Fam:
I didn't get to e-mail yesterday because it was Memorial day. And we have very little time today, we went to the Temple today so we have to squeeze in e-mail time before our appointments.
To be entirely honest this last week sucked hardcore. We tracted like every day from noon till nine and we were constantly rejected. The very few appointments that we had fell through and persecution was coming at us from left and right. We had one guy tell us to our faces that we were wolves in sheep's clothing, some stupid teenagers kept bugging us the entire day constantly driving up and offering us money if we drank their beer for them, we went to an appointment with a member only to be chased off the property by some rather disgruntled men, who told us nobody was home and to go away (when we knew very well that our investigator was inside). It got old fast. One of the only high lights of the week was finding King David.
We were tracting and the street we were on was all white people and we were looking in vain for hispanics when we see an orange trailer with serapes (brightly colored poncho like things made of wool) in the windows, chickens and dogs all over the yard and even a donkey tethered up in front of the house. We were like, sweet there has to be hispanics living here. We stepped into the yard and the dogs started barking and the donkey came up to us and we petted it until the door opened. It was a huge 300 pound guy wearing this tiny pair of shorts, with a huge white beard and nasty curly dreadlocks down his back. He was actually pretty friendly, after yelling at his dogs he sat down on the steps in front of the door and we talked with him for a while. It was hilarious, he's genuinely insane. He said his name was David, King David, the same David who slew Goliath and he was born about 3000 years ago and that Donkey was the very same one that Christ rode into Jerusalem on, and that he is a prophet. I actually enjoyed talking to him, he knew lots of stuff, we talked about the Knights Templar, the Apocrypha, and other stuff but Elder Frost, ever the stick in the mud decided we were wasting our time and so he tried to teach him a quick principle. He started talking about the apostasy and he told him that in between the time of the apostles and Joseph Smith (this guy already knew the whole mormonism thing), there were no prophets and no authority. And then David said: "You don't know that! There could have been prophets here in the ancient americas during that time!" We were like... wow... That's right, have you heard of the Book of Mormon? He told us that he read it but we quickly figured out he hadn't and yeah... He's insane.
I have to move quickly now. On monday I got a haircut. I was tired of missionary given haircuts, they don't look very good so I'd thought I'd try to get a professional one. It cost me $15 and it was the worst hair cut I've ever had. It was a legit place, the lady had a diploma from some cosmetology school and everything yet when I examined my hair later that day we concluded that she must have been drunk or something. My neck line was a hideous curve and I had a step on the front of my head as my bangs were about a 1/6th of an inch shorter than the hair right behind it higher up on my head. I was horrified, mostly at the fact that I spent $15 on it. Correcting it would be tricky so I just decided to shave my head, that'd be easier. I used a 2 on my clippers and buzzed everything, Elder frost did my neck and back of the head for me. Now it's all symmetrical but I look really ugly, though I kind of like the skin head look. You can see it in the picture of me and Elder Lemly, who actually was in Provo High school with me, though I never knew him. He was in ROTC and did the whole military thing so he's always had a buzzed head. A couple days later we did exchanges in our district and Elder Lemly and I switched areas for a day and none of the hispanics even suspected that we were different people.
The other pictures are of some service we did. We have this one family that we're trying to teach and they always make up excuses so we can't teach them. It's the same family that I wrote about last week
. We decided we'd go and clean up their huge filthy yard. We showed up one saturday morning with trash bags and we started picking up trash. Then we discovered that they're septic tank (hole in the ground where the waste from the trailer goes) was almost overflowing and the lady said it was because the sewage people wouldn't empty it because there was this huge chunk of concrete in there. So we moved it out, I actually wasn't there for that, we were still on exchanges and Elder Parker and I arrived just as they finished pulling it out. The smell was horrible, then we discovered that the garbage man does not come around this neighbourhood and if you wanted your trash taken away you either had to pay a ridiculous amount of money to a trash company or take it to the dump yourself. The nearest dump is in Conroe, 15 miles away. She told us that they usually burn their trash. So we burned the trash, we felt just like real missionaries because all the missionaries in 3rd countries burn trash. Unbeknowngst to us Elder Lewis, one of the english elders who was helping us (who's a brand new missionary) had put an old spary paint can in his garbage bag. Luckily we weren't too close when the resulting explosion shook the family's nasty trailer and we all felt the hot wave of air hit us and push us back a bit. There were no debries nor flying shards of metal luckily.
Okay that's about everything interesting that happened this week, we're out of time and we've got to go, peace out I love you all.
-- Elder Rice
