Bostesa

July 12, 2010

Hello Family.

This week was yet another slow week, at least the World Cup is finally over, maybe we'll be able to teach people now and maybe the members will actually start coming to Church. It's been raining quite a bit as well but we haven't seen any flooding of any kind. We're pretty sure that our area is getting closed down. Kind of a shame since it was just opened but, it's not just because of the lack of work but also because the Branch itself is moving to a new building! It was originally supposed to go down to a chapel somewhere near the Houston Temple. But that's not going to work so they're thinking about renting a building somewhere in Tomball, TX. Which is the "city" just south of where I am in Magnolia. Who knows what will happen, all we have to go on are rumors and things. So hopefully in a couple of weeks I will be in a new area. I'm getting real tired of being out in the sticks. I want to go down south within Houston itself, somewhere where there are actually lots of hispanics. Where I am right now is pretty much straight out of King of the Hill. In fact I was just telling Adam in an e-mail that if you want to try and catch of glimpse of what my mission has been like just combine King of the Hill with Nacho Libre.

So, once again this week was slow, lots of tracting and little teaching, yet it was a great week as we've witnessed a couple of miracles. The first involves an investigator who lives with a less active family. We tried to teach him last transfer but he had absolutely no interest whatsoever, the sincere testimonies from us and the family simply bounced off of him. So we thought out of the box and came up with a new tactic. We decided to start a family scripture study with them. We go over every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night and read one chapter from the Book Of Mormon and discuss it a little bit. We started in 1 Nephi chapter 1 and are going through the story of Nephi. And wow it's worked out great, if I've learned anything on my mission recently it's that I've realized more fully the power of the Book of Mormon. This guy is getting way into it now, into the story and the gospel principles found in the stories are sinking in. I have high hopes for him.

The second miracle consists of a less active woman who is an "under-the-radar" member. She's been inactive the last few years of her life. We found her last transfer and she told us of her miraculous conversion story of how some missionaries knocked on her door just before she was going to commit suicide. She expressed her desire to return to church. We invited her to chruch and set up a return appointment. We never saw nor heard from her again for another 2 months until we got a call from her wanting us to come back over. We went over and she told us how her father was about to kick her and her three small children out of his house, she has no job and nowhere to go. Her father gave her a week. She asked us if we knew anywhere she could go. We invited her to church to meet the members who might know of places. Then we emphasized that far more important was her spiritual well being, we told her that the Lord wants to help her, all she has to do is ask and do his will. We challenged her to pray and read the Book of Mormon on a daily basis, she agreed. We went by her two days later and she had read despite not being able to understand what she read, never-the-less she said she felt an inner peace while reading the book. We challenged her to keep reading and to come to church the very next day, we had a member who would pick her up. She agreed, the next morning we got a call from her and she told us that she had run into a friend of her mother who she had not seen for a decade or so. This friend offered her to live in a trailer she owned, free of charge until she got some income going. She was beside herself with excitement and gratitude, as I was on the phone with her I could not help but feel overawed, she had asked the Lord in prayer for somewhere to go and read the Book of Mormon and the very next day she had somewhere to go. It was amazing and I am humbled and grateful that I was able to be the Lord's messenger and to relate to her what he requires of us.

That was an excerpt from my weekly e-mail to President Hansen this morning, that would be why it's sounds a little more "spiritual" than what I usually e-mail to y'all. But yeah, it was really neat seeing stuff like that. We may not have baptized many people here but we have brought quite a few lost sheep back into the fold.

The pictures are of a tiny, tiny frog we found one day while it was raining. And of a big, big spider that we also found. The locals call it a "Yo-Yo Spider" and supposedly they are perfectly harmless, what they do is they put in their hands, close their hands around it. Let it sit in there for a while while it makes a web then you open your hands and fling it out and it'll bounce back. So like a sort of paddle ball action, just bouncing this spider in and out of your hands. We didn't know any of this when we caught it. We caught it as we were helping one of the other Elder's investigators clean out this nasty trailer. It was a scary process catching that thing, it was hanging in this huge web. But we got and took pictures and videos of it before we threw it in a fire-ant hill and watched it get devoured. Still, even if it supposedly harmless I don't think I'd touch that thing. Okay well that's enough for today. Hope you all have a good week, peace....

-- Elder Rice

Ampolla

July 6, 2010

Buenas Tardes Familia.

So first things first. Mom I have your recipe for that mysterious Salsa. However I'm not sure on the portion sizes at all, Hna. Flores didn't seem to think it was important enough to mention how much of each ingredient you need. Anyway it's pretty simple, all you need are Roma Tomatoes, Onions, Garlic, and a pepper called "Chile Seco de Arbol". Which means 'dry chili of the tree' I don't think they actually grow on trees but that's what they're called. Anyway you take a Roma Tomato, don't chop it up anything, and you boil it with the chiles for 20 minutes. You don't cut up the chiles either, just throw it all in boiling water. After the twenty minutes is up put the tomato and the chiles in a blender with the garlic and onion and blend it and there you have it. Pretty simple, I'm thinking about trying it myself one day, see if it works. There could be perhaps some crucial details I'm missing but I think I got it all, Salvadorians are way hard to understand, they talk quietly and don't change their tone while speaking, so you can't tell if they're happy or sad or anything they just talk in a dull monotone. I asked Elder Ordaz, my previous companion two transfers ago and he said that even for him it's hard to understand people from El Salvador, that's means I'm in trouble.

Well this week was a pretty good week. We more than doubled our stats from last week, for whatever reason more people opened their doors and let us talk to them. We still don't have any progressing investigators or even any solid ones (ones that will actually be there when we make appointments with them), but none-the-less we are talking to more people and more people are at least more polite than the usual people we've encountered in this area. We're down to the last subdivision in our area and after we've finished tracting that we're not sure what there will be to do. This weekend it rained a lot, for like 3 days straight Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday it rained pretty much the whole time, there wasn't much to do so we've been getting creative. We got tired of all the big nasty roaches that keep turning up all over the place in the apartment and we are clean out of roach killer so we decided to start incinerating them, we'd catch them and spray them with insect repellent and while they'd try to skitter away we'd use a grill lighter and light them up. As they're on fire they start running really fast then in circles for a few seconds before they flip on their backs and die. I've got some pretty funny videos on my camera, probably not the most humane thing to do but we're out of roach killer and smashing makes a huge mess. Though lately we made a rule that no more roaches will be burned within the apartment (the smell of cooked cockroach is NOT a very pleasant smell).

Independence Day was uneventful. Saturday, Sunday, and even yesterday on Monday, President didn't want us out past 7:30 unless we had appointments. Saturday we didn't so we played Risk with the english Elders that night. It was a long game and it was weird playing with people who don't get bored as fast and drop out (like Austin and Aidan). The game finally ended at 12:30 and victory was mine but we were all so sick of it after 4 hours of playing that we didn't feel like it was worth it. Sunday a member invited us over for dinner (a rare event). The Perez (that same family in the picture of our recent convert Carlos) invited us and another family of the ward as well. We had a good time, the food wasn't hispanic at all, the Perez are pretty Americanized (most well-off hispanics usually are) the food was really good though, chicken in some sort of creamy savory sauce with mashed potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and rolls. It was all really good but as I said something not hispanic at all, though we did have horchata to drink. Last night we had an appointment with a part member family. The Davila family is one that is starting to become active again and one guy lives them named Enrique and he is an investigator of ours. He's a nice guy, I like him but he doesn't care at all about religion or anything, Elder Frost and I taught him a couple times but he just sits there bored of out his mind and won't respond. So Elder Manship and I have taken a different approach, we decided that if Enrique is ever going to get baptized the Davlias are going to have to be %100 active, and not just %100 active but they're going to have to be like %100 active white members of the church. So with them we're starting a family scripture study (something unheard of among hispanic members). We go over there every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night and read a single chapter out of the Book of Mormon with them (including a reluctant Enrique), taking turns reading verse by verse. And when we finish we discuss the chapter for a few minutes have a prayer and leave. We started with 1 Nefi and are going through it one chapter at a time. I think it's really helping, Enrique won't participate in the discussion but he will read so we're banking on the Book of Mormon here, Preach My Gospel says it's the most powerful tool we have to convert people so we're putting all of our trust in that. It's also helping the Davilas out as well, they've had a lot of problems in the past and are still struggling today to make ends meet and be active members at the same time so hopefully it will help them as much as it does Enrique.

Well that's all that happened last week pretty much. We don't have much lined up for this week other than family scripture study with the Davlias. So that means more and more tracting. Oh and my hair is back to a reasonable length now in case anyone was wondering, it grew back quite fast after I buzzed my head. I don't have any pictures but hopefully next week I'll have some. Okay, hope you all have a good time in -- WAIT a second. I got the package, thanks for the journals mom. And those were some neat pictures of the San Diego Zoo, and is Austin really that big? Though I think his arms and legs still haven't caught up. Aidan looks a lot taller too and skinnier, while Alyssa looks a lot older. Mom and Dad look the same, as well as the dog. Okay now I'm done, hope you all have a good week and don't be too bored.

-- Elder Rice

Abarisia

June 28, 2010


Hello family.

Sounds like y'all had a good week, boating and sushi and whatnot. Well for us this last week hasn't been that stellar. We still don't have any investigators since Carlos was baptized so we've been tracting and tracting and tracting. It's been especially difficult lately because of the World Cup. The vast majority of hispanic men are addicted to watching soccer. And for them it's an excuse to throw a party. Basically it's like having a super bowl sunday every day, two or three times a day. They all get together and while the men watch soccer all the women gossip and make food and the children run around and eat. In such an environment nobody has any particular interest in the gospel. But now that Mexico got knocked out we might have a bit more success in talking to people. Since this new transfer has started we've had yet to get more than 10 lessons a week. Which is really low, even for english Elders. There are about 5 neighborhoods in our area that have significant hispanic populations and we've knocked every door in 4 of the 5. This week we will finish number 5 and then who knows what we will do after that, probably look around some more for hispanic areas.

We aren't getting much from the few members we have in our area, but perhaps we need to hit them harder with the whole "give us referrals" thing. Though we did find a "under the radar" family. Meaning inactive members that nobody knows about. They actually found us. We were just walking one day when this car drove past us, stopped, two mexicans jumped out and said "Hey Elders! Where's the chapel around here?" We were pretty surprised, firstly because few hispanic members actually call missionaries "Elders", very very few actually use that. Most of the time we're the "Hermanos" or the brothers of the church. So we went to their house and gave them a little map and shared a lesson with them. They've been inactive for a long time and they moved here to Magnolia a couple weeks ago and have been feeling the need to go back to church. So that was pretty cool, it's another family for the tiny branch here and it'll help the branch out a lot.

Other than that not much has been going on, more crazy white people (we had a guy tell us that God's purpose for him was to kill black people), more close calls with nasty dogs, we were just walking down the street when this dog comes out of nowhere snarling and very nearly got Elder Manship, he jumped out of the way in the nick of time and I started yelling at the Dog and advanced aggressively toward it, it tried to lunge a few times but I kicked at it, my foot never actually made contact with it but we managed to drive it away. I hate dogs, I've been wanting to kick one for a long time now. Everybody out here has nasty dogs and gates and fences full of signs saying that trespassers will be shot. Tracting is a tricky business out here, we have to be very selective in the doors we knock, many trailers are situated as such that you have to walk a good 50 feet or so within their property just to get to their front door, and their properties are usually full of dogs. Most people here, even the hispanics are pretty unfriendly. I'm not sure why, though if I lived in the middle of nowhere and had nothing to do I would probably be very unfriendly as well. And we're never sure if people actually would shoot us or not. Bahhh.... Whatever. It won't be forever, I hope...

And Mom I think I can get you that recipe. We're having a family home evening tonight in the house of some members (from El Salvador) and the mom, Hna. Flores is an expert pupusa maker. She has a small business in which she makes pupusas and other kinds of food for people. Her pupusas are really good and I know exactly which salsa you are talking about. Interestingly enough that salsa is not something that they use in El Salvador, she told us that it's actually a mexican salsa that somebody discovered went very well on pupusas. I will ask her tonight what it's made of and how to make it and I can e-mail it to you next monday. Okay that's all for this week, have a good week I'm looking forward to that package.

-- Elder Rice

Fight Fire with Fire

June 21, 2010

Buenos Dias, Familia Arroz!

This new transfer is off to a good start, as I mentioned before my companion is Elder Manship, he was in my MTC district and we know each other pretty well so it's been fun this first week. Actually the best part was seeing him in this new area. He just finally got out of his first area (he's been in the same area he started in when he first came to the mission about 10 months ago). His last area in a city called Katy, supposedly isn't too different from Utah, he's from Brigham City, and he says that his area was more or less the same as his hometown, mostly suburbs and middle class citizens. Imagine his surprise to come out here to Magnolia among the trailer parks, when we were tracting on his first day here he said "What the heck! There are horses in people's front yards!" He doesn't really like this area at all, we have no investigators, we have lots of sketchy potentials, (people we've tracted into) and that's about it. This week we've just gone out and tracted for several hours every day and, unsurprisingly, nothing has come from it. Tracting just isn't effective, especially out in the middle of nowhere, for every 10 trailers we knock, 1 person will open the door, and most of the time they're white people. The hispanics are getting scarce. I'm pretty sure Elder Frost and I talked to the majority of hispanics in several places, and now we are actually running out of places to tract (places that could possibly have hispanics). In this one trailer park, we just have a couple more streets to do then we'll have knocked every door in there and we haven't gotten a single investigator out of it. I believe the general idea, and this is what our Mission President says as well, is that the purpose of the tracting is to demonstrate your diligence to the Lord and as a result he will eventually lead you to someone who is ready for the gospel. So that's what we're kind of going on here.

Well as usual I don't have much to write about, the pictures are of when we burned some garbage at a members trailer, it was pretty fun, since "the garbage man" does not exist in the far flung reaches of Texas, everyone has a burn pile in they're backyard when they burn all of their garbage. It's pretty fun, many times with fantastic results, we burned an air conditioner once and it exploded (twice!), we burned an old TV, a couch, and all sorts of random objects that constitute the old broken junk that people have in their backyard. Many times it makes this nasty oily smoke that smells real bad. So that's what most of the pictures are.

Also is a picture of a dead armadillo, it's was the first armadillo I have ever seen and it was pretty big, I should have had someone stand next to it to give some sort of sense of how big it was, almost as big as the dog, Lexy. but it was dead and it was the worst smell I have ever smelt in my entire life, it smelled like dead fish but infinitely worse, I don't know. One of the english elders we live with, Elder Hurd, says that supposedly armadillos carry leprosy, I could believe that, it certainly smelled like it could carry that.

Okay that's about everything, oh and Mom I am indeed keeping up in my journal, speaking of which I need some more, I finished my 2nd one the other day and I tried to find another one in Wal-Mart last P-Day but they didn't have any journals whatsoever, I had to stick with a spiral bound notebook. If you could send me a couple more of those same kind of journals that you got me (which if I recall correctly came from Wal-Mart) it would be sweet. Well I hope you all are having fun, have fun at Youth Conference Alyssa and Austin, Flaming Gorge sounds vaguely familiar I think I might have been there before, I don't know. I can't remember anything anymore about not being a missionary. I love you all, bye.

-- Elder Rice

Garden of Kadesh

June 14, 2010

Hey family

Well this week was the last week of this transfer. It was rather fun. On monday after I e-mailed y'all we did the GALLON CHALLENGE. In which you have to drink a gallon of milk under 1 hour and then hold it another hour. It was pretty fun we did with some members. Well, nobody got the whole gallon down in one hour, and only Carlos, the big guy on the left in the picture of all of us got the whole gallon down and kept it down. The rest of us couldn't keep it down. I got like 2/3rds of the gallon down. The pictures of everyone vomiting are hilarious but I don't think mom would want to see them so I think I'll send them to Austin.

Other than that we've just been working hard, it was my companion's last week in the mission so he's been working with this 'chicken with it's head cut off' mentality it was crazy but whatever we worked hard. I'm trying to think of some amusing story.... umm... Okay, so Carlos was finally baptized, I don't know if I mentioned this last week but I guess he thought that if he got baptized he would have to go back to Mexico and get re-married to his ex-wife. That's why he didn't get baptized three weeks back. Anyway we told him that was not the case so he was good to go. So he was baptized and that was all fun and good. The other picture shows the Perez family, the family who works with Carlos and are his fellowshippers.

I forgot what other pictures I attached but I know one is of some food I made one day. It was really good, I wondering what to eat so I poked around and found some things and made that master piece. I cut up some onion, fried it with some black beans and an egg, added some brown rice, cooked it all together, threw it on a plate and added lettuce, avocado, cojita cheese, crema mexicana, and some Tajin, which is this chile/lime seasoning that I had gotten last P-day and some limes. It looked so good that I decided to take a picture of it.

What else happened? Oh on saturday we had this epic bash with this guy. On friday we had tracted into this family from Guatemala, who had been taught by missionaries before, we talked to the wife and some of her teenage sons. We came back the next day for our return appointment and this time the dad was there. He invited us in and asked us to sit down and once everyone had gathered together he told us straight up that the Bible is the only word of God and there can't be any other scripture. I admit that I got a little mad, got my blood running, I call it my beserkergang, which was what the Vikings called a sort of mad frenzied blood-wrath. Anyway I opened my bible and we spent the next hour utterly destroying him. Thinking about it afterward I realized that this guy believed pretty much every false doctrine there is that crept in in the early Christian era. Nobody has ever seen God, Jesus doesn't have a body, God no longer speaks to man, the Bible is the only word of Got, etc, etc, etc. Well we utterly destroyed him on every single one of his false beliefs using his own Bible. He was pretty dumb, when we'd refute him on something with a scripture he'd find himself cornered and would then spew out something completely random about having faith or Abraham. He would try to show off how much (if anything) he knew about religion and likely hoped that something he said would somehow prove us wrong. It utterly failed, by the end of it his head was bowed and he wouldn't look us in the face. And his family was looking at him like "Dad, you're an idiot, stop making a fool of yourself". They looked pretty embarrassed. We felt kind of bad for him, we had just humiliated him in front of his family and made him look like an fool, so we asked him if we could read something about Jesus, he agreed in a barely audible voice and we opened the Book of Mormon and had him read parts of 3 Nephi 11 when Christ introduces himself to the Nephites. The tension seemed to leave the room and the spirit seemed to stick it's head in just a tad. We probably should have done that in very first place and avoided the whole bash, but perhaps it was necessary to pierce the guy's hard heart and after we had utterly crushed him, strike while the iron was hot and bring the spirit in. We then left him with the challenge to read the rest of the chapter, he accepted, we bore our testimonies and got out of there. On the way out we talked to one of his sons and the mom and they told us they didn't believe any of that stuff that they're dad said and they really wanted to know if our church was true or not. So it went well.

Well that's all I got for today. Tomorrow I'm geting my new companion, Elder Manship, he was in the MTC with me and we are good friends so this next transfer should be a blast. Okay, I love you all, bye.

-- Elder Rice

Laichzeit

June 7, 2010

Hi family.

This last week has been a little crazy. Most of it just the same old stuff, but a few funny stories. But first of all I guess I need to work on my "political correctness". Yes I am well aware that everybody is a son or daughter of God. As important is this information is it is none-the-less a not very descriptive term. Were I to say "yesterday we were tracting in a children of God trailer park"- there is virtually no mental image there. If I use more descriptive terms like: white trash, redneck, savages, etc. It is far easier to get a mental image of the sort of people I'm running into everyday. And yes I do feel genuinely sorry for these people that have to live such horrible lives, but that doesn't excuse them from leaving trash all over their yards or not washing their hands. I'm pretty sure you can be impoverished and sanitary at the same time.

So... That being said, something really quite amusing happened the other day. We were teaching this lady, her name is Amalia, she's this old hispanic lady who's home everyday and looks after her grand children. She's awesome and will be baptized eventually. She goes to a Pentecostal Church and she hates Catholicism, she was converted to her church about 10 years ago. Anyway she loves the Book of Mormon, since we've given her one she's read it every day. Says it helps her sleep at night, which is hard for her because of some thyroid problem. She studies it with a pencil in one hand and a notebook in the other. She's come to chruch once and she loved it and regretted that she forgot to bring something to write notes on. She believes that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a real prophet and everything but she's not sure if she wants to be baptized in our chruch or not. We're not sure why yet but we're working on it.

Anyway this one afternoon we were teaching her out on her porch and her neighbour walks up. He's this old white man, named Donald, and I guess he's friends with Amalia's family. He doesn't speak a word of spanish but he always helps them out with their trailer maintenance, and they feed him every now and then. He's out of work. So he walks up and he was really suspicious of us at first but we started talking to him and Amalia, using all the english she knew, invited him up to join us. Well for the next hour or so we talked to him and he is absolutely insane. He couldn't talk quite straight and he told us that the Bible was a computer program made by aliens, that God is in all things, (he started yelling at a rock in his hand to demonstrate), that "Grace" is this sort of Karma that flows between people. I was entertained for awhile then I got bored and then tuned out. Then I sneezed and he said "Bless You" and I said "Thank You", he kept looking at me as if he expected me to say something more. Then he got kind of mad and said that I should have said "bless you" as well. And that "thank you" is the normal response for society but God likes it better when we keep the "grace" flowing between people. By "blessing me" after I sneezed he sent some of his grace to me, and I should have sent it back to him by saying "bless you" but instead I said "thank you" and thus kept the "grace" and I ate it. And I guess he had just been talking about all this before I sneezed but I wasn't listening so I missed that right there. In my head I was like "Okay we're done here". And we tried to teach him something but... he's literally off his rocker.

15 minutes later he got up to leave and we asked him if we could give him a pamphlet, we gave him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet, it has a picture of the resurrected Christ emerging from the tomb. We gave it to him, he looked at it. And then freaked out. he started dancing around the yard hollering and screaming, that he finally found it. That after years of searching he found the picture of Jesus that he saw in a dream or something years ago. He was just skipping around dancing and singing and yee-hawing. Poor Amalia had no idea what was going on, for last hour she just read the Book of Mormon while we talked to Donald. She was just watching him and Donald comes up to her and tries in his best Spanglish, to tell her that he's finally found the picture, and ended with a hallelujah. Amalia was like "yeah, hallelujah!" She had no idea what was going on. I was trying incredibly hard not to laugh, I was biting my lips. We gave him a pass-a-long card with the same picture. And we gave him the 'Finding Faith in Christ' DVD, which has the same picture on the case. That was more than his poor little brain could bare. He went into overdrive with his hallelujahs and dancing. Elder Frost was like encouraging him, saying that this was the day that he found it! And blah blah! And went to give Donald a hug. Elder Frost got a little bit more than a Hug, he got a hug and Donald kissed him on the cheek, saying "That's holy, not betrayl'. Donald then came over to me and I was like, oh shoot. I was ready and he gave me a hug and shifted my balance just a bit so his kiss landed on my collar rather than on my face.

We then took a picture together and I'd attach it to this e-mail except that Elder Frost forgot to bring his Camera to the library today, so next week y'all will get to see the picture. Well that's all I feel like writing today. I hope you all have fun in California, we're just sweating to death down here. I love the smell of sweat and mosquito repellent under the noonday sun while knocking doors. PEace out.

-- Elder Rice

Knights of Cydonia

Fam:

I didn't get to e-mail yesterday because it was Memorial day. And we have very little time today, we went to the Temple today so we have to squeeze in e-mail time before our appointments.

To be entirely honest this last week sucked hardcore. We tracted like every day from noon till nine and we were constantly rejected. The very few appointments that we had fell through and persecution was coming at us from left and right. We had one guy tell us to our faces that we were wolves in sheep's clothing, some stupid teenagers kept bugging us the entire day constantly driving up and offering us money if we drank their beer for them, we went to an appointment with a member only to be chased off the property by some rather disgruntled men, who told us nobody was home and to go away (when we knew very well that our investigator was inside). It got old fast. One of the only high lights of the week was finding King David.

We were tracting and the street we were on was all white people and we were looking in vain for hispanics when we see an orange trailer with serapes (brightly colored poncho like things made of wool) in the windows, chickens and dogs all over the yard and even a donkey tethered up in front of the house. We were like, sweet there has to be hispanics living here. We stepped into the yard and the dogs started barking and the donkey came up to us and we petted it until the door opened. It was a huge 300 pound guy wearing this tiny pair of shorts, with a huge white beard and nasty curly dreadlocks down his back. He was actually pretty friendly, after yelling at his dogs he sat down on the steps in front of the door and we talked with him for a while. It was hilarious, he's genuinely insane. He said his name was David, King David, the same David who slew Goliath and he was born about 3000 years ago and that Donkey was the very same one that Christ rode into Jerusalem on, and that he is a prophet. I actually enjoyed talking to him, he knew lots of stuff, we talked about the Knights Templar, the Apocrypha, and other stuff but Elder Frost, ever the stick in the mud decided we were wasting our time and so he tried to teach him a quick principle. He started talking about the apostasy and he told him that in between the time of the apostles and Joseph Smith (this guy already knew the whole mormonism thing), there were no prophets and no authority. And then David said: "You don't know that! There could have been prophets here in the ancient americas during that time!" We were like... wow... That's right, have you heard of the Book of Mormon? He told us that he read it but we quickly figured out he hadn't and yeah... He's insane.

I have to move quickly now. On monday I got a haircut. I was tired of missionary given haircuts, they don't look very good so I'd thought I'd try to get a professional one. It cost me $15 and it was the worst hair cut I've ever had. It was a legit place, the lady had a diploma from some cosmetology school and everything yet when I examined my hair later that day we concluded that she must have been drunk or something. My neck line was a hideous curve and I had a step on the front of my head as my bangs were about a 1/6th of an inch shorter than the hair right behind it higher up on my head. I was horrified, mostly at the fact that I spent $15 on it. Correcting it would be tricky so I just decided to shave my head, that'd be easier. I used a 2 on my clippers and buzzed everything, Elder frost did my neck and back of the head for me. Now it's all symmetrical but I look really ugly, though I kind of like the skin head look. You can see it in the picture of me and Elder Lemly, who actually was in Provo High school with me, though I never knew him. He was in ROTC and did the whole military thing so he's always had a buzzed head. A couple days later we did exchanges in our district and Elder Lemly and I switched areas for a day and none of the hispanics even suspected that we were different people.

The other pictures are of some service we did. We have this one family that we're trying to teach and they always make up excuses so we can't teach them. It's the same family that I wrote about last week
. We decided we'd go and clean up their huge filthy yard. We showed up one saturday morning with trash bags and we started picking up trash. Then we discovered that they're septic tank (hole in the ground where the waste from the trailer goes) was almost overflowing and the lady said it was because the sewage people wouldn't empty it because there was this huge chunk of concrete in there. So we moved it out, I actually wasn't there for that, we were still on exchanges and Elder Parker and I arrived just as they finished pulling it out. The smell was horrible, then we discovered that the garbage man does not come around this neighbourhood and if you wanted your trash taken away you either had to pay a ridiculous amount of money to a trash company or take it to the dump yourself. The nearest dump is in Conroe, 15 miles away. She told us that they usually burn their trash. So we burned the trash, we felt just like real missionaries because all the missionaries in 3rd countries burn trash. Unbeknowngst to us Elder Lewis, one of the english elders who was helping us (who's a brand new missionary) had put an old spary paint can in his garbage bag. Luckily we weren't too close when the resulting explosion shook the family's nasty trailer and we all felt the hot wave of air hit us and push us back a bit. There were no debries nor flying shards of metal luckily.

Okay that's about everything interesting that happened this week, we're out of time and we've got to go, peace out I love you all.

-- Elder Rice