Omerta

April 12th

Hello family.

Not much new this week, the same old grind, and apparently it's not just us but the whole mission is like this too. At zone conference President said that the number of progressing investigators in the mission is at an all time low, lower than it's been for a few years. We still don't have anyone progressing. The Dubons were dodging us for a couple weeks but we finally caught Giovanni by surprise by dropping in unexpectedly on a tuesday night and finally caught him there. It went well surprisingly enough, his excuse for dodging us was that he has started working on weekends now so we'll have to see him weeknights from now on. That's fine with us, he also likes Elder Ordaz a lot, he says it's better that he can talk to an hispanic missionary now because he can probably explain things better than us gringos, yeah... ow... But he's right, hispanics use different sayings, different analogies, and other different things that we Anglo-Saxons don't use. Though usually that culture gap isn't too much of a problem for most people. Well his biggest doubt is still the Book of Mormon so we left him 2 Nephi 29 for homework (the chapter that disses on the bible all hardcore like). Maybe that'll help him out a bit. Also, this is his question that nobody, even President Hansen is sure how to answer... He says: "So let's say I get baptized and do all I need to do and get to live in the Celestial Kingdom with my family for ever, what if my family doesn't want to follow me? What if they don't make it there? And if they don't make it there then I think I wouldn't be happy if I didn't have all of them there..." Yeah... I've wanted to say might as well at least save yourself, but I really don't know, I don't really have an answer for that. We asked President once and he started talking about some sort of obscure doctrine regarding parent-child relationships and saving principles but nothing quite tangible enough. I dunno, I'm sure that you, Mom and Dad have thought about this before and since you are in fact parents probably have some greater insight to this than I do.

Other then that we've been doing meat grinder tactics, finding new people and dropping them just as fast, churning through the masses in hopes of finding someone. It's not fun but whatever, keeps us busy. Especially since the other missionaries I live with are incredibly disobedient with the rules. (A couple days ago my companion watched Ice Age 3 on his portable DVD player, he found the movie in street one day). Yup... A lot of fun dealing with that. Well that's all I got to say today.

The pictures are of some of the wildlife here in Texas, geckos, turtles, and elephants. It was pretty funny, we were just driving along out in Cut-N-Shoot which is redneck territory when we saw this elephant just chilling in this pasture. We stopped and snapped a couple of pictures and drove on.

-- Elder Rice

Blood of the Scribe

Blood of the Scribe

Hello Family, no I still haven't gotten the package yet, mail travels really slowly here... I guess... It'll come one day...

So... This week was rather slow but I've gotten used to it now. We had interviews with President on Thursday and he was thinking about closing down the other spanish area here in Conroe and asked me what I thought about that. Well when they first proposed opening up another spanish area here in Conroe I was wholeheartedly for it, because our area was so flipping big. Though after a couple transfers I realize now that there's not quite enough work for two companionships. So that's what I told President, that closing down the other spanish area wouldn't be a bad idea there are other places in the mission that apparently are in 'dire need' of spanish missionaries. So perhaps they will close down the other area and have only one companionship for Conroe again. I really could care less now, hopefully I'm on my last transfer here.

So... Conference. Was pretty good, we got luckly and our Chapel here in Conroe was one of the few that were broadcasting conference. Now for us missionaries, Conference is a mad scramble of trying to get investigators to watch it, it's great because there are five sessions over two days and thus nobody would have a good excuse to not come to one of them. So to the 1st session nobody showed, it was just us eight missionaries and a handful of the nearby members of the english wards. They had the relief society room in the back that was broadcasting it in spanish. Nobody came for that. 2nd session we got one member and one investigator to come. A lot more came to the priesthood session and we got a few more of our members for the sunday sessions. Not a big turnout. During conference I jumped back and forth between english and spanish. I could understand most it pretty well in spanish. The problem is I'm still not yet at the point where I can passively understand spanish. I have to be concentrating or else it just sounds like a bunch of vowel sounds spilling out all over the place. So when I got bored or unfocused (a common occurrence) I would fall asleep. I've been doing that a lot lately, I've become constantly tired as a missionary, I'm even developing the ability to power-nap. I fell asleep during some of the sessions in english too I was just so freaking tired. However there were some great talks and I can't wait for the may ensign. There were some particular talks that I really liked but can't recall them off the top of my head right now.

Well that's about all I got right now, most of this week has had me trying to keep the other elders in line, they're incredibly disobedient to the mission rules so that has been an ongoing struggle in our apartment, it's difficult but whatever... I only got a few more weeks here, then I ought to be in a new area.

Okay I'm done, love you all.

-- Elder Rice

Dead Skin Mask

Elder Rice, reporting in.

This week was rather noteworthy, a rarity as of late. So the new transfer began and Elder Ordaz is my new companion. He's cool, from Mexico, has no papers, and has bad english. Kind of lucky on my part getting the only native spanish speaker in the mission as my companion, well there are other hispanics in the mission but the others are all "Chicanos" (born in the states or spent most of their lives in the states and speak english better than spanish). I had high hopes when I got him for learning better spanish but that kind of evaporated quickly, despite having bad english he prefers to speak it (with me and the other missionaries) rather than spanish. That kind of stinks, but oh well, at least while we're teaching I can see how an hispanic teaches the gospel. He's kind of a quiet guy too. Rather weird, it often falls on me to teach most of the lesson or do the small talk, which is hard since I have nothing in common with the people we teach, he does though. And on the rare occasion he feels like talking with the people about stuff it goes over well (he can actually connect with these people, I can't). But just like Dad said when you have an hispanic companion you become invisible to the people you are teaching. They won't pay much attention to me and are indeed almost startled if I suddenly speak up. Though as of yet I haven't anyone turn to Elder Ordaz and ask him what I just said, my spanish hasn't been that bad.

Say... that reminds of an amusing anecdote. This happened a couple weeks ago and I should have written about it then. Elder Woodruff and I were going around town and making the rounds, I had to use the bathroom so we stopped at this little corner store/taqueria thing (basically a gas station without gas). It was called El Supermercado Chiquita or something along those lines. So I walk in and all these hispanics are everywhere not a single Anglo-Saxon, I turned to the guy behind the cash register and ask him if there was a bathroom here. "Hay un banjo aqui?" The guy just stared at me blankly for a second and repeated "Banjo?" I got rather impatient and said: "Si, un banjo. Hay un banjo, aqui, en este edeficio?" He stared at me doefully some more and said "restroom?" At this point everyone was watching and I said in english: "YES.... a restroom." He pointed to the corner and went to it. I was in there thinking to myself, is my spanish really that bad? I can't even ask where the freaking bathroom is! Then I had a sneaking suspicion. On the way out I checked to confrim. Sure enough the guy I just talked to was talking to this little brown woman (presumeably his wife or something) and yep, he sure wasn't speaking spanish and yep the woman had a red dot on her forehead. I should have known! Every flipping gas station in Conroe are worked by Indians! I should have known, but what threw me off was that there was a taqueria in there, I didn't expect any Indians in there.

So that was rather funny. Now the pictures attached to this email depict what I called "Shelob's Cave". The place in Lord of the Rings where the giant spider lives. One night Elder Ordaz and I were biking back home, it had been a long hard day and we had been biking up and down the same street in down town all day and I didn't want to ride it again so we went a new way. It was about 7:30 pm and we were biking next to the freeway and the feeder through all the grass and consturction. We come to this bayou that runs under the freeway (a "bayou" in Texas what we would call a big gutter or culvert". Basically a 40 foot concrete half pipe just not as steep. There was no stream running through it like there usually is and we were going along it when we pass by these seven or so tunnels in the side of it that ran under the freeway. Ordaz dared me go in one of them as a sort of joke. I was like "YEah let's go!" I picked one where we could see an opening at the other end on the other side of the freeway and went in. Ordaz was flipping out, he didn't expect that we would actually go in them. They were probably about 150 yards long and big enough that we could ride side by side in them. We didn't ride through it, we just sat on our bikes and pushed along with our feet off the wall, there was a little water running through it but not enough to come up past the soles of our shoes. Oradz was afraid that some hobo or something was living in it and would jump out and kill us. I told him that nobody had been in here for a while because of all the spider webs everywhere we were going through. We came to about the middle of it where the was a crack in the ceiling, the other half of the tunnel was lower than our half (imagine a dislocated pipe). I stopped because my front tire went down into this sort of pothole where a chunk of concrete was missing. It was like half a foot deep and half of my front wheel was submerged in it, I nearly lost my balance. I regained it, looked up and right there in front of my face was this huge nasty spider, just chilling right there on its web. It was huge! It's leg span was about the circumference of a tennis ball. I backed up rather startled, Ordaz was tripping out. I snapped a few pictures and counted more of them. I counted 11 of these huge spiders sitting in this vast nextwork of web that had been strung through this crack. Pretty cool, I wonder what kind of spiders they are.


So we called that place, Shelob's cave and went home. Yup, that's some of the adventures I had this week, now I'm tired of typing so I hope you all have a good day.

-- Elder Rice

Requiem

March 22, 2010

Hi family.

I did get the CD, thanks for that, I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet since most CD players don't seem to play discs with MP3's on it but I just finished burning the talks onto regular disks so it should be good. And my belt will likely be in a my closet with all the old nasty ties, dress shirts and junk. I don't know, I can't quite remember what my closet looks like.

So we got transfer call saturday night. And I'm freaking staying here in Conroe, and my companion is leaving. This is the third time that has happened! I'm officially the King of Conroe now since no spanish missionary has ever stayed in Conroe for more than 3 or 4 transfers and now I'm starting on my 5th. But the good news is the new companion I'm getting, Elder Ordas, he's the only native spanish speaking elder in the mission, his english is pretty bad from what I hear too, he didn't go into the MTC but just came straight to the field. I'm excited to have a hispanic companion, my spanish is going to be great since we will speaking spanish all the time and everywhere.

Lately Conroe has been doing less than spectacular. Everything we've worked for this transfer seems to have crumbled into nothingness, Giovanni Dubon isn't progressing at all, we can't even get him to come to church anymore, they're losing interest and there's not much more we can do for them. Hopefully having a hispanic missionary will help out quite a bit. Giovanni's thing lately is that we (Elder Woodruff and I) were born in the chruch and we cannot possibly understand how hard it is for him to join a new church. Which is true in a way, but we've visited him with all sorts of members in the ward who are all recent converts and had circumstances similar to his.
Everyone else too seems to be slipping, I don't what we're doing wrong but everything is just crumbling. Oh well, whatever, it'll be better this new transfer with new people.


Mmmm.... Yeah, nothing interesting happened this week, just the same old grind. So.... Yeah, kind of a short and boring e-mail but that's all I got to say today. Oh and happy birthday mom, again. Austin let me know that it was yesterday on the 21st so happy 40somethingth birthday!

-- Elder Rice

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