September, 17, 2009
Howdy y'all.
So..... Not much to say this time. Not a lot happens that much anymore. Actually something amazing did happen. On Tuesday Elder Holland and his wife came and spoke to us. It was epic. Elder Holland is brutal, he totally destroyed us, waving his hands around and just bringing down the hammer on us. It was great, I could have sat there forever and listened to him screaming in my face. The gist of it all was that we had better not waste a single moment of our mission, not a single moment, he told us that we will regret wasting our time on our missions because we only we get to do this once. Well once as young missionaries anyway, it's probably not quite the same for senior missionaries. In fact, here at the MTC the senior missionaries get like an hour or two of nap time after lunch. I wish we had nap time, we need it more than they do. So yeah, it was epic. We were hoping for something, since we heard that President Monson was speaking at BYU for the devotional on Tuesday so we hoped that he'd just come across the street and speak to us that night. We weren't disappointed though, we got Elder Holland, he's brutal.
Speaking of nap times, yeah it's hard for me to sleep. But I sleep a lot better now, not only cause of the medication but probably because I'm finally used to the stupid mattress and cheap blankets, that and by the end of every day I'm exhausted just from doing what we usually do. Perhaps I'm working hard, which is what we should be doing.
Spanish is still coming along. It doesn’t feel like I've learned much but when I look back and when I'm teaching a lesson I realize how much I know, which still isn't much but huge compared to what I knew before. Yeah..... It's good....
Oh okay, I got something else to talk about. On Monday Elder Wood was wounded playing basketball, someone stepped on his foot or something while he turned or something and he got a real nasty sprained ankle. It's kinda funny, he's like 6'5, the tallest guy on the court and somebody steps on him? Harhar. He couldn't walk on it, so he spent two days on crutches and one day on a single crutch and today he doesn't need any and he limps along just fine. He recovered quickly but those first few days were miserable not only for him but for me as well. He was virtually helpless so I had to help him do everything short of helping him change his clothes and using the bathroom. I also had to wrap and unwrap his foot a lot. Which I dreaded the most, I think I mentioned before that Elder Wood has the nastiest smelling feet on the face of the planet. So yeah...... I should get a medal or something, I'm good enough to be a battlefield surgeon by now. Elder Wood still thinks I'm nuts, that other day when we got that nice thunderstorm, much to his displeasure I went outside in the pouring rain and ran around in circles roaring with delight. Cause I just love thunderstorms and rain, I'll probably be sick of rain by the end of my mission but out here in the wastes of Utah I love them, so yeah.
Anyway, that's pretty much all I have to say. And I only have like 3 weeks left.... pretty scary.... I'm actually eager to get out to field though, I'm tired of rotting in this prison, I want to teach actual people rather than volunteers pretending they are investigadores. Sooooo...... yeah. That's all I have to say for now. Oh I started another epic letter to answer all your questions and whatnot so if you have questions and stuff for me, send them now.
--Elder Rice
Frayed Ends of Sanity
Dear Family
How goeth normal life? It's probably pretty intense, I would guess. Life here is like that movie with Bill Murray where he re-lives the same day over and over again. What's it called? Like Ground-hog day or something? Anyway, that's pretty much what living here is like living the same day over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over again. I could hardly believe that I've been here like a month now and that we have a bit less than a month before we're deployed to the front lines.
I kinda want to get out there already, the MTC is boring. I feel like I could teach pretty good but I don't quite know enough spanish. I'm pretty good but it takes me a minute or two to process what people are saying, so in our mock discussions with "investigators" I hear and understand most of their words but it'll take me a minute to figure out just what it was that they were saying. And sometimes they talk so fast that I don't have time to think about what they were saying. I'll get it eventually, besides, I'll have to re-learn everything out in the field, because the native speakers probably sound a lot different than our computer programs and return missionary teachers. Though I'm getting it, my writing is really screwed up and I starting writing things with Spanish spellings and whatnot, so don't be surprised if my spellings come out a little funny. I did that the other day when in the RC I was telling some guy over a chat what prophets were and I unknowingly typed 'profetas'.
I really don't have a lot to say today, not a lot has happened, or least not that I remember, when you relive the same day over and over and over and over again there's not really a lot that sticks out. Ah, wait, okay. 2 days ago on Tuesday for the devotional we had Elder Richard Hinckley and his wife speak to us. Remember when he spoke to us a few years ago for stake conference? He's still really funny and he shared the same story about the English guy and the whatever church it was that he was a part of and how political their church is etc, etc, etc. So yeah that was pretty cool.
I don't have any funny stories but I will tell some things or some hilarity. Our district is rather terrible when it comes to singing. Of the 10 of us there are about 3 (not including myself) who know how to sing and the rest of us suck real bad. So whenever we sing a hymn it's pretty painful. In the TEC which stands for something about teaching, they have workshops for entire districts with other teachers. There are language workshops, study workshops, planning workshops, and many more but much to the disappointment of our district leader there is no workshop for music. So yeah, we're pretty terrible. One of our teachers, Hermano Hanson was telling us that it was a good idea to sing at the start of a lesson with an investigator. Elder Wood wanted to do that the next time we were in the TEC and having another mock discussion with a teacher playing as an investigator. I expressed my thoughts that it wasn't a good idea, but we ended up doing it anyway, we picked a rather easy song, 'Families can be together forever'. And it was horrible, just like I thought it was gonna be. I actually don't think I sound that bad but I can't read music so I ended up singing the first part along to the chorus while Elder Wood, well I told you about Elder wood's voice, that and he sung very very very quiet. I won't go into the details but it sufficeth me to say that we won't be doing that again any time soon. So yeah, we suck. We're in trouble when it comes to our last week and our district will have to a special musical number in our Zone sacrament meeting.
It suddenly occurred to me that school started again. I didn't realize that till just now, I also just remembered that Austin is starting middle school. Well Austin, I'm gonna tell you straight up that those two years at Dixon were probably the worst two years of my entire life. Middle school sucks, everyone is a jerk and you have no idea what is going on and nor do you know why everyone is mean or so stupid all the time. My advice for you would be to take advantage of your large size and be all intimidating, you're pretty easy to walk all over, so be brutal and don't let anyone try to push you around. Just stand up straight and stare at them with a scary expression on your face that says "I'm going to Kill you." But don't actually get in a fight, that would be bad.
Hmmm..... I've got five minutes left, nothing much to say. Aidan you sound like your doing really good in flag football, crush your enemies, show them no mercy. Any it Sounds like fun, and your birthday too, but the lego clock sounded lame.
Well yeah, thanks for the stuff, oh and by the way you'll get a bill concerning some medical stuff, that's just for some medication to help me sleep, I don't sleep good at all here in these musty dank rooms. So that's what that is, shouldn't be too much. So yeah, that's pretty much all I have to say. Oh wait! Dad when you get around to sending me another letter please include the dialog for the brain sucking joke thing. I love you all.
-Elder Rice
How goeth normal life? It's probably pretty intense, I would guess. Life here is like that movie with Bill Murray where he re-lives the same day over and over again. What's it called? Like Ground-hog day or something? Anyway, that's pretty much what living here is like living the same day over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over again. I could hardly believe that I've been here like a month now and that we have a bit less than a month before we're deployed to the front lines.
I kinda want to get out there already, the MTC is boring. I feel like I could teach pretty good but I don't quite know enough spanish. I'm pretty good but it takes me a minute or two to process what people are saying, so in our mock discussions with "investigators" I hear and understand most of their words but it'll take me a minute to figure out just what it was that they were saying. And sometimes they talk so fast that I don't have time to think about what they were saying. I'll get it eventually, besides, I'll have to re-learn everything out in the field, because the native speakers probably sound a lot different than our computer programs and return missionary teachers. Though I'm getting it, my writing is really screwed up and I starting writing things with Spanish spellings and whatnot, so don't be surprised if my spellings come out a little funny. I did that the other day when in the RC I was telling some guy over a chat what prophets were and I unknowingly typed 'profetas'.
I really don't have a lot to say today, not a lot has happened, or least not that I remember, when you relive the same day over and over and over and over again there's not really a lot that sticks out. Ah, wait, okay. 2 days ago on Tuesday for the devotional we had Elder Richard Hinckley and his wife speak to us. Remember when he spoke to us a few years ago for stake conference? He's still really funny and he shared the same story about the English guy and the whatever church it was that he was a part of and how political their church is etc, etc, etc. So yeah that was pretty cool.
I don't have any funny stories but I will tell some things or some hilarity. Our district is rather terrible when it comes to singing. Of the 10 of us there are about 3 (not including myself) who know how to sing and the rest of us suck real bad. So whenever we sing a hymn it's pretty painful. In the TEC which stands for something about teaching, they have workshops for entire districts with other teachers. There are language workshops, study workshops, planning workshops, and many more but much to the disappointment of our district leader there is no workshop for music. So yeah, we're pretty terrible. One of our teachers, Hermano Hanson was telling us that it was a good idea to sing at the start of a lesson with an investigator. Elder Wood wanted to do that the next time we were in the TEC and having another mock discussion with a teacher playing as an investigator. I expressed my thoughts that it wasn't a good idea, but we ended up doing it anyway, we picked a rather easy song, 'Families can be together forever'. And it was horrible, just like I thought it was gonna be. I actually don't think I sound that bad but I can't read music so I ended up singing the first part along to the chorus while Elder Wood, well I told you about Elder wood's voice, that and he sung very very very quiet. I won't go into the details but it sufficeth me to say that we won't be doing that again any time soon. So yeah, we suck. We're in trouble when it comes to our last week and our district will have to a special musical number in our Zone sacrament meeting.
It suddenly occurred to me that school started again. I didn't realize that till just now, I also just remembered that Austin is starting middle school. Well Austin, I'm gonna tell you straight up that those two years at Dixon were probably the worst two years of my entire life. Middle school sucks, everyone is a jerk and you have no idea what is going on and nor do you know why everyone is mean or so stupid all the time. My advice for you would be to take advantage of your large size and be all intimidating, you're pretty easy to walk all over, so be brutal and don't let anyone try to push you around. Just stand up straight and stare at them with a scary expression on your face that says "I'm going to Kill you." But don't actually get in a fight, that would be bad.
Hmmm..... I've got five minutes left, nothing much to say. Aidan you sound like your doing really good in flag football, crush your enemies, show them no mercy. Any it Sounds like fun, and your birthday too, but the lego clock sounded lame.
Well yeah, thanks for the stuff, oh and by the way you'll get a bill concerning some medical stuff, that's just for some medication to help me sleep, I don't sleep good at all here in these musty dank rooms. So that's what that is, shouldn't be too much. So yeah, that's pretty much all I have to say. Oh wait! Dad when you get around to sending me another letter please include the dialog for the brain sucking joke thing. I love you all.
-Elder Rice
Skeletons of Society
Family.
How goeth life in the secular world? Time doesn't pass, at all here in the MTC, there are no clocks or calendars, so we pretty much have to rely on our internal clocks and the odd watch here and there. And whats with that smoke and stuff in the sky? We assume there is a fire about, but they won't tell us what goes on in the world outside of the MTC. There could be some huge school shooting at BYU and they wouldn't tell us about it.
So.... For once I don't have all that much to say. Nothing all that remarkable has happened, my Spanish is getting better. Now I can generally get the main point of what I'm trying to say across and I can communicate basic ideas and stuff, I still have trouble with conjugation of verbs and whatnot though. Spanish pretty much has no rules and there a bunch of random aspects that don't make much sense at all, you just kinda have to roll with it.
Okay, here's an amusing story. So last week the other Elders in our room, Allbee and Manship, dismantled their bunk bed and put them both on the floor and then we started hanging sheets from the ceiling and we got rather carried away with it. So it was a pretty much a reconstruction of the old Israelite Tabernacle with the different rooms separated by hanging sheets and whatnot. It was pretty funny. Every Friday there is a room check where the custodial staff goes into our rooms, checks them out, and leaves behind a slip of paper saying how well we did. We've pretty much failed it every time, they have a checklist of things that should and should not be done. Like locking the door and leaving the lights off. They have a few random ones like "don't remove the window caulking" and "don't remove the side bed post thing." We haven't yet done this, but we're determined to get a perfect 0 on our room check one of these days, it will be epic.
Unfortunately this all had to go back up, on Sunday we had a couple districts from our Zone leaving. And when such an event occurs we do what I call foolish traditions of our fathers. Every Sunday we're to stay in our normal proselyting clothes until 10:00 rather than getting rid of them right at 9:30 like we do every other night. I hate it, it's stupid, and I show my defiance by not wearing my tie and un-buttoning my collar. Oh yeah, I am such a rebel. Anyway, then we do this other abominable practice called 'the hug line' in which everyone lines up and one end of the line moves down the other and thus ends up in everyone giving a hug to everyone. I hate that too, I'm not much of a touchy-feely person to start off with but hugging 30 or so sweaty, smelly other Elders is nasty. I want to take a shower after these abominable practice but there isn't enough time after that. And our Branch President comes up into the dorms and wanders around talking to everyone who's leaving. So we were in our room, and we hear that the President is going around to all of the rooms, now we still had all the sheets up and the beds down. So in a manner of seconds we quickly reconstructed our room as it was before. It was fast, it would have impressed those NASCAR teams who change tires during the races. Literally 5 seconds after we finished the President, (who's name is President Dickerson by the way) opened the door and came in and asked us if we were going to participate in the stupid hug line. We said yes, and went out. He didn't see a thing. We are amazing.
Another amusing story. So here in the MTC you can get T-shirts that have various countries at states for the missions in them. They're white, with a picture of the flag in the middle and the state motto or country motto or whatever it is, and information such as languages spoken there, population, how many square miles, etc. So Elder Wood wanted us to get Texas T-shirts. I didn't particularly want one but Elder Wood persisted on the grounds that we ought to love our mission areas, I agreed but said that we don't necessarily need some stupid T-shirts to love our mission area. Never the less I was tired of his prattling so I went in with him to fill out a slip for our T-shirts. But unbeknownst to him I didn't select the Texas shirt, I filled out one for a Sweden shirt, and about a week later we got them and Elder was flabbergasted and somewhat outraged that I had a Sweden T-shirt rather than a Texas one. I laughed, Sweden is el mejor. So now I got myself a sweet Sweden T-Shirt. I think I might get Norway and Austria shirts too.
Ummmmm..... I got 6 minutes, I don't know what else to say. Life here is one really long day punctuated by all too short periods of unconsciousness. The routine has gotten so regular that I barely notice the passage of time. Personal Study Time is my favorite time because I can study, by myself, and not to have to talk to anyone. So yeah.... I'm still alive, but for how long? This food is killing me, hopefully I will send my huge letter to ye'all that I finally completed today, it details some of the effects of the nasty food and I'm sure Aidan and Austin will find it hilarious. Happy birthday Alyssa and Aidan, you finally got a Tablet eh? Oh and the mac, har,. Oh and could you send me some face-wash or something? This hand "soap" as they call it in the bathrooms just ain't cutting it. Peace out.
---Elder Rice
How goeth life in the secular world? Time doesn't pass, at all here in the MTC, there are no clocks or calendars, so we pretty much have to rely on our internal clocks and the odd watch here and there. And whats with that smoke and stuff in the sky? We assume there is a fire about, but they won't tell us what goes on in the world outside of the MTC. There could be some huge school shooting at BYU and they wouldn't tell us about it.
So.... For once I don't have all that much to say. Nothing all that remarkable has happened, my Spanish is getting better. Now I can generally get the main point of what I'm trying to say across and I can communicate basic ideas and stuff, I still have trouble with conjugation of verbs and whatnot though. Spanish pretty much has no rules and there a bunch of random aspects that don't make much sense at all, you just kinda have to roll with it.
Okay, here's an amusing story. So last week the other Elders in our room, Allbee and Manship, dismantled their bunk bed and put them both on the floor and then we started hanging sheets from the ceiling and we got rather carried away with it. So it was a pretty much a reconstruction of the old Israelite Tabernacle with the different rooms separated by hanging sheets and whatnot. It was pretty funny. Every Friday there is a room check where the custodial staff goes into our rooms, checks them out, and leaves behind a slip of paper saying how well we did. We've pretty much failed it every time, they have a checklist of things that should and should not be done. Like locking the door and leaving the lights off. They have a few random ones like "don't remove the window caulking" and "don't remove the side bed post thing." We haven't yet done this, but we're determined to get a perfect 0 on our room check one of these days, it will be epic.
Unfortunately this all had to go back up, on Sunday we had a couple districts from our Zone leaving. And when such an event occurs we do what I call foolish traditions of our fathers. Every Sunday we're to stay in our normal proselyting clothes until 10:00 rather than getting rid of them right at 9:30 like we do every other night. I hate it, it's stupid, and I show my defiance by not wearing my tie and un-buttoning my collar. Oh yeah, I am such a rebel. Anyway, then we do this other abominable practice called 'the hug line' in which everyone lines up and one end of the line moves down the other and thus ends up in everyone giving a hug to everyone. I hate that too, I'm not much of a touchy-feely person to start off with but hugging 30 or so sweaty, smelly other Elders is nasty. I want to take a shower after these abominable practice but there isn't enough time after that. And our Branch President comes up into the dorms and wanders around talking to everyone who's leaving. So we were in our room, and we hear that the President is going around to all of the rooms, now we still had all the sheets up and the beds down. So in a manner of seconds we quickly reconstructed our room as it was before. It was fast, it would have impressed those NASCAR teams who change tires during the races. Literally 5 seconds after we finished the President, (who's name is President Dickerson by the way) opened the door and came in and asked us if we were going to participate in the stupid hug line. We said yes, and went out. He didn't see a thing. We are amazing.
Another amusing story. So here in the MTC you can get T-shirts that have various countries at states for the missions in them. They're white, with a picture of the flag in the middle and the state motto or country motto or whatever it is, and information such as languages spoken there, population, how many square miles, etc. So Elder Wood wanted us to get Texas T-shirts. I didn't particularly want one but Elder Wood persisted on the grounds that we ought to love our mission areas, I agreed but said that we don't necessarily need some stupid T-shirts to love our mission area. Never the less I was tired of his prattling so I went in with him to fill out a slip for our T-shirts. But unbeknownst to him I didn't select the Texas shirt, I filled out one for a Sweden shirt, and about a week later we got them and Elder was flabbergasted and somewhat outraged that I had a Sweden T-shirt rather than a Texas one. I laughed, Sweden is el mejor. So now I got myself a sweet Sweden T-Shirt. I think I might get Norway and Austria shirts too.
Ummmmm..... I got 6 minutes, I don't know what else to say. Life here is one really long day punctuated by all too short periods of unconsciousness. The routine has gotten so regular that I barely notice the passage of time. Personal Study Time is my favorite time because I can study, by myself, and not to have to talk to anyone. So yeah.... I'm still alive, but for how long? This food is killing me, hopefully I will send my huge letter to ye'all that I finally completed today, it details some of the effects of the nasty food and I'm sure Aidan and Austin will find it hilarious. Happy birthday Alyssa and Aidan, you finally got a Tablet eh? Oh and the mac, har,. Oh and could you send me some face-wash or something? This hand "soap" as they call it in the bathrooms just ain't cutting it. Peace out.
---Elder Rice
Season's in the Abyss
August 27, 2009
Dear family and other people.
Well I'm now officially 1/3rd of the way through my imprisonment, er, I mean experience in the MTC. It's actually quite odd, on one hand I feel as though I've just gotten here and time has flown by, but on the other hand I feel like I've spent my entire life here. That, and that it's hard to remember what life was like before the MTC, one of the elders in my district commented that a veil has been placed over our minds separating our life now and that of before. Really, it's almost like that.
Anyway, this last week was pretty epic. On Tuesday for our devotional Elder Richard G. Scott made a "surprise" visit and that was our devotional for the night. It was epic, at first it was rather dull, he was using a power point and I was like: "What?! We have an apostle speaking to us and he's using a powerpoint!? Of the all things he could say to us, he uses a power point to demonstrate what we've been hearing in every devotional for the past 3 weeks, namely teaching by the spirit. And I guess he picked up on that cause about 15 minutes in to that he just stopped, said he was going to change his talk at a whim and discard his powerpoint presentation. And then he did a couple of epic things. First of all, in his words he "used his apostolic power" to give all of us there in the room who were going on foreign speaking missions, to confirm upon us the gift of tongues. That was epic, I'd never heard of any general authority doing that to hundreds of people at once, and he also confirmed upon us a shield of protection, for the sisters in particular. So yeah, it was pretty epic. And then he told us awesome stories from his days as a missionary in South America and how the spirit led him to dodge drug smugglers and revolutionaries like Che Guerva running guns through jungles and whatnot. So yeah, it was pretty cool. I'd say more but I don't have the paper with me from which I took notes on during his talk.
Oh and on Sunday we did the Oquirrh Mountain Temple dedication, which was okay, though I very nearly fell asleep during the hour or so before it actually started, and my companion Elder Wood says he saw angels during it. Now there's something of interest, Elder Wood has been getting weirder and weirder lately. The other day we're in the Referral Center (RC) where we make calls and do chats on computers with investigators and whatnot, I'll be more specific with what the RC in my huge family letter that I'm working on. Anyway, we were in the RC on our computers and mine was taking along time to log in. I was sitting there patiently waiting for the computer to load when Elder Wood said something about a prayer for the computer to work, I was only half listening and I thought he was joking, but he launched right into a prayer, in Spanish, asking God for my computer to work. At first I stared at him with the "are you freaking serious?" look on my face. The prayer was short, and afterwards he looked up, saw it was still loading and then slapped his forehead and said that he used the incorrect tense and conjugation of 'trabajar'. So he started praying again, using the correct conjugation I presume, this time I bowed my head respectfully. And when he finished lo and behold my computer finished loading.... Yeah he's insane. He then praised the lord and chastened me for my lack of faith. I was still staring at him like he was an idiot, and if that prayer hadn't worked he probably would have wanted to give my computer a priesthood blessing.
By the way mom, back when we were in San Diego Elder Wood's last lame was 'Wilde' or maybe Wildewood' or something like that. His parents have separated since. So maybe that'll help you. Oh and I made the comment about not being able to read Arabic because, mom and aunt Becky, your handwriting is so loopy and cursive-y that it looks like Hebrew or Arabic or something. And definitely not something using the Latin alphabet.
Spanish is coming along better, in PMG there is this excerpt from the 1st vision that we are to memorize. You know the part with "I looked up and beheld two personages.... This is my beloved son, hear Him." And all that. Well I memorized it first in English and now I have it down in Spanish too, which I thought was amazing cause it's like two whole paragraphs and I have the memory of a small mammal and can't remember what happened 5 minutes ago, something that Elder Wood tells me all the time, and he's right. Har har.
Okay so not much else of importance has happened. I'm still working on letters for y'all, it takes mucho tiempo and Yo no tengo mucho tiempo por escribir. So be patient, it will be epic and rather detailed.
Ummm.... What else? I've got five more minutes of e-mail time. I need to come up with a subject line too. I think I will use song titles from my gentile music that I no longer have and miss very much. Hymns have gotten real old real fast, even in Spanish. So today it's gonna be “Seasons in the Abyss”, like I wanted the blog to be called.
Again, thanks for all the letters and stuff, my whole district thinks it's unreal how many letters I get, I tell them they're from my chicas back home, har har~! And for the stuff. Speaking of stuff, I could use a lint brush, I know you said I wouldn't need one dad but you should see my pants when the come out of these nasty dryers. Oh and could you get me Adam's address too? That'd be great. So that's all for today, don't get into my stuff and have fun with school. Oh and Austin I was laughing so hard when mom told me she signed you up for ballroom dance. BWAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!
Elder Rice
Dear family and other people.
Well I'm now officially 1/3rd of the way through my imprisonment, er, I mean experience in the MTC. It's actually quite odd, on one hand I feel as though I've just gotten here and time has flown by, but on the other hand I feel like I've spent my entire life here. That, and that it's hard to remember what life was like before the MTC, one of the elders in my district commented that a veil has been placed over our minds separating our life now and that of before. Really, it's almost like that.
Anyway, this last week was pretty epic. On Tuesday for our devotional Elder Richard G. Scott made a "surprise" visit and that was our devotional for the night. It was epic, at first it was rather dull, he was using a power point and I was like: "What?! We have an apostle speaking to us and he's using a powerpoint!? Of the all things he could say to us, he uses a power point to demonstrate what we've been hearing in every devotional for the past 3 weeks, namely teaching by the spirit. And I guess he picked up on that cause about 15 minutes in to that he just stopped, said he was going to change his talk at a whim and discard his powerpoint presentation. And then he did a couple of epic things. First of all, in his words he "used his apostolic power" to give all of us there in the room who were going on foreign speaking missions, to confirm upon us the gift of tongues. That was epic, I'd never heard of any general authority doing that to hundreds of people at once, and he also confirmed upon us a shield of protection, for the sisters in particular. So yeah, it was pretty epic. And then he told us awesome stories from his days as a missionary in South America and how the spirit led him to dodge drug smugglers and revolutionaries like Che Guerva running guns through jungles and whatnot. So yeah, it was pretty cool. I'd say more but I don't have the paper with me from which I took notes on during his talk.
Oh and on Sunday we did the Oquirrh Mountain Temple dedication, which was okay, though I very nearly fell asleep during the hour or so before it actually started, and my companion Elder Wood says he saw angels during it. Now there's something of interest, Elder Wood has been getting weirder and weirder lately. The other day we're in the Referral Center (RC) where we make calls and do chats on computers with investigators and whatnot, I'll be more specific with what the RC in my huge family letter that I'm working on. Anyway, we were in the RC on our computers and mine was taking along time to log in. I was sitting there patiently waiting for the computer to load when Elder Wood said something about a prayer for the computer to work, I was only half listening and I thought he was joking, but he launched right into a prayer, in Spanish, asking God for my computer to work. At first I stared at him with the "are you freaking serious?" look on my face. The prayer was short, and afterwards he looked up, saw it was still loading and then slapped his forehead and said that he used the incorrect tense and conjugation of 'trabajar'. So he started praying again, using the correct conjugation I presume, this time I bowed my head respectfully. And when he finished lo and behold my computer finished loading.... Yeah he's insane. He then praised the lord and chastened me for my lack of faith. I was still staring at him like he was an idiot, and if that prayer hadn't worked he probably would have wanted to give my computer a priesthood blessing.
By the way mom, back when we were in San Diego Elder Wood's last lame was 'Wilde' or maybe Wildewood' or something like that. His parents have separated since. So maybe that'll help you. Oh and I made the comment about not being able to read Arabic because, mom and aunt Becky, your handwriting is so loopy and cursive-y that it looks like Hebrew or Arabic or something. And definitely not something using the Latin alphabet.
Spanish is coming along better, in PMG there is this excerpt from the 1st vision that we are to memorize. You know the part with "I looked up and beheld two personages.... This is my beloved son, hear Him." And all that. Well I memorized it first in English and now I have it down in Spanish too, which I thought was amazing cause it's like two whole paragraphs and I have the memory of a small mammal and can't remember what happened 5 minutes ago, something that Elder Wood tells me all the time, and he's right. Har har.
Okay so not much else of importance has happened. I'm still working on letters for y'all, it takes mucho tiempo and Yo no tengo mucho tiempo por escribir. So be patient, it will be epic and rather detailed.
Ummm.... What else? I've got five more minutes of e-mail time. I need to come up with a subject line too. I think I will use song titles from my gentile music that I no longer have and miss very much. Hymns have gotten real old real fast, even in Spanish. So today it's gonna be “Seasons in the Abyss”, like I wanted the blog to be called.
Again, thanks for all the letters and stuff, my whole district thinks it's unreal how many letters I get, I tell them they're from my chicas back home, har har~! And for the stuff. Speaking of stuff, I could use a lint brush, I know you said I wouldn't need one dad but you should see my pants when the come out of these nasty dryers. Oh and could you get me Adam's address too? That'd be great. So that's all for today, don't get into my stuff and have fun with school. Oh and Austin I was laughing so hard when mom told me she signed you up for ballroom dance. BWAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!
Elder Rice
Brutalness
Hola familia and other people.
Today is my second P day! And yes I only get to do e-mails on P day both reading them and writing them, and for only 30 minutes. So where to start. I'm working on letters for all of you, as I won't get to everything in 30 minutes. So they'll come eventually, don't count on them anytime soon. Thanks for all the stuff, especially for the hangers and the clippers. I had some pretty gnarley claws and I was considering buying some from the book store. And now that I have hangars I don't have to put my pants in those nasty drawers.
Speaking of the MTC book store it's really neat. It's basically the same as the BYU book store except everything is like 40% off! We have a blue card and every week $6 gets put on it. We're to use this for laundry, buying stuff from the book store, vending machines, etc. It's cumulative too, so by the time I leave I'll have quite a bit to spend on random junk. I haven’t but much from there, just a name tag clip, washing detergent, a small spanish verb book that has like the 300 most used verbs that it highly recommended by everyone.
Spanish has been going a lot better! For the first week it was tough, but then it finally clicked for me one day when I finally figured out that using personal pronouns is entirely optional in spanish, that it's rarely used. Before then I was staring at these sentences and wondering where in the world the "Yo" was when I clearly saw that the verb was in the Yo form. What a lazy language... Anyway, we're progressing really fast, and I'm keeping up somehow. We've already finished with present, imperfect, preterite, and present progressive tenses. Quite a bit but they have these neat computer programs that help a lot, I drill my self on conjugations for at least a half hour each day.
Oh and in my last e-mail I mentioned my companion Elder Wood and that he went to Carmel Creek when I did. Anyway, it turns out that we might have actually knew each other, we were in the same class, same ward, and my friends were his friends. That and he's still in contact with them! They're like his best friends now. Remember Antonio? I forgot his last name even though Elder Wood just told me five minutes ago. But Antonio among others, are on Elder Wood's mission e-mail list, so he's gonna tell them about me. He says he remembers me but I don't remember him. He remembers me as the little blond kid that was always in trouble all of the time at school and didn't like being at church. That sounds pretty accurate, but I don't remember him, though he claims that YOU, mother, arranged to have him come over to our house one day so that I could "make a new friend" or something ridiculous like that. I told him no way. There's no way my mother would do something stupid and incredibly lame like that!
What else? Oh and I figured out the secret behind the uncleanliness of the MTC, you're exactly right dad, they have the missionaries do the cleaning. No wonder... Saturdays at 6:30 AM is when our zone does our time cleaning stuff. Last saturday we cleaned bathrooms, it sucked. Not even that but the manner of cleaning the various bathroom fixtures is to splash chemicals all over them, wipe it around, and then pour water on it to rinse, and then towel dry. Obviously that doesn't get things very clean, but I'm grateful cause it takes like 10 seconds to clean a toilet and there's no scrubbing involved. Now there is a MTC custodial staff, but they just direct us around, we do the real work.
Hmmm... What else? Oh, the other day we had lesson from a sub teacher that we called the 'J-Dub 101' Lesson. Our teacher, Hermana Barker, served her mission in Brooklyn, the supposed center of J-Dubdom. Anyway we had to get to know her as an "investigator" and then teach her. It was tough, we failed miserably, halfway through our 10 minutes that Elder Wood and I were "teaching her" we found out in a very unpleasant manner that they don't even use the same bible we do! Thus we were totally defeated halfway into it, and she stopped us right there and started to tell us how we ought to teach. It was kinda fun, the J-Dubs have some weird beliefs, most of my district thought that they are freaking crazy and they must be stupid to believe such things but I for one, think that their beliefs are just as bizarre as ours.
8 minutes.... Moving fast. Gym time is fun, before I got here I thought Gym time would be miserable because all I'd ever hear of people playing was basket ball. But there's a field too! And I can play soccer! My companion hates soccer and loves basketball, so we alternate everyday. I've gotten pretty beat up from soccer, supposedly there's not supposed to be any heads or slide tackles allowed, nor are we supposed to keep score but it never turns out like that. Anyway I was pretty sore after the first few days and I have a slight and temporary limp in my left leg. It's incredibly fun and brutal! And we don't have any hispanics that share our gym time so we're all equally bad, save for a few souls. When we go to the gym I'll just play volleyball, a lot of people play it there. The last couple times I've been playing with a district that's going german speaking and thus I was able to converse with them and to apologize most sincerely to this one girl who's nose I almost broke when the ball hit her straight on the face when we both went for it.
Umm... 4 minutes. Not much else to say. The food is still terrible, probably always will be. But I'm almost use to it now. Not much else I have to say, or at least that I could say in 3 minutes. I saw Bro. Manwaring in the temple today. And don't try and "run into" me there, that's not supposed to happen. So I love you all. Oh! and also Mom and Aunt Becky, please write in a language that uses the Latin alphabet, I cannot read Arabic all that well.
And no Austin you cannot have the speakers nor the ipod dock.
-Elder Rice
Today is my second P day! And yes I only get to do e-mails on P day both reading them and writing them, and for only 30 minutes. So where to start. I'm working on letters for all of you, as I won't get to everything in 30 minutes. So they'll come eventually, don't count on them anytime soon. Thanks for all the stuff, especially for the hangers and the clippers. I had some pretty gnarley claws and I was considering buying some from the book store. And now that I have hangars I don't have to put my pants in those nasty drawers.
Speaking of the MTC book store it's really neat. It's basically the same as the BYU book store except everything is like 40% off! We have a blue card and every week $6 gets put on it. We're to use this for laundry, buying stuff from the book store, vending machines, etc. It's cumulative too, so by the time I leave I'll have quite a bit to spend on random junk. I haven’t but much from there, just a name tag clip, washing detergent, a small spanish verb book that has like the 300 most used verbs that it highly recommended by everyone.
Spanish has been going a lot better! For the first week it was tough, but then it finally clicked for me one day when I finally figured out that using personal pronouns is entirely optional in spanish, that it's rarely used. Before then I was staring at these sentences and wondering where in the world the "Yo" was when I clearly saw that the verb was in the Yo form. What a lazy language... Anyway, we're progressing really fast, and I'm keeping up somehow. We've already finished with present, imperfect, preterite, and present progressive tenses. Quite a bit but they have these neat computer programs that help a lot, I drill my self on conjugations for at least a half hour each day.
Oh and in my last e-mail I mentioned my companion Elder Wood and that he went to Carmel Creek when I did. Anyway, it turns out that we might have actually knew each other, we were in the same class, same ward, and my friends were his friends. That and he's still in contact with them! They're like his best friends now. Remember Antonio? I forgot his last name even though Elder Wood just told me five minutes ago. But Antonio among others, are on Elder Wood's mission e-mail list, so he's gonna tell them about me. He says he remembers me but I don't remember him. He remembers me as the little blond kid that was always in trouble all of the time at school and didn't like being at church. That sounds pretty accurate, but I don't remember him, though he claims that YOU, mother, arranged to have him come over to our house one day so that I could "make a new friend" or something ridiculous like that. I told him no way. There's no way my mother would do something stupid and incredibly lame like that!
What else? Oh and I figured out the secret behind the uncleanliness of the MTC, you're exactly right dad, they have the missionaries do the cleaning. No wonder... Saturdays at 6:30 AM is when our zone does our time cleaning stuff. Last saturday we cleaned bathrooms, it sucked. Not even that but the manner of cleaning the various bathroom fixtures is to splash chemicals all over them, wipe it around, and then pour water on it to rinse, and then towel dry. Obviously that doesn't get things very clean, but I'm grateful cause it takes like 10 seconds to clean a toilet and there's no scrubbing involved. Now there is a MTC custodial staff, but they just direct us around, we do the real work.
Hmmm... What else? Oh, the other day we had lesson from a sub teacher that we called the 'J-Dub 101' Lesson. Our teacher, Hermana Barker, served her mission in Brooklyn, the supposed center of J-Dubdom. Anyway we had to get to know her as an "investigator" and then teach her. It was tough, we failed miserably, halfway through our 10 minutes that Elder Wood and I were "teaching her" we found out in a very unpleasant manner that they don't even use the same bible we do! Thus we were totally defeated halfway into it, and she stopped us right there and started to tell us how we ought to teach. It was kinda fun, the J-Dubs have some weird beliefs, most of my district thought that they are freaking crazy and they must be stupid to believe such things but I for one, think that their beliefs are just as bizarre as ours.
8 minutes.... Moving fast. Gym time is fun, before I got here I thought Gym time would be miserable because all I'd ever hear of people playing was basket ball. But there's a field too! And I can play soccer! My companion hates soccer and loves basketball, so we alternate everyday. I've gotten pretty beat up from soccer, supposedly there's not supposed to be any heads or slide tackles allowed, nor are we supposed to keep score but it never turns out like that. Anyway I was pretty sore after the first few days and I have a slight and temporary limp in my left leg. It's incredibly fun and brutal! And we don't have any hispanics that share our gym time so we're all equally bad, save for a few souls. When we go to the gym I'll just play volleyball, a lot of people play it there. The last couple times I've been playing with a district that's going german speaking and thus I was able to converse with them and to apologize most sincerely to this one girl who's nose I almost broke when the ball hit her straight on the face when we both went for it.
Umm... 4 minutes. Not much else to say. The food is still terrible, probably always will be. But I'm almost use to it now. Not much else I have to say, or at least that I could say in 3 minutes. I saw Bro. Manwaring in the temple today. And don't try and "run into" me there, that's not supposed to happen. So I love you all. Oh! and also Mom and Aunt Becky, please write in a language that uses the Latin alphabet, I cannot read Arabic all that well.
And no Austin you cannot have the speakers nor the ipod dock.
-Elder Rice
Week 1 Recap
Family and anyone else who may be reading this,
I finally made it to P-Day. I thought it would never come, it finally did. Now this is going to be rather short for I have only 30 minutes to write this email and five of it was already spent setting up the e-mail account, so try to ignore all of my typos.
Anyway, I have so much to say and so little time, so for actual detailed accounts of my exploits you will have to rely on my illegible letters. So, where to begin? Day 1. If I had to associate one word with the MTC it would be 'Madness' cause that's exactly what it is. The first day was a day full of: "go here, get this, go there, get that." I was loaded up with books and sent to the room that would be my residence for the next couple months.
So we don't have to pay for the essential package of books we got. We got a Preach My Gospel, which will heretofore be mentioned as the PMG, in spanish. A bible and book of mormon in spanish. The cool thing is that the Bible we have is a Catholic one, it's really cool, it has this baroque, old world look to it and in it. So much more cool than our stale protestant like standard works.
So loaded with all of this I finally got to my room with my luggage. There I met Elder Allbee, not my companion but he was in the same room with us, his companion is Elder Manship. Elder Allbee is cool, he's a fellow metal-head so we get along quite well.
Elder Wood is my companion, he's from San Diego and it turns out that he went to the same elementary school that we did when we lived in San Diego, Carmel Creek Elementary School, so we must of been in that school together. Elder Wood is amazing, he's had 3 years of spanish already and is like 6 tenses ahead of the rest of us and knows his scripture mastery really well, like down the page number. But he and I have nothing in common, that and I cannot really understand him, he can't say his R's so to him my name isn't 'Elder Rice' it's 'Eldwah Wice' it irritates me to no end but I've gotten used to it now and now I only have to ask him to repeat things once. So now you know that his english is bad, now imagine his spanish! Like I said before, he knows it really well but he cannot, for the life of him, pronounce anything. He relies on me for pronunciation, of which I believe I am rather good at. One of our teachers said that I sounded almost like a native, so that's good. Elder Wood will only talk about Spanish, nothing else. He get's really annoyed at this habit of mine. I have a tendency to go out of my way to talk to anyone with Cyrillic or Slavic characters on their name tags or striking up conversations with those going German speaking.
Spanish has been tough though, especially after a couple years of German. Several times now when I give the prayer or anything else that requires me to speak spanish under pressure I end up speaking Spanish, German, and English all in the same sentence. It's kinda funny, and I enjoy letting my district hear the mighty language of German and how much more awesome it is than any wimpy Latin language.... Oh and I think I figured out the secret of going on foreign speaking missions. Most everyone I've talked to has had at least 3 years of the language they're going to. So, Austin and Aidan, take 3 years of whatever it is you want to speak and don't take ANY Spanish at all, or else that will cancel out anything else.
So, the MTC, the room was terrible, I was expecting something dirty but it was just nasty. It smelled terrible, like an old wet sock in that's been left in a corner of Cove Point or something. The only thing that smells worse is Elder Wood's feet, I have to vacate the room when he takes his socks off so I won't gag. The food isn't that bad, but nor as good as others have pretended. Rather less than mediocre actually, at first it was nice being able to eat curly fries at both dinner and lunch and as much as you wanted but after the first 3 days my bowels were being torn up something terrible and now I just mostly eat salads with the occasional something else more meaty. I've got six minutes left so perhaps I shall give a more detailed descriptions of the food later.
Our district consists of 12 people, who's names I don't have time to mention. 6 of us are going to Houston, 4 to Chile, and 2 to Guatemala. We're an odd bunch, lots of weirdos, but weird in the churchy way, as in a tad bit overzealous, in fact we once had a heated discussion about Geology and the age of the earth and other things that I won't go too much into cause I have a couple minutes left.
Okay so I need a few things, clippers, whites socks, about 3 or 4 pairs, two more pairs of garments, dri-lux, round neck, medium sized, and a contact lense for my left eye. I lost down the sink the other night. So please send as soon as you can, the contact will take awhile I know but i have a minute left so I love you all and almost but not quite miss you.
- Elder Rice
I finally made it to P-Day. I thought it would never come, it finally did. Now this is going to be rather short for I have only 30 minutes to write this email and five of it was already spent setting up the e-mail account, so try to ignore all of my typos.
Anyway, I have so much to say and so little time, so for actual detailed accounts of my exploits you will have to rely on my illegible letters. So, where to begin? Day 1. If I had to associate one word with the MTC it would be 'Madness' cause that's exactly what it is. The first day was a day full of: "go here, get this, go there, get that." I was loaded up with books and sent to the room that would be my residence for the next couple months.
So we don't have to pay for the essential package of books we got. We got a Preach My Gospel, which will heretofore be mentioned as the PMG, in spanish. A bible and book of mormon in spanish. The cool thing is that the Bible we have is a Catholic one, it's really cool, it has this baroque, old world look to it and in it. So much more cool than our stale protestant like standard works.
So loaded with all of this I finally got to my room with my luggage. There I met Elder Allbee, not my companion but he was in the same room with us, his companion is Elder Manship. Elder Allbee is cool, he's a fellow metal-head so we get along quite well.
Elder Wood is my companion, he's from San Diego and it turns out that he went to the same elementary school that we did when we lived in San Diego, Carmel Creek Elementary School, so we must of been in that school together. Elder Wood is amazing, he's had 3 years of spanish already and is like 6 tenses ahead of the rest of us and knows his scripture mastery really well, like down the page number. But he and I have nothing in common, that and I cannot really understand him, he can't say his R's so to him my name isn't 'Elder Rice' it's 'Eldwah Wice' it irritates me to no end but I've gotten used to it now and now I only have to ask him to repeat things once. So now you know that his english is bad, now imagine his spanish! Like I said before, he knows it really well but he cannot, for the life of him, pronounce anything. He relies on me for pronunciation, of which I believe I am rather good at. One of our teachers said that I sounded almost like a native, so that's good. Elder Wood will only talk about Spanish, nothing else. He get's really annoyed at this habit of mine. I have a tendency to go out of my way to talk to anyone with Cyrillic or Slavic characters on their name tags or striking up conversations with those going German speaking.
Spanish has been tough though, especially after a couple years of German. Several times now when I give the prayer or anything else that requires me to speak spanish under pressure I end up speaking Spanish, German, and English all in the same sentence. It's kinda funny, and I enjoy letting my district hear the mighty language of German and how much more awesome it is than any wimpy Latin language.... Oh and I think I figured out the secret of going on foreign speaking missions. Most everyone I've talked to has had at least 3 years of the language they're going to. So, Austin and Aidan, take 3 years of whatever it is you want to speak and don't take ANY Spanish at all, or else that will cancel out anything else.
So, the MTC, the room was terrible, I was expecting something dirty but it was just nasty. It smelled terrible, like an old wet sock in that's been left in a corner of Cove Point or something. The only thing that smells worse is Elder Wood's feet, I have to vacate the room when he takes his socks off so I won't gag. The food isn't that bad, but nor as good as others have pretended. Rather less than mediocre actually, at first it was nice being able to eat curly fries at both dinner and lunch and as much as you wanted but after the first 3 days my bowels were being torn up something terrible and now I just mostly eat salads with the occasional something else more meaty. I've got six minutes left so perhaps I shall give a more detailed descriptions of the food later.
Our district consists of 12 people, who's names I don't have time to mention. 6 of us are going to Houston, 4 to Chile, and 2 to Guatemala. We're an odd bunch, lots of weirdos, but weird in the churchy way, as in a tad bit overzealous, in fact we once had a heated discussion about Geology and the age of the earth and other things that I won't go too much into cause I have a couple minutes left.
Okay so I need a few things, clippers, whites socks, about 3 or 4 pairs, two more pairs of garments, dri-lux, round neck, medium sized, and a contact lense for my left eye. I lost down the sink the other night. So please send as soon as you can, the contact will take awhile I know but i have a minute left so I love you all and almost but not quite miss you.
- Elder Rice
Secret Code?
I guess the parents of a new missionary are the last to know.
In his mailing address is says Houston Texas Mission 1006
Well 1006 is his departure date from the MTC- Oct 6th.
Good to know.... Glad the people at the delivery place told Michael.
In his mailing address is says Houston Texas Mission 1006
Well 1006 is his departure date from the MTC- Oct 6th.
Good to know.... Glad the people at the delivery place told Michael.
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