Metal Militia

February 16, 2010




Howdy family.

I didn't get to e-mail yesterday because of President's Day. I'm sure you all appreciated the day off from school, work, etc. But for missionary’s fake holidays like President's Day, are a hindrance ESPECIALLY on P-Day. There's no mail, nothing is open, and most of the people would rather spend their time with their families and they don't want us around. Good to hear that you and Amy got back in one piece mom, I'm excited to read how it went.

This last week was rather slow but good since that family that I was writing about last time came to Church. Giovanni Dubon and his two daughters came to Church, it was great. They had a great time as far as I could tell. Though Giovanni got poor Hermana Heimaiz (gospel principles sunday school teacher) flustered with his complicated questions, and he stirred up quite a ruckus in Elder's Quorum (it's bad enough without investigators there). But he generally enjoyed it I think. His problem is a problem that I share, and that is that he thinks too much and it's difficult for him to feel the spirit. He wants to know our Church is true intellectually rather than spiritually, which obviously doesn't work too well, because without the spirit you can't know that it's true. So we will see how that goes. The girls as far as I know enjoyed being at church and they actually recognized some of the youth there from school. I really hope they'll get baptized, they're the only reason I have any desire to stay in here in Conroe, I'm getting tired of it. Oh speaking of which, mom I remembered that a friend asked you which ward I'm in right now some time ago and I don't think I ever answered that, so it's the Woodlands 3rd ward.

Every Friday morning we have what is called District Meeting. Where all the missionaries in the area get together and have a little two hour meeting. I bring this up because we watched this really cool movie, actually it was part two of a really cool movie and I bring it up because I think y'all should get them and watch them for a couple of family home evenings or something. Part 1 is called "Journey of Faith" and part 2 is "The New World". They are basically documentaries on the Book of Mormon. The first one is about Lehi and the trip from Jerusalem to the new world and part two is about the Nephite civilization in the new world. It's really cool, I know Dad and Austin would like it a lot, it basically shows that in secular terms the Book of Mormon is real and clears up a lot of Mormon lore on the subject. As far as a documentary goes it's a little less than good compared to something on the History Channel but I liked them a lot. Y'all should watch them, I would assume you could get them in the... Um,,, Whatever that place was called... The Mormon Bookstore next to the Distribution center. I forgot the name of it.

Here are some pictures (the mom here, Alex forgot to send them as jpegs- so we can't open them), I don't have a lot of pictures with myself actually in them since I hate being in pictures but I thought you all would like to see me anyway. The first one is when someone (to this day I do not know who) took a picture of me when I was writing in my journal. This was back in October, notice how much I look like Dad, very tired. The second one is from Christmas P-Day after the mission conference of myself and Elder Allbee doing our best brutal faces. The third is of Elder Porter, my previous companion back in December. He wanted us to do a dumb pose and I didn't want to, so I stepped to the side right before the picture was taken so I wouldn't be in it, so it just shows him looking dumb and that is the only picture I have of him.

Okay I'm out of time. Until next Monday then, unless there's some other dumb holiday.

-- Elder Rice

Angel of Death

February 8, 2010

Angel of Death


It's a new transfer now, ye-haw... We got transfer calls on saturday and I'm staying here in Conroe with Elder Woodruff. This will be the first time I've had the same companion for more than one transfer. I'm rather happy to be staying I am tired of Conroe, biking up and down the same old streets, knocking on the same doors, and standing on the same old door steps while nobody answers the door. I'm tired of the same old inactive members who won't come to church and the same investigators who won't progress. But on the other hand I didn't want to get transferred to the downtown Houston zone where the majority of the spanish missionaries are. I have no desire to be down in the city any time soon I prefer out in the middle of nowhere much more. Also I didn't want to have to get used to a new companion again.

So this last week was okay. We don't have any progressing investigators, the closest we have to that is the Dubon family. They're from Honduras and they're an interesting bunch. The father, Giovanni thinks like a white man. He's very different from most hispanics. We've been teaching him since October and he still hasn't come to church, he has thousands of questions, lots of doubts, and is a rather intelligent guy, he remembers everything we tell him and from what he's read. He's read a good chunk of the Book of Mormon and he remembers every detail, names, principles and everything. And he always has deep and serious questions. For example we had him read about Lehi's dream of the tree of life and Nephi's explanation of it in the following chapters. He understood it perfectly but his question was: "So what happens if I do everything I need to do and my children choose not to follow the same path? If we're going to live in this celestial kingdom of yours with our families forever and be eternally happy how can I be eternally happy if my children aren't there because they mad bad decisions and didn't want to follow?" To this we didn't know what to say. Later we had to ask our mission President what he thought about this. Anyway so he has all of these "questions of the soul" and whatnot and is in agreement with everything we've taught so then the natural question is why isn't he baptized yet? Because he's like a white guy with all of his questions and doubts. He, apparently are the kind of people that english missionaries deal with all the time. He also thinks ahead. Most hispanics don't think too much about the future, next week being the farthest in advance they think about. Giovanni just bought a bunch of land behind him and he's planning on buying another trailer and renting it out. It's weird, he plans and thinks things through, most hispanics don't do that. Your average hispanic, upon having a pile of money will go out and buy a big but not very good TV. After a couple months the TV will break but they don't want to throw it away so they just go and buy another one. I've been in countless houses with these huge TV's everywhere but the family will all be watching the smallest TV.

Anyway Giovanni is a great guy, he has four kids. The oldest a 20 year old named Jose was kicked out of the house for getting some other girl pregnant (again most hispanics wouldn't be bothered by that). Two girls, Elisa and Martha, ages 17 and 14. And a little baby, Giovanna. The kids are good too. We don't see much of Jose but the two girls are always with Giovanni when we come over to teach them and they will always read the homework we leave them, they like their dad, have read a lot of the Book of Mormon. They'd also be baptized by now if it weren't for their dad. They're not all that independent, but I think it's a cultural thing.

Hispanic culture is very macho-istic. Petra, who was our first convert in my first transfer, was 25, lived with her older brother and his wife and with her younger sister. Neither of them could leave the house to go out anywhere unless they had their brother's permission. They're all like that and it's weird, even in member's houses for dinner and such, they'll feed us the guests, and the father and the sons if any and all the females will be in the kitchen just bringing food to us and cleaning up after us. It's the weirdest thing. And they'll get mad if you try to help them with the dishes or anything. It's just their culture I think, the men never have to do anything and it's expected that the women do everything. This may be part of the reason why most spanish missionaries I've met who have been out for a while want to get married to a hispanic when they get back.

Anyway, this last saturday we went to the Dubon's at 8:00 to go help them clear their property behind their trailer. It was a lot of fun, we were chopping down trees. There was one guy with a chainsaw and he'd cut a little wedge out of the side of the tree and then he'd start cutting on the other side while we pushed. Then these huge trees would come crashing down all the wood cracking and splintering and then the huge thud and crash as they hit the ground. Then all of us would get the machetes and start taking off the branches and then we'd pile up the logs and branches. It was a lot of work, lots of heavy lifting. We worked from 8:00 to 2:00 doing this and at the end of it we were scratched up, covered in sap, and sore. But it was a ton of fun, we cut down about 70 trees. Anyway the best part about this was that Giovanni finally seemed to trust us know, he finally knows that we were serious. And so when we were leaving he asked if he was going to come to church on sunday. (like we always do) and said if he could he would. But the next sunday he promised that he would come. So this next sunday he's going to come and perhaps finally start progressing and hopefully they'll be baptized before the end of this transfer. I'm excited for them, we've been working with them for so long.

Well I'm out of time now. Hope you have fun in the Netherlands mom, send me pictures and a soccer jersey. Hope the rest of y'all are having a good time too. Oh and Alyssa I got your letter but I haven't gotten a single e-mail from you. I don't know where they are going but I'm not getting them. And the comics are funny, I have them thumb tacked up on my wall. But I think whoever made them doesn't really know much about those countries, at all. And the one with the fish is Iceland not Switzerland. Send more if you can. Okay, 30 seconds left. Peace out.

--Elder Rice

Rosenrot

February 1, 2010

Well, I actually don't have much to say this week family.

Bummer that everyone's sick I still haven't gotten sick yet, lots of other missionaries are getting sick but that's because they're dumb. Elder Bone, for example has been sick this past week. Probably because he used all of his money to buy a GPS and has been trying to live off of ramen noodles and dinner from members all through the last transfer. It's amazing to me how stupid a lot of the missionaries are out here. Bone's companion, Elder Smith, buys nothing but candy and mountain dew. They all think I'm weird for buying vegetables and juice and stuff but as Elder Bone found out I have the last laugh.

Also that was cool that thing in Preston Idaho with Thai cooking. I miss Asian food a lot. And most other missionaries around here hate Asian food and will eat nothing else but mexican food. Of which I've been getting tired of lately. Lately I've also been having a difficult time getting along with the other missionaries too. Funny how Elder Paxman said the same thing in his e-mail that you forwarded to me, that the hardest thing about the mission is getting along with other missionaries. I actually get along with my companion really well. It's just others that I live with. Though luckily we don't have nearly as hard a time as the sister missionaries do. They're always mad at each other.

Well it's the last week of the transfer and I don't know if I will be staying here in Conroe or going somewhere else. I kind of want to go to get away from Elder Bone, and I'm a little sick of my area. But on the other hand I like the ward a lot being made up of mostly South American Hispanics, whereas most others in the mission are composed mostly of mexicans. Also I still have no desire to be in the downtown Houston zone. I'd rather stay out in the country like Conroe, but we'll see what happens. Also that's why I haven't given y'all my new address because I have a good chance of not being here anymore next week. Besides, sending stuff to the mission office is just fine, it just slows things down by a day. It's all good. And I know mom, that you want to hear all of that spiritual stuff, and I'm working on a letter containing all of that.

Well that's about all I got. This week has been dull, I don't have any amusing stories. But hopefully the pictures will work this time. When I send them. It's the new bicycle handle bar and the Mary shrine.

-- Elder Rice

Waidmanns Heil

Hello family.

Sorry that those pictures didn't work. I don't have my camera with me today so I'll resend them again next week. Along with some new ones.

So I remembered the other rather amusing anecdote that I was going to share last time and it's an ongoing subject that concerns the J-Dubs. So, apparently there are a lot of J-Dubs out here. But I haven't yet actually seen one. My mission involving them is playing out like a horror movie, they're coming closer and closer but I still haven't seen them. On my very first day in the mission field back in October the new missionaries were taken tracting by all the trainers. I was in a threesome with two other elders and we were tracting this apartment complex in the evening. Eventually it got dark and as we were walking along one of the Elders, Elder Barret, looks off into the distance and comments that the J-Dubs are here tracting these same apartments. I looked over where he was pointing and all I saw were these two dark shadows dart behind a building. Spooky right? Then several months later during my last transfer Elder Porter and I were tracting. We were talking to this old hispanic man in his driveway and we ask him the usual "have you seen missionaries like us before?" question. To which he responded, "Oh yeah, you guys came by two days ago." Elder Porter and I looked at each other, we hadn't been anywhere near this area ever before. We kinda laughed a bit and said that it might of been but probably not. But the man continued, "Yeah you guys gave me this neat little book thing, I'll go get it." He went inside and came back out with one the little J-Dub booklets they hand out. Again, spooky, I realized that they are here in Conroe, in our territory.

And then just recently we were visiting this less active woman in our ward on a Thursday morning. We were in her kitchen in the middle of sharing a scripture when there's a knock on the door. The lady says "excuse me" and goes to get it. A couple minutes later she comes back and says that it was the J-Dubs. We were like "what?!?!" And she said yes and she told us that she told them that she was not interested and that she was a mormon and that in fact the mormon missionaries were here in her house right now and that was their car over there. Obviously that was not the smartest thing to say. But then she told us that they then asked if they could come in and talk with us. Luckily she didn't let them in. But once again, spooky. They're getting closer and closer.

Oh and remember in my last e-mail I said that I was gong to be on exchanges that day with one of the zone leaders who don't speak spanish? Well that went pretty well. But during this one lesson with another less active lady there's this knock on the door and these two hispanic men walk in the door. They were in their late 40's or so and they were dressed like us, slacks, ties, and everything and carried what looked like to be scripture bags. My first thought was that these two were J-Dubs, my second thought was that I'm the only missionary in here than can speak spanish, I didn't have my companion to rely on, my third thought was that these guys would try to bash with us (or me rather) and my spanish is very limited along with bashing abilities. I was thinking that we were indeed screwed when it turns out that they weren't J-Dubs but just a couple of business men. They walked in and the lady we were teaching showed them into the kitchen where the three of them sat down, started talking, exchanging money and documents and other things. Just right in the middle of our lesson. None of them said a word to us. We sat there are few minutes waiting for them to finish up, We had another appointment to get to so we asked the Hermana if we could finish another time, without even looking up she said yeah, sure, fine, come back whenever you want. So we left, that was a little rude.

And then, just this last week we discovered the J-Dub church here in Conroe on our way to a members house. It looked like a one story castle without windows and a spiked fence around it. Apparently they don't have any windows in their buildings for some odd reason. So basically the point of this is that the J-Dubs are indeed out there and my mission is playing out like a horror movie, I can only imagine what's going to happen when I actually encounter them.

So that's all I got for today. Hope y'all are doing good at home with the new floor and whatnot. Oh and this last week it's been about 70 degrees everyday so winter is probably over down here. So yeah, have a good week, love you all. Peace out.

-- Elder Rice

Liebe ist fur alle da

Hello family,

Not much going on down here. I think I had a couple of crazy stories but I forgot what they were. And don't worry mom I got everything, thanks for the cereal. Also we are finally moved in to a new apartment which is nice and clean and has two bathrooms. So that's all good. Oh and we didn't get to e-mail yesterday because of Martin Luther King Jr. Day or whatever it's called, and all the libraries and stuff were closed, luckily we had permission to do it today.

Blast.... I can't remember the amusing story that I was going to write about, I remember one of them, as you can see in one of the two attached photos(*) that there is a bicycle with a wooden leg for a handlebar. Our new Elder, Elder Smith, got my previous companion's old bike, and by old I mean old. The other day one of the handle bars broke off and we figuring out if it was possible to fix, we tired a few things like duct tape and braces but they all failed. So we were about to give up and go get a new one at one of the hundreds of pawnshops here in Conroe when I came up with the idea that we should use a leg from this rickety old stool that we have. So we did, it was a lot of fun. We didn't have any tools except a pocket knife and some wrenches. We unbent the hole in the remaining metal tube of the handle bar on the bike by using a 5lb weight and the biggest wrench, then we shoved the stool leg in and pounded it in there, and used the pocket knife to whittle at the leg so the brake switch and the gear shifter could fit over it. It actually worked and it's pretty solid. And it's hilarious, we took so many pictures and movies of the process and we were laughing our guts out the whole time. Pretty funny. I wish I could remember the other story but I can't The other picture is of one of the many Mary shrines that people have in their houses and driveways. The funny thing about this one is that it's in the driveway of a members home, she's inactive, obviously. We're going to visit her today and I think we ought to share something about how we shouldn't worship idles.

Speaking of today we're doing exchanges with the zone leaders. And for the first time I will be the one staying in the area, and since the zone leaders speak english that means I'm gonna be teaching all by myself today. So wish me luck, I think I can do it but we'll see how it goes. We have appointments only with less active members today so if I say something wrong the consequences won't be all that bad. Well I'm out of time, hope the house looks good with new junk in it, love y'all, peace out.

--Elder Rice

* From the Mom: I couldn't open Alex's pictures, so I have requested that he send them again.

All kinds of Wars

January 11, 2009

Howdy Family,

How y'all doing? This week has been really long. The four of us are still stuck in that miserable little 2-man apartment it was pushed back yet again to today- Monday. So we've spent two weeks in here and it we hate it, we've been living out of our suitcases and have not done any laundry two weeks. Not fun, at all. Hopefully we will move in today, we should. The roaches probably figured out that we were moving so last night they tried one final attack, they lost and we killed like 30 of them last night. Though this morning we found a silverfish by Elder Smith's bed, which apparently is a sort of bug belonging to the centipede family and they're bites are like bee stings. So hopefully we get out today.

This last week has also been bitterly cold. Friday it got down to 20 degrees at 5:00 PM, we also happened to be on bikes that day. That was real bad. We've seen lots of trailers with broken water pipes spewing water everywhere. Down here water pipes aren't insulated because it usually doesn't get this cold, our apartment management people had sent out a warning a few days before and wanted us to take several precautions to prevent pipes from freezing and then breaking. During that day we stopped in a a convenience store to warm up for a little bit and look at the map. Now we were in the middle of our area of which white people are few and far between. Anyway the guy that ran the store, this jumpy Vietnamese guy was getting antsy about us being there, probably thought we were cops or something. So we bought a couple of sodas and talked to him for a bit, saying sorry that we were hanging around so long. He told us that we shouldn't be here too long because it was "bad for business" and that all the people there don't like white people. We were very well aware of this. So we went to our next appointment which was actually just across the street from that little store, it's a member family and we were talking to them and we found out that indeed we were "bad for business" we were scaring away all the drug dealers. It's a funny part of town, all hispanic except for a significant population of blacks too. It's funny there's these two streets that run parallel to each other both with the name of "Dr. Martin Luther King Avenue" and all the blacks in Conroe live around there. It's kinda funny. So anyway it turns out that there's always these gang wars between the hispanics and the blacks around this area. And these hispanic members had friends that were part of one of these gangs and that's how they stay safe at night. Apparently we (the missionaries) are also under this one gang's protection as we have been observed visiting this family and they've told their friends that we're good and that's why we can walk up to their gate without getting shot. Also we found out from them that just about everyone around there thinks that we are cops posing as missionaries trying to bust all the drug dealers. ... Yeah... Lots of fun, we're not going back there during the night. It's fun during the day but apparently it's in the night is where all the people get mugged and all of the drug dealers and prostitutes come out and people start shooting each other. When they split Conroe in half for the new spanish elders we got the worse side by far.

Hmm... Anything else fun happen? Not much, we've finally found some investigators that might actually progress, it's about time too, all of last transfer we were working with flakey people who weren't going anywhere. So hopefully we will get a couple of baptisms this transfer. My spanish is making rapid strides now, I can hold conversations with people and understand most of what is being said, it's also extremely interesting to hear all the different varieties of spanish. We have people from all over Latin America up here and it's fascinating to hear all the different accents, vocabulary, and grammar usage. I said in my last e-mail that the Argentinian spanish is my favorite, sounds like french and is way more old world-ish than mexican spanish. The 2nd counselor in our ward is from Uruguay and he has the sickest (awesome-ist) accent. I'm doing my own little study on all the different dialects by talking to people and asking them about the language and stuff. Most of them think that central american spanish is the ugliest sounding (Guatemala and Honduras), the most "correct" spanish is in Chile, Peru, and Paraguay. Mexican spanish is the most ghetto and americanized and has the most slang of them all while Spain, Uruguay, and Argentina are the most Europeanish. Fascinating, I'm making lists of vocabulary from all the different places

Well I'm out of time, so that's all I got for today. Have a good week and send me more letters! Peace out.

-- Elder Rice

Of Wolf and Man

Hello family.

A new transfer has just begun and it's been an interesting one so far. I got a new companion, Elder Woodruff, from somewhere in Idaho. He's way cool, we have a lot in common, probably more so than any other companion I've had yet, all five of them. And get this... He hates basketball! Just like me! I've never thought I'd meet a missionary that hates basketball, but it turns out that they exist after all, that makes two of us.
So yeah he's cool. New Year's Eve was rather dull, we had to be in by 5:00 pm, no exceptions. President didn't want us out on the road with all the borrachos driving around. The day before I had finally gotten rid of Elder Porter and picked up Elder Woodruff, and we had moved into another apartment, we switched apartments with the other english elders. It is bad, no hot water, roaches everywhere, it's just an old nasty apartment. Luckily we're not going to be staying in it for long. They told us that we'd be moved into a new 4 man apartment today, on monday. That hasn't happened yet, and it probably won't for another week or so. Which really stinks because we got our two new Spanish Elders to work in Conroe with us. Elder Bone (or Bonehead as I call him, he's pretty much the same as Elder Porter, both of them don't like me at all) and a brand new missionary straight out of the MTC, Elder Smith. On new years day they came down with a couple beds and the 4 of us are living in a 2 man apartment at the moment. It rather stinks, there's no room for all of us. But hopefully they'll move us into a new one soon. It's nice having a new spanish missionary. Looking at Elder Smith I finally see how much I've learned. I can actually carry conversations now with people and get most of what they say. Depending on who it is. Some people still talk so dang fast that I can't get more than a word of it.
Also it was odd as I was in charge for a while. The other three are completely new to the area and they all had to rely on me because I know the area and the people. It was kind of a spooky feeling, being in charge of something like that. The last two transfers I just followed Astin and Porter around, I didn't have to worry about anything. Now I have to worry about everything. They split our area in half and Bonehead and Smith got the vast majority of our investigators and less active members. Which kinda leaves us with not a lot of work. But oh well, they've got those Pentecostals now, not my problem (as much) anymore.
That's pretty much all that went down this week, moving in, moving the others in, and doing logistics on the ward and the area and whatnot. Lots of paperwork and map work. Oh I have a question, so where did you get that little electronic nano bug thing? We visited a part member family the other day and I let their 2 year old little girl play with it and they all thought it was the most amazing thing they'd ever seen and they wanted to know where to get one. I told them I didn't know and that I'd ask y'all so if y'all can do that it would be cool. I'm trying to come up with some sort of object lesson that I can use with the little bug, it'd be a cool lesson if I could think of something.
Well that's about it for today, oh and myldsmail has finally updated to this new g-mail system. It's identical to g-mail and works much better unlike the old retarded Novell powered myldsmail. It's amazing! So that's all I got to say, I hope you all are doing well. So yeah, peace out.

-- Elder Rice