Howdy Family.
This last week was rather busy. We've been mostly tracting and talking to every single person we see, lots of work. Yesterday our investigator, Carlos, had his baptismal interview, and he will get baptized next sunday. It's exciting, I haven't had a baptism since November. We have two other people who are progressing so things are going just swell. Though two days ago we nearly lost Carlos because he almost got deported. In his car the dial on the speedometer doesn't work (fairly typical of hsipancs). So he didn't know how fast he was going. He was on his way to the church where we were going to meet him and have a lesson. Well he was in a 20 mph zone going 40 when a cop got him and pulled him over in the church parking lot. And unsurprisingly Carlos does not have a license, not being a citizen. And the cop could have easily called immigration and that would have been the end of Carlos. Luckily this was not the case, the cop was actually an hispanic (so they understood each other perfectly) and gave him a ticket for nothing more than speeding but was going to tow his car unless someone showed up in the next 15 minutes with a driver's license. The cop told Carlos that he could call someone and if they could get here soon enough he could put the car under the responsibility of someone else and he wouldn't have to tow it. So on our way to the church we got a call from Carlos where told us what had happened, he didn't tell us about the part with towing and the license and whatever. We got there and jumped out of the car and walked over to where Carlos was in his car, the cop who was in his car doing whatever it is they do in there, pointed at us out the window and told us to get back. I did and had to beckon my companion back to our car. My companion doesn't have a lot of common sense in these matters, this is going off on a tangent but we were tracting the other day and we go this trailer with a chain link fence around it with 'BEWARE OF DOG' signs all over it. He was about to open the gate and walk in but I stopped him and told him to shake the fence. He did and two rather large dogs came out of nowhere barking. He seemed very surprised and thanked me for saving him. Interesting that my companion, who's been on his mission for 23 months now, and especially one who likes to tract a lot. Had never done that before. He's very oblivious to 'NO TRESSPASSING' signs and other things of that nature, his catch-phrase is 'God will protect us!' He's probably going to get us killed one of these days or arrested onf of these days so I shall have to step up in 'not being stupid'.
Where was I?.... Oh yeah so after 5 minutes or so the cop beckoned us back over and he told us what had happened and asked who Carlos had called, which was my companion, and to make a long story short he signed Carlos' car to Elder Frost who was now responsible if something happened in the next 24 hours. Meaning that if Carlos wrecked or hit someone on the way back home it would be on Elder Frost's head. Yup... I'm glad I was driving and it wasn't my phone day. Nothing happened but it would have been hard to go through the rest of the day with that on your mind.
But we had a great lesson with Carlos after that and he will get baptized next sunday. That's about everything interesting that happened this week. The pictures attached are of me making tortillas and me sitting on the roof of Hno. Bonilla's house (less active member) teaching him and his cousin, Javier (one of our investigators). We had just dropped by to see if Javier was around and he was up on the roof working on it, so we climbed up and helped him for a while then Hno. Bonilla arrived later and after we worked on the roof for a little bit we sat down and had a lesson.
We were making tortillas because my companion, is one of those super hard working, super obedient, and tries really hard to be super mexican. Last week he bought some tortilla flour from Wal-Mart and wanted to make tortillas. I had finished my lunch and was reading when we calls and asks me if I know anything about cooking because he needed some help. He succeeded in making dough out of the flour and getting the general procedure down but his tortillas were turning out as misshapen lumps of pita bread, and it was literally pita bread, thick and kind of hard. So I showed him to work the dough, get the flour in your fingers, get it nice and thin and in a general round shape and not to let it sit on the cooking pan so long. Now I have never made tortillas before but I knew how to work with dough (thanks mom!) and I had a general idea of what they should look like. And they were turning out pretty good, I wish I had picture of them but I made some decent tortillas, my companion thought it was so amazing that he went and found my camera and started of taking pictures. You'd be suprised how many missionaries don't know how to cook.
Well that's all I got for today. Mom I will send an email to you right after this one with the 5 pictures I have in mind. Okay, love you all, peace out.
-- Elder Rice
