Waidmanns Heil

Hello family.

Sorry that those pictures didn't work. I don't have my camera with me today so I'll resend them again next week. Along with some new ones.

So I remembered the other rather amusing anecdote that I was going to share last time and it's an ongoing subject that concerns the J-Dubs. So, apparently there are a lot of J-Dubs out here. But I haven't yet actually seen one. My mission involving them is playing out like a horror movie, they're coming closer and closer but I still haven't seen them. On my very first day in the mission field back in October the new missionaries were taken tracting by all the trainers. I was in a threesome with two other elders and we were tracting this apartment complex in the evening. Eventually it got dark and as we were walking along one of the Elders, Elder Barret, looks off into the distance and comments that the J-Dubs are here tracting these same apartments. I looked over where he was pointing and all I saw were these two dark shadows dart behind a building. Spooky right? Then several months later during my last transfer Elder Porter and I were tracting. We were talking to this old hispanic man in his driveway and we ask him the usual "have you seen missionaries like us before?" question. To which he responded, "Oh yeah, you guys came by two days ago." Elder Porter and I looked at each other, we hadn't been anywhere near this area ever before. We kinda laughed a bit and said that it might of been but probably not. But the man continued, "Yeah you guys gave me this neat little book thing, I'll go get it." He went inside and came back out with one the little J-Dub booklets they hand out. Again, spooky, I realized that they are here in Conroe, in our territory.

And then just recently we were visiting this less active woman in our ward on a Thursday morning. We were in her kitchen in the middle of sharing a scripture when there's a knock on the door. The lady says "excuse me" and goes to get it. A couple minutes later she comes back and says that it was the J-Dubs. We were like "what?!?!" And she said yes and she told us that she told them that she was not interested and that she was a mormon and that in fact the mormon missionaries were here in her house right now and that was their car over there. Obviously that was not the smartest thing to say. But then she told us that they then asked if they could come in and talk with us. Luckily she didn't let them in. But once again, spooky. They're getting closer and closer.

Oh and remember in my last e-mail I said that I was gong to be on exchanges that day with one of the zone leaders who don't speak spanish? Well that went pretty well. But during this one lesson with another less active lady there's this knock on the door and these two hispanic men walk in the door. They were in their late 40's or so and they were dressed like us, slacks, ties, and everything and carried what looked like to be scripture bags. My first thought was that these two were J-Dubs, my second thought was that I'm the only missionary in here than can speak spanish, I didn't have my companion to rely on, my third thought was that these guys would try to bash with us (or me rather) and my spanish is very limited along with bashing abilities. I was thinking that we were indeed screwed when it turns out that they weren't J-Dubs but just a couple of business men. They walked in and the lady we were teaching showed them into the kitchen where the three of them sat down, started talking, exchanging money and documents and other things. Just right in the middle of our lesson. None of them said a word to us. We sat there are few minutes waiting for them to finish up, We had another appointment to get to so we asked the Hermana if we could finish another time, without even looking up she said yeah, sure, fine, come back whenever you want. So we left, that was a little rude.

And then, just this last week we discovered the J-Dub church here in Conroe on our way to a members house. It looked like a one story castle without windows and a spiked fence around it. Apparently they don't have any windows in their buildings for some odd reason. So basically the point of this is that the J-Dubs are indeed out there and my mission is playing out like a horror movie, I can only imagine what's going to happen when I actually encounter them.

So that's all I got for today. Hope y'all are doing good at home with the new floor and whatnot. Oh and this last week it's been about 70 degrees everyday so winter is probably over down here. So yeah, have a good week, love you all. Peace out.

-- Elder Rice