A house where one of our investigators lives. Is was not hard for me to imagine dad cringing if he were there.
November 09' Pics
A house where one of our investigators lives. Is was not hard for me to imagine dad cringing if he were there.
November 09' Pics
Some Texas long-horn cattle we saw when we were biking one day. They're huge, and they weren't very friendly towards us, the Lord's representatives either.
November 09' Pics
The first photo is of my district. In the center is our district leader, Elder Dexter, to the right is his companion Elder Pitts, behind him me and Elder Nelson. Behind me, my companion Elder Astin. Sister Dubuos and sister Cook on the left and Elder Brown above them.
The second is just of our zone milling around in front of the temple. I didn't really get a good picture of the Houston temple so you won't being seeing one this time. Nor will you see the picture that was taken of me and elder Astin because it looks dumb and I'll have to wait till we go to the temple agian this month to get a better picture.
Elders Brown and Nelson
Elders Brown and Nelson (share the apartment with Alex and Elder Astin in Conroe)
If I have to eat another tortilla...
I never want to eat another tortilla or tamale again....
Howdy family, I am still alive here in Texas, just so you know. This past week has been a long one, and we've been stuffed to the point of death by members. One day we had two dinner appointments with members, I don't know how we scheduled such a thing but it sufficeth me to say that when we got home that night I never wanted to eat another tamale or tortilla or whatever again. At the first one we also had this nasty cinnamon drink, I forget what it was called but it had the consistency of elmer's glue and tasted vaguely like cinnamon. I found out later it was made from plums and other things, but yeah it was like drinking warm glue.
So I had my first baptism this week! I brought my camera today so I can send pictures, and I did find out how to change the size of the pictures, but after I had taken these so these photos I send today will be huge but next time they won't. So like I said we had a baptism. The new convert's name is Petra, she's 20 something from somewhere in Mexico and her younger sister is a member, we taught her for a long time before she finally wanted to get baptized. I, just attached the picture, she's the one in white, her sister Celene, in the red shirt and green hoodie, my companion Elder Astin in his baptismal clothes on the left and me on the right with a freakish smile on my face. I was trying to get my eyes open since when I smile for pictures my eyes close.
So that was on friday. The next day saturday was interesting, our district leader, Elder Dexter (who by the way, is from Rancho Cucamonga CA, and I think Elder Paxman is serving in his very ward right now) had to go with Elder Astin to give a baptismal interview to one of our investigators, Sergio. Elder Dexter is an English Elder, but Sergio speaks good english so thus Elder Dexter could interview him. Before when Petra got her interview we had to get another missionary all the way down in Houston to come up and interview her. Since when there is an interview it has to be done by a zone or district leader, and since Elder Astin and I are the only two Spanish Elders in our zone, and we're not any kind of leader so we had to get a leader-elder that spoke spanish to come up.
Anyway the point of all that is that I went with Elder Dexter's companion, Elder Pitts and the other two english missionaries for a service assignment. It was an interesting experience. We went with their ward's elder's quorum president, a man in his 40's that has the demeanor of a teenager, out to 'Cut n' Shoot' that's what the town is called. Cut n' Shoot, Texas. It was real redneck country. Trailers, garbage and chickens everywhere. Abandoned household appliances such as toilets, sinks, and rubber tires strewn across the land. Every here and there old Southern Confederate Battle Flags flying from flagpoles and clotheslines. The geological strata was very interesting, the lowermost layer was mud, then crushed beer cans, then matted grass. That will make an interesting formation in a few million years.
So what we did is we "hung siding". Which basically was putting wooden walls on a trailer home, and cutting them to fit around the windows and notches. The locals who were supposedly members had real thick funny accents. It was an interesting experience, and I got to hear about 5 minutes of Slipknot, one of their 15 year old sons was playing his music nearby and that made the whole trip worth it.
Hmm... Not many other epic things happened. We have a baptism lined up for next sunday. So that will make 3 baptisms for my first transfer. Not bad eh? 3 because we had the one that sort of counted. I think in a previous email I mentioned Lupita, a hispanic woman who was married to a member, and not just any member but a returned missionary at that. She technically was our first baptism this transfer but she was baptized somewhere else and we didn't get to go it and she had already been taught everything before. We had just made sure she was up to date with everything.
Now then, in response to your letters and whatnot. I found Alyssa's letter amusing. Welcome to learning another language, it's difficult but after a while it goes rather easy. It was interesting also that Latin has so many cases, German has only 5 and that was more than enough for me. And Latin has how many again? Like 7? Phew, that's a lot. Did you know that Finnish has 15 cases? That's incredible, so just imagine that you could be learning Finnish and that will make those 7 cases seem easy. Spanish doesn't have cases, luckily, it's a relatively simple language. Thanks for the art stuff. The dragon is brutal, the winged dogs were just funny. And as for ideas for your art thing I have no idea. The first thing that came to my mind was a depth charge but I don't know how you'd make a character out of that.
So if you all want to send me stuff all you have to do is send cash. That always works, no packaging involved. Easy and simple. And you all want to know what I want for Christmas huh? Well that's easy, there's not much I need/want, being a missionary and all. But the following would be useful:
-money
-a few ties, wearing the same eight gets old real fast (make sure they're 100% polyester, silk ties get destroyed by this humid climate as a I have discovered) -my own pan. The pots and pan's we have are degenerate and corroded lumps of rust. If had my own stainless steel pan thing for my use alone I would be most grateful. And maybe my own nice spatula too.
-more money
That's about all I'd want for Christmas, I don't need much. And that's about all I have to write today. I'll send some more pictures in a moment. Until next week then!
-- Elder Rice
One Gun Salute
November 2, 2009
Family:
I got the big package, thanks for all the food and stuff, that was great I really needed a lot of that stuff. I've not yet received the clothes yet but I hope it will come eventually.
So things in Texas are going well. I forgot to bring my camera today, I've taken some more epic pictures but that can wait till next week. Oh, so those last pictures I've sent. I laughed when you asked me who was the elder that was "praying over the washing machine". That was Elder Pitts, and you may not be able to tell but you will notice in that picture that the kitchen floor is rather reflective, because it's under 2 inches of water. Elder Pitts was on the chair, out of the water and finishing his laundry. He was the one who flooded out apartment and in that picture he's doing it while our apartment is flooded, he didn't care about the flooding he just wanted to get his laundry done. I'll do the names of the people in the pictures some other time when I have it with me.
So the work is going well, we have 4 baptisms lined up, but only two of which are for sure, we think. It's rather miraculous how this happens, our best investigator was one that just came out of nowhere and just showed up to church one day and said he wanted to be baptized and we started teaching him. It's astonishing to me that people actually want to know about this stuff, I always try to put myself in the shoes of the people we teach and I think I would be bored out of my mind if a couple of guys were telling me this mysterious stuff. Maybe that's just something unique about Texas and other such places, people are still concerned about religious matters and not all that secular as the modern world is.
Oh and an interesting thing Dad, there are no native spanish speakers in this mission. I found that out and was rather shocked but that's indeed the situation. Which is odd but whatever. We do have one missionary here from Mongolia, I haven't met him but most people like him, and think he's weird, he's an english missionary though so I don't know if I'll run into him. Areas like mine are mixed english and spanish, but mostly english. Down the Houston Zones, that are actually in Houston itself they are entirely spanish zones, that would be nice except that it's in the ghetto. It's bad enough here, I hate that dank grimey smell of the nasty little trailers that hispanics live in, it'll be a hundred times worse down in those Houston Zones. They tell me horrid tales of multitudes of fleas, roaches, and bed bugs. Not looking forward to that but whatever. It's not too bad up here. Did I mention our bed-bug infestation in my last e-mail? Well we had one, we think we've gotten them all and we've finally gotten some zip up mattress covers. But now we think we have fleas, Elder Astin saw one jump off his arm yesterday. And we killed this HUGE cockroach the other day. It was a monster, I was hoping to send pictures of it today but you can look forward to those next week.
Hmm.... Anything else interesting? Oh, I'm learning how to crochet. My whole district does it and one day when we had this huge thunderstorm that kept us in all day they taught me and I got my own yarn and hook and I'm making a hat right now... Yeah... It's kind of fun but rather mind-numbing. The others do it to send back to the girls they're writing at home, I don't have any such reason so I just do it just because.
Yeah.... Well that's all I got today. I love y'all. Peace out.
-Elder Rice
Family:
I got the big package, thanks for all the food and stuff, that was great I really needed a lot of that stuff. I've not yet received the clothes yet but I hope it will come eventually.
So things in Texas are going well. I forgot to bring my camera today, I've taken some more epic pictures but that can wait till next week. Oh, so those last pictures I've sent. I laughed when you asked me who was the elder that was "praying over the washing machine". That was Elder Pitts, and you may not be able to tell but you will notice in that picture that the kitchen floor is rather reflective, because it's under 2 inches of water. Elder Pitts was on the chair, out of the water and finishing his laundry. He was the one who flooded out apartment and in that picture he's doing it while our apartment is flooded, he didn't care about the flooding he just wanted to get his laundry done. I'll do the names of the people in the pictures some other time when I have it with me.
So the work is going well, we have 4 baptisms lined up, but only two of which are for sure, we think. It's rather miraculous how this happens, our best investigator was one that just came out of nowhere and just showed up to church one day and said he wanted to be baptized and we started teaching him. It's astonishing to me that people actually want to know about this stuff, I always try to put myself in the shoes of the people we teach and I think I would be bored out of my mind if a couple of guys were telling me this mysterious stuff. Maybe that's just something unique about Texas and other such places, people are still concerned about religious matters and not all that secular as the modern world is.
Oh and an interesting thing Dad, there are no native spanish speakers in this mission. I found that out and was rather shocked but that's indeed the situation. Which is odd but whatever. We do have one missionary here from Mongolia, I haven't met him but most people like him, and think he's weird, he's an english missionary though so I don't know if I'll run into him. Areas like mine are mixed english and spanish, but mostly english. Down the Houston Zones, that are actually in Houston itself they are entirely spanish zones, that would be nice except that it's in the ghetto. It's bad enough here, I hate that dank grimey smell of the nasty little trailers that hispanics live in, it'll be a hundred times worse down in those Houston Zones. They tell me horrid tales of multitudes of fleas, roaches, and bed bugs. Not looking forward to that but whatever. It's not too bad up here. Did I mention our bed-bug infestation in my last e-mail? Well we had one, we think we've gotten them all and we've finally gotten some zip up mattress covers. But now we think we have fleas, Elder Astin saw one jump off his arm yesterday. And we killed this HUGE cockroach the other day. It was a monster, I was hoping to send pictures of it today but you can look forward to those next week.
Hmm.... Anything else interesting? Oh, I'm learning how to crochet. My whole district does it and one day when we had this huge thunderstorm that kept us in all day they taught me and I got my own yarn and hook and I'm making a hat right now... Yeah... It's kind of fun but rather mind-numbing. The others do it to send back to the girls they're writing at home, I don't have any such reason so I just do it just because.
Yeah.... Well that's all I got today. I love y'all. Peace out.
-Elder Rice
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