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