The Shortest Straw

March 15, 2010

The Shortest Straw

Well...... I don't think I have too much to say this week. It's been the same as every other week mostly.

Progress with the Dubons is starting to slow down, on saturday we had a rather frank discussion with Giovanni about baptism, we told him that we've taught him everything and it was up to him to decide if he wanted to make the next step to baptism. He said that the only thing holding him up is the Book Of Mormon, the bible, he says can be proved, he wants hard evidence that the Book of Mormon is what it says it says. So we just bore some powerful testimonies of the Book of Mormon, of how we know that it's true, and that our testimonies are based on what we felt from the spirit and not from any sort of secular proof, the things of men. Unfortunately our testimonies just seemed to bounce right off of him, he kept wanting to know if there was any hard proof, with reluctance we mentioned that indeed there is a great deal of archaeological and historical evidence, but that we shouldn't know it's true through those, the spirit is the only way. So yeah... We're not quite sure what to do with him anymore, other than to remind him to keep on reading and praying. Which he says he's doing. I hope he gets the answer he needs.

Saturday we went to the "Redneck Pulga" out in Cut-N-Shoot. A week ago we were tag-teaming with the english elders (that's when an english companionship and a spanish companionship who cover the same area go out together in the same car and hit up the people in that area). Anyway we saw this place and we really wanted to go check it out but definitely not then, dressed the way we were as mormon missionaries. And it's only open on Saturdays and Sundays so we decided to come back next week undercover (in street clothes). So saturday morning we went and had a good time. Pulga is the spanish word for 'flea market' which makes sense since Pulga literally translated means flea. Down more towards the city in Houston there are quite a few pulgas and the missionaries get assignments to work the Pulga, in which doing so they get millions of referrals. We called this one the Redneck Pulga because it was out in Cut-N-Shoot Texas with mostly white trash running it, the hispanics were the minority. We saw some funny stuff, the pictures attached are of this place, the other is of Elder Lopez using a type writer that the english elders got to type their letters and things.

Well that's about it, this next week may very well be my last week in Conroe, transfer calls are on Saturday so it is very likely that I will be leaving since I've been in Conroe for 6 months now. And no I have not yet gotten the CD so hopefully it comes soon, also could you send me my belt? The brown casual one? I've been looking around for the last couple months for a casual and reasonably priced belt but I have been unable to find one so could you send that to me? It would be much appreciated. Hope y'all having a good time in Provo, it's been in the 80's this week for us and the humidity and bugs are starting to come back. Love y'all, peace out. Oh by the way what's Ryan's address? (mission office) Is it the Rancho Cucamungawhatever one? He hasn't written me back since I sent him a letter like 5 months ago, maybe I have the wrong address.

-- Elder Rice

The Thing That Should Not Be

(From Alex with some comments from me)

Hello Family. How goeth life?

Not much has been going on over here. It's the same old. The Dubons are progressing slowly. Every lesson we have with them is one step backwards and one and one half steps forward. So it's slow but they're getting there. I'm not sure if I'll still be here in Conroe when they finally get baptized but we can go to other areas for baptisms with President's permission, which usually means only if we can get a ride with a member. So yeah, I'm pretty much done with Conroe, I'm tired of it, and there's only 2 weeks left of the transfer so who knows where I'll end up, or even if I'm going anywhere.

This week was somewhat interesting actually. Once again we had exchanges with the Zone Leaders. I went down to the Woodlands to be an english Elder for a day and it was okay. Though I noticed that there are a lot of ugly white people in Texas(Alex!), I've been around Hispanic faces so long that I was amazed by looking at these white people's faces. They're really weird. Now our Zone Leaders with perhaps the most odd pair of missionaries in the Mission. Elder Short and Elder Dashdorj. Elder Short is from Oregon, 25 years old, round like an egg, and is perhaps the strangest person I've ever met, he's sort of creepy too. I think I've mentioned Dashdorj before, he's the Elder from Mongolia, his english is pretty good but he still has a really thick accent, he speaks both Mongolian and Korean and wants to learn spanish too. He's really cool actually. Anyway so Elder Hansen (the zone leader I was on exchange with) and I came back to the apartment at 8:45 and the lights were off and the door was locked. So we thought that the other must still be out. Hansen unlocks the door and opens it. Then this hazy smoke wafted out, we walk in and Elder Short is sitting right there next to the door at his desk, staring at this little blue light on his speakers. Sitting completely still and just staring at it in otherwise complete darkness. He didn't say a word as we came in. Dashdorj was sprawled out on the couch staring off into space. Hansen says: "What the is going on?!" And he starts going around throwing open windows and trying to waft the smoke out, I was just laughing while Dashdorj says in his thick Mongolian accent "I was cooking some buffalo meat." I was still laughing and I asked Dashdorj where he got Buffalo meat from and he told us that some member gave it to them.

Later that night after we had finished planning I was talking to Dashdorj and I asked him what buffalo tasted like. The conversation went somewhat like this:

R: "So what does buffalo meat taste like?"
D: "It tastes like Yak"
R: "What does Yak taste like?"
D: "Kind of like camel?"
R: "What does Camel taste like?"
D: "Like Marmot"
Elder Hansen: " What's a Marmot?"
(I explain to Hansen what a marmot is)
D: "You're the first American I've met that knows what a Marmot is."
R: " Thank you, so what does Marmot taste like?"
D: "Almost like Dog"
R: "... We have got to find some common ground here... does it taste like chicken?"
D: "Um..... yeah... sure."
R: "Okay then."

Yeah it was rather funny. Most of our conversation was me asking him about stuff in Mongolia and Korea, he told me how they make Kim-chi and how to prepare dog and stuff. He says that in Mongolia they pretty much eat only meat, almost nothing grows, no fruit whatsoever and very few vegetables. And then he just asked me how to say certain words, like 'diagonal' and whatnot.

So yeah, the next day we had District meeting and it was probably the most boring district meeting I've ever had, probably because their district has sister missionaries in it, that and they're district leader, Elder Hunsicker has the worst monotone voice ever. I spent most of district meeting teaching Dashdorj spanish slang and he was writing it all down in his planner.

After district meeting we were off to un-exchange, Dashdorj and short went with us too. And we were driving along and ahead there was this red pick up truck full of drunken white trash fools (Alex!). They were weaving all around the road and we decided to get ahead of them so they wouldn't hit us. We passed them and noticed that the female driver was buck naked. We drove faster and got away from them. A few minutes later we were waiting to merge on the feeder (which is this road that runs along all the free ways in texas and it "feeds" you into the free way. It's really cool, they ought to have them in Utah (they do Alex). Anyway these fools ended up behind us and rear ended us. We pulled off the side, but they kept going and sped away. We got their license plate number though so they're toast. There was no damage luckily but even so, Elder Hansen was furious, Dashdorj and I were laughing and Short was babbling about something strange.

So yeah, that was Thursday and friday. The most eventful days of this week.

Okay so the pictures I sent are of many things. Most of them are random shots out the car window from our trip to College Station, the countryside, some kids smoking something, a ferry, a doughnut shop, an odd trailer, Elders Woodruff, Shultz, and Lopez after a long day, and a few others that I've already forgotten about.

So yeah. Oh and mom I know your birthday is sometime this month but I can never remember the day (nice). I got you something and I'm gonna send it in a package and it'll probably be your birthday/mother's day gift(okay!). Oh and while I'm at it I'm gonna send the rest of you stuff. I've already got something for Alyssa and I know what I'm gonna get Dad and the boys. I think y'all will like them. You should get this package around the end of the month maybe I have not yet gotten everything yet. So yeah that's all for today. Glad Austin got his homework done. So I love you all and have a good day.

-- Elder Rice

Weisses Fleisch

March 1, 2010

Buenos Dias, Family.

Yes mom I did get the package, it was really neat that jersey was pretty sick, I love it. And I sent a letter to you and dad a couple days ago so you ought to be getting it this week.

Speaking of this week it was rather dull. We had Zone Conference which meant a 140 mile round trip out to College Station, which is about 70 miles North-West of Conroe. We had to get up at 5 to get there on time and then it was a long boring drive through the countryside, especially when the CD player in the car doesn't work, I got some cool pictures on the way back but they will have to wait till next week because these computers are not cooperating with me today.

Just yesterday we had Stake Conference, Our Stake Center is actually out of our Mission, it's down in Houston itself just barely out of mission boundaries. So we went to that and had a rather good time. I was surprised to see President and Sister Hansen sitting up on the stand there at a spanish Stake Conference but the other Elders told me that it was normal procedure that the Mission President and his wife attend all the Stake Conferences in the mission. They also spoke too! Just short and simple testimonies, they're spanish is downright awful but they did a good job. Interestingly enough, out of the 10 or so talks given at this conference only 2 of them were given by actual hispanics. In addition to President and Sister Hansen, the President of the Houston South Mission and his wife were there. The Houston Temple President and his wife, and the General Authority and his wife. The General authority was Elder Shwick, of the 70. Of all the 8 gringos that spoke only he actually spoke spanish fluently. The rest of them just had either short little testimonies like the Mission presidents, read their talks directly off papers, or had someone translate for them right there.

This was all extremely amusing to me and the other missionaries I would assume because it makes us all feel better about our spanish, few things make you feel like you can speak good like hearing someone worse than you try and speak in front of hundreds of people. When it ended everyone stood around and talked to each other. Elder Woodruff and Elder Bone talked to all of their converts and other people from their previous wards while Elder Smith and I, not knowing anyone, just talked to the other missionaries there. I did get to see Elder Astin, he told me that he talked to Petra (one of our converts that moved to Chicago after she was baptized) and said that she had a calling and was active. So that was good to know that all of the 3 people that we've gotten baptized are still active. Hispanics have a really hard time staying active for a plethora of reasons which I don't have the time to discuss here.

In other news the Dubon's are still hesitant and won't yet accept a baptismal date. Giovanni still has some doubts but we finally got him to start praying so hopefully we can set up a date within the next couple weeks. That's really all that's been going on. It's the same old thing, week after week, the same boredom punctuated by periods of extreme silliness and hilarity because all missionaries including myself are absolutely insane (probably what happens when you don't watch TV for a while) and we find the most random things utterly hilarious.

Okay that's all for today. Help Austin out with his special "assignment" if he needs, or rather, make sure he actually does it. Peace out.

-- Elder Rice

Phantom Lord

February 22, 2010



Pictures didn't work again? Hmm... Well I don't know, they work fine for everyone else. They shouldn't come up as DAT. files, try opening them with some program like the picture viewer or something. That's what I have to do to view pictures, I'll try something and send last week's and this week's in a separate e-mail (mom here-got the photos and put them on last week's post).

So, this week was good. The Dubon's came to church again and we're so close to getting them baptized, Giovani, the dad, says that our church makes perfect sense and he'd join, it's just that the Book of Mormon is the only thing in his way. He says the problem with it is you just have to accept it with faith and there's not much secular evidence for it. We're like, yeah, DUH. Of course the only to know if it's true is through faith and sincere prayer. We're getting close, we had interviews with President Hansen on Thursday and I was talking to him about this and he shared with me some great scriptures and using that we constructed the "Recipe for Revelation" lesson. Which we shared with the Dubon's on saturday along with the 2nd counselor. It was a good lesson and they came to church yesterday but had to leave early. And they said they'll pray so hopefully by the end of this week we'll have a date set up for them to get baptized.

Not much else is going on. Though the pictures I'm going to send could use some explanation. In the first one that shows me covered in mud was when one day we were "Tag-Teaming" with the english Elders out in Cut-N-Shoot. The car got stuck in some mud and we got out and pushed and the spinning tires got mud all over me. There's actually a really great video I took of that beforehand when we were driving down this dirt road with these huge deep puddles at 35 mph. After that night we decided that Elder Lopez is never driving again. One of these days when I have enough videos I'm going to send a DVD with all the videos I've taken on it and y'all can watch it.

The other pictures are of this huge dog that Elder Woodruff and I encountered. We think it's a Great Dane mixed with a Lab or something. We were scared to death of it when it loped up to us but after we stared him down we stared playing with him. A couple days later we passed by the same place (we were looking for a referral there) and we met the guy who owned the dog and he was telling us that it's only 7th months old! The dog's name is Pantera (panther) and he's supposed to get half as big as he already is. About 5 feet tall he said.

The other pictures are of the "Fellowship of the Woodlands" church. This big Non-Dom (Non-Denominational) church in the Woodlands. It's not too far from our church and we had some extra time before church last Sunday so we thought we'd drive by and see it. We had heard rumors about it. So these are a couple of pictures I snapped out the car window as we drove quickly through it. It was huge, about the size of a college with chapels and lecture halls and gyms and all sorts of crazy stuff. Lots of people around in our area go to it.

Well not much else to report things are the same as they've always been. I'll try to send those other pictures off in another e-mail. Peace out.

Elder Rice

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