Abarisia

June 28, 2010


Hello family.

Sounds like y'all had a good week, boating and sushi and whatnot. Well for us this last week hasn't been that stellar. We still don't have any investigators since Carlos was baptized so we've been tracting and tracting and tracting. It's been especially difficult lately because of the World Cup. The vast majority of hispanic men are addicted to watching soccer. And for them it's an excuse to throw a party. Basically it's like having a super bowl sunday every day, two or three times a day. They all get together and while the men watch soccer all the women gossip and make food and the children run around and eat. In such an environment nobody has any particular interest in the gospel. But now that Mexico got knocked out we might have a bit more success in talking to people. Since this new transfer has started we've had yet to get more than 10 lessons a week. Which is really low, even for english Elders. There are about 5 neighborhoods in our area that have significant hispanic populations and we've knocked every door in 4 of the 5. This week we will finish number 5 and then who knows what we will do after that, probably look around some more for hispanic areas.

We aren't getting much from the few members we have in our area, but perhaps we need to hit them harder with the whole "give us referrals" thing. Though we did find a "under the radar" family. Meaning inactive members that nobody knows about. They actually found us. We were just walking one day when this car drove past us, stopped, two mexicans jumped out and said "Hey Elders! Where's the chapel around here?" We were pretty surprised, firstly because few hispanic members actually call missionaries "Elders", very very few actually use that. Most of the time we're the "Hermanos" or the brothers of the church. So we went to their house and gave them a little map and shared a lesson with them. They've been inactive for a long time and they moved here to Magnolia a couple weeks ago and have been feeling the need to go back to church. So that was pretty cool, it's another family for the tiny branch here and it'll help the branch out a lot.

Other than that not much has been going on, more crazy white people (we had a guy tell us that God's purpose for him was to kill black people), more close calls with nasty dogs, we were just walking down the street when this dog comes out of nowhere snarling and very nearly got Elder Manship, he jumped out of the way in the nick of time and I started yelling at the Dog and advanced aggressively toward it, it tried to lunge a few times but I kicked at it, my foot never actually made contact with it but we managed to drive it away. I hate dogs, I've been wanting to kick one for a long time now. Everybody out here has nasty dogs and gates and fences full of signs saying that trespassers will be shot. Tracting is a tricky business out here, we have to be very selective in the doors we knock, many trailers are situated as such that you have to walk a good 50 feet or so within their property just to get to their front door, and their properties are usually full of dogs. Most people here, even the hispanics are pretty unfriendly. I'm not sure why, though if I lived in the middle of nowhere and had nothing to do I would probably be very unfriendly as well. And we're never sure if people actually would shoot us or not. Bahhh.... Whatever. It won't be forever, I hope...

And Mom I think I can get you that recipe. We're having a family home evening tonight in the house of some members (from El Salvador) and the mom, Hna. Flores is an expert pupusa maker. She has a small business in which she makes pupusas and other kinds of food for people. Her pupusas are really good and I know exactly which salsa you are talking about. Interestingly enough that salsa is not something that they use in El Salvador, she told us that it's actually a mexican salsa that somebody discovered went very well on pupusas. I will ask her tonight what it's made of and how to make it and I can e-mail it to you next monday. Okay that's all for this week, have a good week I'm looking forward to that package.

-- Elder Rice