Churasco

April 18, 2011

Hello family,

Well, again not too much to report this week. It was slightly better than last week, we've found some more people now and we have more people to teach. We'll see where they go. And....... yeah...

So my tiredness is still prevailing, on exchanges with Elder Armstrong we were visiting a member, it was his birthday that day and he's old and blind, his family was outside preparing a surprise party for him so they wanted us to go inside and stall him. We were supposed to stall him until they got the fajitas cooked on the grill. So we sat there and talked with him, shared a scripture, and I was really tired and went out instantly. Which was perfectly fine since this Hno. is blind and didn't notice. Armstrong informs me that I was asleep for 20 minutes, and he was getting pretty sleepy too so he was about to wake me up and then we would switch off and he would sleep while I carried on the conversation with this Hno. Actually it was funny that I fell asleep first because Elder Armstrong is probably the most torpid person ever, he always falls asleep. He even fell asleep standing up once. Well one of the kids got home from school and that woke me up, and then we sat there for another half hour or so talking to him, or rather listening to him talk. Finally they motioned to us that the party outside was ready and his daughter led him out and it was a surprise and we stuffed ourselves with fajita. It's been kind of weird actually, this months seems to be fajita month because for the past couple weeks everyone has been feeding us fajita. Which is great, of course that's not good for our health.

Since I got to this area in December I've gained about 10 lbs. We have 6-7 fixed dinner appointments every week, we get almost no exercise and the consequences are starting to show. Since gyms are banned, and our apartment is tiny, and our neighbourhood is not one you'd want to go out running in, early in the morning for fear of getting mugged, we've started going to the chapel every morning and running around in the gym. It's stupid but better than nothing.

So today is day 5 without hot water. It hasn't been fun at all, showering with cold water. We're starting to feel like real missionaries, missionaries that serve in 3rd world countries and live with things like this. Also the dryer hasn't been working for the last month so every P-Day we just hang dry everything in our apartment. Now the members we live are unaffected by the water, they have a separate water heater for their house, and the non-functioning dryer doesn't phase them, they said they'll get a new one eventually. Today the people are supposed to come and fix the water heater or whatever is wrong with it. We think it might just be the lack of gas for the water heater since the stove doesn't work either, there is no gas running to anything. So yeah... We're almost the point of real missionaries now.

One more amusing anecdote them I'm done. So on that same exchange with Armstrong we were in a McDonald's working on the weekly progress report for our meeting that night with the ward mission leader. He's supposed to take the same progress report to PEC the next day on Sunday, but he rarely goes to PEC, he never wakes up in time, he barely makes it to church on time. So we were in McDonald's sitting there and filling this thing out, when this black guy, who was behaving rather oddly, as though he was trying really hard to not be noticeable comes up to us holding two spray bottles, they were name brand cleaning chemicals for car interiors. Well he comes up and starts talking to Armstrong, I didn't hear a single word he said and if I could have heard what he said it's doubtful that I would have understood any of it. It looked like at first that he was asking us to move so he could clean the tables, but he was dressed in civilian clothes, he didn't look like he worked there, then he puts the bottles down on the table right in front Armstrong and sits down across from him, still talking the whole time, and miraculously produces 5 or 6 more of these same bottles from within his pants! I was impressed, he was able to smuggle in like 6 of these thing in his pants without looking like he had them! Then again, most black dudes around here wear such baggy clothes that they could hide all sorts of things in there. Well it was apparent that he was trying to sell us these chemicals (I don't think you can do that in another business establishment). Armstrong, being the mellow soul that he is just kind of sat there looking like he was about to say something. It was about then that the genes I inherited from Dad kicked in and I told the guy rather brusquely that we were not interested and to go away. I would have done it sooner but the revealing of all the spray bottles that he smuggled into there in his pants was impressive enough that I was kind of speechless.

Yeah, so that's pretty much all that's happened this week. I love you all and hope you have a good week. Peace out

-- Elder Rice