Weisses Fleisch

March 1, 2010

Buenos Dias, Family.

Yes mom I did get the package, it was really neat that jersey was pretty sick, I love it. And I sent a letter to you and dad a couple days ago so you ought to be getting it this week.

Speaking of this week it was rather dull. We had Zone Conference which meant a 140 mile round trip out to College Station, which is about 70 miles North-West of Conroe. We had to get up at 5 to get there on time and then it was a long boring drive through the countryside, especially when the CD player in the car doesn't work, I got some cool pictures on the way back but they will have to wait till next week because these computers are not cooperating with me today.

Just yesterday we had Stake Conference, Our Stake Center is actually out of our Mission, it's down in Houston itself just barely out of mission boundaries. So we went to that and had a rather good time. I was surprised to see President and Sister Hansen sitting up on the stand there at a spanish Stake Conference but the other Elders told me that it was normal procedure that the Mission President and his wife attend all the Stake Conferences in the mission. They also spoke too! Just short and simple testimonies, they're spanish is downright awful but they did a good job. Interestingly enough, out of the 10 or so talks given at this conference only 2 of them were given by actual hispanics. In addition to President and Sister Hansen, the President of the Houston South Mission and his wife were there. The Houston Temple President and his wife, and the General Authority and his wife. The General authority was Elder Shwick, of the 70. Of all the 8 gringos that spoke only he actually spoke spanish fluently. The rest of them just had either short little testimonies like the Mission presidents, read their talks directly off papers, or had someone translate for them right there.

This was all extremely amusing to me and the other missionaries I would assume because it makes us all feel better about our spanish, few things make you feel like you can speak good like hearing someone worse than you try and speak in front of hundreds of people. When it ended everyone stood around and talked to each other. Elder Woodruff and Elder Bone talked to all of their converts and other people from their previous wards while Elder Smith and I, not knowing anyone, just talked to the other missionaries there. I did get to see Elder Astin, he told me that he talked to Petra (one of our converts that moved to Chicago after she was baptized) and said that she had a calling and was active. So that was good to know that all of the 3 people that we've gotten baptized are still active. Hispanics have a really hard time staying active for a plethora of reasons which I don't have the time to discuss here.

In other news the Dubon's are still hesitant and won't yet accept a baptismal date. Giovanni still has some doubts but we finally got him to start praying so hopefully we can set up a date within the next couple weeks. That's really all that's been going on. It's the same old thing, week after week, the same boredom punctuated by periods of extreme silliness and hilarity because all missionaries including myself are absolutely insane (probably what happens when you don't watch TV for a while) and we find the most random things utterly hilarious.

Okay that's all for today. Help Austin out with his special "assignment" if he needs, or rather, make sure he actually does it. Peace out.

-- Elder Rice