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