Sangargarinconado

February 14th 2011

Hello family..,

Well this week was horribly cold, again. Like 30 degrees once more for a few days, actually I guess it wasn't too bad because we did go to the Temple on Tuesday but other than that it was not a good week. It came to a final and brilliant climax of epic on Sunday (this seems to happen a lot, I wonder if there is a pattern here). Not a single investigator came to church, we were doing our usual sunday morning round up and even though it wasn't raining and the weather was reasonable nobody wanted to get up to come to church. We even had two people who when we stopped by were getting ready to go to church and yet they never showed up. Not very many members came either. The gospel principles teacher didn't come (which is odd because she's the bishop's wife, she's usually always there) so it was up to us to teach the lesson. There were like 4 people in gospel principles, four people other than us 7 missionaries I might add. It was probably just as well that nobody came because we were woefully un-prepared, and it was a dumb topic anyway, about the the scattering and gathering of Israel, something completely unimportant to investigators and new members.

Well after church we decided to swing by Minerva and Dianna, they didn't make it to church for some mysterious reason. We went to see if they were okay and to remind about a youth fireside that night. We go in there and they were a little bit more cold than usual, it was weird, and then we found out why when they started demanding that we show them where in the Bible it says that Sunday is the Sabbath Day. Apparently the day before they had some neighborhood friends over who just happened to be the 7th Day Adventists who filled them full of lies and false doctrine. Well we clearly and calmly explained to them that under the Apostolic Ministry the sabbath was changed to Sunday in honor of Christ's resurrection, for he was resurrected on the 1st day of the week. We told them that we know this through modern revelation that we get through modern prophets and there really isn't much convincing evidence in the bible that it was changed (there's like two rather vauge verses that mention breaking bread on the 1st day of the week and the saints collecting on the 1st day of the week, I've used them before when talking with the Adventists but they just don't work all that great). So even after we carefully explained all of this that we know this because we get our doctrine straight from God and not so much from the Bible, they still weren't very pleased, and they wanted us to leave them the scripture references so they could show them to these "friends" of theirs. We didn't, the last thing we want is our new members with their delicate new testimonies trying to bash with people from another church. They were so put out by this that they didn't want to go the Family History Center and enter in the information for Minerva's mother who she was planning to get baptized for. The youth and all of the recent converts of our ward are going to the Temple on Thursday to do baptisms for the dead and we want Minvera and Dianna's first experience to be very personal being baptized for their deceased family. It was quite frustrating and disheartening, luckily we managed to coax them into going on Wednesday to the Family History Center and do it. I just hope that they can still do it the day before, I'm not sure how the system works. We're really quite worried for them, but we figure if we can just get them to the Temple they'll have an epic experience there and that they'd never give in to the lies of their "friends". Man, the 7th Day Adventists are the worst, they're far worse than the J-Dubs, it's easy to prove with the Bible that Jehovah and Christ are the same person but there really just isn't too much proof in there that Sunday is now the sabbath day.

So we drove away feeling rather down, we went to the house to go eat and do studies, well as we got there we noticed this thug out in the street limping down the road toward our house. His neck and chest was drenched in blood, and we thought about pulling over and asking him if he was okay, well right in front of our house, or rather the Ayala's house with whom we live. There was a truck in the middle of the street blocking the road, we parked in our usual daytime parking spot on this patch of grass in front of our house but a little ways back, we were about to jump out and ask the guy if he was okay, when he stomped up the truck, yelling and screaming, this other guy came out of the neighbour's house with his 2 year old toddler in his arms, shaking his fist, yelling and screaming, and there were like three guys in the truck all yelling and screaming. Well they all converge on the truck and the guy who had come down the street rips one of the doors open and tries to get into the truck, while the guy inside, who we noticed had a hole in his head and just blood everywhere, started fighting him. They're all hispanics by the way. And then the guy with the kid jumps into this fight too and we were like: "Oh my gosh, at least put the kid down you idiot!" But no, he jumped right in there while his kid started crying. It was at this point that we decided that this probably wasn't the best place to be at the moment. Now we have this rule that when you're backing up your companion has to be out of the car and making sure you don't run into anything. We decided to disobey that rule, and I started backing out but I stopped when I realied that we were starting to back into the deep ditch on the side of the road behind our patch of grass (every road in Texas has a deep ditch on either side). So our only escape was forward and there was a truck with this brawl going on in the way. So we sat there and watched for a minute, the other neighbors were already outside on the phone with the cops so we just watched. There's something just very disturbing and unsettling about watching human beings trying to tear each other to pieces, and the poor kid just terrified out of his poor little brain right in the middle of it all. Well the guys inside the car succeeded in ejecting the thug with the blood all over his chest out of the car, and they close the door and started to drive away, but he jumped into the bed of the truck and we watched them drive off while he tried to bust in the windows with his fist, they started swerving all over the road trying to throw him off. They turned a corner and went out of site, while the guy with the kid just walked after them shaking his fist and screaming some more. We decided that we probably ought to leave and go visit some people or something and come back for lunch and studies later. We drove away and when we came back a half our later the cops were just all over the place, search helicopter flying low and circling the area, when we turned onto the road like 6 police cars just booked it out of there sirens going and everything, spreading out and looking for them. Now with the street completely deserted except for us and a few groups of inquisitive neighbors - we decided to parked and go in. During our studies some of the cops came back and pulled up in front of our house and started talking to the neighbors, Elder Green suggested that it was our 'civic duty to report what we had witnessed' and that we go out and talk to the cops. I frankly disagreed and told him it was best that we don't get involved, he protested but I made him stay in the apartment.

The rest of the day was a rather fruitless, nobody was home, or rather, wouldn't open their doors when we knocked on them. But it ended well, we got two new investigators from Guatemala who remembered being taught by missionaries many years ago in their country, and we stopped by a less active family who just happened to be having a big carne asada so we finished the night by stuffing ourselves with fajita. So not a bad end to the week I guess.

Well that's all, I hope you all have a good week and... yeah. Peace out

-- Elder Rice