Kikiriyuta

Hello Family....

Well... I think I actually have a few interesting things to say this week. First of all it's the start of a new transfer, one of the other areas in our ward got closed down. The infamous "Crosstimbers" area. It's generally regarded as the most dangerous area of the mission. It's the only area in the mission that covers the also supposedly infamous "5th Ward" area of Houston (And no it's not referring to a "ward" as in we what we lds think of, just some geographical area, similar to New York's Bronx I believe). Now the funny thing is that for the longest time it was a Sister missionary area, who knows why, they were never allowed to go tracting or anything like that in that area. Well a few months ago President moved the sisters out and replaced them with elders because some random black guy off the street just walked up to sisters and smooched one of them and that week their apartment was broken into and totally destroyed (luckily they were not in the apartment when it occurred). So the sisters were moved out and elders were moved in. Well President got wind of some sort of crazed machete murderer gang on the loose somewhere over there so he decided to close the area all together. So it was closed and it was divided up between us and the other elders. So Houston 3rd Ward went down from 3 companionship's to 2. Our areas just doubled in size and now we got to go and take care of all the work they left there. If I see crazy people with machetes I'll be sure to get some pictures for y'all.

In other news we are convinced that the ward leadership is trying as hard as they can to make our recent converts go inactive. Last Sunday Minerva and Dianna didn't make to church because all of the members they called for a ride told them to call someone else that lives closer. And the 7th Day Adventists will come and pick them up in their church bus whenever they want! So if you will recall from last week our plan to get them away from the Adventistas was to basically jump start their testimonies by getting them to the Temple on Thursday to do baptisms. We had been prepping them all week, making sure they weren't going anywhere else on Thursday night. We visited them on Thursday afternoon to make doubly sure that they would make it.

The first obstacle came up when the Young Women's president refused to take Dianna's mom Minerva on the grounds that it was 'just for youth'. Now we had already gotten it cleared with the Bishop weeks before, that she and our other recent converts could go with the youth on this occasion. The YW's President was planning on coming by to get Dianna but not Minerva. So we made several calls and eventually called the YW's President back and told her to take Minerva because Hno. So-an-so of the Bishopric said she could go. The bishop was out of town this last week, we are still un-sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. So we left thinking that all would be well.

The next day we go by to see how it went and it turns out that Minerva didn't go, she didn't feel like it at the last minute, Dianna went, but she didn't like it. Now we had told her what it was she was going to do, she was going to get baptized and confirmed for some people that have already died. We explained to her what was going to happen so she wouldn't be freaked out. Well on the way she asked the other people in her car about the details of what they were going to do and they (thinking they were being funny) didn't tell her anything except that she was going to get wet. So she was nervous the whole way there and the whole time in there. And knowing her already unstable mental condition this couldn't have been good at all. Now here's the climax, here's the cherry on top of the whole thing here, we couldn't believe this but, thinking that it would be good for Dianna's first time, they made her do ALL of the baptisms. All of them, except for the ones for deceased men of course. The other young women just all sat and watched as Dianna was dunked several times, over and over and over again. She didn't really like that, it kind of freaked her out. So she said that she didn't like it, she didn't like the whole experience. But she did say that she'd consider doing it again sometime, she wasn't against the idea of going again in the near future.

Heh heh, so how did we react to this? Kind of like *FRUSTRATION*!!!!! We were like, oh-my-gosh, we are sorry, it shouldn't have gone like that. Uhhh.... Now just yesterday they didn't come to church again, but they did go to the 7th Day Adventist church on saturday, and because they went then they forgot to buy food and stuff and Minerva had diabetes so when we called her sunday morning she said they wouldn't be going because she didn't feel good and she was waiting for her son to wake up and go buy her food because with her diabetes something crazy would happen with her blood sugar and therefore she could not spend the next three hours in church.

Ay..... Not fun, I really don't know what to do with these people. A rather interesting thing that I've experience a lot as a missionary is that oftentimes you feel like your own salvation depends, or rather is parallel or inseparably linked, to those you are working with. So when they don't go to Church you feel like you didn't go to church, when they didn't read their scriptures or pray you feel like you haven't read your scriptures or pray, when they're lazy and stubborn and don't seem to grasp the eternal perspective you feel exactly the same. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I've already been baptized or that at least I'm still going to church and working for eternal life.

Well on the brighter side of things we found a churro stand in the other elder's area that sells the most absolutely amazing churros or anything else for that matter that I've ever tasted. Indeed it may be said that the churros they have there are the best sweet sugary things that I've ever eaten in my entire life. And they're only a buck a piece. I'm going to get some pictures of it soon. Also as you can see in the photo we saw two nuns stealing a child one day(ha-ha). It was really funny, they were coming out of McDonald's when we first spotted them so we assumed that they snagged some child out of the ball-pit in the play land and were making their escape. The other picture is of our district and our ward mission leader Hno. Izzaguire, he's a funny guy, perhaps not the most reliable guy, but really funny.

Well that's all for today. I hope you all have fun, and yeah... Peace out.

-- Elder Rice

Mostasa

January 24, 2010

What up fam....

Well, again not too much to say this week. I did get the photos, thank you mom, wow, all of you look way older. I had to double check that this one picture of Austin was actually Austin and not someone else. And as far as the matieral that the molcajete is made from I don't know, I assume some kind of volcanic rock, and... yeah...

Well this week was rather dull except for the fact that our one favorite teenage recent convert who always has so much drama surrounding her is now in a mental hospital. Yup... Friday night the ward had a meeting or activity with the youth and their parents and it was about chastity. Apparently Dianna found out about all the stuff the other young women had saying about her a few weeks previous, and that combined some other factors resulted in some sort of mental meltdown during this activity and the bishop took her and her mom to the Houston mental hospital at 2 AM, she's getting our tommorow morning so hopefully we'll be able to see her and see how she's doing. We found out on saturday when we dropped by and just found her mother there and she told us all about it. Luckily she and her adult sons that live close by all assume that it was because Dianna's father spoiled her as a child and that's why she's unstable. I don't know if I'd agree with that but at least they don't blame the chruch. We were intensely worried that they'd think it was a result of joining the mormon church. Poor girl, her mom was saying that she's kind of caught between her non-member friends which, reportedly, are a bunch of scumbags, and her mormon friends who stabbed her in the back, but who she's now friends with again, though perhaps not anymore. That combined with this new mormon lifestyle seems to have fried her poor little 15 year old brain. Poor thing, luckily the ward doesn't know about it. Only the bishop and his wife. We've been praying for her quite a bit and tommorow we'll stop by and see how she's doing. Drama, drama, drama, I'm tired of drama. No more drama please.

I really have been getting tired things like this lately. Missionary work is very depressing in few facets. Everyday we visit families that are being spiritually destroyed right in front of our eyes, and we do our best, most often with marginal results, and it's just down right sad. It really is a war, and just like those stories of soilders who go insane after months and months of seeing their fellow human beings hewn down. It's depressing but the few times that we really do help someone, be it through baptism or re-activation, it makes up for all the horror we have to put up. That I'm learning rather keenly from these situations how NOT to run my family, and how NOT to live my life. I've learned that if I make the same mistakes as these people I'll end up like them in their horrible situations.

Hmm... I'm trying to think or something to end this e-mail on a slightly happier note. Oh so we have a new missionary in our district, fresh from the MTC, Elder Padilla, he's from Peru. He's been living in Pleasent Grove for the last 5 years and yet his english is non-existant. Much to the amusement of us, also he has a hard time understanding the people here just like we do, since most everyone here is Mexican or Central American, very different from Preuvian spanish. I've been having him teach me Peruvian slang, though I don't know when I'll use it, I've met a total of two Peruvians my whole mission.

Well that's all for today. I love you all and hope you have a good week. Peace out.

--- Elder Rice

Cachorro

January 18, 2011

Hello Family.

Well looks like we got a few things to go through here. Firstly concering registration we are allowed to go onto the BYU site and get most of that figured out ourselves. Everything short of actually registering for classes because if I recall correctly I had to get up at like 2 AM to actually register for the classes when the time came. We can't do that obviously but we can look up stuff on P-Days so I can do that. But I think it'd be better if on the home front you found all the info as in when I need to be registered and whatnot. In fact just right now I went and logged onto it and put my new e-mail address as this one and did all that. So I can more or less keep up with it, but it'd be better off being informed from the home end.

Okay... Well things are going well. As you can see from the pictures our two investigators, named Minerva and Dianna were baptized. They're doing well, yesterday we had their first FHE with them as recent converts in the home of a member family. And we were quite suprised, the wife of this family is one of the YW's leaders and we showed up and found about half of the YW there with Dianna and they were all chatting and being happy. So they're all friends again. Much to our relief, I was seriously worried that they'd go inactive quickly because of this rift but everything seems fine now. I guess the YW's leaders did their stuff and everyone is happy and friends again. Thank goodness.

Other than that not much else of interest has occured of late. No real fiascos to report, just the usual daily grind of missionary work. The weather has been cray here, the week after Christmas it was in the 70's, the following week the 30's and 40's, and this week it's evened up but accompanied by constant rain.

And.... Um... I really can't think of much else to write, I think there was something slightly amusing but I forgot what it was and we're on a tight schedule today being a tuesday. I think I've never realized before my mission just how many stupid fake holidays are on mondays. I hate it now but I will be grateful for three day weekends in the future. But when you don't have weekends it kind of makes everything difficult.

Okay that's everything, I love you all and hope you have a good week. PEaCe

-- Elder Rice

Se Me Fueron Las Chivas Al Monte

December 20, 2010


Howdy fam...

Well this week was rather good, we now have five investigators with baptismal dates, last week we had one, but in this last week we've been lucky and have had all of this success. Three of them will be baptized on the 1st and the others later in January.

So let's see... Any amusing stories? Okay I thought of one. So Friday was the ward Christmas party, in which I participated far more that I wanted to. Firstly the week before the elder's quorum president had asked us if we (the missionaries) could perform a musical number. Of the six of us in the ward three are gifted with musical talents, and as y'all are aware I'm not one of those 3. What we ended up doing was singing 'Silent Night' my companion on the violin, another on the piano, and the rest of us singing. It went rather well, even if it hadn't sounded good it would have been fine, hispanics, as a people, can't sing nor do they know what good singing sounds like. That wasn't so bad, the part that was bad is that a few days before it, we were leaving the gate when the mom of the member family that lives with us, caught us going out and asked if we could held them with the Christmas party, we said yes, we'd be happy to help. She then said that they needed an angel for their little nativity play, she pointed at me and said: "Tu eres el mas alto y el mas güero." Meaning that I was the tallest and most white person of the six of us, and that she wanted me to be the Angel in the play. Now I'm neither the tallest nor the most white of our district, (the funny part being that the whitest elder of us all is named Elder white, and the tallest is an asian named Elder Whittle). But I agreed so for the Christmas nativity thing I was the angel. I didn't have to say anything, the whole thing was narrated so I stood there and motioned around as if I was talking and gesturing. I wore a white reflective gown with wings a Halo and eveything, the whole nine yards. So that wasn't too fun but oh well. We had a great turn out though, almost all of our investigators made it to the party and they all enjoyed it.

I think that's about all that happened this week. All interesting or that I can think of, and I'm going to talk to y'all on saturday. I will probably call that night, this year they're a little bit more lax about calling schedules so we can call anytime we want. I'll probably call like 7 or 8 at night. Meaning 8 or 9 for you all. Well I'm done, I'd like to thank everyone for all the cool stuff they've sent. So yeah, I love you all, have a good day and peace out.

-- Elder Rice

Tirando Barra

December 13, 2010

what up fam?

This week was busy and fast paced, we have like zero time to do anything just jumping around from appointment to appointment, trying to squeeze everyone into our already tightly packed days. I like it, it feels more fulfilling, to come home each day exhausted. But only about half of all that is actually useful work, that is helping people make commitments and progress, a lot of it is being full time home or mostly visiting teachers. Elder Green kind of has this mentality that we should be like bishops or something, basically doing the ward's job, today we even went and got a prescription filled out for a homebound member's medicine. I've talked to him about this before, about how we should get the ward involved on what they should be doing but he seems content on doing it ourselves. Now I have no problem with helping out people outside of our responsibility but doing that without trying to get the ward to get on the bandwagon, thus making it our responsibility, is a problem. He's also concerned about certain members and their worthiness and whatnot, again I told him that's between them and the Bishop, we're not to get involved in such things. But Elder Green is rather stubborn, I have the the opposite problem with him than I did with Elder Lamoure. Elder Lamoure was lazy and wouldn't do anything, which is irritating but at least I could see that we got things done the right way. Elder Green is not lazy at all, but as an inexperienced greenie he doesn't know what he's doing, but he thinks he does, and tries to do everything. So I end up having to mend the fences along the way, everywhere we go. It's tiring but at least it's better than last transfer.

So... Amusing anecdotes of the week. On Wednesday we had 3 dinners with members, it was really good food, caldo de verdaduras y pollo, enchiladas rojas, mole, and of course with each meal lots of arroz, frijoles, and tortillas, it was a ton of food we were so full we wanted to die. And now that I'm in the ghetto we were getting REAL mexican food, so real that the next morning we were taking turns in the bathroom for several hours. We both got pretty sick from it, it was the first time I'd ever been really sick on my mission. Luckily the day that we got sick we had only one appointment, so we went to that and then crashed for the rest of the day. We were back up the next day, just fine and again went about everywhere at break-neck speed teaching people.

As aforementioned the ward council refuses to give rides to investigators, we have to go around them and individually ask members to give people rides. Anyway for sunday we had a plan, we had two investigators and a part-member family who live pretty close to each other and we were going to try to get them on the bus to the church. From the previous week we found out that simply telling people where the church was, telling them to take the bus, and hoping to see them there, isn't enough. So we tracked down maps of the bus routes and asked members who use the bus and formulated a plan. Sunday morning we were to go wake everyone up at 10:00, go back to the church to correlation meeting, then go back, and walk each family to the bus stop, get them to wait there, while we went and got the others and walked with them to the bus stop, once they were all there the active member who also uses that bus-stop would come and be with them on the bus and herd them to the Church. The only thing we lacked were sheep dogs.

Well our plan was a complete failure, one family had some family visiting so they had "other things to do" that day. Same with a few other investigators, the only ones that were ready that morning were Maria and Katrin, an older hispanic woman and her 10 year old daughter who is actually a member who was baptized a year ago. Now to all of these people we had carefully explained the plan, so when we came to pick them up and walk with them to the bus-stop, which was actually like a half mile away, they walked out of the house and straight to our car. They assumed that we were just going to take them to church in our car. As I started to explain to them the plan all over again they both stood there, wrapped up in there jackets and things, shivering and as I was telling them that they were going to take the bus I saw their faces fall. I kind of just slowed down and stopped talking, it was really cold, there was this nasty biting wind, the bus stop was a ways away, and they might or might not have a few bucks on them for the bus fare. They did what the dog likes to do and gave us the big brown eyes, this little old mexican woman and her kid. Then I told them to get in the car, we would take them this time and show them where to get on and off the bus and everything, but next week they were going to take the bush for sure. Their faces instantly brightened up and lept into the car. Elder Green, who was struggling to keep up with the conversation saw them get into the car and, realizing what we were about to do started to protest but I told him to get in the car and we drove them to church. So yeah, we broke the rules, we can't have investigators or even members in our car unless they're Melchizedek priesthood holders, etc, etc, etc. But whatever, we took them to church, and they had a good time. So of all the 8 or so investigators we expected to come to church only one came, that we drove there, there were some others who were supposed to come independently but didn't show. Maria and Katrin did take the bus home though with a member so we didn't have to take them back. I don't know, Jesus would have probably given them a ride....

So yeah.... Oh and sunday was 'El Dia de la Virgen Guadalupe'. I had forgotten all about it, which may explain why none of our investigators came to church. It's basically a holiday in which mexicans celebrate their worship of Mary. Apparently back in the day some mexican, Don Miguel, or something prayed and Mary appeared to him and ever since them they started calling her Guadalupe, for who knows what reason. But on the day previous to it we were in a teaching appointment, and the family had their front door open because they were cooking and it was hot in the house, and down the street as we were teaching comes this huge crowd of mexicans, we didn't see them because the door was parallel to the street but we heard all of this clanging and voices and then one lady shouts: "!SALUDEN A LA VIRGEN GUADALUPE!" literally: 'salute virgen guadalupe'. And then there was cheering and stuff and much clamour, I wish I had gotten a video of it, it was pretty funny.

Okay, I'm out of time. I sent y'alls Christmas box today so it should come later this week. Nothing's wrapped so don't open the box till Christmas. And Dad's present is actually in the box that I sent home a couple weeks ago, but there's a note inside of this box explaining all of that. So yeah.... Oh and mom I hope you got from the e-mail last week that I needed a couple of my hoodie-jacket things, I hope they're in the Christmas package, if not please send them ASAP. So I love y'all and have a good week.

-- Elder Arroz



Andando con los Cholos

December 6, 2010














Hello Fam...

This week was a long week. It feels like forever since I wrote that last e-mail on Monday. However, first things first. The box I sent was in fact for me. I decided that I had too much stuff, it's full of books that I've found on my mission that aren't quite authorized additions to the 'missionary library' or that I don't really need nor have room for. So please just put that with my other boxes and let it be. And as for my address I don't know what it is yet, but I am close enough to the mission office that it won't be too much of a big deal. So just stick with the mission office address for now.

Now then... My first week in Houston... Was pretty good. On Tuesday I met my new companion, Elder Green from the-middle-of-nowhere, Utah. This is his 2nd transfer so he's had a total of 3 and a half months as a missionary including his time in the MTC. He's an interesting fellow. The term I have to describe him is 'business elf'. He's quite short with big ears and has a sort of impish demeanour about him. He's very cordial, he says things like "I fear that..." and "It would seem that..." Language that no normal human being would use in every day speech unless you were trying to imitate someone from... Victorian-era England. It's kind of funny. He makes a lot effort to be very polite, professional, and well mannered. It's kind of funny, easy to get along with but kind of boring, he's kind of girly too. His 'thing' is the whole choir-drama club-ballroom dance type deal. One day we were driving and we passed two streets named 'Temple' and 'Shirely', the conversation went as follows:

EG: *Laughs*
ER: "What's up?"
EG: "Those two streets, Temple and Shirley, that's funny."
ER: "Like... Don't call me shirley surely?"
EG: "No, like Shirley Temple"
ER: "I think I've heard that name before, who's that?"
EG: "Shirley Temple played Annie in the movie 'Annie' "
ER: "Oh..., I've never seen it but-"
EG: "How can you have not seen Annie! I have been in at least two plays of-"
ER: "Hey, you can't say anything! You haven't even seen 'Indiana Jones' remember? You basically have no childhood..."

We've had many such conversations and it's rather funny but it gets old and slightly irritating after a while but I've had companions of all spectrums by now so I'm not too bothered. He's a good missionary, good work ethic, obedient, etc. He only lacks experience and spanish. Which again seems to be a problem because he's rather stubborn when it comes to how missionary work is done and he thinks he knows what he is doing and how to go about doing it, even when he has no idea what's going on. Time will teach him though, of the many things I've taught him so far some of them include: Not standing in front of people's houses and writing things down in your planner, when contacting a refferal or when someone you don't recognize opens the door introduce yourself and tell them who we are first before asking if so-an-so is there, don't explain and then offer preisthood blessings to people who have no idea what they are, don't indignantly shout "Why not!" to people passing by who don't want to learn about God, etc. He's a good guy though and a good cook, With time he'll get sharpened into an effective missionary.

So... This new are is pretty sweet. We live in the ghetto with an active member family, they have an apartment type thing above their garage that we live in. It's tiny but comfortable and well kept, I haven't seen a single roach yet. The area is super, super ghetto. It looks like Mexico, all of the roads are under construction, broken sewer pipes everywhere, the whole city smells like sewege, and people here drive like maniacs, we've almost been hit like a dozen times now. All of the car accidents that happen in our mission come this area and the areas around us. These pictures are acutally of dowtown Houston that's right next to our area and outside of the mission boundaries. One day we accidently took the wrong lane on the 8 lane free-way and ended up outside of the mission and inside Houston, Elder Green started to freak out a bit, but I laughed, handed him my camera and told him to start snapping picutres while we found our way out of there. So those pictures you see are of a part of downtown. I don't have any good pictures of the ghetto yet. The other two pictures are of the infamous Pulga, or hispanic flea makert. The other great thing about finally serving in Houston is that we get to do shifts at the pulga. We have our own little table set up in there with all the rest of the stuff with dispalys of pamphlets, pass-a-long-cards, and Books of Mormon. The shifts are two hours long and you stand there in front of this table and try to get people passing by to stop, listen to you, and get them to write down their address and stuff in these binders we have that eventually turn into the media refferals we get through the phone. Hispanics will come from miles and miles away to the Pulga to sell and buy hispanic junk. And we, the spanish missionaries love it because we get to buy hispanic junk as well.

They're only open on saturdays and sundays, I went for the first time in my mission on saturday. At first I was like "THIS IS SO COOL!" After serving out in the country and in the suburbs my whole mission I was excited to see so many hispanics in one place all at once They're just walking around everywhere, stands selling elotes, and weird hispanic snack foods, hotdogs wrapped in fried tortillas, pork rinds in the shape of wagon wheels carried in a huge back filled with hot sauce, lime and chile powder candies that the little kids lick out of little plastic containers. They have the hispanic music going and everything, it looked like a lot of fun. Well after 20 minutes or so I was like "Okay, I'm tired of this, let's go home now." I can't decide if it's worse than tracting or not. There's far more rejections per minute, and since we don't have them cornered on their doorstep they're a bit more rude. Well after two hours we had literally spoke to hundreds of people and only 5 of them were good people, actually interested who wanted to learn more and wrote their names down in the notebook.

The fun part comes once your shift is over and the next missionaries arrive, then you can go around and look at everything and buy stuff. So I did a bit of Christmas shopping for y'all at the Pulga. So y'all have that to look forward to for Christmas, I didn't really get any good pictures of it because I didn't want to be too creepy, we're creepy enough as it is, two white guys walking around dressed like the FBI.

On Sunday I got to meet the ward. I can see why most missionaries who have served in this ward hate it. Our correlation meeting with the ward leadership was interesting. The bishop wants us to report our stats to him, to see if we're working hard enough, they don't want us to give rides to investigators because they think it will make them lazy and they should instead be self sufficient and take the metro to church, and they seem to have this idea that success comes from how many doors we knock a week rather than having members visit investigators with us. So yeah... I walked out of the meeting wanting to go back to Katy, but after being in church and for the combined priesthood-relief society meeting, we, the missionaries were in charge of the lesson so we taught about the role of members in missionary work. It went well, and I had a better view of this ward, there are lots of good people and there's a lot of potential here. We just have to be patient with them and encourage them.

Well I'm running out of time but I'm having a good time, we don't have any time to tract because of all the appointments we have everyday. So I'm doing great, so I hope you all are having a good time, and I forgot one thing, I lost my hoodie in my last area after football on Thanksgiving, I think one of the english members might have accidently taken it. So if you could please send me one or two of my hoodies that I left at home that would be nice. I just need something warm to wear around in the apartment, it's getting rather chilly, and I do not need a coat. Mine is good enough but a couple of those sweaters I mentioned would be handy. So I hope you all have a good day and I love you all, peace out.

-- Elder Rice

Caseras

November 29, 2010

Family.

This week was a rather good one. For Thanksgiving we had 5 dinner appointments, it was brutal. That morning we played football with the english wards then played fútbol with our ward. Then we went to our 5 dinner appointments, luckily we weren't biking, we were going to everyone with the sister missionaries in our ward. So I pretty much got sick of turkey. In this ward since everyone is pretty rich and Americanized they all have American style Thanksgiving, unfortunately. I would have preferred Mexican food. So it was turkey, turkey, turkey, and more turkey, I never really liked turkey much before but now I hate it, it just tastes so boring. We got a ton of leftovers as well, and our bathroom has smelt like turkey for the last 5 days...

On Saturday we had the big game of Westgreen vs. Bear Creek soccer game.... 9:00 was too early nobody came until 10:00 and we had to call several people of the ward to wake them up and get them out of bed. This may be the reason why all the little hispanic churches start at 1:00. For the first hour it was Westgreen vs. the missionaries. All the people that had showed up so far was Hno. Lopez, his kids and some of the youth of the ward. Which was sufficient, the score was 6-2 before more people started showing up. 10 year old hispanic boys are far better than any of us. The only advantage we had was that we had longer strides, even Elder Lang, who played soccer in high school and is pretty good was having trouble. More people started to show up and we mixed up the teams a little bit. Only 1 person from the Bear Creek ward showed up, and they even announced in their ward on sunday while our bishop refused to announce it. Kind of ironic. But we did have some non-member friends of a family in our ward that showed up and they live in the sisters' area so they have some new investigators now. So that was a good result of it.

We also found out that Karla did in fact like the cookies, though she said she needed a glass of water because they were spicy. She says the funniest things. Since she's been baptized we've been reading through the Book of the Mormon with them. When we read about the part where Nefi cuts off Laban's head she said: "Oh that's just like this movie Freddy vs. Jason, where they cut off this guy's head and... blah, blah, blah, it was kind of scary." And this other time when we read about the Tree of Life and we read about the river of filthy water representing the 'profundidades del infierno'. She commented on how it was like this movie called 'Paranormal Activity'. It's really funny, she and her sister are some of the most desensitized kids I've ever seen but they somehow are still so innocent. It's really funny.

And now for the good news... I'm getting transferred! Finally! I'm done babysitting Elder Lamoure. He in fact is going to my last area, Oakcrest, which isn't quite what I predicted for him but it's close enough, it's easily one of the worst spanish areas in the mission. I'll be going to Houston, that's right, for the first time on my mission in Houston Texas, I will actually be in Houston. I'll be going to the Houston 3rd Ward, in a way ghetto area, it's the only area that has a part of downtown Houston in it. Supposedly it's puro mexicano, no more white people. I'll be going with Elder Green, this will be his 2nd transfer and I will be "greenie-breaking" him as they say. So I'm excited, I'm still sad to leave Westgreen, it's a great ward, the strongest spanish ward in the mission, most active people, most active youth and everything. But the area stinks, it's hard to find people. Where I'm going is supposedly the opposite, easy to find and teach people but that ward struggles a lot, it's very poor and the members are more concerned about where their next meal is coming from rather than going to church or giving investigators rides.

Well... That's all I got to say today, tomorrow is transfers and I'll go to my new area. So I hope you all have a good week. Peace out.

-- Elder Rice

Arrastrando La Cobija

I am not sure if I should say "Oh dear..." or "TMI" or both!

Lisa


November 22, 2010

Hey fam...

This week I actually have something interesting to report. On Tuesday we had Zone Conference, 8 AM to 3 PM, it was a killer, I can't stand long meetings anymore, I could barely handle church before my mission now it's just gotten worse I can't handle meetings. Well after Zone Conference Elder Lamoure talked with President and Sister Hansen about his bowel problems (up to this point he hadn't pooped in 10 days and it was difficult for him to walk). They called up Missionary Medical and they decided that Elder Lamoure should go to the emergency room. So we went to the ER, the english Elders dropped us off there and we were there for the next 6 hours. Elder Lang and I hung out in the waiting room all that time, it got pretty boring. At about 10:00 PM they finally let him out, they gave him two "enemas" I'm not sure what those are but to make a long story shorter they didn't get it all out, just enough so that he could get around comfortably, they said the problem was out of their league and they said he needed to go to a GI doctor. But they did tell him something he could get that would help, so the english elders picked us up at 10 and we went to the local drug-store where he went to get his thing. The whole time in the car he was complaining and complaining about his problem, and how the doctors can't figure it out. I got tired of it, he tells everyone that he's tried everything including a healthier diet and lots of exercise. I got tired of hearing it and I called him out and told him that if he actually tried to stick with a good diet and really exercised he could do it. Elder Lamoure probably has the worst diet of anyone I ever met, it consists of soda, beans, pizza, chili cheese fries, and cereal. He hates eating fruits and vegetables, I've been with him for almost 3 months now and that's all he eats. I told him that, also told him that he doesn't really exercise, we go to a ghetto little gym in our apartment complex and all he does is sit on the bike machine, peddles a little bit, and watches the TV in the gym. I told him that if he honestly tried he could probably overcome this. Well, he got mad and had another one of his hissy-fits.

I'm so sick of him, he's so negative about everything all the time, and that's saying something, I know that I'm rather pessimistic but Elder Lamoure makes me look like a ray of sunshine. It's simply suffocating to be in his presence when he's talking, and he keeps bringing up the same subjects over and over and over again as if we've never heard them before. If there is anything I have learned from my time with him it's that we should try to have a positive attitude. Luckily though this is the last week of the transfer, I'm pretty sure that I won't be with Elder Lamoure. So I only have one more week, I just need to hold out a little longer without killing him. He might actually go english next transfer, President was asking him if it was the hispanic food that gives him these problems, President is thinking about sending him english, which is the greatest fear of all spanish missionaries. That's what happens to all of the useless spanish elders, they go english. There was one elder who was a slacker and didn't keep up on his spanish and just didn't really care about being a missionary much and he got sent to an english area to be an english area, that would suck hardcore. I think Elder Lamoure is in for the same fate, especially seeing as though he's had almost a year in the mission and his spanish is at the same level mine was in my 2nd transfer. He's in for it.

On a higher note I have a more happy, amusing story. Yesterday was Karla's birthday, our recent convert. The last time we were at their house was Thursday, she was eating a bag of hot cheetos as she told us it was her birthday on sunday, we said that we were going to have to make her a cake or something, and then we jokingly suggested that we make her a hot cheeto cake. She said that would fine, she proceeded to tell us that she loves spicy food and she eats everything with chile. Which is odd, Karla and her family are Hondurans, and in Honduras they don't eat anything spicy at all and most hate spicy food. But not Karla, she's been mexicanized and eats everything with chile and lime. Fast forward to saturday when we remembered that it was Karla's birthday the next day. We wanted to make her something. I recounted to my companions that my mom had made jalapeno cookies once and that they were pretty good, and since Karla loves chiles we should make some jalapeno cookies. My companions were a little skeptical at first, but I pressed them so we decided to do it. We went to Mcdonalds (because it has free wi-fi and Elder Lang has an i-touch, one of the reasons why he likes to going to Mcdonalds all the time). We looked up recipes for jalapeno cookies. Elder Lang chose this recipe for jalapeno-cranberry cookies. It sounded interesting so we decided to do it. We went to Wal-Mart and bought the necessary ingredients. We decided to make them sunday morning before church and give them to her at church. (Our ward meets at 2:00, they hate having the late schedule but they've had for two years in a row now because the english wards don't want it either and when it comes to push and shove the spanish wards always get the shaft, it's quite sad actually. The english wards blame everything on the spanish wards, messes, and maintenance and everything.

Anyway... The dough was made of cream cheese, butter, and flour. We had fresh cranberries and jalapenos and you make this mixture out of it using vinegar. I don't really know, Elder Lang made the sauce I did the dough, and Elder Lamoure slept. What we were supposed to do was cut the dough into 2 inch squares, dabble a tablespoon of the cranberry jalapeno sauce on it and make a roll-type-deal by bringing just two of the opposite corners of the square together. Well it was taking too long to measure and cut 2 inch squares out of the dough so we found a ginger bread man cookie cutter and used that, dabbled the sauce onto each gingerbread man and then tucked their heads in between their legs, thus making a sort of roll shaped thing. We were supposed to use something called "confectioners sugar" but we couldn't find any at wal-mart so we used regular sugar instead. We baked them for 12 minutes and then pulled them out. They didn't look too pretty, some of them looked okay but most looked like small exploded animals. I forgot to take pictures (sorry mom). But they looked edible, and they were actually really good. I liked them a lot, Elder Lang really liked them too, Elder Lamoure wouldn't try one, he's lame like that. So we put them all (we had like 30 of these cookies) in a tupperware along with a birthday card we got for her and some pictures of her baptism. Everything was going according to plan. The sister missionaries picked us up to take us to church. They were impressed with our cookies, or rather they were impressed that we made the effort to make cookies, but not so impressed with how they tasted, they didn't like them at all. At chruch before sacrament meeting when everyone mills around during the prelude music everyone was like "Oh Elder, for me? You shouldn't have."or "Heeeyyy... What do you got there Elder?" And then I'd tell them and they'd go "Ewww... Really?" And nobody wanted to try one. Also, one thing about having jalapeno-cranberry sauce in a cookie is that it starts to smell very... pungent... after a while. People would smell it and go ewww.... Of all the people that dared to try one, only 2 liked them, 1 said it was okay, and 4 or 5 others ran to the bathroom or the nearest trash can to spit it out. So we were really striking out with these cookies. I guess hispanics don't really do the whole sweet and spicy thing, it tasted a lot like jalapeno jelly and whenever I tell them that back home we grew habaneros and made jelly out of them and ate it with peanut butter in a sandwich they are usually aghast at such and idea. And to top off the whole thing, the Enamorados didn't show up. Karla didn't come. So for a the whole 3 hour block we had these strong smelling cookies on us. Which was kind of a blessing, it gave Elder Lang and I something to eat during Elder's Quorum.

Well later that night after chruch we went by the Enamordo's to at least give all the stuff to Karla, they weren't there but some guy who'd we never met before named Javier was there (this is very typical of hispanic households, there are so many people coming and going that might be family that you meet someone new every time you go buy. We gave him the junk and told him to give it to Karla. We then went home and went to bed. Twas a lame ending of a lame day. It was kind of funny though. And those cookies were good, Mom, you should make some. Though I think that only you and maybe the boys would like them.

Well that's all I have to say. This week should be pretty fun, eating and soccer. We set up a soccer game between our ward and neighboring hispanic ward for saturday. We planned it with the missionaries of that ward for a while now but come sunday our Bishop refused to announce it because he said that activities involving multiple wards needed approval from the stake. So we just went around telling everyone that there was going to be soccer on saturday morning in a park and if another ward just happened to show up wanting to play soccer then what a coincidence it would be. We're also playing with the ward on Thrusday, and the missionaries are playing today for P-day. And for Thanksgiving we've had like 5 families invite us over. So we're going to go to all of them, 2 plates per house we decided, Elder Lamoure does not like that idea, he'll probably explode but I wouldn't have a problem with it unless he explodes anywhere near me or my stuff. So this will be a week of soccer and food so I'll be having fun. And mom I'll get you a Christmas list for next week, so have a good week, I love you all!

-- Elder Rice

Todo anda Sobre Ruedas

November 15, 2010

Hello Family.

This e-mail is going to be very, very short. The people at the college are starting to catch on to us and you need a student ID to log onto their computers. So all 7 of us are using two computers, that have already been logged on to. Hopefully we finish before anyone notices and thy kick us out again. We're going to have to find somewhere new to e-mail next week.

Ummm.... So.... Nothing new really. We got like nothing done this week. Elder Lang had a series of doctor's appointments this week. He's had some rash on his feet lately and the doctor said he is allergic to his shoes. So they had to do some test where they put these strips on his back and he couldn't shower for 4 days. So we didn't really go anywhere. And then for the rest of the week he was "sick". So we taught like a total of 4 lessons. It sucked hard core, probably the laziest week I've had on my mission. I can't stand it anymore, I'm spread really thin and I can't stand the sound of Elder Lamoure's voice.

That's pretty much all that has happened. Yup, nothing new to report. Oh Mom, I did get the package, gracias. And yeah... Well I hope you all have a good week. Peace

-- Elder Rice

¿Que Te Pasa Vato?

Hello Family,

Well this week has a few good tidings to report. First off we had Karla's Baptism on Saturday as you can see from the pictures, the sister missionaries also had a 9 year old girl investigator baptized at the same time so it was double dunk. It went well, so in the pictures there, Elder Lang is the tall Elder will short hair and Elder Lamoure is the short one with glasses, I don't think I've yet sent you all pictures of them. The Baptism went well, it was funny. Later that night after the baptism, Karla called us and told us she couldn't sleep because she was too excited to be confirmed with the Holy Ghost the next day. She's funny.

Well the situation goes better with my companions, President got wind of their doings through certain means and he called us one morning and had separate long discussions with my companions over the phone, he said he was coming down on Thursday to have some "special interviews". Well he came down we all got an interview from President and to me he just told me that he was grateful that I was staying true even though my companions weren't, he then stressed the need to take a more active role in their missions and keep them in line. Since then things have been going slightly better, obedience is improving but it's a slow going. We'll see what happens. Then the day after we went on exchanges with the AP's. The AP's don't usually go on exchanges with anyone except ZL's so we knew that it was President double checking on us. I went to the AP's area and the other came down to work with Lang and Lamoure, and boy did he work them hard, when we un-exchanged backed they were both exhausted. I actually had a good time in their area. They have a pretty ghetto area, we didn't talk to a single white person all day, it was great, not a single person turned down taking a card from us. It just reminded me more and more of how easy it would be to do missionary work in the ghetto, and how I really want to get transferred to a ghetto area. Hopefully I will, President said that the three of us most likely won't be staying together next transfer so I will hopefully be out. Which is kind of a shame because I really like this ward. It's been my favorite so far but the area is pretty boring.

Well... I don't have much more to write, which is good since we're getting kicked out of the computer lab again. We need to start coming earlier. I love you all and hope you all have a good week.


-- Elder Rice

Agüitarse

November 1, 2010

Agüitarse

Hello Family,

Reporting in after another long week. It went slightly better than most recent weeks have gone, we have a baptism this Saturday! It's been forever since I've had a baptism, but we're finally going to get one. It's that 9 year old Karla girl, she had originally wanted to be baptized on her birthday on November 21st. But Her dad still hasn't showed up and the Sister missionaries in our ward have another little 9 year old girl of a less active family getting baptized so the Bishop wants to get them both baptized at once. So this Saturday we're having a double-dunk. Which is sweet, and Karla said that her non-member family members are going to come so that'll open up some more doors hopefully.

Other than that though things haven't been doing so hot. I am really beside myself about what to do about my companions, the other day I was only barely able to convince them to NOT buy a sports illustrated swimsuit edition magazine when we were at wal-mart. It's bad, on one hand I really hope I get transferred out of here at the end of this transfer so I don't have to put up with them anymore, but on the other hand if I were to leave the two of them together they'd surely get into trouble. Oh, I'm so tired of putting up with all of this. I really want to get out of here.... On friday we had a "specialized training" meeting with our Zone and President Hansen, the subject couldn't have been more appropriate, it was obedience, obedience, obedience. It was a good meeting, I really liked it, President had some good stuff to say. And I think he was trying to scare some of the older lazier missionaries like Elder Lang, by talking about stories of missionaries who wasted their time on their missions, went home and had lousy lives. It was pretty hardcore, he was saying that we pay a high price for whatever pleasure we think we are getting when we are being disobedient, and we are denying ourselves the presence of the spirit and revelation to help our investigators and find new ones. During the meeting I was pretty impressed and felt as though something was getting through to my companions and when we got back we could make some goals to be more obedient. Well this wasn't the case. It was like the parable of the sower, the seed fell by the wayside and President's words fell on the deaf ears of my companions. When we got home they criticized President, the mission rules, and just about everything else. They're really paying a price for it too, we had exchanges with our leaders this week. And Elder Lamoure, who boasts of his whole 9 months as a missionary, can't even speak spanish. We were tracting in the trailer park, talking to people we found in the street and our Zone Leader we were with, would say "Okay Lamoure, this one's yours, and we're not going to help you." And well... It was pretty pathetic, he would start talking a little awkwardly to them and stop in mid-sentence, his mind completely blank, or perhaps a "stupor of thought". He would look at us for help, and I could just see a pleading look written all over his face. But nope, we didn't say a word until the guy we were talking to got kind of freaked out and then we jumped in and saved him. He felt pretty down the whole day, after several more experiences like that. I did feel kind of bad for him, but I also felt a "That's what you get!" Or as they would say in Houston "Tha' wha' you get foo-!"

Okay, I'm out of time now, not much else has happened anyway. Have a good week!

-- Elder Rice

Xochitecatl

October 25, 2010

Hello family...

Well once again not much to report this week. This is a boring area, the ward is way cool though, I really like the ward here but the area itself is way boring. Well........ We got our 3rd companion this week. Elder Lang is from Los Angeles, CA. He's actually really old, he's 23 and has about 3 months left on his mission. He's cool, I like him, he'd be a good friend, but not a good companion. This one day we didn't go anywhere because his bike broke the day before and because of his sprained ankle he couldn't walk either. So he spent this one day do nothing except sleeping and eating until 6:00 when the sister missionaries picked us up to go to an appointment with some members. I was going nuts, usually I'm pretty chill and sitting around doesn't bother me too much but not all day. I was getting restless. So needless to say we didn't get too much done last week. Elder Lang had already been in this ward before 6 months ago and the ward really likes him so that's a plus. It's been nigh on impossible to get both of them to get up on time, do studies, or do pretty much anything. After all that work last transfer I finally got Elder Lamoure into a habit of getting up almost on time but he's back to where he was. I've kind of given up trying to get them to do things they don't want to do, hopefully I have only 5 more weeks here and I'll get transferred, and they won't be my problem anymore.

I forgot to mention this last week but during an exchange we had with our district leader I somehow someway lost my name-tag. We have no idea where it went or how it even could have been lost but whatever the case it's gone now, so since then I've been sporting Dad's 80's style name-tag. It's pretty cool, I recall that when I was in the MTC I'd where it sometimes and the staff either thought it was really cool, or they told me to take it off and wear the current one. Out here in the field it's not that big of an issue. My fellow missionaries think it's cool, mission leaders don't notice because whenever we're at somewhere that we'd run into the APs or President we are always wearing our suits, so nobody sees the one you wear on your white shirt, just the clip one that goes on suits. That and people, members and non-members don't notice. One thing I've learned on my mission that I would have never even guessed is that NOBODY looks at your name tag. Since I've been out in the field for over a year now I can count the number of times on one hand when people have actually looked at it and read it and asked why we both have the same first name. Nobody looks at them, maybe they register that there is a name tag there but nobody reads it. So having the old style tag isn't an issue. Hopefully though I will get around to getting a new one, they cost $4 a piece. I'm thinking about getting two, the other one saying "ELDER ARROZ". Elder Bone, whom you all have met, did that same thing, got a tag with his spanishsized name on it 'Elder Hueso'. He ruined it though because since he did it, President has forbidden anyone else to do it but Bone was still able to where his. So I'm thinking about getting one and then not wearing it until my last transfer when we will have a new Mission President. All the members call me that anyway, I always introduce myself to anyone as Elder Arroz, then I'll point to my nametag and they'll read Rice and then laugh, so it's a cheap laugh that helps break the ice when talking to new people. Most hispanics that come here to the states know the english word for arroz. So everyone already calls me that anyway.

And.... Yup, that's about everything interesting to report. I got nothing else. Well I hope you all have a good week and yeah..... PEace.

-- Elder Arroz

Cacahuate de Empacando

October 18, 2010



Hello Family.

Well... I don't think I have too much to say today. My 9th transfer has ended and my 10th has just begun, I realized today that I only have 9 months left and it's kind of scary. Unfortunately I will be remaining here and babysitting Elder Lamoure for one more transfer. But I won't be doing it alone. Many new elders are coming to the mission this transfer and not too many are leaving, we have a too many missionaries and not enough areas. There are going to be 4 threesomes this transfer and we're going to be one of them. The missionary who is coming is named Elder Laing, he's only got three more transfers to go so he will likely end his mission here. He's pretty cool, way chill, I like him though I had never wanted to be his companion due to his laziness and blatant disregard for all the rules. I have my hands full already trying to keep Elder Lamoure on the straight and narrow Elder Laing will prove too much, I honestly don't think we will be getting much done this transfer. At least I'll be able to preserve my sanity though. Though it's going to be way awkward in a threesome, especially in a bike area, we're going to take up the whole street. Tracting will be very awkward as well, just the thought of all three of us crowded together on people's porches seems like it would be very intimidating. But hopefully I will only have to endure it for 6 weeks, they try to get rid of threesomes as fast as they can so next transfer I ought to be getting out of here.

The work goes slow as it always does, Elder Lamoure is a dead weight still and it doesn't help at all. Though we're confident that our 9 year old investigator will get baptized, our other one, Hna. Munroy seems doubtful, we haven't taught her in 3 weeks now, she comes to church every sunday but has been "ill" every monday when she's available to be taught. Her family, the members, haven't been very helpful lately either, even them, active members of the church have been ignoring our phone calls and not answering the door when we go over to remind to drag their grandmother to their home on monday nights. I'm so tired of all of this, I don't get it, do they honestly not want to, oh I don't know, live together forever? Jeez, it's times like these when I look forward to the judgment day. Well I'd better stop now before I start getting too "negative".

I don't think I have anything to add on a higher note. But I do need a few things, I'm down to five white shirts; wear, tear, grease, and gum have destroyed about half of my white shirts in the past year. I'm down to one longsleeve and four shortsleeves. Now I'd go buy some myself but once again we don't have a car. So if you could send a longsleeve and like 3 or 4 shortsleeve white shirts, that'd be grand. The size I have is 16 1/2 and 33/32, or something like that. Oh and I need that one-week enzymatic cleaner for my contacts. I ran out a while ago but for whatever bizarre reason they have a one-week enzymatic cleaner famine here in Houston and our Walmart doesn't have it due to a "supply issue" that's lasted 3 months now. So maybe you could send all that with the Ensign and Liahona, and maybe if you can find some, those Friday's Spicy Pepper Jack Cheese fires, they don't have them here and I've been craving them lately.

Okay, the pictures today are of some strange insect we found on our couch one day. We couldn't figure out what it was, but we concluded that it belongs to the beetle family. The other is of millions of mocking birds that were all other this intersection one day. It was kind of scary, they've been everywhere lately in huge numbers, in preparation for the migration no doubt. And the final was taken in the bayou where we saw some sort of huge rodent swimming around next to one of the many drain pipes that go into the bayou. It looks like a beaver but without the tail, it has a normal rat like tail. We've been seeing a lot of them lately and every time I try to get a picture they always swim into the pipes before I can get close enough, but I got a good picture this time. And there was a turtle just chilling there right next to it, there's lots of turtles that live in these bayou's. And the other day some member was telling us about this one bayou where these huge sewer alligators live, we're going to go find it one day.

Okay, I love you all, have a good week.

Paranda

October 17, 2010


Hi Family.

This last week was another long week, though we did have a lot of cool stuff happen. On Saturday there was a Tri-Mission Conference. Where all three of the Texas Houston Missions got together and someone comes to speak to us. Elder Costa, the Brazilian guy who spoke in conference last week, came and spoke to us. We all got to shake hands with him and meet him and stuff, he's incredibly funny, I really liked his talk that he gave us. He mostly spoke about how we should focus on people, or as he put it "Don't teach lessons, teach people." It was really good I feel like I learned quite a bit.

Something cool happened this week. We were in the one Trailer Park we have in our area and we were just biking around and talking to people and we come across two mexican boys, probably around 13-15 years old. Standing on opposite sides of the narrow street and taking turns throwing a soccer ball into these trashcans they had. We stopped, started talking to them and taking our turns throwing the soccer ball in the trashcan as well. We chilled with them a little bit just talking about stuff, then I got them to teach me how to do some of those soccer tricks that all hispanics instinctively know how to do. Then we started kicking the ball around, and this little 10 year old kid joined us, and the four us were just kicking this ball around talking (Elder Lamoure was standing off to the side with our bikes checking his watch over and over again, he was just being his usual lame stick in the mud self.) The two older kids said we should play a game, so we did, we used our helmets and the trashcans as makeshift goal posts and we started playing soccer right there in the street, it was me and the 10 year old verses these two 15 year olds. Now here's the funny part, after 15 minutes or so the score was 8-0, the 8 belonging to us. It was way funny, the two teenagers were starting to get pissed, a gringo wearing a tie and dress shoes and a 10 year old were beating them badly. Now this was in the evening when all the people in the trailer park are out walking around. As people walked by I'd ask them if they wanted to play with us, and they did. We weren't far from this little playground and this guy was pushing a stroller with a toddler in it with his wife who was leading another small child by the hand. I asked the guy if he wanted to play with us, well I didn't really ask him I was like "Hey dude! Come play with us!" He stopped, cocked his head to one side, thought about it for a second and handed the stroller to his wife "Here dear, take the kids." And he ran towards us and started playing. (You gotta love Mexicans). So we had this good game going in the street and there were lots of spectators no doubt it was rather weird that some dressed up gringo was out there laughing, shouting in spanish, and screaming GOOOOOAAAALLLLLL every time a goal was made. It was fun I was having a great time, Elder Lamoure wouldn't come play, he just kept standing off in the shadows and complaining about all the bug bites he was getting and that we should go because it was getting dark. Now the teams were un-even and we needed another man so I beckoned Elder Lamoure to come play with us and he still refused, saying he couldn't play because he doesn't like sports. I got everyone to start chanting "Si, se puede!" meaning "Yes you can" and finally he couldn't take everyone yelling at him and reluctantly came into the street and played with us. We played for a little longer until it got so dark that I could barely see the ball (It was 8:00). The score was 18-12, the other team was catching up now. I declared to everyone that last goal wins all. It was a final and furious round all the spectators yelling and cheering, and then the 10 year old scored the last goal and we won. I quickly grabbed Elder Lamoure, handed him a stack of pass-a-long cards, gave him some rapid instructions, and as everyone was starting to disperse we separated and started talking them all as they were leaving and giving everyone cards, inviting them to learn more about our message. We got like 20 people all in 10 minutes, it was great. Unfortunately we haven't seen any of them since then, nor have we taught any of them. But it was a fun, a good experience.

Other than that not much cool has happened, our two investigators with baptismal goals finally made it to church this sunday, so that was good. Elder Lamoure and I finally had it out one night during our nightly planning session. He was complaining about how we had to go down to the Tri-Mission Conference with the english elders, the zone leaders that we live with, which aren't our zone leaders but are zone leaders none-the-less, and Elder Lamoure hates them. So he was complaining about that and I was finally sick of all of his complaining and told him that there's nothing we can do about it and complaining won't help so shut up. Then he got mad and threw his planner at the blinds and we finally had it out. I told him straight up that he was a useless dead weight and that he didn't have the spirit with him. I asked what he thought he was doing here, I asked him if he even wanted to be a missionary, if he even cared... He didn't say anything, he just sat there fuming, he knew I was right, he couldn't argue, then I told him that I loved him and that I want to help him do what he's supposed to be doing out here, and to stop being a useless sack and then I told him to pick up his freaking planner and we will continue planning for the next day. He didn't say anything still, he just got up, went into our bedroom, screamed into his pillow for 30 seconds, came back in, picked up his planner and remained in a state of murderous silence the rest of the night. Later he told me that he was sorry, that I was right, and that he was going to start being better. The sad thing is that I didn't believe him, he's done these 180 degree flips many times before, and I honestly don't think he meant any of it. And since that night he's been the same as he's always been. I don't know what else I can do. Luckily it's the end of the transfer and hopefully he'll be transferred somewhere else and someone else can baby-sit him. It's so exhausting just putting up with him 24/7, I'm about to lose it. Well we have interviews with President this week so hopefully he can do something about him.

Well I'm done for today, oh and I did get that book mom, It's actually quite lame but it had a few good ideas, thanks for that. Last P-Day I did my own looking around and I can't seem to find a good one so perhaps there isn't a good gospel object lesson book. Though everyone could send me ideas every now and then, that'd be cool. Okay I'm done, I love you all and hope y'all have a good week. Peace out.

-- Elder Rice



Inguieta

October 4, 2010


Hey fam.... Que paso?

Well this week has somewhat of a high note. We have two investigators with baptismal dates, one a 9 year old girl of some less actives and one way old lady whom everyone in the ward thought was a member, missionaries have been teaching her on and off for the past 6 years but we finally got a date for december (when her son-in-law get's back from Iraq). I don't know if I already mentioned this the last time. So that's about all that's going on.

My companion ran out of his St. John's Wort pills and is back to his usual nasty self. I can't stand him anymore, now at least we can get out the door without too many problems, and he will follow me around well enough but he complains unceasingly. About every single thing, from the mission rules to the amount of light bulbs in the bathroom. And he won't stop critiquing everything, I can't buy so much as a tube of toothpaste without him informing me why I'm wasting my money and why I should buy whatever he's buying, it's like that with everything, especially food, he goes on and on about how unhealthy my diet is and how much saturated fat/calories/carbs/etc, etc, etc, etc, is in everything. (And all of this coming from a guy who used to weight 255 lbs, and probably still would were it not for a month of constipation). (That and he doesn't eat healthy at all now). He thinks he knows everything, it's driving me absolutely insane! Last night when I called in our weekly stats I was almost begging our district leader asking him when we are to go on exchanges. It's getting that bad, he offends the members by refusing to eat certain things that he doesn't like or refusing to eat at all if he's not hungry. And if I glare at him and whisper very threateningly at him to eat the stinking food, he gets mad and then starts to eat by eating really fast, just shoveling it into his mouth and making little snarling noises while he does it. It's ridiculous! Afterwords I tell him to freaking grow up... Man.... He is so self centered, he doesn't care about anything other than his own well-being, he didn't even want to watch Conference, he wanted to stay home and sleep.... It's weighing heavily upon me, I wouldn't be surprised if I have a few gray hairs by the end of this transfer. I don't know what to do with him, In my e-mails to president he just counsels me to have the spirit more, have more companionship unity, etc. Vague stuff, but interviews are next week so hopefully I can figure something out with him.

Yet all of this grief has kind of been a blessing to me, I look back and this transfer with Elder Lamoure I think has been the transfer where I've grown the most, this transfer I've made more effort to work hard and be obedient than I ever have before on my mission. I have this really cool Book of Mormon study manual and in this one section there's a quote from Hugh Nibley where he talks about how it was a blessing for the Nephites to have the Lamanites always attacking them, it kept them on their toes and reminded them they needed to rely on the Lord more and more. That's how it's kind of been for me this last transfer, with a horrible companion I've definitely been more on the ball with missionary work and have been relying on the Lord much more to get me through this horrible experience. Still though I want to be rid of my companion.

Other than that things are pretty much the same. I'm tired of this area despite being here for only almost 2 transfers now, I'm tired of these rich sub-urbs. I want to go downtown where all the fun is, and where there are no white people. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get transferred. Transfers are in two weeks. General Conference was great, it was a good one and I took good notes, I can't wait for the November Ensign. And do you think that when it comes out you could send me a copy? And a spanish version in the Liahona? Here we get the Ensigns but we only get one copy for the apartment, we have to share and it stays in the apartment so I'd like my own personal copies to mark up. If you could do that when it comes out that'd be swell. Well that's all I got for today. The weather has been great, feels almost like Utah and I've been loving it. So have a good week, I love you all, peace out...

-- Elder Rice

Remachado

September 27, 2010

Hello family...

Well that's quite odd that Frost and Bone ended up in the house. I'll bet that was weird. Well this last week has seen some interesting developments. We got a new investigator on Tuesday, we set a baptismal date and everything, it's a 9 year old girl of a less active family that moved to Katy from Houston a few years ago and they've been hiding under the radar up until now. They decided that they want to come back and get their daughter baptized so we will see what happens with that. They didn't come to church on Sunday on account of having "visitors" over. Things will probably go slow with them. Elder Lamoure is getting better. Last week he was in the vitamin isle in wal-mart and decided to by these "St. John's Wart" pills that supposedly improve ones mood when taken regularly. And it's actually worked, he's been much more pleasant lately, now we just need to work on his laziness.

Thursday was a brutal day. Two days previously as we were coming out of our apartment this old lady in a car asked us if we could help her move out her friend, this 70-something year old man with one leg and Alzheimer's disease. Lived two floors below us and couldn't pay his rent and he was getting evicted from the apartment. We happily agreed and said we set up a time on Thrusday morning at 7:30 to get this guy moved out. We expected the move to take about 2 hours at the most. Well we finished at about 9:45 pm that night. The thing this woman had failed to mention was that they hadn't packed anything. It was ridiculous, this man had a ton of nasty old junk, he's a huge pack rat and he had all sorts of old junk and trinkets that he didn't want to leave behind, and a ton of furniture, like 3 huge glass cabinets full of expensive china, and all of these large dressers, hundreds of old books and papers, this man was a Catholic Priest back in the day and he still had his clerical wardrobe and all the incense, prayer books, and whatnot. We had one member from the local english ward helping us out, his name is Tony and he's 21 and just got back from Iraq. He's way cool, he and his family are Colombians who were originally in our ward but they switched the english ward a few years ago. So we had him and two sets of english elders who jumped back and forth between helping us and their appointments. We made so many phone calls that day, this sort of work is what members are for. But unsurprisingly nobody from our ward, and two english wards could help out except for this one guy. We couldn't just leave them though, this man and his friend, two aged people literally didn't have anyone else to help them. And the whole time the old man drove us nuts, wheeling around on his wheel-chair, complaining, making sure we didn't throw anything away, asking where his prosthetic leg was after we had told him that we had already packed it. The poor guy wasn't all there and we got so tired of him that we came very close to locking him in the bathroom while we packed up all his old nasty junk. The lady had rented a 17 foot U-haul truck. And from this little apartment this guy had it took two trips. His new apartment was actually out of the mission boundaries, it was 20 minutes south of us more towards downtown Houston. We called up the Houston Texas South Mission hoping to get some of the missionaries down there waiting on the other side so they could unload the guy but typically they were all "too busy" and wouldn't get help from their wards either. Except for two elders who had a 30 minute window to help us unload. It was a massive project so we got permission from President Hansen to go down there with our member in the U-Haul truck and unload. So we got down there, and the South elders helped us for about 20 minutes then they had to leave, leaving the three of us to unload this truck by ourselves. It took us a while, we were dead tired and our arms were like noodles but we did it, started on our way back, got stuck in Houston traffic, and finally got back around 6:00, we had left at 2:00. We had planned on the english elders finishing the rest of the packing so that it would all be ready to go by the time we got back. But it was not so, so we got back and packed and the truck was finally all ready to go by 8:00. Obviously we couldn't go unload the second trip because our curfew is 9:30. The best we could do was the give the woman the number of the south missionaries and we dropped the truck off in front of her sister's house who didn't live too far from the new apartments. We were exhausted, that whole day we didn't shower, shave, or even get dressed in proselyting clothes. All we had to eat the whole day was a yogurt for breakfast and a granola bar for lunch. After we had dropped off the truck Tony took us through the drive through of Taco Bell and the three of us gorged ourselves on cheap tacos and burritos. Then he took us home, we showered and went to be, completely exhausted. And ever since then we've had a crappy week, being sore and stiff and generally too tired to do anything, that and all of our investigators bailed out on us. We don't quite get it, an exhausting 14 hour act of charity and our area goes down the drain. You'd think that we'd be more blessed after doing something like that.

Whatever, I hope everything is going good at home. The weather is getting better here, it's starting to cool down. Today it feels almost like Utah outside. Well I'm out of time, I love you all and hope you have a good week.

-- Elder Rice

Atascada

September 20, 2010

Ahoy there family,

This week has been rough, the process of whipping my companion into shape goes slowly. I have to drag him out of bed and out the door everyday. It's been rough, with not a few instances of gnashing of teeth. Though I did get my bike back on Friday so we were no longer on foot which has helped a lot. Other than that not much is going on. Though I think the work is starting to pick up, have some people who we are going to try and set some baptismal dates with this week. We've found some cool new investigators as well. One such person was a media referral we got through the phone and at first we thought it was a joke because he had some crazy name that we weren't entirely sure how to pronounce. We concluded that it must be someone with some indigenous Mayan name or something. Well we found the guy and he's an old man from Colombia but his parents or grandparents immigrated to Colombia from India, hence his bizarre name. He said we could call him 'Salim'. He's way cool though, keenly interested in the Book of Mormon, we gave one to him, talked about it a bit and set up a return appointment for saturday. I hope it goes well.

We also have a possible source of new families to teach. In this one apartment complex there is this Dominican Family in our ward and we go over every now and then to check on Travis, a 12 year old recent convert. The family consists of a single mother and 4 or 5 kids, I'm not sure how many, ranging from ages 4-14. So every time we are over there, the apartment is just full of the kids and they're friends just coming and going. Now Travis has an incredibly short attention span so most of our new member lessons with him are these cool little games and object lessons. The past couple times all of the kids friends have sat in on the lesson and have been amazed by the stupid little magic tricks we do to demonstrate gospel principles. In fact some of the older children, who are 10, 11, 12, etc. Showed up to the Fiesta de Patrias we had a couple weeks ago and have been asking their parents if they could go to church with this family. And they have, we've had a couple of these kids friends come with them to church the past couple weeks, it's amazing. I never would have guessed that children of such young age would even have the slightest interest in the church. What we're banking on is to start teaching these kids' families if we can get this family to start inviting their friends over for our little visits. It will be sweet. The problem is that we are almost out of ideas for stupid little games and magic tricks. From my time in the mission I've learned a few from my many companions, we have about 5 really cool little tricks/games that demonstrate gospel principles really well. But we're almost out of them. So I need ideas, in fact I've seen some book called "The Missionaries' little Book of Object Lessons" that some missionary had. So I was wondering if you all could find that book, or something like it, some little book full of cool little things you can do with common household items and send it to me, 'twould be much appreciated. Also send some postage stamps with it if you could. I'm completely out.

And, uh... Yeah. That's just about all I got to say this week. This area is really boring, all suburbs, and nothing really epic or crazy happens. Oh and mom I've started working on some letters, but as I said I need stamps if they are to go anywhere anytime soon. Oh and I got the package, turns out it did arrive on the 3rd it's just that the apartment office didn't notify me or the little package slip they put in our mail was lost or something but I got it. Thanks, it was really sweet. Okay I'm done now, I hope you all recover and have a good week. Peace out...

-- Elder Rice

Inquieta

September 13, 2010

Hello FAm...

This has been a rather stressful week. My bike is still broken so we walked everywhere, we went by every member in our area to see if they or anyone they knew, knew how to fix bikes. They all had their own theories and all of them tried but none of them could, I myself have spent hours on it, and nothing has come of it. So I gave up and today we went by the local bike shop and dropped off to be fixed. Knowing how bike shops are it'll probably cost me an arm and a leg but whatever, I don't care anymore. They said they'd have it done by Thursday so we're not through walking yet.

My new companion, Elder Lamoure, is an interesting fellow. He started his mission in the Dominican Republic and after being there for three months, got seriously ill and was sent home. Apparently the local diet got him, they eat nothing but rice over there and he entered the mission weighing 255 lbs, all the rice plugged him up and he couldn't use the bathroom for a month, and in that same month he lost 70 lbs. He's not sure where it all went seeing that he couldn't poop for a month but it went somewhere. He was at home another three months recovering then he was reassigned to this mission. He's not quite over whatever happened to him over there, he can't eat rice, bananas, or pasta, and only has to poop twice or three times a week. He's been in this mission for 4 months, so he has 7 months total as a missionary. So he's still pretty new and his spanish isn't good at all, I've been pretty much teaching by myself this last week and he's just been following me around. I try to get him to do something but he generally has a very negative attitude about... everything, I've felt the temptation on multiple occasions to tell him to suck it up and get his act together... This transfer is looking to be a challenge, hopefully things will go better this week, last week was a little rough but we're a little better off now.

So in addition to walking everywhere and not teaching too many people our ward had it's "Fiesta de Patrias" saturday night. It was cool, it was a good turn out and lots of potential investigators came. It's basically just a party in which everyone brings food, clothes, and dances from their native countries and shows them off to everyone else. It was great, there was so much food, I got to try all sorts of weird things from all sorts of weird countries. We had Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Peru, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. I took lots of pictures as you can see. There was this really bizarre dance performed by the Bishop and his wife, some Venezuelan thing where he hopped around like a monkey beating his stick on the ground while holding a rope that was tied around his wife while she stumbled around pretending to be a donkey or something. It was one of the most odd things I've ever seen in my life, and we weren't alone the whole ward was like: "What the freak...?" The bishop and his wife are the only Venezuelans so the rest of us didn't seem to get it.

Oh and that's way weird that Alyssa ran into Frost and Bone, very weird...

Okay so the pictures are of the area and me with the bike. Myself and Elder Rupp with the two english elders we live with, Elder Gustafson and Elder Miller, and the others are of the Fiesta de Patrias. I still haven't gotten the package, we'll swing by the apartment office tomorrow and see what they say. If not then I don't know, I don't really care about too much right now, mostly just trying to stay awake and getting my companion out the door. Okay, that's all for this week. Hopefully next week's e-mail will have better news, and sorry mom I haven't had anytime to write any letters, hopefully I can start some soon though. Adios.