June 13, 2011
Hello fam.
Once again reporting in at the end of yet another slow week. There really just wasn't much that happened, again. Just more of the same, knocking doors, driving around, visiting the same old people with the same old problems. It's getting old.
Actually a couple of interesting things did happened. Firstly we finally are now able to text on our phones. They told us back in September of last year that soon we would be able to text, then they authorized that ability on all of the ZL's phones but not for the rest of us underlings. Well finally this week they announced in Zone Conference that they would finally authorize it on our phones. We think the reason why president waited so long is since he's done in two weeks so he'd authorize and then the new president would have to put up with all of the mischief that will surely follow. We have strict rules on who and when we can text but it is sure that people will start abusing it soon. So far it's actually been going great for us. People Never return our calls, ever, so now that we text people they will actually respond to us. It's pretty amazing. Twas also odd to text for the first time in like almost two years. So yeah, now that we can text I'm sure that baptisms will just start rolling in now haha!
Also we've been sorely afflicted this week. On exchanges I with Elder Armstrong went to do service for Hno. Garza, and old old man who wants to come and do his yard work every now and then. Usually we just mow his lawn and whack the weeds. But this time we were engaged in a desperate battle with the plants all over Garza's fence. There were small trees growing through the middle of it so I don't think it's been touched for several years. Armed with only our wits and two machetes we were locked in a duel to the finish with the many vines, weeds, trees, and shrubbery that held Hno Garza's fence captive. 'Twas a desperate fight in which didst end in a draw. For though many of the enemy combatants were hewn down and cast into the fire after two hours we didst only slay the smallest part of them. Having partially come off as the conquerors we returned and a few days later we found out that a lot of that vegetation was poison ivy. Now it's spread to the whole district and we spend most of our time trying not to scratch ourselves. It didn't get me too bad, only my left arm and ankles were badly effected. Though for Armstrong it's now over his whole body and he definitely got hit the hardest out of all of us. Though it's starting to get bad my companion, Elder Cawley.
Yup, that's pretty much all the interesting stuff that's happened this week. These e-mails just seem to get shorter and shorter. Hmm... Well have a good week.
-- Elder Rice
Dos que Tres
June 6, 2011
Hello family.
Sounds like y'all are having fun in Japan Mom and Dad. Also remember to see if you can get me a Japanese soccer jersey while you're there. And don't get one that's huge! Actually since all the people there are pretty small you might have to get one that's huge for them.
Well down here there's not much going on. It's been brutally hot, everyday we try to think of things to do other than walk around outside tracting or something because of the heat. Actually it's easy because nobody else is outside as well. The lack of rain really worries the locals who say that means that there will be a hurricane this summer. Which would be cool, I would like to see a hurricane before I go home. I don't know how ethical it is to want a destructive hurricane to come to Houston and flatten everything just for my amusement.
Oh kay. I got something to write about. So here's the latest chapter in the Minerva and Dianna drama. And I fear it might be the last chapter as well. So neither of them have come to church for the past two months due to an endless mountain of excuses, but Dianna has gone to mutual almost every week. Well this one week the YW had a "campout" in the YW leader's house, basically a sleepover. Well SOMETHING happened, we're not sure on the details but it had something to do with an investigator of the other elders who is a young woman as well and went along, who needs to wait a couple months before she can be baptized, she had to have an interview with President Cue, President Hansen's spanish-speaking counselor who does interviews for people who have serious issues. Well whatever happened, the YW leader freaked out and called the bishop. And the bishop talked to Dianna and told her that she couldn't come to mutual anymore but she could still come to church on sunday "if she wanted". So Dianna decided she doesn't want to go to church anymore and Minverva, who will only go if Dianna goes because she is her seeing-eye-human, and who always feels sick sunday morning, wouldn't be going either. We talked to them about losing out on our blessings if we don't go to church. And then Minerva says that well if they couldn't make it to the church a friend or someone is offering to take them to their Pentecostal church. Her reasoning was "Well yeah it's bad to not go to church and we lose blessings but I think if we go to another we can get some blessings, better than sitting at home right?" Well we told her NO. And that when Joseph Smith asked Jesus which of all the churches was true Jesus replied that none of them were true, thus meaning that all churches except the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is completely false. Furthermore, In both the Bible and the Book of Mormon it speaks of the last days as only having two churches, the church of the lamb and church of the Devil, and since we've all figured out that our church is the church of the lamb, it means that every other church is in fact founded by the devil, including that stupid pentacostal church. (Which happens to be across the street from our building).
So therefore it would in fact be better if they sat at home rather than go to another church. We talked about their baptisms and how they had made a PROMISE with God and stop going to church would be to break that promise they made with God, which is a big NO-NO. Now I didn't blow up like I've been doing a lot lately because they're not stupid, and I love them very much, they're part of my family away from family and I honestly told them that I didn't want them to suffer the same fate that I've seen countless other recent converts suffer for almost two years now. Well despite all of this we got a 'well we'll think about it' response. So we left them with homework to read at least one chapter out of the BoM everyday and pray together afterwards, and we have called them every night since to remind to do it. They did it for the first couple days then the following ones they slacked off and came up with a bajillion excuses as to why they didn't read their scriptures. Yeah so I was kind of depressed the next couple days. Out of all our recent converts, only half of them still make it to church.
Oh and the cherry on the top of this cake is when we brought it up in ward correlation (the ward mission leader didn't come to church so we had to fill in for him, and I actually wasn't in the meeting either, I was giving a baptismal interview to some other elders' investigator but my companion and one of the other elders in our ward were in there). So they brought up Minerva and Dianna in there and how they don't to come anymore and how they want to go to another church. The bishop said: "Oh that's natural, of course they feel like that." And then he dropped the subject and moved on. Now normally I would be really upset with this stupid ward again but I'm so used to it by now that I don't feel that upset at all, sure it's sad that the bishop and the other ward leaders don't care about people but this is so normal now that it was no surprise.
Yup, so... Nothing much going down on here. Actually one more amusing anecdote. So we were having a lesson with Tomas, Rubiel, and Hno. Galeano. All of them are recent converts, and the first two are our recent converts. We were doing the fun activity where you read selected verses in 1 Nefi 8 and have everyone draw out the whole Lehi's Dream with the tree and everything. But you don't explain what it is. Then after everyone is finished you ask them what in the world could such a picture mean? And most people who are unfamiliar with Lehi's dream have no idea, it's just one of the oddest pictures they've ever seen. Then you jump to 1 Nefi 11-12 and read the selected passages where the Angel describes to Nefi what all the elements in the dream symbolize. I told them that all of these things were symbolic, and we had a little chat about symbolism just to make sure everything knew what symbolism was. They did. So we went through and read the verses and after reading each verse and I would ask them what X represented. It would go something like this:
Scripture: "X=Y"
ER: "Okay Hno. so from that verse that you just read, what does X equal?"
Hno. :"X=W"
ER (patiently):" Not quite.... what does it say in the verse?"
Hno.: "X=W or maybe X=Z"
ER: "Okay let's read it again, X=Y"
Hno. "Oh okay, so X=W"
ER: "DAAAAHHHH!!!!!"
That's kind of how a lot of our lessons have been with all sorts of people lately. Well I'm out of time so have fun in Japan Ma n' Pa. And I'll be seeing y'alls later.
-- Elder Rice
Hello family.
Sounds like y'all are having fun in Japan Mom and Dad. Also remember to see if you can get me a Japanese soccer jersey while you're there. And don't get one that's huge! Actually since all the people there are pretty small you might have to get one that's huge for them.
Well down here there's not much going on. It's been brutally hot, everyday we try to think of things to do other than walk around outside tracting or something because of the heat. Actually it's easy because nobody else is outside as well. The lack of rain really worries the locals who say that means that there will be a hurricane this summer. Which would be cool, I would like to see a hurricane before I go home. I don't know how ethical it is to want a destructive hurricane to come to Houston and flatten everything just for my amusement.
Oh kay. I got something to write about. So here's the latest chapter in the Minerva and Dianna drama. And I fear it might be the last chapter as well. So neither of them have come to church for the past two months due to an endless mountain of excuses, but Dianna has gone to mutual almost every week. Well this one week the YW had a "campout" in the YW leader's house, basically a sleepover. Well SOMETHING happened, we're not sure on the details but it had something to do with an investigator of the other elders who is a young woman as well and went along, who needs to wait a couple months before she can be baptized, she had to have an interview with President Cue, President Hansen's spanish-speaking counselor who does interviews for people who have serious issues. Well whatever happened, the YW leader freaked out and called the bishop. And the bishop talked to Dianna and told her that she couldn't come to mutual anymore but she could still come to church on sunday "if she wanted". So Dianna decided she doesn't want to go to church anymore and Minverva, who will only go if Dianna goes because she is her seeing-eye-human, and who always feels sick sunday morning, wouldn't be going either. We talked to them about losing out on our blessings if we don't go to church. And then Minerva says that well if they couldn't make it to the church a friend or someone is offering to take them to their Pentecostal church. Her reasoning was "Well yeah it's bad to not go to church and we lose blessings but I think if we go to another we can get some blessings, better than sitting at home right?" Well we told her NO. And that when Joseph Smith asked Jesus which of all the churches was true Jesus replied that none of them were true, thus meaning that all churches except the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is completely false. Furthermore, In both the Bible and the Book of Mormon it speaks of the last days as only having two churches, the church of the lamb and church of the Devil, and since we've all figured out that our church is the church of the lamb, it means that every other church is in fact founded by the devil, including that stupid pentacostal church. (Which happens to be across the street from our building).
So therefore it would in fact be better if they sat at home rather than go to another church. We talked about their baptisms and how they had made a PROMISE with God and stop going to church would be to break that promise they made with God, which is a big NO-NO. Now I didn't blow up like I've been doing a lot lately because they're not stupid, and I love them very much, they're part of my family away from family and I honestly told them that I didn't want them to suffer the same fate that I've seen countless other recent converts suffer for almost two years now. Well despite all of this we got a 'well we'll think about it' response. So we left them with homework to read at least one chapter out of the BoM everyday and pray together afterwards, and we have called them every night since to remind to do it. They did it for the first couple days then the following ones they slacked off and came up with a bajillion excuses as to why they didn't read their scriptures. Yeah so I was kind of depressed the next couple days. Out of all our recent converts, only half of them still make it to church.
Oh and the cherry on the top of this cake is when we brought it up in ward correlation (the ward mission leader didn't come to church so we had to fill in for him, and I actually wasn't in the meeting either, I was giving a baptismal interview to some other elders' investigator but my companion and one of the other elders in our ward were in there). So they brought up Minerva and Dianna in there and how they don't to come anymore and how they want to go to another church. The bishop said: "Oh that's natural, of course they feel like that." And then he dropped the subject and moved on. Now normally I would be really upset with this stupid ward again but I'm so used to it by now that I don't feel that upset at all, sure it's sad that the bishop and the other ward leaders don't care about people but this is so normal now that it was no surprise.
Yup, so... Nothing much going down on here. Actually one more amusing anecdote. So we were having a lesson with Tomas, Rubiel, and Hno. Galeano. All of them are recent converts, and the first two are our recent converts. We were doing the fun activity where you read selected verses in 1 Nefi 8 and have everyone draw out the whole Lehi's Dream with the tree and everything. But you don't explain what it is. Then after everyone is finished you ask them what in the world could such a picture mean? And most people who are unfamiliar with Lehi's dream have no idea, it's just one of the oddest pictures they've ever seen. Then you jump to 1 Nefi 11-12 and read the selected passages where the Angel describes to Nefi what all the elements in the dream symbolize. I told them that all of these things were symbolic, and we had a little chat about symbolism just to make sure everything knew what symbolism was. They did. So we went through and read the verses and after reading each verse and I would ask them what X represented. It would go something like this:
Scripture: "X=Y"
ER: "Okay Hno. so from that verse that you just read, what does X equal?"
Hno. :"X=W"
ER (patiently):" Not quite.... what does it say in the verse?"
Hno.: "X=W or maybe X=Z"
ER: "Okay let's read it again, X=Y"
Hno. "Oh okay, so X=W"
ER: "DAAAAHHHH!!!!!"
That's kind of how a lot of our lessons have been with all sorts of people lately. Well I'm out of time so have fun in Japan Ma n' Pa. And I'll be seeing y'alls later.
-- Elder Rice
Hacendoso
May 31, 2011
Hello Family.
Well... Not much to report once again. Ummm.... There's got to be something to say, some sort of funny story... Hmmm... I'm looking through my planner, looking at what we even did this week... We had a leadership training meeting and a zone meeting. Both were very long and very boring. We did a lot of service on Saturday. Hurricane season is coming around so in church they have these emergency preparedness classes and things and the elder's quorum has being going around and helping people cut down trees in their yards. Better to cut it down now than to have it fall onto your house during a hurricane. So we went and helped because of course only 4 of the men from the elder's quorum actually showed up. So the four of us missionaries made up half of the work force. But it was fun, I learned how to sharpen a chainsaw, change the chain on the chainsaw, how to fix a chainsaw, everything about chainsaws except for actually using a chainsaw. The hermanos had brought like 8 chainsaws and all of them would not function and one time or another so we spent a lot of the time simply taking them apart and fixing them. We did that and most of the manual labour. None of them wanted to do the menial tasks of dragging all of the fallen foliage out to the street or hauling the logs away, they like doing all of the important things like cutting the trees down. Which was just fine with us since we never complain about anything and we didn't really want to be up in those trees with a not-quite-fully functioning chainsaw cutting off the larger sections which would dangerously swing about threatening to knock you off the tree. That nearly happened to one hermano, two more were nearly flattened when pulling down a rather large tree with a rope. They barely dove out of the way. So we were just fine watching and dragging the branches around.
We had a ward FHE, which we were in charge of. It was really funny actually, we taught about the Book of Mormon and the activity we had was a Jeopardy type trivia game. When we made the game up we knew that we would be dealing with hispanic members so we tried to dumb the questions down a bit. But nevertheless it proved to be a bit too difficult for them. We also felt kind of bad for the investigators that showed up, they didn't have a clue what was going on but we had a good time. One my favorite questions was: "Who was the only person in the book of Mormon who did a push-up with out his head?" They were pretty dumbfounded by that one. One hermana actually got it right by sheer guessing. We gave them a hint that it was in the book of Ether and she randomly guessed Shiz, and she was right. Even simple scripture mastery was just barely beyond their grasp. The thing is that mexicans don't really like to read, at all. Someone showed us a poll once, worldwide countries and on average how many books each person read on a yearly basis or something like that and Mexico was almost at the very bottom. The top was like Finland or something but the U.S. was close to the top as well. Even for the active members who study the scriptures on a somewhat regular basis it's a serious chore for them. It's just not something they do, so they learned quite a bit.
Well that's all the interesting things that happened this week. I hope you all have a good week. PEace out!
-- Elder Rice
Hello Family.
Well... Not much to report once again. Ummm.... There's got to be something to say, some sort of funny story... Hmmm... I'm looking through my planner, looking at what we even did this week... We had a leadership training meeting and a zone meeting. Both were very long and very boring. We did a lot of service on Saturday. Hurricane season is coming around so in church they have these emergency preparedness classes and things and the elder's quorum has being going around and helping people cut down trees in their yards. Better to cut it down now than to have it fall onto your house during a hurricane. So we went and helped because of course only 4 of the men from the elder's quorum actually showed up. So the four of us missionaries made up half of the work force. But it was fun, I learned how to sharpen a chainsaw, change the chain on the chainsaw, how to fix a chainsaw, everything about chainsaws except for actually using a chainsaw. The hermanos had brought like 8 chainsaws and all of them would not function and one time or another so we spent a lot of the time simply taking them apart and fixing them. We did that and most of the manual labour. None of them wanted to do the menial tasks of dragging all of the fallen foliage out to the street or hauling the logs away, they like doing all of the important things like cutting the trees down. Which was just fine with us since we never complain about anything and we didn't really want to be up in those trees with a not-quite-fully functioning chainsaw cutting off the larger sections which would dangerously swing about threatening to knock you off the tree. That nearly happened to one hermano, two more were nearly flattened when pulling down a rather large tree with a rope. They barely dove out of the way. So we were just fine watching and dragging the branches around.
We had a ward FHE, which we were in charge of. It was really funny actually, we taught about the Book of Mormon and the activity we had was a Jeopardy type trivia game. When we made the game up we knew that we would be dealing with hispanic members so we tried to dumb the questions down a bit. But nevertheless it proved to be a bit too difficult for them. We also felt kind of bad for the investigators that showed up, they didn't have a clue what was going on but we had a good time. One my favorite questions was: "Who was the only person in the book of Mormon who did a push-up with out his head?" They were pretty dumbfounded by that one. One hermana actually got it right by sheer guessing. We gave them a hint that it was in the book of Ether and she randomly guessed Shiz, and she was right. Even simple scripture mastery was just barely beyond their grasp. The thing is that mexicans don't really like to read, at all. Someone showed us a poll once, worldwide countries and on average how many books each person read on a yearly basis or something like that and Mexico was almost at the very bottom. The top was like Finland or something but the U.S. was close to the top as well. Even for the active members who study the scriptures on a somewhat regular basis it's a serious chore for them. It's just not something they do, so they learned quite a bit.
Well that's all the interesting things that happened this week. I hope you all have a good week. PEace out!
-- Elder Rice
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