December 14th
Dear family and other people,
All goeth all on the southern front. This week was a little bit more interesting that most. Tuesday we got to go to the temple and we had exchanges with the ZL's after that. That was kinda fun, I went with Elder Mccann to his area in the Woodlands, TX. It was weird teaching white people, I could actually understand what they were saying and I was able to speak to them and have them understand me also! It was fun. We went and visited this one less active member, because of some health problem he "can't come to church" and apparently can't go out of his house much either. Now based on the following event I came to the conclusion that perhaps it's good to go to church every sunday after all. So it was like 8:30 and we just wanted to drop in, share a quick scripture and go. We go in there and have a little chit chat with this man but he starts going and going and going off about crazy stuff, he was trying to teach us, he's one of those guys who tries to show off their "massive intellects". Anyway he was telling us that in the pre-mortal life we were already sinners and that based on our sins we were assigned to different planets, and that earth was for all the prideful people and therefore since we are here on earth we were extremely prideful in the pre-mortal life, “children of pride” is what he called it. We were like: Okkkkaaaayyyyy…… sure…. And then he proceeded to tell us that years ago some missionaries like us challenged him on it, and according to him it’s all in the scriptures. His evidence for it was in the book of Job, and he had these missionaries read the book like 5 times and they could not find until he pointed it out for them, later that night I went and found the scripture and it’s just the part where the Lord is talking to Job about how amazing the leviathan (a whale) is and it’s a sign of the Lord’s power, and in the very last verse of that chapter it says that “he (the whale) is king over all the children of pride”. So I guess that based on this verse is where this guy is getting all of this false doctrine from. Thus my conclusion is that if you’re cooped up in your house a lot and don’t go to church you start formulation your own bizarre doctrines and become crazy like this guy, so therefore we ought to go church more regularly so we don’t end up like that guy…
Anyway the rest of this guy’s family came home, his family is super active but he’s not and we managed to stop his monologue to share a quick scripture with them, I shared one of my favorites, a couple of verses in Mosiah 3: where it talks about “listing to obey the evil spirit” I think it’s cool because ‘listing’ is a naval term for when a vessel leans in the water so I have this cool little analogy about not spiritually capsizing. Unfortunately in the Spanish scriptures they don’t have a word equivalent to “listing” they use “opt” so it kind of ruins the whole analogy when I try to share it with Hispanics and I have to end up telling them that in the English scriptures it uses this one word that means this, etc. So I was pretty excited to share it with white people and especially this family, they’re 19 year old son is a Sea Scout and is about to get his equivalent of an Eagle in Sea Scouting and his family is also into sailing and nautical nonsense so they all understood it right off the bat and thus it was good. I was rather pleased with them.
What else happened this week? Hmmm…. Wednesday was rather dull, all of our appointments fell through and we tried to go through our list of contacts and it turns out that half of the addresses and telephone numbers don’t even exist, we tried visiting less actives and ward members too. Also to find that a lot of them don’t exist or had moved out of the ward like 10 years ago, in fact we tried to call this one family using the phone number listed on the ward list and it turned out being the number to the nearest Papa John’s. That was funny. Thursday was similar. Friday was cool though. We had what is called “Navidad en el Barrio”. Where all the missionaries in the mission (except for those in the College Station zone) go this big old warehouse somewhere within downtown Houston for this big huge service project, we wrap presents and stuff for poor families and stuff. And President actually invited us (myself, Elder Porter, Elder Brown, and Elder Lopez) to his house to have breakfast and then all 6 of us would drive down to it. It was the first time in a long time that I’d had a warm breakfast, it was good. Then we went to the thing in Houston. It was my first time in Houston, the city itself but it wasn’t all that big as I had imagined it to be. Anyway the best was that I got to meet up with my fellow comrades who were in the MTC with me and as we were wrapping presents and junk we swapped our epic stories and whatnot, it was from 9-3 so we had a lot of fun.
That’s about all that’s interesting that happened this week. The Home Front sounds like it’s still there, Dixon is still lame and it’s still cold up there. Though that’s crazy that there’s an In-N-Out Burger up there now, oh and happy birthday Dad, kind of delayed but I forgot, and before I forget I might as well say happy birthday to Austin too… Oh man, Austin is gonna be 13?! That’s madness! Austin a teenager? I can’t even imagine that. Christmas time around here is lame, everyone had decorations and stuff and yet there’s no snow so it just looks weird. It feels like late October here, except we have a lot of fog which is cool. Thanks for my jacket and flash drive, it makes doing these e-mails much easier. And I forgot how much I like that jacket, thanks for sending it. So the Christmas tree died? I thought it was fake, how could it die? Seems like we just got it not that long ago. We have a tiny little pathetic fake tree that looks more like a… shrubbery (DUH-NUH!) Christmas week is actually going to be quite fun. Monday will be a half p-day, because the next day is a mission wide P-day in which we’re all going to get together and do stuff like play sports and make gingerbread houses, Wednesday is Mission Temple day where all the missionaries go through the Temple on the same day (that will be fun for the temple workers) And then for Christmas Eve and Christmas day we don’t do anything, including missionary work (yay!) and then after new years we have a mission conference. So a lot of fun coming up. Oh and On Christmas Day my so far appointed calling time is 7:00 pm. Which I think is 6:00pm for y’all. So just be home that night and we will get to talk for an hour. My companion is a dork and is counting down the hours until he gets to call home, he’s dumb like that. Oh thanks to everyone for your generous donations to my well being, that’ll be put to good use here in a couple hours. I’ll be trying to get off actual written letters to everyone (extended family) but that’ll take awhile so don’t be surprised if you get them in like…. February… Or something. Well that’s all got for now. Peace out.
--Elder Rice
Flesh Storm
Familia:
Did I really sound that miserable in my last email? Let me go read over it again.... Hmmm... Yeah that was kind of a less than good week, but I wasn't all that miserable. In the MTC my companion Elder Wood always said I was too pessimistic about everything, I told him that he should see me when I'm actually pessimistic. Hmmm, maybe I just sound like that to everyone. That or I think that all of the not so fun things that happen are more interesting to relate than the good things that happen to me as a missionary.
So anyway.... This week... We had Zone Conference on Tuesday, we drove up to College Station for it. On the way up my companion was driving and we had to get up early in the morning to make all the way up to college station by 8:00, anyway he was driving and I guess he was speeding through a school zone because a cop pulled us over and gave him a ticket for speeding in a school zone. He was rather bummed, turns out it's gonna cost him $230! Ouch! Wait till his parents hear about that. It was a good zone conference though, the subject was about using the Book of Mormon, which was yet another blow to my companion that day because before then we'd, or rather HE had been teaching our investigators primarily out of the Bible, which is a formula for an epic fail. Ain't no one ever been converted by the Bible.
The following day was probably the first day that I've actually been cold here in Texas, we were on bikes that day and there was this horrid wind that was blowing real hard. Anyway we were going to find the police station so Elder Porter could see how much his ticket was gonna cost and to see if he could get it dropped or something or another. So we looked up the police station's address and saw that it was on 'Old Montgomery Road' which was just off the Fraiser, which is the big road that like the train tracks, divides the city of Conroe in half. So we thought that we'd just go down the Fraiser until we hit that Old Montgomery Road, so we started biking and there was real hard wind blowing and these big dark clouds of death tearing through the skies at high speeds, I had never seen clouds move so fast before, I thought it was gonna break open and we'd be drenched in a minute. It never did though, so we biked down the Fraiser looking for it... and looking for it... and looking for it... going down and down and down... About 8 miles later when we reach the city limits Elder Porter concluded that we had missed it, he pulled the map out of his bag and saw that Old Montgomery Road was like 400 yards from where we lived. So we turned around and bike all the way back up, with the wind against us the whole time, by this time I wasn't cold anymore, and we came back to right where the road should be. It wasn't there. Now here's the thing about roads in Texas, they have multiple names and randomly stop and a new road will start on the same road. Well we eventually found the police station and that's when we found out how much the ticket was gonna cost and it turns out that the judge or whoever wasn't there so we had to come back another day to see him. So then we biked back home, walked in a collapsed. It was only like 3:00 and we were exhausted. We decided to do "weekly planning" which means having a long nap.
Let's see that was Wednesday... Oh on Friday it snowed! Incredible huh? Snow in Texas, never thought I'd see it, the locals were dumbfounded and confused by the snow. Which was more like light hail than snow, none of it stuck of course. I got some pictures of it that I'll send. Not much else interesting happened this last week. Saturday we once again biked all over town, I don't have a butt anymore, now it's just my tailbone grinding against the rock like seat of my bike. So yeah, I'm getting a lot of exercise from that.
Mi espanol is getting better, slowly. I'm getting to the point that I can understand their spanish better than their heavily accented and broken english, so perhaps that indicates progress but who knows.... Well that's about all the interesting things I have to say. And don't worry about the incredibly slow speeds and which mail and other things travel, not a problem it's okay. Though now I think it's a better idea that y'all send packages, and maybe letter to the mission office. Because just the other day a package for Elder Nelson came, 3 weeks after he'd been transferred. That was funny, so in the future, especially at the end of this month when transfer calls are coming up, mail things to the mission office address. The Hafer Road one, I don't remember what it is, hopefully you still have it somewhere. And if other people ask give them that address if they want to write me. Which nobody does, I never did hear from Adam, Austin go tell him to send me a bloody letter. Well cool, that's all I got and I'm running out of time here. I hope all goeth well in la tierra de los montanas. I miss the mountains and the snow. And send me some more photos that I can put in the little photo book thing, now that I can almost communicate with the ward members they want to get to know me and see pictures of my family and stuff. Okay I'm done, peace out.
-- Elder Rice
Psychosocial
November 30, 2009
This last week was another long one. Thanksgiving was okay. Luckily for us we didn't have to go proselyting that day. The white handbook or missionary manual says that holidays are the best time to proselyte since everyone is home. Not true, holidays are the worst times to proselyte since everyone is at home with their family and the last thing they want is for some missionaries to knock on their door and bother them. So we didn't do any of that luckily. At 8:00 in the morning the two english wards had their own Turkey Bowl thing on the local high school's football field so we did that. I was bored out of my skull during that since I stink at football and there were so many people that we had to split into four teams of 20 or so, therefore I spent the whole time just running back and forth and not doing anything since nobody else was. We did that until 10:00. After that we went home and got ready for the day, some members of our ward had pity on us and had invited us over for their thanksgiving meals. First we went to the Pineda's and I thought it was just gonna be more hispanic food but I was surprised since they made turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, stuffing and all that. Course we ate with different varieties of chili peppers so that kinda made it slightly hispanic but oh well. Then at 5:00 we and the sister missionaries of the spanish ward were invited to the Bishop's house for his dinner too, which we went and ate. That was interesting, the Bishop of our spanish ward is a white guy who served his mission in Argentina, he married an Argentinian woman and his 4 kids are half and half, they speak both spanish and english. And his brother and his family was there too, his brother had served his mission in Taiwan, and had married a Taiwanese woman and his 3 kids were likewise half and half, speaking both Chinese and english. So it was a very multi-ethnic affair english, spanish, and chinese all being spoken at the same time. But it was all traditional american thanksgiving food except for these japanese yams with mint sauce or something on them. They tasted weird. Oh and the Bishop's mother was there too, she might have given y'all a call, she wanted our home numbers and said she would call our mothers to say that she spent thanksgiving with your sons, etc. That lasted the rest of the night, we other people had invited us but we didn't have the car that day so we had to politely decline when they called us.
What other interesting things happened? Hmmm.... Saturday stunk, Elder Porter had a baptism he wanted to go to in his old area in College Station, but mission rules are that if you want to leave your zone to go to a baptism or something like that you need to have a member take you because that would be a lot of miles on the mission vehicles. So Elder Porter had asked Hermano Pineda to take us down saturday morning for the 1 and 1/2 hour drive to College Station, he said he would and then on saturday 20 minutes before he came to pick us up he called and said that he couldn't. Elder Porter was furious and then called every ward member on our phone trying to find someone who would take us. Nobody did, and we didn't go. I don't blame them, I think it was extremely rude that Elder Porter would ask someone to drive them all that way to see a baptism of someone that they don't even know, and especially when Hermano Pineda couldn't and then asking people on such short notice was even more rude and presumptuous. I told him this and his reasoning was that the lady being baptized wanted him to personally baptize her. I said it didn't really matter who baptized her it's the same priesthood... So he was ticked off for the rest of day which didn't make that day a very happy day.
It looks like I'm gonna have to go in a minute here and move to another computer, we're in a college today using an empty classroom with computers in it but it seems like a class is about to start so I may have to end this right now and resume on a different computer.
Okay I'm on a different computer now, and I found out how to save e-mails but it's difficult and takes up a lot of room. So yeah, saturday, stunk real bad. Having an upset companion is not fun, not fun at all. We didn't have any appointments that day either so we tracted and tried to just drop in on investigators and less actives. We were on bikes that day so from 2:00 to 8:00 we rode all over town knocking on doors. It was awful, all of that and we ended up like teaching only 3 lessons, two of which were with less active members. Ugh, I was so tired when we finally got home.
Sunday wasn't much better, Elder Porter had yet another convert that he was to "personally" confirm in his old area. He did find a ride this time, some ward member from his old area came to get him. Unfortunately it was decided by the WML and Elder Porter that we go on splits, just in case any of our investigaros showed up to church that day. So I was stuck with Pedro all day, he's 20 something and about to leave for his mission in a month to Oklahoma city. So basically I was left all alone in hostile territory with all of these hispanics. That was not a fun day, this guy Pedro is also one of the ward missionaries and one of the young men's leaders so I had to sit in with him in all of his meetings before church. I just followed him around and tried to figure out what in the world was going on. Later during sunday school there was some urgency and commotion and Pedro and I were beckoned to come out into the hall, we went into an abandoned classroom and the two of us, along with another guy in the ward proceeded to give priesthood blessings to 6 different people. They just lined up outside the door and we started blessing them, we nearly ran out of oil in Pedro's little vial. That was stressful since I don't know how they go in english let alone spanish and I had to have pedro whisper in my ear quite a bit to help me out. And the members being blessed didn't like that at all, this one lady wanted me to do the second part of the blessing, the one where you use your own words and stuff, and oh that stressful but I did it somehow someway, but after wards she was a little upset that it was so short and not all that good cause my spanish sucks. Blargh... I was exhausted after that, I hate it when people think that priesthood blessings are like a cure-all pill or something, and go for that instead of proper medical attention, and these people weren't even all that ill, they just had a cold or something and wanted a blessing. This sort of view is really prevalent among hispanics, they treat us missionaries like holy men with special powers. Which we are, in a way. But they think that God listens to our prayers more than normal people which is why they want us to pray all of the time. During the last transfer this one lady wanted a blessing of comfort and she wanted Elder Astin to do it even though the Bishop was in the same room with us. They'd pick a missionary over just about anyone else. Not only do these people, members and non members alike need the light of the gospel but they need the light of science as well!
Well that's all I got for today. I hope y'all sent me my jacket and flash drive, I'm still waiting for it to come. Oh congratulations on being accepted to USU Alyssa, thank goodness, I was afraid that I've to go to BYU with you. Well I miss you all and hope your having a good time with all of that snow and those mountains, the trees here don't even turn different colors, they're green all year round, kind of boring. Well peace out.
-- Elder Rice
This last week was another long one. Thanksgiving was okay. Luckily for us we didn't have to go proselyting that day. The white handbook or missionary manual says that holidays are the best time to proselyte since everyone is home. Not true, holidays are the worst times to proselyte since everyone is at home with their family and the last thing they want is for some missionaries to knock on their door and bother them. So we didn't do any of that luckily. At 8:00 in the morning the two english wards had their own Turkey Bowl thing on the local high school's football field so we did that. I was bored out of my skull during that since I stink at football and there were so many people that we had to split into four teams of 20 or so, therefore I spent the whole time just running back and forth and not doing anything since nobody else was. We did that until 10:00. After that we went home and got ready for the day, some members of our ward had pity on us and had invited us over for their thanksgiving meals. First we went to the Pineda's and I thought it was just gonna be more hispanic food but I was surprised since they made turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, stuffing and all that. Course we ate with different varieties of chili peppers so that kinda made it slightly hispanic but oh well. Then at 5:00 we and the sister missionaries of the spanish ward were invited to the Bishop's house for his dinner too, which we went and ate. That was interesting, the Bishop of our spanish ward is a white guy who served his mission in Argentina, he married an Argentinian woman and his 4 kids are half and half, they speak both spanish and english. And his brother and his family was there too, his brother had served his mission in Taiwan, and had married a Taiwanese woman and his 3 kids were likewise half and half, speaking both Chinese and english. So it was a very multi-ethnic affair english, spanish, and chinese all being spoken at the same time. But it was all traditional american thanksgiving food except for these japanese yams with mint sauce or something on them. They tasted weird. Oh and the Bishop's mother was there too, she might have given y'all a call, she wanted our home numbers and said she would call our mothers to say that she spent thanksgiving with your sons, etc. That lasted the rest of the night, we other people had invited us but we didn't have the car that day so we had to politely decline when they called us.
What other interesting things happened? Hmmm.... Saturday stunk, Elder Porter had a baptism he wanted to go to in his old area in College Station, but mission rules are that if you want to leave your zone to go to a baptism or something like that you need to have a member take you because that would be a lot of miles on the mission vehicles. So Elder Porter had asked Hermano Pineda to take us down saturday morning for the 1 and 1/2 hour drive to College Station, he said he would and then on saturday 20 minutes before he came to pick us up he called and said that he couldn't. Elder Porter was furious and then called every ward member on our phone trying to find someone who would take us. Nobody did, and we didn't go. I don't blame them, I think it was extremely rude that Elder Porter would ask someone to drive them all that way to see a baptism of someone that they don't even know, and especially when Hermano Pineda couldn't and then asking people on such short notice was even more rude and presumptuous. I told him this and his reasoning was that the lady being baptized wanted him to personally baptize her. I said it didn't really matter who baptized her it's the same priesthood... So he was ticked off for the rest of day which didn't make that day a very happy day.
It looks like I'm gonna have to go in a minute here and move to another computer, we're in a college today using an empty classroom with computers in it but it seems like a class is about to start so I may have to end this right now and resume on a different computer.
Okay I'm on a different computer now, and I found out how to save e-mails but it's difficult and takes up a lot of room. So yeah, saturday, stunk real bad. Having an upset companion is not fun, not fun at all. We didn't have any appointments that day either so we tracted and tried to just drop in on investigators and less actives. We were on bikes that day so from 2:00 to 8:00 we rode all over town knocking on doors. It was awful, all of that and we ended up like teaching only 3 lessons, two of which were with less active members. Ugh, I was so tired when we finally got home.
Sunday wasn't much better, Elder Porter had yet another convert that he was to "personally" confirm in his old area. He did find a ride this time, some ward member from his old area came to get him. Unfortunately it was decided by the WML and Elder Porter that we go on splits, just in case any of our investigaros showed up to church that day. So I was stuck with Pedro all day, he's 20 something and about to leave for his mission in a month to Oklahoma city. So basically I was left all alone in hostile territory with all of these hispanics. That was not a fun day, this guy Pedro is also one of the ward missionaries and one of the young men's leaders so I had to sit in with him in all of his meetings before church. I just followed him around and tried to figure out what in the world was going on. Later during sunday school there was some urgency and commotion and Pedro and I were beckoned to come out into the hall, we went into an abandoned classroom and the two of us, along with another guy in the ward proceeded to give priesthood blessings to 6 different people. They just lined up outside the door and we started blessing them, we nearly ran out of oil in Pedro's little vial. That was stressful since I don't know how they go in english let alone spanish and I had to have pedro whisper in my ear quite a bit to help me out. And the members being blessed didn't like that at all, this one lady wanted me to do the second part of the blessing, the one where you use your own words and stuff, and oh that stressful but I did it somehow someway, but after wards she was a little upset that it was so short and not all that good cause my spanish sucks. Blargh... I was exhausted after that, I hate it when people think that priesthood blessings are like a cure-all pill or something, and go for that instead of proper medical attention, and these people weren't even all that ill, they just had a cold or something and wanted a blessing. This sort of view is really prevalent among hispanics, they treat us missionaries like holy men with special powers. Which we are, in a way. But they think that God listens to our prayers more than normal people which is why they want us to pray all of the time. During the last transfer this one lady wanted a blessing of comfort and she wanted Elder Astin to do it even though the Bishop was in the same room with us. They'd pick a missionary over just about anyone else. Not only do these people, members and non members alike need the light of the gospel but they need the light of science as well!
Well that's all I got for today. I hope y'all sent me my jacket and flash drive, I'm still waiting for it to come. Oh congratulations on being accepted to USU Alyssa, thank goodness, I was afraid that I've to go to BYU with you. Well I miss you all and hope your having a good time with all of that snow and those mountains, the trees here don't even turn different colors, they're green all year round, kind of boring. Well peace out.
-- Elder Rice
Conroe College
These two photos are of the Conroe college. Probably one of the smallest colleges on the planet, I thought that was funny. I'll send one more email in the next 8 mintues with more pictures then I'll have to log in again and send the real e-mail.
More Photos
-The Conroe Water Tower, it's the center of Conroe and is next to the railway. The tracks divide conroe in half. One on side is the white country folk, and on the other side is the ghetto where all of the hispanics live.
-Elder Astin and I on the shores of Lake Conroe, it's a nice looking lake. I'm told that Conroe is to Houston as Park City is to us. Or at least the parts around the lake, lots of golf courses and whatnot it's a get-away place for people that live in houston.
whoah snap out of time. I forgot what the 3rd one I just attached was anyway. I'll send another e-mail in a little bit.
Choke Sermon
November 23, 2009
Choke Sermon
Okay this is the real e-mail this time.
So it's a new transfer now. Our district was totally changed up and just as predicted we were scattered upon the four winds and only Elder Brown and I remain in the Conroe district, we got 7 new missionaries here. Well not new but new as in never been in Conroe before. 4 Elders and 3 sisters. My new companion is Elder Porter, he's a nice guy, very focused and very hard working but slightly insane, actually very insane, he's one of those brainwashed missionary types, singing hymns every spare moment and quoting scripture. Anyway he sent a letter to you, when I saw that there was a letter by the door that was addressed to you and from Elder Porter I was like "what the freak?" I asked him and he said that he was writing to you all and that he's done that with all of his previous companions. I asked him how he got my family's address and he had gone through the trash or something to find the discarded envelopes from the letters you all have sent me.... Yeah.... Didn't even ask me if it was okay... Not that I have a problem with it. Not really... Just to make to make sure there's not anthrax or anything like that in there.
So it's been another long week. We've done a lot of tracting. Our teaching pool was getting rather low at the end of the last transfer and when Elder Porter got here he set about to fix that and pretty much for three days straight we roamed up and down trailer parks knocking on doors. Heh, this one time, at night, when it was dark we were walking down a road in the middle of this ghetto and we see a man in his driveway are putting his trash in his trash can. Elder Porter says: "This one's yours Rice." I say okay, and walk toward him and said from 20 feet away: "HEY HERMANO!" The guy jumped and in the same motion flipped around and drew a gun from his pocket and pointed it at me. I froze and I noticed that Elder Porter quickly scuttled behind a fence out of the line of fire. I was saying: Whoah! Hang on a minute man!, when I noticed that he didn’t have a gun at all. He was just holding his hand like it was a gun. Then the guy busted up laughing and so did I, and when Elder Porter poked his head out and realized what had happened he busted up laughing too. So we talked to the guy, he was real funny and was interested. In fact I found out later that Elder Porter had signed us up to teach a Bible study class at the church this guy went to... Oh snap... It'll be a week from this coming thursday... Well Elder Porter will have fun with that. He always tells me that we would give one of his arms to bible bash with a J-Dub or whomever... I'm not so keen on that. The thing about Elder Porter is that he likes to pick fights, when we were teaching this crazy old woman he complemented her many pictures of Jesus that were plastered all over the inside this lady's trailer but then said that he didn't like the picture of the virgin Mary. And then he went into a long argument about why we shouldn't pray to Mary nor any other saint and blah blah blah. In the last few days he's argued with like 6 different people about Mary and all of this nonsense... I'm just there for the ride when these sorts of things happen. He also gets into arguments with members too...
Another amusing anecdote. So Elder Brown and his new companion Elder Lopez were out in Cut N' Shoot one day with the ar (that little red-neck town that I spoke of before) when they ran over a homemade spike strip which put holes in all of the tires. Luckily they were close to a member's home and they patched them all up and made it back. But they didn't tell us and left the hub-caps in the trunk. So when Elder Porter and I got back that night Elder Brown came outside and he said: "Hey... where's our hub-caps?" Elder Porter and I turned and looked and saw that indeed there were no hub-caps on our car. We concluded that some loser had stolen them. The next day was our car day and as we backed up we noticed that the front right tire was flat. Again we concluded that the same loser that stole our hubcaps had also let the air out of the front right tire. So we changed the tire and when we opened the trunk to get the spare we found the hub-caps. So when I went back into the apartment to wash my hands when Elder Porter was finishing up putting the hub-caps back on Elder Brown told me what had happened and he told me not to tell Porter. And I didn't so we went to fill up the tire at a gas station. We did, and then found the hole so we went to a tire place to get a patch job. They said the job would only take 15 minutes but it ended up taking two hours. During which we sat in the waiting room thing. Elder Porter was fuming during that whole time, that man does not like to waste a minute. I was okay though, there was a TV and it was the G4 channel and we watched 2 hours of old COPS re-runs, that was fun. COPS is lame but I like seeing the commercials, just to see what's going on the world, also since G4 is a gaming channel I got to see a few updates on what's going on the video game world.
Yesterday on Sunday we had a baptism. Well not really us. The Spanish sister missionaries in our zone had a baptism and the little 9 year old girl they had been teaching wanted me to baptize her, for whatever odd reason. Now Elder Porter wanted to go back to his old area in Brian that same time for a baptism of one of his investigators. So we had to go on splits with the members. I went with Pedro Ortiz, one of the ward missionaries who's like 22 and is leaving on his mission in a month to Oklahoma. So we went to the baptism and all went well. I was afraid that I wouldn't remember how to say it in spanish but I did and the girl, Leslie Batalla didn't have to get baptized in the Mormon church twice like Aidan did. So it was a mostly good night, though I'm getting tired of some of the ward members treating me like I'm stupid just because I can't fully communicate with them yet. Really some of them treat like I'm a retard and in special education or something... Whatever, I will endure.
Well that's all I got for today. Remember to send me my jacket and a flash drive. Oh and thanks Grandma for the cash, that will be put to good use. Okay, peace out. Love y'all, bye.
Choke Sermon
Okay this is the real e-mail this time.
So it's a new transfer now. Our district was totally changed up and just as predicted we were scattered upon the four winds and only Elder Brown and I remain in the Conroe district, we got 7 new missionaries here. Well not new but new as in never been in Conroe before. 4 Elders and 3 sisters. My new companion is Elder Porter, he's a nice guy, very focused and very hard working but slightly insane, actually very insane, he's one of those brainwashed missionary types, singing hymns every spare moment and quoting scripture. Anyway he sent a letter to you, when I saw that there was a letter by the door that was addressed to you and from Elder Porter I was like "what the freak?" I asked him and he said that he was writing to you all and that he's done that with all of his previous companions. I asked him how he got my family's address and he had gone through the trash or something to find the discarded envelopes from the letters you all have sent me.... Yeah.... Didn't even ask me if it was okay... Not that I have a problem with it. Not really... Just to make to make sure there's not anthrax or anything like that in there.
So it's been another long week. We've done a lot of tracting. Our teaching pool was getting rather low at the end of the last transfer and when Elder Porter got here he set about to fix that and pretty much for three days straight we roamed up and down trailer parks knocking on doors. Heh, this one time, at night, when it was dark we were walking down a road in the middle of this ghetto and we see a man in his driveway are putting his trash in his trash can. Elder Porter says: "This one's yours Rice." I say okay, and walk toward him and said from 20 feet away: "HEY HERMANO!" The guy jumped and in the same motion flipped around and drew a gun from his pocket and pointed it at me. I froze and I noticed that Elder Porter quickly scuttled behind a fence out of the line of fire. I was saying: Whoah! Hang on a minute man!, when I noticed that he didn’t have a gun at all. He was just holding his hand like it was a gun. Then the guy busted up laughing and so did I, and when Elder Porter poked his head out and realized what had happened he busted up laughing too. So we talked to the guy, he was real funny and was interested. In fact I found out later that Elder Porter had signed us up to teach a Bible study class at the church this guy went to... Oh snap... It'll be a week from this coming thursday... Well Elder Porter will have fun with that. He always tells me that we would give one of his arms to bible bash with a J-Dub or whomever... I'm not so keen on that. The thing about Elder Porter is that he likes to pick fights, when we were teaching this crazy old woman he complemented her many pictures of Jesus that were plastered all over the inside this lady's trailer but then said that he didn't like the picture of the virgin Mary. And then he went into a long argument about why we shouldn't pray to Mary nor any other saint and blah blah blah. In the last few days he's argued with like 6 different people about Mary and all of this nonsense... I'm just there for the ride when these sorts of things happen. He also gets into arguments with members too...
Another amusing anecdote. So Elder Brown and his new companion Elder Lopez were out in Cut N' Shoot one day with the ar (that little red-neck town that I spoke of before) when they ran over a homemade spike strip which put holes in all of the tires. Luckily they were close to a member's home and they patched them all up and made it back. But they didn't tell us and left the hub-caps in the trunk. So when Elder Porter and I got back that night Elder Brown came outside and he said: "Hey... where's our hub-caps?" Elder Porter and I turned and looked and saw that indeed there were no hub-caps on our car. We concluded that some loser had stolen them. The next day was our car day and as we backed up we noticed that the front right tire was flat. Again we concluded that the same loser that stole our hubcaps had also let the air out of the front right tire. So we changed the tire and when we opened the trunk to get the spare we found the hub-caps. So when I went back into the apartment to wash my hands when Elder Porter was finishing up putting the hub-caps back on Elder Brown told me what had happened and he told me not to tell Porter. And I didn't so we went to fill up the tire at a gas station. We did, and then found the hole so we went to a tire place to get a patch job. They said the job would only take 15 minutes but it ended up taking two hours. During which we sat in the waiting room thing. Elder Porter was fuming during that whole time, that man does not like to waste a minute. I was okay though, there was a TV and it was the G4 channel and we watched 2 hours of old COPS re-runs, that was fun. COPS is lame but I like seeing the commercials, just to see what's going on the world, also since G4 is a gaming channel I got to see a few updates on what's going on the video game world.
Yesterday on Sunday we had a baptism. Well not really us. The Spanish sister missionaries in our zone had a baptism and the little 9 year old girl they had been teaching wanted me to baptize her, for whatever odd reason. Now Elder Porter wanted to go back to his old area in Brian that same time for a baptism of one of his investigators. So we had to go on splits with the members. I went with Pedro Ortiz, one of the ward missionaries who's like 22 and is leaving on his mission in a month to Oklahoma. So we went to the baptism and all went well. I was afraid that I wouldn't remember how to say it in spanish but I did and the girl, Leslie Batalla didn't have to get baptized in the Mormon church twice like Aidan did. So it was a mostly good night, though I'm getting tired of some of the ward members treating me like I'm stupid just because I can't fully communicate with them yet. Really some of them treat like I'm a retard and in special education or something... Whatever, I will endure.
Well that's all I got for today. Remember to send me my jacket and a flash drive. Oh and thanks Grandma for the cash, that will be put to good use. Okay, peace out. Love y'all, bye.
Seek and Destroy
Hopefully the proceeding email with this weeks photos got to you already.
Anyway, it's been another long week, as they always are. So as you can see we had our 3rd baptism this transfer. Sergio Del Agula, it was yesterday but unlike our others it was done in Baring, which is close to downtown Houston in the stake center there because Sergio's cousin, Alex Del Agula, was leaving the following day to the MTC and he was getting set apart as a missionary. So that was nice and all.
Saturday was a rather stressful day, for it was transfer call day. Now after all of that nonsense that I spoke of a couple weeks ago we were pretty certain that there would be a lot of changes, it was just a question of who. So throughout the whole day everyone was stressed. The zone leaders finally called our district leader at like 9:45 pm with the info. Elder Astin is getting transferred to one of the downtown Houston Zones, he's not happy at all about that, I'm staying here and my new companion will be Elder Porter, I've only met him once at our last zone conference, he seems like a nice guy but also like a preachy wind-bag as he was the guy that sat front row and center and was making preachy comments every 5 seconds during zone conference. He's also pretty hard core from what I here, that he won't waste a second, so I guess I'll be tracting a lot during this upcoming transfer which will start on Wednesday. Elder Nelson is to be leaving as well and will be replaced with a new missionary, so I won't be the newbie in the district anymore. Elder Pitts is going home, his time is up, and Elder Dexter is going somewhere and they're to be replaced by Elder Beck, who I think played on BYU's football team, he's a Polynesian who was an AP for a while, and he will be training another new missionary.
Hmm... Other things that happened this week. We did quite a bit of service this week. On Tuesday we went with the english elders to a member's ranch at like 7 AM and fed their dozen or so horses and then spent the next five hours splitting logs. I'm still tired from that but it was fun. Then on saturday we went out to some red-neck country and helped a member put up a fence for several hours, we dug holes, put logs in them and packed them in, all around his several acres of property. It was rather fun and also rather back breaking.
Well that's about it. Oh I also thought of a few more things you could get me for christmas. You get me a calender, preferably a two year one, with a cool theme like medieval or Napoleonic battles or something like that. And you get me some electronic clippers and electronic shaving device, of which I know nothing about, so good luck with that. Maybe also a new camel back, this dog was chewing on the straps and plastic buckles the other day and the thing in general is only just holding together but it can hold out for the rest of this year so no worries.
Well that's all I got for today.
-- Elder Rice
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