, I can barely remember yesterday, the days fly by so fast it’s incredible, especially when you do more or less the same thing day after day after day. I realized that I’ve been out nearly 5 months now, that’s forever. Anyway… My Spanish is getting better, if I focus and concentrate real hard I can get about 80% of what’s being said, and that’s pretty good, the hard part is then actually speaking, but that’s getting better, slowly. I’m participating more in lessons and stuff so it’s all going good.
Well that’s about all I got for today, can’t wait to talk to y’all on Friday. So remember that it will be like 6:00pm your time that I will call and I’ll get only an hour so be ready for that. Peace out.
-- Elder Rice
All Nightmare Long
Buenos tadres, familia.
Thanks for Christmas box, I did get it and Austin can’t wrap things very well so I saw what it was immediately and Austin if you even think for one second that I’m gonna use that then you’re wrong! Sending things to the mission home only delays them for a day, it’s not too bad. But it’s still better to send things to the mission home for a multitude of reasons. Sounds like some… interesting… things have been going on back home, I’m kind of glad that I’m out here and don’t have to worry about such things. Though it’s funny that you mentioned that because this week we’ve had a bunch of ward meetings and I think I’m starting to realize how much it stinks to be a bishop. Especially in a Hispanic ward, every week in Elders quorum there’s always some big debate about some doctrinal something, it’s hard when a good portion of the members are converts and don’t know all that much, there’s always some false doctrine taught in Sunday school as well. Also one of the members, Pedro Ortiz went on his mission and at his little going away party thing there was all this drama because his family didn’t want him to go (of his immediate and extended family he and his older brother are the only members and the family is hostile to the church) and the Bishop sort of had to get things back under control. I feel sorry for the poor guy, and I never want to be a bishop.
Elder Law sounds like he’s having fun in Africa, he was already really skinny, I would guess that if he was to shave his head now he’d look like a holocaust victim or something har har. No,I really do hope he’s doing well. Man, that sounds tough. I don’t have any problem with getting enough to eat, in fact my problem is that I’m getting too much to eat, which is a problem since my companion won’t go the gym like we did last transfer but on the other hand we are biking a lot more and not as many members will feed us anymore since they don’t like my companion. So all is well with that. Oh and I don’t know what it is you are trying to end in these e-mails but it ends up not working and there’s a big empty white box with a little red X in the corner. And something is wrong with Grandma Benham’s email’s too. All of the text comes out as gibberish in symbols and whatnot. MyLDSmail apparently is not that great. Kent tells me that the church is working with Google to make a new e-mail thing and soon myldsmail will work like G-mail. Which will be really useful.
This week has been a really long week. Our teaching pool has been getting low for multiple reasons, so we needed some new people to teach, we didn’t have any referrals so we tracted. We’ve tracted every day this week and we must of beat down the doors of half a dozen trailer parks. I absolutely hate it, but it’s just something that needs to be done, sort of. President Hansen says that “finding” is the heavy lifting of missionary work. Though he himself says that tracting is a less than useful manner of finding, he tells us that in his mission he didn’t have any success at all tracting and the reason we do it is to show our dedication to the Lord’s work if nothing else. Okay. It also rained like all that week and it was a little chilly. But this week it’s supposed to get back up to 70, even today we’re all in our short sleeved shirts. It doesn’t feel like Christmas at all with everything still green and warm.
Hmmm…. I’m trying to think of some amusing stories that have happened. Every Friday morning at about 9:45ish before we go to district meeting this cat comes up to our door and starts meowing and we let it in. It’s someone’s cat, it’s too clean to be a stray but it doesn’t have a collar or anything, anyway the first thing she does is go under the coffee table (always with a “clunk” cause she always hits her head on it). Stand there for a minute and then jump into someone’s lap to be petted. So this time Elder Brown picked her up went over to the bathroom while Elder Lopez was taking a shower, opened up the door and tossed the cat in. The next 10 minutes were quite hilarious, I think you can imagine what it sounded like in there. Elder Lopez freaking out and the cat screeching, stuff being knocked over. I was laughing my guts out.
Hmm… I can’t really think of anything else, I can barely remember yesterday, the days fly by so fast it’s incredible, especially when you do more or less the same thing day after day after day. I realized that I’ve been out nearly 5 months now, that’s forever. Anyway… My Spanish is getting better, if I focus and concentrate real hard I can get about 80% of what’s being said, and that’s pretty good, the hard part is then actually speaking, but that’s getting better, slowly. I’m participating more in lessons and stuff so it’s all going good.
Well that’s about all I got for today, can’t wait to talk to y’all on Friday. So remember that it will be like 6:00pm your time that I will call and I’ll get only an hour so be ready for that. Peace out.
-- Elder Rice
Beating on Death's Door
December 14th
Dear family and other people,
All goeth all on the southern front. This week was a little bit more interesting that most. Tuesday we got to go to the temple and we had exchanges with the ZL's after that. That was kinda fun, I went with Elder Mccann to his area in the Woodlands, TX. It was weird teaching white people, I could actually understand what they were saying and I was able to speak to them and have them understand me also! It was fun. We went and visited this one less active member, because of some health problem he "can't come to church" and apparently can't go out of his house much either. Now based on the following event I came to the conclusion that perhaps it's good to go to church every sunday after all. So it was like 8:30 and we just wanted to drop in, share a quick scripture and go. We go in there and have a little chit chat with this man but he starts going and going and going off about crazy stuff, he was trying to teach us, he's one of those guys who tries to show off their "massive intellects". Anyway he was telling us that in the pre-mortal life we were already sinners and that based on our sins we were assigned to different planets, and that earth was for all the prideful people and therefore since we are here on earth we were extremely prideful in the pre-mortal life, “children of pride” is what he called it. We were like: Okkkkaaaayyyyy…… sure…. And then he proceeded to tell us that years ago some missionaries like us challenged him on it, and according to him it’s all in the scriptures. His evidence for it was in the book of Job, and he had these missionaries read the book like 5 times and they could not find until he pointed it out for them, later that night I went and found the scripture and it’s just the part where the Lord is talking to Job about how amazing the leviathan (a whale) is and it’s a sign of the Lord’s power, and in the very last verse of that chapter it says that “he (the whale) is king over all the children of pride”. So I guess that based on this verse is where this guy is getting all of this false doctrine from. Thus my conclusion is that if you’re cooped up in your house a lot and don’t go to church you start formulation your own bizarre doctrines and become crazy like this guy, so therefore we ought to go church more regularly so we don’t end up like that guy…
Anyway the rest of this guy’s family came home, his family is super active but he’s not and we managed to stop his monologue to share a quick scripture with them, I shared one of my favorites, a couple of verses in Mosiah 3: where it talks about “listing to obey the evil spirit” I think it’s cool because ‘listing’ is a naval term for when a vessel leans in the water so I have this cool little analogy about not spiritually capsizing. Unfortunately in the Spanish scriptures they don’t have a word equivalent to “listing” they use “opt” so it kind of ruins the whole analogy when I try to share it with Hispanics and I have to end up telling them that in the English scriptures it uses this one word that means this, etc. So I was pretty excited to share it with white people and especially this family, they’re 19 year old son is a Sea Scout and is about to get his equivalent of an Eagle in Sea Scouting and his family is also into sailing and nautical nonsense so they all understood it right off the bat and thus it was good. I was rather pleased with them.
What else happened this week? Hmmm…. Wednesday was rather dull, all of our appointments fell through and we tried to go through our list of contacts and it turns out that half of the addresses and telephone numbers don’t even exist, we tried visiting less actives and ward members too. Also to find that a lot of them don’t exist or had moved out of the ward like 10 years ago, in fact we tried to call this one family using the phone number listed on the ward list and it turned out being the number to the nearest Papa John’s. That was funny. Thursday was similar. Friday was cool though. We had what is called “Navidad en el Barrio”. Where all the missionaries in the mission (except for those in the College Station zone) go this big old warehouse somewhere within downtown Houston for this big huge service project, we wrap presents and stuff for poor families and stuff. And President actually invited us (myself, Elder Porter, Elder Brown, and Elder Lopez) to his house to have breakfast and then all 6 of us would drive down to it. It was the first time in a long time that I’d had a warm breakfast, it was good. Then we went to the thing in Houston. It was my first time in Houston, the city itself but it wasn’t all that big as I had imagined it to be. Anyway the best was that I got to meet up with my fellow comrades who were in the MTC with me and as we were wrapping presents and junk we swapped our epic stories and whatnot, it was from 9-3 so we had a lot of fun.
That’s about all that’s interesting that happened this week. The Home Front sounds like it’s still there, Dixon is still lame and it’s still cold up there. Though that’s crazy that there’s an In-N-Out Burger up there now, oh and happy birthday Dad, kind of delayed but I forgot, and before I forget I might as well say happy birthday to Austin too… Oh man, Austin is gonna be 13?! That’s madness! Austin a teenager? I can’t even imagine that. Christmas time around here is lame, everyone had decorations and stuff and yet there’s no snow so it just looks weird. It feels like late October here, except we have a lot of fog which is cool. Thanks for my jacket and flash drive, it makes doing these e-mails much easier. And I forgot how much I like that jacket, thanks for sending it. So the Christmas tree died? I thought it was fake, how could it die? Seems like we just got it not that long ago. We have a tiny little pathetic fake tree that looks more like a… shrubbery (DUH-NUH!) Christmas week is actually going to be quite fun. Monday will be a half p-day, because the next day is a mission wide P-day in which we’re all going to get together and do stuff like play sports and make gingerbread houses, Wednesday is Mission Temple day where all the missionaries go through the Temple on the same day (that will be fun for the temple workers) And then for Christmas Eve and Christmas day we don’t do anything, including missionary work (yay!) and then after new years we have a mission conference. So a lot of fun coming up. Oh and On Christmas Day my so far appointed calling time is 7:00 pm. Which I think is 6:00pm for y’all. So just be home that night and we will get to talk for an hour. My companion is a dork and is counting down the hours until he gets to call home, he’s dumb like that. Oh thanks to everyone for your generous donations to my well being, that’ll be put to good use here in a couple hours. I’ll be trying to get off actual written letters to everyone (extended family) but that’ll take awhile so don’t be surprised if you get them in like…. February… Or something. Well that’s all got for now. Peace out.
--Elder Rice
Dear family and other people,
All goeth all on the southern front. This week was a little bit more interesting that most. Tuesday we got to go to the temple and we had exchanges with the ZL's after that. That was kinda fun, I went with Elder Mccann to his area in the Woodlands, TX. It was weird teaching white people, I could actually understand what they were saying and I was able to speak to them and have them understand me also! It was fun. We went and visited this one less active member, because of some health problem he "can't come to church" and apparently can't go out of his house much either. Now based on the following event I came to the conclusion that perhaps it's good to go to church every sunday after all. So it was like 8:30 and we just wanted to drop in, share a quick scripture and go. We go in there and have a little chit chat with this man but he starts going and going and going off about crazy stuff, he was trying to teach us, he's one of those guys who tries to show off their "massive intellects". Anyway he was telling us that in the pre-mortal life we were already sinners and that based on our sins we were assigned to different planets, and that earth was for all the prideful people and therefore since we are here on earth we were extremely prideful in the pre-mortal life, “children of pride” is what he called it. We were like: Okkkkaaaayyyyy…… sure…. And then he proceeded to tell us that years ago some missionaries like us challenged him on it, and according to him it’s all in the scriptures. His evidence for it was in the book of Job, and he had these missionaries read the book like 5 times and they could not find until he pointed it out for them, later that night I went and found the scripture and it’s just the part where the Lord is talking to Job about how amazing the leviathan (a whale) is and it’s a sign of the Lord’s power, and in the very last verse of that chapter it says that “he (the whale) is king over all the children of pride”. So I guess that based on this verse is where this guy is getting all of this false doctrine from. Thus my conclusion is that if you’re cooped up in your house a lot and don’t go to church you start formulation your own bizarre doctrines and become crazy like this guy, so therefore we ought to go church more regularly so we don’t end up like that guy…
Anyway the rest of this guy’s family came home, his family is super active but he’s not and we managed to stop his monologue to share a quick scripture with them, I shared one of my favorites, a couple of verses in Mosiah 3: where it talks about “listing to obey the evil spirit” I think it’s cool because ‘listing’ is a naval term for when a vessel leans in the water so I have this cool little analogy about not spiritually capsizing. Unfortunately in the Spanish scriptures they don’t have a word equivalent to “listing” they use “opt” so it kind of ruins the whole analogy when I try to share it with Hispanics and I have to end up telling them that in the English scriptures it uses this one word that means this, etc. So I was pretty excited to share it with white people and especially this family, they’re 19 year old son is a Sea Scout and is about to get his equivalent of an Eagle in Sea Scouting and his family is also into sailing and nautical nonsense so they all understood it right off the bat and thus it was good. I was rather pleased with them.
What else happened this week? Hmmm…. Wednesday was rather dull, all of our appointments fell through and we tried to go through our list of contacts and it turns out that half of the addresses and telephone numbers don’t even exist, we tried visiting less actives and ward members too. Also to find that a lot of them don’t exist or had moved out of the ward like 10 years ago, in fact we tried to call this one family using the phone number listed on the ward list and it turned out being the number to the nearest Papa John’s. That was funny. Thursday was similar. Friday was cool though. We had what is called “Navidad en el Barrio”. Where all the missionaries in the mission (except for those in the College Station zone) go this big old warehouse somewhere within downtown Houston for this big huge service project, we wrap presents and stuff for poor families and stuff. And President actually invited us (myself, Elder Porter, Elder Brown, and Elder Lopez) to his house to have breakfast and then all 6 of us would drive down to it. It was the first time in a long time that I’d had a warm breakfast, it was good. Then we went to the thing in Houston. It was my first time in Houston, the city itself but it wasn’t all that big as I had imagined it to be. Anyway the best was that I got to meet up with my fellow comrades who were in the MTC with me and as we were wrapping presents and junk we swapped our epic stories and whatnot, it was from 9-3 so we had a lot of fun.
That’s about all that’s interesting that happened this week. The Home Front sounds like it’s still there, Dixon is still lame and it’s still cold up there. Though that’s crazy that there’s an In-N-Out Burger up there now, oh and happy birthday Dad, kind of delayed but I forgot, and before I forget I might as well say happy birthday to Austin too… Oh man, Austin is gonna be 13?! That’s madness! Austin a teenager? I can’t even imagine that. Christmas time around here is lame, everyone had decorations and stuff and yet there’s no snow so it just looks weird. It feels like late October here, except we have a lot of fog which is cool. Thanks for my jacket and flash drive, it makes doing these e-mails much easier. And I forgot how much I like that jacket, thanks for sending it. So the Christmas tree died? I thought it was fake, how could it die? Seems like we just got it not that long ago. We have a tiny little pathetic fake tree that looks more like a… shrubbery (DUH-NUH!) Christmas week is actually going to be quite fun. Monday will be a half p-day, because the next day is a mission wide P-day in which we’re all going to get together and do stuff like play sports and make gingerbread houses, Wednesday is Mission Temple day where all the missionaries go through the Temple on the same day (that will be fun for the temple workers) And then for Christmas Eve and Christmas day we don’t do anything, including missionary work (yay!) and then after new years we have a mission conference. So a lot of fun coming up. Oh and On Christmas Day my so far appointed calling time is 7:00 pm. Which I think is 6:00pm for y’all. So just be home that night and we will get to talk for an hour. My companion is a dork and is counting down the hours until he gets to call home, he’s dumb like that. Oh thanks to everyone for your generous donations to my well being, that’ll be put to good use here in a couple hours. I’ll be trying to get off actual written letters to everyone (extended family) but that’ll take awhile so don’t be surprised if you get them in like…. February… Or something. Well that’s all got for now. Peace out.
--Elder Rice
Flesh Storm
Familia:
Did I really sound that miserable in my last email? Let me go read over it again.... Hmmm... Yeah that was kind of a less than good week, but I wasn't all that miserable. In the MTC my companion Elder Wood always said I was too pessimistic about everything, I told him that he should see me when I'm actually pessimistic. Hmmm, maybe I just sound like that to everyone. That or I think that all of the not so fun things that happen are more interesting to relate than the good things that happen to me as a missionary.
So anyway.... This week... We had Zone Conference on Tuesday, we drove up to College Station for it. On the way up my companion was driving and we had to get up early in the morning to make all the way up to college station by 8:00, anyway he was driving and I guess he was speeding through a school zone because a cop pulled us over and gave him a ticket for speeding in a school zone. He was rather bummed, turns out it's gonna cost him $230! Ouch! Wait till his parents hear about that. It was a good zone conference though, the subject was about using the Book of Mormon, which was yet another blow to my companion that day because before then we'd, or rather HE had been teaching our investigators primarily out of the Bible, which is a formula for an epic fail. Ain't no one ever been converted by the Bible.
The following day was probably the first day that I've actually been cold here in Texas, we were on bikes that day and there was this horrid wind that was blowing real hard. Anyway we were going to find the police station so Elder Porter could see how much his ticket was gonna cost and to see if he could get it dropped or something or another. So we looked up the police station's address and saw that it was on 'Old Montgomery Road' which was just off the Fraiser, which is the big road that like the train tracks, divides the city of Conroe in half. So we thought that we'd just go down the Fraiser until we hit that Old Montgomery Road, so we started biking and there was real hard wind blowing and these big dark clouds of death tearing through the skies at high speeds, I had never seen clouds move so fast before, I thought it was gonna break open and we'd be drenched in a minute. It never did though, so we biked down the Fraiser looking for it... and looking for it... and looking for it... going down and down and down... About 8 miles later when we reach the city limits Elder Porter concluded that we had missed it, he pulled the map out of his bag and saw that Old Montgomery Road was like 400 yards from where we lived. So we turned around and bike all the way back up, with the wind against us the whole time, by this time I wasn't cold anymore, and we came back to right where the road should be. It wasn't there. Now here's the thing about roads in Texas, they have multiple names and randomly stop and a new road will start on the same road. Well we eventually found the police station and that's when we found out how much the ticket was gonna cost and it turns out that the judge or whoever wasn't there so we had to come back another day to see him. So then we biked back home, walked in a collapsed. It was only like 3:00 and we were exhausted. We decided to do "weekly planning" which means having a long nap.
Let's see that was Wednesday... Oh on Friday it snowed! Incredible huh? Snow in Texas, never thought I'd see it, the locals were dumbfounded and confused by the snow. Which was more like light hail than snow, none of it stuck of course. I got some pictures of it that I'll send. Not much else interesting happened this last week. Saturday we once again biked all over town, I don't have a butt anymore, now it's just my tailbone grinding against the rock like seat of my bike. So yeah, I'm getting a lot of exercise from that.
Mi espanol is getting better, slowly. I'm getting to the point that I can understand their spanish better than their heavily accented and broken english, so perhaps that indicates progress but who knows.... Well that's about all the interesting things I have to say. And don't worry about the incredibly slow speeds and which mail and other things travel, not a problem it's okay. Though now I think it's a better idea that y'all send packages, and maybe letter to the mission office. Because just the other day a package for Elder Nelson came, 3 weeks after he'd been transferred. That was funny, so in the future, especially at the end of this month when transfer calls are coming up, mail things to the mission office address. The Hafer Road one, I don't remember what it is, hopefully you still have it somewhere. And if other people ask give them that address if they want to write me. Which nobody does, I never did hear from Adam, Austin go tell him to send me a bloody letter. Well cool, that's all I got and I'm running out of time here. I hope all goeth well in la tierra de los montanas. I miss the mountains and the snow. And send me some more photos that I can put in the little photo book thing, now that I can almost communicate with the ward members they want to get to know me and see pictures of my family and stuff. Okay I'm done, peace out.
-- Elder Rice
Psychosocial
November 30, 2009
This last week was another long one. Thanksgiving was okay. Luckily for us we didn't have to go proselyting that day. The white handbook or missionary manual says that holidays are the best time to proselyte since everyone is home. Not true, holidays are the worst times to proselyte since everyone is at home with their family and the last thing they want is for some missionaries to knock on their door and bother them. So we didn't do any of that luckily. At 8:00 in the morning the two english wards had their own Turkey Bowl thing on the local high school's football field so we did that. I was bored out of my skull during that since I stink at football and there were so many people that we had to split into four teams of 20 or so, therefore I spent the whole time just running back and forth and not doing anything since nobody else was. We did that until 10:00. After that we went home and got ready for the day, some members of our ward had pity on us and had invited us over for their thanksgiving meals. First we went to the Pineda's and I thought it was just gonna be more hispanic food but I was surprised since they made turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, stuffing and all that. Course we ate with different varieties of chili peppers so that kinda made it slightly hispanic but oh well. Then at 5:00 we and the sister missionaries of the spanish ward were invited to the Bishop's house for his dinner too, which we went and ate. That was interesting, the Bishop of our spanish ward is a white guy who served his mission in Argentina, he married an Argentinian woman and his 4 kids are half and half, they speak both spanish and english. And his brother and his family was there too, his brother had served his mission in Taiwan, and had married a Taiwanese woman and his 3 kids were likewise half and half, speaking both Chinese and english. So it was a very multi-ethnic affair english, spanish, and chinese all being spoken at the same time. But it was all traditional american thanksgiving food except for these japanese yams with mint sauce or something on them. They tasted weird. Oh and the Bishop's mother was there too, she might have given y'all a call, she wanted our home numbers and said she would call our mothers to say that she spent thanksgiving with your sons, etc. That lasted the rest of the night, we other people had invited us but we didn't have the car that day so we had to politely decline when they called us.
What other interesting things happened? Hmmm.... Saturday stunk, Elder Porter had a baptism he wanted to go to in his old area in College Station, but mission rules are that if you want to leave your zone to go to a baptism or something like that you need to have a member take you because that would be a lot of miles on the mission vehicles. So Elder Porter had asked Hermano Pineda to take us down saturday morning for the 1 and 1/2 hour drive to College Station, he said he would and then on saturday 20 minutes before he came to pick us up he called and said that he couldn't. Elder Porter was furious and then called every ward member on our phone trying to find someone who would take us. Nobody did, and we didn't go. I don't blame them, I think it was extremely rude that Elder Porter would ask someone to drive them all that way to see a baptism of someone that they don't even know, and especially when Hermano Pineda couldn't and then asking people on such short notice was even more rude and presumptuous. I told him this and his reasoning was that the lady being baptized wanted him to personally baptize her. I said it didn't really matter who baptized her it's the same priesthood... So he was ticked off for the rest of day which didn't make that day a very happy day.
It looks like I'm gonna have to go in a minute here and move to another computer, we're in a college today using an empty classroom with computers in it but it seems like a class is about to start so I may have to end this right now and resume on a different computer.
Okay I'm on a different computer now, and I found out how to save e-mails but it's difficult and takes up a lot of room. So yeah, saturday, stunk real bad. Having an upset companion is not fun, not fun at all. We didn't have any appointments that day either so we tracted and tried to just drop in on investigators and less actives. We were on bikes that day so from 2:00 to 8:00 we rode all over town knocking on doors. It was awful, all of that and we ended up like teaching only 3 lessons, two of which were with less active members. Ugh, I was so tired when we finally got home.
Sunday wasn't much better, Elder Porter had yet another convert that he was to "personally" confirm in his old area. He did find a ride this time, some ward member from his old area came to get him. Unfortunately it was decided by the WML and Elder Porter that we go on splits, just in case any of our investigaros showed up to church that day. So I was stuck with Pedro all day, he's 20 something and about to leave for his mission in a month to Oklahoma city. So basically I was left all alone in hostile territory with all of these hispanics. That was not a fun day, this guy Pedro is also one of the ward missionaries and one of the young men's leaders so I had to sit in with him in all of his meetings before church. I just followed him around and tried to figure out what in the world was going on. Later during sunday school there was some urgency and commotion and Pedro and I were beckoned to come out into the hall, we went into an abandoned classroom and the two of us, along with another guy in the ward proceeded to give priesthood blessings to 6 different people. They just lined up outside the door and we started blessing them, we nearly ran out of oil in Pedro's little vial. That was stressful since I don't know how they go in english let alone spanish and I had to have pedro whisper in my ear quite a bit to help me out. And the members being blessed didn't like that at all, this one lady wanted me to do the second part of the blessing, the one where you use your own words and stuff, and oh that stressful but I did it somehow someway, but after wards she was a little upset that it was so short and not all that good cause my spanish sucks. Blargh... I was exhausted after that, I hate it when people think that priesthood blessings are like a cure-all pill or something, and go for that instead of proper medical attention, and these people weren't even all that ill, they just had a cold or something and wanted a blessing. This sort of view is really prevalent among hispanics, they treat us missionaries like holy men with special powers. Which we are, in a way. But they think that God listens to our prayers more than normal people which is why they want us to pray all of the time. During the last transfer this one lady wanted a blessing of comfort and she wanted Elder Astin to do it even though the Bishop was in the same room with us. They'd pick a missionary over just about anyone else. Not only do these people, members and non members alike need the light of the gospel but they need the light of science as well!
Well that's all I got for today. I hope y'all sent me my jacket and flash drive, I'm still waiting for it to come. Oh congratulations on being accepted to USU Alyssa, thank goodness, I was afraid that I've to go to BYU with you. Well I miss you all and hope your having a good time with all of that snow and those mountains, the trees here don't even turn different colors, they're green all year round, kind of boring. Well peace out.
-- Elder Rice
This last week was another long one. Thanksgiving was okay. Luckily for us we didn't have to go proselyting that day. The white handbook or missionary manual says that holidays are the best time to proselyte since everyone is home. Not true, holidays are the worst times to proselyte since everyone is at home with their family and the last thing they want is for some missionaries to knock on their door and bother them. So we didn't do any of that luckily. At 8:00 in the morning the two english wards had their own Turkey Bowl thing on the local high school's football field so we did that. I was bored out of my skull during that since I stink at football and there were so many people that we had to split into four teams of 20 or so, therefore I spent the whole time just running back and forth and not doing anything since nobody else was. We did that until 10:00. After that we went home and got ready for the day, some members of our ward had pity on us and had invited us over for their thanksgiving meals. First we went to the Pineda's and I thought it was just gonna be more hispanic food but I was surprised since they made turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, stuffing and all that. Course we ate with different varieties of chili peppers so that kinda made it slightly hispanic but oh well. Then at 5:00 we and the sister missionaries of the spanish ward were invited to the Bishop's house for his dinner too, which we went and ate. That was interesting, the Bishop of our spanish ward is a white guy who served his mission in Argentina, he married an Argentinian woman and his 4 kids are half and half, they speak both spanish and english. And his brother and his family was there too, his brother had served his mission in Taiwan, and had married a Taiwanese woman and his 3 kids were likewise half and half, speaking both Chinese and english. So it was a very multi-ethnic affair english, spanish, and chinese all being spoken at the same time. But it was all traditional american thanksgiving food except for these japanese yams with mint sauce or something on them. They tasted weird. Oh and the Bishop's mother was there too, she might have given y'all a call, she wanted our home numbers and said she would call our mothers to say that she spent thanksgiving with your sons, etc. That lasted the rest of the night, we other people had invited us but we didn't have the car that day so we had to politely decline when they called us.
What other interesting things happened? Hmmm.... Saturday stunk, Elder Porter had a baptism he wanted to go to in his old area in College Station, but mission rules are that if you want to leave your zone to go to a baptism or something like that you need to have a member take you because that would be a lot of miles on the mission vehicles. So Elder Porter had asked Hermano Pineda to take us down saturday morning for the 1 and 1/2 hour drive to College Station, he said he would and then on saturday 20 minutes before he came to pick us up he called and said that he couldn't. Elder Porter was furious and then called every ward member on our phone trying to find someone who would take us. Nobody did, and we didn't go. I don't blame them, I think it was extremely rude that Elder Porter would ask someone to drive them all that way to see a baptism of someone that they don't even know, and especially when Hermano Pineda couldn't and then asking people on such short notice was even more rude and presumptuous. I told him this and his reasoning was that the lady being baptized wanted him to personally baptize her. I said it didn't really matter who baptized her it's the same priesthood... So he was ticked off for the rest of day which didn't make that day a very happy day.
It looks like I'm gonna have to go in a minute here and move to another computer, we're in a college today using an empty classroom with computers in it but it seems like a class is about to start so I may have to end this right now and resume on a different computer.
Okay I'm on a different computer now, and I found out how to save e-mails but it's difficult and takes up a lot of room. So yeah, saturday, stunk real bad. Having an upset companion is not fun, not fun at all. We didn't have any appointments that day either so we tracted and tried to just drop in on investigators and less actives. We were on bikes that day so from 2:00 to 8:00 we rode all over town knocking on doors. It was awful, all of that and we ended up like teaching only 3 lessons, two of which were with less active members. Ugh, I was so tired when we finally got home.
Sunday wasn't much better, Elder Porter had yet another convert that he was to "personally" confirm in his old area. He did find a ride this time, some ward member from his old area came to get him. Unfortunately it was decided by the WML and Elder Porter that we go on splits, just in case any of our investigaros showed up to church that day. So I was stuck with Pedro all day, he's 20 something and about to leave for his mission in a month to Oklahoma city. So basically I was left all alone in hostile territory with all of these hispanics. That was not a fun day, this guy Pedro is also one of the ward missionaries and one of the young men's leaders so I had to sit in with him in all of his meetings before church. I just followed him around and tried to figure out what in the world was going on. Later during sunday school there was some urgency and commotion and Pedro and I were beckoned to come out into the hall, we went into an abandoned classroom and the two of us, along with another guy in the ward proceeded to give priesthood blessings to 6 different people. They just lined up outside the door and we started blessing them, we nearly ran out of oil in Pedro's little vial. That was stressful since I don't know how they go in english let alone spanish and I had to have pedro whisper in my ear quite a bit to help me out. And the members being blessed didn't like that at all, this one lady wanted me to do the second part of the blessing, the one where you use your own words and stuff, and oh that stressful but I did it somehow someway, but after wards she was a little upset that it was so short and not all that good cause my spanish sucks. Blargh... I was exhausted after that, I hate it when people think that priesthood blessings are like a cure-all pill or something, and go for that instead of proper medical attention, and these people weren't even all that ill, they just had a cold or something and wanted a blessing. This sort of view is really prevalent among hispanics, they treat us missionaries like holy men with special powers. Which we are, in a way. But they think that God listens to our prayers more than normal people which is why they want us to pray all of the time. During the last transfer this one lady wanted a blessing of comfort and she wanted Elder Astin to do it even though the Bishop was in the same room with us. They'd pick a missionary over just about anyone else. Not only do these people, members and non members alike need the light of the gospel but they need the light of science as well!
Well that's all I got for today. I hope y'all sent me my jacket and flash drive, I'm still waiting for it to come. Oh congratulations on being accepted to USU Alyssa, thank goodness, I was afraid that I've to go to BYU with you. Well I miss you all and hope your having a good time with all of that snow and those mountains, the trees here don't even turn different colors, they're green all year round, kind of boring. Well peace out.
-- Elder Rice
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