Gandalla

March 21, 2011


Hello fam.

This week was pretty good. Slower than usual but good. We had a baptism on the weekend. Rubiel Hernandez Cruz, he's really cool. We've taught him for only two weeks, we set a baptisimal date on the 2nd visit. He's really smart, a deep thinker, and always does the homework we leave him. Would that I could say the same about the member family he lives with. But the coolest thing is that we got Daniel (the man who was baptized last week) to baptize him! He got the Aaronic priesthood last sunday and we asked him to baptize Rubiel. Poor Daniel was terrified, but we spent a whole night going over how to perform the ordinance and everything. He was far more nervous about the baptism than Rubiel was. But the baptism went fine. Rubiel is happy and content and very interested in the way the church works.

Now for an update on Minerva and Dianna. Turns out that the supposed hospital bill of $4000+ wasn't really a bill. It was just showing them what they would to have paid if it had not been covered by their insurance or something or another. I dunno, but whatever the case it's not a problem anymore. Now for a particularly funny but horrible story with the two of them.

We went by last night to see them, they didn't go to church yesterday. So we came in and Dianna proudly showed us her new piercing in the top of her ear. We were like "Cool.... but.... uhh.... Not really". We talked a bit how extra piercings look nasty such as ones in the nose and lips, and she was like, why? We then explained that there's this sort of standard that we have in the church and modern prophets counsel us that we ought not to have any piercings anywhere except for women and just on the ear lobe. We mentioned the same about tatoos and she was kind of bummed because she had always wanted to get a tatoo on her backside (no pun intended). And then Elder Green whips out 'For the Strength of Youth' and decides to have a lesson on the section about 'Modest Dress And Grooming'. We read through it and oh my gosh, That is the last time I teach out of 'For the Strength of Youth'. It was really funny and really akward because Dianna usually does not dress very modestly at all and she wasn't too happy while reading through that. But Minerva was loving it, she said "Good, we can throw out all of your short-shorts and mini-skirts." Well Dianna wasn't very happy and said that such a change would 'take time' because she 'didn't want to be a hypocrite' and dress like a person she was not. Now I had been frantically pulling the eject lever during the whole thing but Elder Green was really fized on talking about this with her. Her imodesty had been bothering him lately.

Now this is one of the funny things about Elder Green. The other day we were at a less active family's house and we were talking with their kids and one of them had seen they were about to turn 16 and Elder Green says "So are you excited that you will be able start dating?" He got a bunch of blank looks from the whole family and I leaned over and whispered "Elder Green.... We're not in Utah." He was kind of offended and retorted that they were members. I told him that it doesn't matter, we're not in Utah, such standards simply don't exist here. It's true really, the members of the Church in Texas are very different from those in Utah, especially the members in the Hispanic wards, it's an entirely different world. So anyway Elder Green has started this sort of personal crusade to educate everyone of the standards held among members of the Church in Utah.

Now I'm all for everyone having standards... But that is definitely NOT the job of the missionaries. It was horribly akward but also hilarious, it's a good thing Minerva and Dianna know us so well or it could have been very, very, very, very akward. So basically that's a subject better suited to be taught by the YW's leaders and NOT by missionaries. I think mentioning the standards would have been fine, but teaching them and then commiting her to live them? Not so much.

So yeah... I think that's pretty much all that's interesting that happened this week. There's this one family that loves to feed us and takes requests and I've been asking them to feed us lots of authentic mexican food, the weird stuff. So last monday we had liver, apparently they love liver in mexico. So we had this liver cooked in grease and onions with beans, rice, lettuce, and tortillas to make tacos. I've never had liver before but it was pretty good. It tasted just like meat only it seemed like it had been vacuum packed into a liver shape. I liked it, Elder Green was choking it down. He was definately not a fan. It's pretty funny because he's not a fan of mexican food. He hates beans, spicy foods, and greasey or oily foods. So the fact that he's on a spanish speaking mission is hilarous. So this week we will be having tacos de lengua. (cow tongue) I've never eaten tongue before so I'm excited. Well I hope you all have a good week and I'll get you those pictures mom.

-- Elder Rice

Los que Tranzan no Vanzan

March 14, 2011

'Ello fam.

Well this week was really crazy. We're just so busy all the time driving around everywhere, visiting many people, and getting fed way too much. We've eaten so many beans, chicken, and tortillas this week that I'm sick of it all and feel as though I just want to eat salad for the rest of my life. Well as you can see in the picture we had a baptism. Daniel was finally baptized, we've been teaching him for a long time. It was amazing to see the change in him. When we first started teaching him he was a nervous wreck in the middle of an ugly divorce. After a month of teaching him he wanted to be baptized but he had some issues to take care of so we had to push his baptism back two months.
The two kids are a family that we took over after the other area was closed down. The mom, the blond lady, Rocio, is a less active member with two kids, Alexa and Kevin, 10 and 8. A long time ago the sister missionaries started visiting her after she had divorced from her husband and they got her to stop smoking and get rid of other bad habits. Alexa would have been baptized a long time ago but the husband didn't want the kids baptized into the mormon the church he wanted them to be catholic. Even though they've been divorced for a while now they still share the kids but I believe Rocio still has the legal guardianship. But she is still intimidated by her ex and so for a long time now the kids haven't been baptized. Well the elders we replaced got close and had their baptisimal forms filled out and their interviews done but they couldn't get Rocio to stand up to her ex. Well we came along and taught her about how we ought to fear God more than other people and that we need to do the right thing in the face of pressure. Well it worked and we set a baptisimal date and they were baptized. Now here's the cool thing, that man in the black is the ex husband. When Rocio finally stood up to him and told that they were getting baptized and that he had no say in the matter I guess he took it well and wanted to come. So he came and they were pretty happy to see each other. Weird...

The baptisimal service itself was very nearly a disaster. It was supposed to start at 7:00. Daniel was the only one who showed up on time, we had asked him and the family to be baptized to show up at 6:30 so we could get them all dressed up. Most everyone else started showing up at about 7:20ish. We know that MST (mormon standard time) is about 5-10 minutes behind regular time. But add MST to HST (Hispanic standard time) and thusly the service started at 7:40. Other problems were that the closet that contained all of the baptisimal clothing didn't have any clothes at all that would have fit a child. Everything was huge, apparently in the 3 wards that share this chapel nobody is ever baptized at 8 years old because there was not any clothes at all that were small enough for Alexa and Kevin. That was pretty stupid. And of the clothes they did have they had yellow stains and stuff all over them. It was frankly embarrassing as we were with them going through this closet looking for something that would fit them. Well we found the smallest clothes we could and rolled up the pant legs and we even used white ribbon to hold their pants up. Ridiculous. Oh and we realized that nobody from the bishopric was there. Our ward mission leader was supposed to have made all of the appropriate calls but nobody from the bishopric was there. When a baptism is performed you have to have the bishop or one of his counselors there to preside over the whole thing. Luckily, one of them was in the building. Every saturday night the stake has some sort of marriage classes in the building, he and his wife were in there so we yanked him out of there so he could preside over the whole thing. So we finally started and everything was going well until we got the portion were the ordinances were to be performed. Kevin was baptized, but Rocio wanted him to see his sister's baptism so we had to wait until he got dried off and changed. Then Alexa was baptized, then came Daniel's turn.

Well the other elders have been teaching Daniel's wife for a while now and they haven't seen each other in like 6 months, but they told her about his baptism and she was thinking about coming. We tought it would be really cool for her to assist his baptism and have both of them feel the spririt at the same time. Daniel didn't know she was coming. Well she didn't show up and Danile and Elder White were down there in the water when the other elders said to stop and wait till she got there, they had called her and she said she was on the way. She took 20 mintues to get there (she lived 2 mintues away). And there was a long akward moment as both of them just stood there in the water with everyone else in the room just watching. We closed the accordian wall and had some people share their testimonies, then there was a false alarm as someone thought she had just come in so they opened it back up. And it would have been even more akward to close it again so they left it open for another 10 mintues and everything was just akward.

Well she finally showed up and Daniel was baptized. Now I'm down to about 4 mintues so I'll have to go really fast here but. It was all good and we blew everyone away with a special musical number done by all of the missionaries, we had everyone in tears, even Rocio's ex, it was great. I'd like to describe what it was but I don't have time for that and I'm typing really fast so there's probably a lot of mispellings and things but oh well I'm oput of of time we're having a baptism this week as well sot hings are thgoing tgood. Peace out and have a good week I lvoe you all bye.

-- Elder Rice

Mitzmutzatzacuiltitimanizque

Hello family.

Before I forget I'll let mom know that my release date is August 10. Sorry it took so long but I read the letters and by the time Monday comes around I've already forgotten anything that you asked me to do. But yeah, that's my release date. Oh and Minerva and Dianna are from Mexico, like everyone else around here. They're from one of the more northerly provinces of Taumolipas. Speaking of them I appreciate how you want to help them out Mom. Minerva, unfortunately does not speak english, she's also pretty blind, she has to hold things right in front of her nose to see anything. I forget what it was that happened to her or that she has but it has something to do with cataracts, I think that's what they're called. Somehow someway her eyes got messed up and she can't see. She is %100 dependent on Dianna just to get around or do much of anything. And being undocumented citizens living on $70 a week they're opportunities for medical help are rather limited. In fact just recently they got the bill from the Mental Hospital where Dianna was and it came out to be a little bit over $4000. They were rather beside themselves what to do about that, their nearby family is all chipping in a little bit but all of them are generally unhappy about that. The whole episode is rather embarrassing, especially seeing as though it was the Bishop who checked her in there and as far as we know, is leaving them to hang on with this huge bill. So needless to say they haven't been all that happy lately. But at least the Adventists haven't come back since we drove them off last saturday. It's an improvement, instead of defending them from a whole other church and our own ward, now we only have to defend them from our own ward.

Despite all of that this week was pretty good. Actually it was great. The area we've taken over contains many wonderful opportunities. This week we set baptisimal dates with three new investigators on the very first time we taught them, which were in members' home with the members themselves present. Which is perfect, that's really the ideal lesson, teaching an investigator in a member's home with the member actively participating in the lesson. The part is both of these guys have been coming to church to weeks now, one of them actually lives with a member family and recent convert, and the elders who were in this area before never knew about them at all. When we talked to them we told them about all of this and they were just like "Hhuh... That's cool." They didn't have any idea that a couple of member families had been bringing investigators to church for a few weeks now.

We also had a "specialized training" meeting this week with the Mission President and his wife. One of the many subjects was 'working with the ward council'. Which was the perfect opportunity see if we could get some of the higher powers in the local church authorities to fix some things about our ward leadership. One of the ZL's in the meeting asked me to sort of describe some of the difficulties we have with working with the our ward council. I then explained about how our ward council insists that investigators should get themselves to church and that members were not to give any rides, I also described about how we generally avoid working with the ward council and we ask individual members to give rides to investigators and ask them not to mention it to the Bishop. At that point President interrupted and said that has to stop. We can't make the members choose between us and the ward leaders that creates unhealthy divisions in the ward and makes us enemies of the Bishop (Too late!). He said that the system we have in the church must be upholded and even if it isn't running how it should be we should respect our leaders. He then said that our leaders definitely don't seem to be doing what they should be doing and that he would have a word with the Stake Presidency (success!) and would see what he could do. He said that we must do all we can to help the bishop and other leaders realize what their responsibilities are. He then made an interesting comment that we (the missionaries) have to come at them or pressure them from the bottom, that he and the stake leaders had to come down or pressure them from the top, and that others have to pressure them from the sides. We need to be doing all we can to get the ward leaders to do their job but at the same time we can't tell them how to do their job, we just have to 'teach correct principles and let men govern themselves'. He encouraged us to make visits to our ward leaders and go through a few things out of Preach My Gospel with them and do it in a non-offensive non-condescending way.

YEah... So that battle still goes on, though now we finally got the momentum of the stake leadership coming down on the bishop's head so hopefully we can expect to see things improve soon. So that's all I have to say today.

The pictures are of some graffiti and me and a part member family, Artemio, Maria, and Katrin. The girl, Katrin is a member, her parents aren't baptized because they're not married to each other and they can't get married to each other yet because they're not yet divorced from their spouses, both of which are in Mexico and they haven't seem them for like 10 years. It's been a frustrating nightmare trying to get ahold of layers, the Mexican consulate, and people who might know anything about how to get divorced from someone who lives in another country and don't know his or her whereabouts. They're way ready for baptism, they just need to get married. Also they're really, really, really simple people. They're so ignorant of so many things it's almost cute. Artemio grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere Mexico, never went to school, can barely read and works as a butcher. Maria grew up on the outskirts some little Indian village on the slopes of some Volcano somewhere in Mexico, likes to talk a lot, and teaches us all of these cool Aztec words and sayings. For both of them the world of lawyers, laws, parking tickets, licences, and other such trappings of the modern civilized world are completely alien to them. And they're trying to go through this horribly complicated legal situation. All we've been doing is telling them to go to the Mexican consulate (which lies out of the mission boundaries, so we can't go with them) and get some lawyer to divorce them. I'm so afraid that some lawyer will just take total advantage of them and rob them of all of their money and leave them no better off than they were before. It's scary just telling these two to go down into the downtown and go into the consulate and having them work it out themselves. So we ask around and we have the Ward Mission leader help them out a bit, but the ward in general is generally unhelpful (no surprise). They're so funny though, we stopped by one Friday night and all of three of them were just sitting in their little two room house doing a puzzle! A puzzle! Friday night, a small family together and doing a puzzle and enjoying each other's company?! Crazy! Who actually does that? It's hilarious! They're just so happy all the time! How do they do that? I really love them, they're one of my favorite families and I hope we can figure out how to get them married somehow.

Okay. Well that's all for today. Have a fun week, peace....

-- Elder Arroz

Que Fracaso

February 28, 2011

Hello Family.

This week has seen a few interesting things. As I mentioned last week our area is now twice as large and we cover a lot of ghetto now. It's super ghetto, I thought our area before was ghetto but no it's nothing compared to what we have now. It's really junky. To illustrate we had an appointment with an investigator that lived next door (literally like 5 feet) away from a less active family in the ward. Well the investigator wasn't there but the dad of the last active family was out ambling about in front of his porch. We had never met him before so we went to say high and he was quite intoxicated with something or another. Probably alcohol, the other elders had told us that he hasn't been to church in a while and is an alcoholic. Well that sure seemed to be the case. His eyes were completely yellow and bloodshot and he was talking really funny and holding a rather sharp looking paint scraper. Well he wanted us to come in and talk with him. He obviously out of his mind and I didn't think that would be a very good idea so I asked if we could stay outside, the weather was good and all. He kept trying to get us to come in but I wouldn't budge, Elder Green almost went in, he was kind of spooked about the whole thing, I don't think he's ever had to deal with someone completely plastered before. We convinced him that outside would be fine and we talked with him for a bit and he was just completely drunk and was almost crying telling us about how he never wanted to be baptized but the sister missionaries made him get baptized and he wanted to quit drinking and he was just generally crazy. Elder Green, as usual was just being stupid and trying to get him to read D&C 89. Yeah so he was crazy and we got out of there and left. But we did manage to get him to throw away all of his beer into the trash can.

A few days later on Friday night we had an appointment with this same family and we went over and the wife opened the door and said that now probably wasn't a good idea because her husband was drunk again and had said to her if the missionaries came by he would chase them off his property. Then she just started crying and was telling us all of this stuff about how she just couldn't take her husband drinking anymore and it was all really sad. The really sad thing is there isn't much we can do about it. We can only teach and encourage people to do the right thing. During her sobbing and sad stories I just took a minute to look around and it was Friday night, not the best time to be in the ghetto I guess. Down the street there were a bunch of teenagers with alcohol fighting and on the other side a house full of noises of revelry and crude language and then some car books it down the street at 40-50 mph driving backwards. The whole neighbourhood itself smelled like human waste and there was garbage strewn everywhere. So I just stand there while all of this is going on and I just say to myself. "What in the world is wrong with this place?" I have never felt father away from civilization that I did at that moment. Crazy!

Well the next most noteworthy event was on saturday. We had an appointment at 5 with Minvera and Dianna, our favorite drama prone recent converts. Well we get there and knock and door and Dianna opens up and seemed rather surprised, she jumps out of the door and then turns around and opens it up and she has that sort of embarrassed smile that she always has on her face when something very awkward is about to happen. (We knew that look quite well by now). So we walk in and Minerva is sitting on the couch with a bible open on her lap and on the other couch is two old women with their own bibles and some printed propaganda. Well it turned out that they were none other than the 7th Day Adventists. Well.... Hmm... How to best describe? Well they were nice at first but you could tell they were just ready to jump at as any moment. For a while they had been visiting Minverva and Dianna while we have been visiting them but we had never encountered each other at the same time. And both of us had been teaching them and telling why the other church was completely wrong. Thus came the conflict and the day of reckoning. Now I hate bible-bashing so I was thinking about saying that we could come back another time. But there were our recent converts and we couldn't just leave them here all defenseless with their tiny fragile testimonies of the truth against the sophistries of the Adventists.

Well we were invited to sit down and as we sat they offered to say the opening prayer. And one of them did. After the prayer was finished they said to Minvera, "Now what was it was it you were confused about? The SABBATH?" I interjected and said. "Okay, we know there's a conflict here. We belive that the sabbath is on Sunday and we know that you all believe it's on saturday, now we don't want to-" I was about to say we don't want to get into a battle here and we'll leave since there's no point in arguing, but I was interrupted by the larger of the two who said something along the lines of: "We don't believe the sabbath on on saturday, we KNOW it is, and we know the commandments, and we obey them, you can't say we believe this or that and blah blah blah." And then they started on the normal routine that the Adventists always take, starting with Genesis about how God sanctified the 7th day and blah blah blah, God can't change blah blah blah, the law cannot change blah blah blah, we must obey the law blah blah blah." Elder Green had started to say something but I kicked him and motioned for him to be quiet, knowing Elder Green I decided that it was best that he didn't say too much. They had us turn to a scripture in Mark that says that the Lord is the Lord of the Sabbath and we must keep his Sabbaths. They substituted sabbath for saturday like they always do, I don't know if that's how their bible reads or if they just automatically do that. Anyway we had Elder Green's bible open. And we pointed out that our Bible didn't say saturday at all, it just said sabbath day, it didn't specify which day. They told is it was saturday because if you went and looked into a dictionary you find that sabbath meant saturday. I said that it was kind of stupid that they were getting their doctrine from the dictionary, we get our doctrine from God! That's probably a better source than the dictionary! They then ranted on a bit about how in their church they have scholars who study hebrew and know what all of these things mean and blah blah blah.

Now I didn't have my bible with me at the moment bible, but I do carry around a small notecard with all of the useful scriptures written on it. I told them that indeed the sabbath was on saturday under the law of moses but that it was changed with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. They said exactly what I thought they would say and said that the law cannot change. I had them flip to Hebrews 7:12 where it says the following: 'For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.' That was the mortal blow, they spent the next twenty minutes trying to come up with explanations why that scripture doesn't say what it says. It was kind of funny really. They said the law can't change, over and over, and they quoted the usual 'not one jot nor tittle hath passed away from the law..." And I said "Then why does it say the law changed right here?" They'd would ask for a one scripture, just one, that said that the law was changed. I would say "We already read it, it's right here, it's pretty clear, it says the law the was changed." They were getting pretty mad by this point, they're faces were red, they kept interrupting us and talking us down, and talking quite fast. Elder Green just didn't say anything, I could tell he was way angry, he gets frustrated really easy. I just kept a chill and smooth disposition. Perfectly calm and collected, they kept trying to tell me to turn to other scriptures but I kept telling them that we still haven't finished with this one yet, because it says quite clearly that the law was changed. They're were like: "NO you're very confused my child, you're taking this completely out of context! Rawr rawr rawr!" They said that we didn't keep the law but that they were perfect keepers of the law. I asked them if they still sacrificed goats and things, they said no... Then they thought they had us.

"Aha! That's what changed, this verse is talking about the sacrificial rites! That's what changed! Aha!"
They were pretty excited, they thought they had us. I thought about telling them that it said LAW rather than sacrificial rites, but I had a better idea. I said:
"Okay, okay, so why did they do those rites?"
They explained why.
"Okay, okay, so who told them to do those rites?"
"Well... God..."
"Uh-huh, and then he took them away so they didn't have to do it anymore."
"Yes..."
"So therefore God gave something and took it away, he changed something, God changed something he gave, God can changed whatever he wants, including the law."

Well they got really mad at that part, foam was flying from their lips almost. Then I decided to use a secret weapon. Minverva and Dianna had been cowering this whole time and I asked them how they knew our church was true. They started to bear their testimonies, and it drove the Adventists so mad that they packed up their things and left.

Now I've left out a lot but I have to log out in two minutes. But basically VICTORY! We totally got them! Haha! We defended our recent converts and it was great and we won and it was Minvera and Dianna who with their infant testimonies delivered the killing blow.

Okay I'm out of time. I love you all have a good week bye.