Chevere

Hello Family.

Not much to report this week, we really busted our butts and we did really well, taught a lot of lessons and talked to a lot of new people. The best part is we didn't tract much, the nice thing about this area is that it's populated enough that we don't have to knock doors all that much, there are enough people bumming around in the streets that we don't have to knock too many doors. Speaking of which, on Tuesday we did exchanges with our Zone Leaders and for the first time even I got to go down into Houston. It was amazing, just ghetto apartments everywhere and as soon as it cooled off in the evening, everybody came outside and we didn't see a single white person, it was great! I've never seen so many hispanics all outside at once on my mission. They usually all just disappear as soon as we show up on the street. But not there, we talked to like 50 people in a couple of hours and got a tons of lessons and return appointments, people who at least pretended to be interested. It was great, we didn't have to knock on a single door. A couple hours there was a week's worth of work in my last area in Magnolia. I hope I get to go down there someday. I'm finally out of the country wastelands but I'm still stuck in gringolandia.

Other than that not too many interesting things have happened. We did teach this one guy who told us a long elaborate story about his experience with God back in his homeland of Guatemala, he says that after trying to commit suicide three times he finally prayed and had the evil voices cast out of his head by a huge muscular angel who then commanded him to start doing a religious talk show on the radio every day at 3:00 AM. He says he's done it ever since. Stories like that are just so typically hispanic and I've heard so many now that I don't even lift an eyebrow at such things.

I'm also completely exhausted, the heat is just killing us on the bikes. We always carry lots of water with us but we often stop by members just to ask for cold water and nothing else. It's a good thing we have lots of members in our area and our area is pretty small too so we always have some friendly territory close by that we can stop at to duck out of the rain or get water. We get fed quite a lot too, though my hopes of trying new authentic hispanic foods from all over latin america (as our ward is very diverse in it's nationality) have been dampened a bit as not many of the members often make their indigenous dishes. This one time we had a dinner appointment with this one family from Mexico and we were hoping for something good but they just bought a bunch of KFC before we came over and we all ate that. Though it was the first time I've ever eaten KFC with tortillas, eating coleslaw with tortillas is quite a different experience let me tell you. The thing is that most of members here are middle-upper middle class, meaning that they're usually pretty Americanized and don't eat too much different from Americans, though with some odd twists. Last week there was a ward baptism and they served hot dogs with pico de gallo on them. At another members house this Hna. changed up a traditional Mexico City dish of toasted bolillos by using re-fried beans and Louisiana Hot Sauce. Yeah.... Oh well... I can't really complain, it all tastes good and it's free, so... yeah....

Our investigator who was to be baptized dropped off the face of the planet. Another common occurrence that also doesn't quite merit the act of raising an eyebrow. We hope to find him again soon, he could still make his date if he comes to church next sunday. Our investigator pool is still pretty low but at the rate in which we talk people we'll get some new ones soon. The problem is the the ward, while really strong- Isn't all that enthusiastic about missionary work. We had a grand total of 3 member present lessons this last week (lessons to an investigator with a member present). And all three of them only counted just because they were less active part member families we were visiting. In my three weeks here we haven't had a single member come out an teach with us. They don't really want to. I'm tired of that, it doesn't get us anywhere, and that's going to change this week, on sunday we kind more or less persuaded a couple of members to come to some appointments we have, we will see how that goes.

Okay I'm tired now and out of things to say. I still don't have any pictures because I haven't taken any pictures of this place yet. Not too many remarkable things about here to take pictures off, just suburbs. I love you all, have a good end of summer. I'm looking forward to school and all that starting again so people's schedules will become more regular. Okay peace out.

-- Elder Rice