Ampolla

July 6, 2010

Buenas Tardes Familia.

So first things first. Mom I have your recipe for that mysterious Salsa. However I'm not sure on the portion sizes at all, Hna. Flores didn't seem to think it was important enough to mention how much of each ingredient you need. Anyway it's pretty simple, all you need are Roma Tomatoes, Onions, Garlic, and a pepper called "Chile Seco de Arbol". Which means 'dry chili of the tree' I don't think they actually grow on trees but that's what they're called. Anyway you take a Roma Tomato, don't chop it up anything, and you boil it with the chiles for 20 minutes. You don't cut up the chiles either, just throw it all in boiling water. After the twenty minutes is up put the tomato and the chiles in a blender with the garlic and onion and blend it and there you have it. Pretty simple, I'm thinking about trying it myself one day, see if it works. There could be perhaps some crucial details I'm missing but I think I got it all, Salvadorians are way hard to understand, they talk quietly and don't change their tone while speaking, so you can't tell if they're happy or sad or anything they just talk in a dull monotone. I asked Elder Ordaz, my previous companion two transfers ago and he said that even for him it's hard to understand people from El Salvador, that's means I'm in trouble.

Well this week was a pretty good week. We more than doubled our stats from last week, for whatever reason more people opened their doors and let us talk to them. We still don't have any progressing investigators or even any solid ones (ones that will actually be there when we make appointments with them), but none-the-less we are talking to more people and more people are at least more polite than the usual people we've encountered in this area. We're down to the last subdivision in our area and after we've finished tracting that we're not sure what there will be to do. This weekend it rained a lot, for like 3 days straight Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday it rained pretty much the whole time, there wasn't much to do so we've been getting creative. We got tired of all the big nasty roaches that keep turning up all over the place in the apartment and we are clean out of roach killer so we decided to start incinerating them, we'd catch them and spray them with insect repellent and while they'd try to skitter away we'd use a grill lighter and light them up. As they're on fire they start running really fast then in circles for a few seconds before they flip on their backs and die. I've got some pretty funny videos on my camera, probably not the most humane thing to do but we're out of roach killer and smashing makes a huge mess. Though lately we made a rule that no more roaches will be burned within the apartment (the smell of cooked cockroach is NOT a very pleasant smell).

Independence Day was uneventful. Saturday, Sunday, and even yesterday on Monday, President didn't want us out past 7:30 unless we had appointments. Saturday we didn't so we played Risk with the english Elders that night. It was a long game and it was weird playing with people who don't get bored as fast and drop out (like Austin and Aidan). The game finally ended at 12:30 and victory was mine but we were all so sick of it after 4 hours of playing that we didn't feel like it was worth it. Sunday a member invited us over for dinner (a rare event). The Perez (that same family in the picture of our recent convert Carlos) invited us and another family of the ward as well. We had a good time, the food wasn't hispanic at all, the Perez are pretty Americanized (most well-off hispanics usually are) the food was really good though, chicken in some sort of creamy savory sauce with mashed potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and rolls. It was all really good but as I said something not hispanic at all, though we did have horchata to drink. Last night we had an appointment with a part member family. The Davila family is one that is starting to become active again and one guy lives them named Enrique and he is an investigator of ours. He's a nice guy, I like him but he doesn't care at all about religion or anything, Elder Frost and I taught him a couple times but he just sits there bored of out his mind and won't respond. So Elder Manship and I have taken a different approach, we decided that if Enrique is ever going to get baptized the Davlias are going to have to be %100 active, and not just %100 active but they're going to have to be like %100 active white members of the church. So with them we're starting a family scripture study (something unheard of among hispanic members). We go over there every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night and read a single chapter out of the Book of Mormon with them (including a reluctant Enrique), taking turns reading verse by verse. And when we finish we discuss the chapter for a few minutes have a prayer and leave. We started with 1 Nefi and are going through it one chapter at a time. I think it's really helping, Enrique won't participate in the discussion but he will read so we're banking on the Book of Mormon here, Preach My Gospel says it's the most powerful tool we have to convert people so we're putting all of our trust in that. It's also helping the Davilas out as well, they've had a lot of problems in the past and are still struggling today to make ends meet and be active members at the same time so hopefully it will help them as much as it does Enrique.

Well that's all that happened last week pretty much. We don't have much lined up for this week other than family scripture study with the Davlias. So that means more and more tracting. Oh and my hair is back to a reasonable length now in case anyone was wondering, it grew back quite fast after I buzzed my head. I don't have any pictures but hopefully next week I'll have some. Okay, hope you all have a good time in -- WAIT a second. I got the package, thanks for the journals mom. And those were some neat pictures of the San Diego Zoo, and is Austin really that big? Though I think his arms and legs still haven't caught up. Aidan looks a lot taller too and skinnier, while Alyssa looks a lot older. Mom and Dad look the same, as well as the dog. Okay now I'm done, hope you all have a good week and don't be too bored.

-- Elder Rice