Laichzeit

June 7, 2010

Hi family.

This last week has been a little crazy. Most of it just the same old stuff, but a few funny stories. But first of all I guess I need to work on my "political correctness". Yes I am well aware that everybody is a son or daughter of God. As important is this information is it is none-the-less a not very descriptive term. Were I to say "yesterday we were tracting in a children of God trailer park"- there is virtually no mental image there. If I use more descriptive terms like: white trash, redneck, savages, etc. It is far easier to get a mental image of the sort of people I'm running into everyday. And yes I do feel genuinely sorry for these people that have to live such horrible lives, but that doesn't excuse them from leaving trash all over their yards or not washing their hands. I'm pretty sure you can be impoverished and sanitary at the same time.

So... That being said, something really quite amusing happened the other day. We were teaching this lady, her name is Amalia, she's this old hispanic lady who's home everyday and looks after her grand children. She's awesome and will be baptized eventually. She goes to a Pentecostal Church and she hates Catholicism, she was converted to her church about 10 years ago. Anyway she loves the Book of Mormon, since we've given her one she's read it every day. Says it helps her sleep at night, which is hard for her because of some thyroid problem. She studies it with a pencil in one hand and a notebook in the other. She's come to chruch once and she loved it and regretted that she forgot to bring something to write notes on. She believes that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a real prophet and everything but she's not sure if she wants to be baptized in our chruch or not. We're not sure why yet but we're working on it.

Anyway this one afternoon we were teaching her out on her porch and her neighbour walks up. He's this old white man, named Donald, and I guess he's friends with Amalia's family. He doesn't speak a word of spanish but he always helps them out with their trailer maintenance, and they feed him every now and then. He's out of work. So he walks up and he was really suspicious of us at first but we started talking to him and Amalia, using all the english she knew, invited him up to join us. Well for the next hour or so we talked to him and he is absolutely insane. He couldn't talk quite straight and he told us that the Bible was a computer program made by aliens, that God is in all things, (he started yelling at a rock in his hand to demonstrate), that "Grace" is this sort of Karma that flows between people. I was entertained for awhile then I got bored and then tuned out. Then I sneezed and he said "Bless You" and I said "Thank You", he kept looking at me as if he expected me to say something more. Then he got kind of mad and said that I should have said "bless you" as well. And that "thank you" is the normal response for society but God likes it better when we keep the "grace" flowing between people. By "blessing me" after I sneezed he sent some of his grace to me, and I should have sent it back to him by saying "bless you" but instead I said "thank you" and thus kept the "grace" and I ate it. And I guess he had just been talking about all this before I sneezed but I wasn't listening so I missed that right there. In my head I was like "Okay we're done here". And we tried to teach him something but... he's literally off his rocker.

15 minutes later he got up to leave and we asked him if we could give him a pamphlet, we gave him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet, it has a picture of the resurrected Christ emerging from the tomb. We gave it to him, he looked at it. And then freaked out. he started dancing around the yard hollering and screaming, that he finally found it. That after years of searching he found the picture of Jesus that he saw in a dream or something years ago. He was just skipping around dancing and singing and yee-hawing. Poor Amalia had no idea what was going on, for last hour she just read the Book of Mormon while we talked to Donald. She was just watching him and Donald comes up to her and tries in his best Spanglish, to tell her that he's finally found the picture, and ended with a hallelujah. Amalia was like "yeah, hallelujah!" She had no idea what was going on. I was trying incredibly hard not to laugh, I was biting my lips. We gave him a pass-a-long card with the same picture. And we gave him the 'Finding Faith in Christ' DVD, which has the same picture on the case. That was more than his poor little brain could bare. He went into overdrive with his hallelujahs and dancing. Elder Frost was like encouraging him, saying that this was the day that he found it! And blah blah! And went to give Donald a hug. Elder Frost got a little bit more than a Hug, he got a hug and Donald kissed him on the cheek, saying "That's holy, not betrayl'. Donald then came over to me and I was like, oh shoot. I was ready and he gave me a hug and shifted my balance just a bit so his kiss landed on my collar rather than on my face.

We then took a picture together and I'd attach it to this e-mail except that Elder Frost forgot to bring his Camera to the library today, so next week y'all will get to see the picture. Well that's all I feel like writing today. I hope you all have fun in California, we're just sweating to death down here. I love the smell of sweat and mosquito repellent under the noonday sun while knocking doors. PEace out.

-- Elder Rice