Cacahuate de Empacando

October 18, 2010



Hello Family.

Well... I don't think I have too much to say today. My 9th transfer has ended and my 10th has just begun, I realized today that I only have 9 months left and it's kind of scary. Unfortunately I will be remaining here and babysitting Elder Lamoure for one more transfer. But I won't be doing it alone. Many new elders are coming to the mission this transfer and not too many are leaving, we have a too many missionaries and not enough areas. There are going to be 4 threesomes this transfer and we're going to be one of them. The missionary who is coming is named Elder Laing, he's only got three more transfers to go so he will likely end his mission here. He's pretty cool, way chill, I like him though I had never wanted to be his companion due to his laziness and blatant disregard for all the rules. I have my hands full already trying to keep Elder Lamoure on the straight and narrow Elder Laing will prove too much, I honestly don't think we will be getting much done this transfer. At least I'll be able to preserve my sanity though. Though it's going to be way awkward in a threesome, especially in a bike area, we're going to take up the whole street. Tracting will be very awkward as well, just the thought of all three of us crowded together on people's porches seems like it would be very intimidating. But hopefully I will only have to endure it for 6 weeks, they try to get rid of threesomes as fast as they can so next transfer I ought to be getting out of here.

The work goes slow as it always does, Elder Lamoure is a dead weight still and it doesn't help at all. Though we're confident that our 9 year old investigator will get baptized, our other one, Hna. Munroy seems doubtful, we haven't taught her in 3 weeks now, she comes to church every sunday but has been "ill" every monday when she's available to be taught. Her family, the members, haven't been very helpful lately either, even them, active members of the church have been ignoring our phone calls and not answering the door when we go over to remind to drag their grandmother to their home on monday nights. I'm so tired of all of this, I don't get it, do they honestly not want to, oh I don't know, live together forever? Jeez, it's times like these when I look forward to the judgment day. Well I'd better stop now before I start getting too "negative".

I don't think I have anything to add on a higher note. But I do need a few things, I'm down to five white shirts; wear, tear, grease, and gum have destroyed about half of my white shirts in the past year. I'm down to one longsleeve and four shortsleeves. Now I'd go buy some myself but once again we don't have a car. So if you could send a longsleeve and like 3 or 4 shortsleeve white shirts, that'd be grand. The size I have is 16 1/2 and 33/32, or something like that. Oh and I need that one-week enzymatic cleaner for my contacts. I ran out a while ago but for whatever bizarre reason they have a one-week enzymatic cleaner famine here in Houston and our Walmart doesn't have it due to a "supply issue" that's lasted 3 months now. So maybe you could send all that with the Ensign and Liahona, and maybe if you can find some, those Friday's Spicy Pepper Jack Cheese fires, they don't have them here and I've been craving them lately.

Okay, the pictures today are of some strange insect we found on our couch one day. We couldn't figure out what it was, but we concluded that it belongs to the beetle family. The other is of millions of mocking birds that were all other this intersection one day. It was kind of scary, they've been everywhere lately in huge numbers, in preparation for the migration no doubt. And the final was taken in the bayou where we saw some sort of huge rodent swimming around next to one of the many drain pipes that go into the bayou. It looks like a beaver but without the tail, it has a normal rat like tail. We've been seeing a lot of them lately and every time I try to get a picture they always swim into the pipes before I can get close enough, but I got a good picture this time. And there was a turtle just chilling there right next to it, there's lots of turtles that live in these bayou's. And the other day some member was telling us about this one bayou where these huge sewer alligators live, we're going to go find it one day.

Okay, I love you all, have a good week.

Paranda

October 17, 2010


Hi Family.

This last week was another long week, though we did have a lot of cool stuff happen. On Saturday there was a Tri-Mission Conference. Where all three of the Texas Houston Missions got together and someone comes to speak to us. Elder Costa, the Brazilian guy who spoke in conference last week, came and spoke to us. We all got to shake hands with him and meet him and stuff, he's incredibly funny, I really liked his talk that he gave us. He mostly spoke about how we should focus on people, or as he put it "Don't teach lessons, teach people." It was really good I feel like I learned quite a bit.

Something cool happened this week. We were in the one Trailer Park we have in our area and we were just biking around and talking to people and we come across two mexican boys, probably around 13-15 years old. Standing on opposite sides of the narrow street and taking turns throwing a soccer ball into these trashcans they had. We stopped, started talking to them and taking our turns throwing the soccer ball in the trashcan as well. We chilled with them a little bit just talking about stuff, then I got them to teach me how to do some of those soccer tricks that all hispanics instinctively know how to do. Then we started kicking the ball around, and this little 10 year old kid joined us, and the four us were just kicking this ball around talking (Elder Lamoure was standing off to the side with our bikes checking his watch over and over again, he was just being his usual lame stick in the mud self.) The two older kids said we should play a game, so we did, we used our helmets and the trashcans as makeshift goal posts and we started playing soccer right there in the street, it was me and the 10 year old verses these two 15 year olds. Now here's the funny part, after 15 minutes or so the score was 8-0, the 8 belonging to us. It was way funny, the two teenagers were starting to get pissed, a gringo wearing a tie and dress shoes and a 10 year old were beating them badly. Now this was in the evening when all the people in the trailer park are out walking around. As people walked by I'd ask them if they wanted to play with us, and they did. We weren't far from this little playground and this guy was pushing a stroller with a toddler in it with his wife who was leading another small child by the hand. I asked the guy if he wanted to play with us, well I didn't really ask him I was like "Hey dude! Come play with us!" He stopped, cocked his head to one side, thought about it for a second and handed the stroller to his wife "Here dear, take the kids." And he ran towards us and started playing. (You gotta love Mexicans). So we had this good game going in the street and there were lots of spectators no doubt it was rather weird that some dressed up gringo was out there laughing, shouting in spanish, and screaming GOOOOOAAAALLLLLL every time a goal was made. It was fun I was having a great time, Elder Lamoure wouldn't come play, he just kept standing off in the shadows and complaining about all the bug bites he was getting and that we should go because it was getting dark. Now the teams were un-even and we needed another man so I beckoned Elder Lamoure to come play with us and he still refused, saying he couldn't play because he doesn't like sports. I got everyone to start chanting "Si, se puede!" meaning "Yes you can" and finally he couldn't take everyone yelling at him and reluctantly came into the street and played with us. We played for a little longer until it got so dark that I could barely see the ball (It was 8:00). The score was 18-12, the other team was catching up now. I declared to everyone that last goal wins all. It was a final and furious round all the spectators yelling and cheering, and then the 10 year old scored the last goal and we won. I quickly grabbed Elder Lamoure, handed him a stack of pass-a-long cards, gave him some rapid instructions, and as everyone was starting to disperse we separated and started talking them all as they were leaving and giving everyone cards, inviting them to learn more about our message. We got like 20 people all in 10 minutes, it was great. Unfortunately we haven't seen any of them since then, nor have we taught any of them. But it was a fun, a good experience.

Other than that not much cool has happened, our two investigators with baptismal goals finally made it to church this sunday, so that was good. Elder Lamoure and I finally had it out one night during our nightly planning session. He was complaining about how we had to go down to the Tri-Mission Conference with the english elders, the zone leaders that we live with, which aren't our zone leaders but are zone leaders none-the-less, and Elder Lamoure hates them. So he was complaining about that and I was finally sick of all of his complaining and told him that there's nothing we can do about it and complaining won't help so shut up. Then he got mad and threw his planner at the blinds and we finally had it out. I told him straight up that he was a useless dead weight and that he didn't have the spirit with him. I asked what he thought he was doing here, I asked him if he even wanted to be a missionary, if he even cared... He didn't say anything, he just sat there fuming, he knew I was right, he couldn't argue, then I told him that I loved him and that I want to help him do what he's supposed to be doing out here, and to stop being a useless sack and then I told him to pick up his freaking planner and we will continue planning for the next day. He didn't say anything still, he just got up, went into our bedroom, screamed into his pillow for 30 seconds, came back in, picked up his planner and remained in a state of murderous silence the rest of the night. Later he told me that he was sorry, that I was right, and that he was going to start being better. The sad thing is that I didn't believe him, he's done these 180 degree flips many times before, and I honestly don't think he meant any of it. And since that night he's been the same as he's always been. I don't know what else I can do. Luckily it's the end of the transfer and hopefully he'll be transferred somewhere else and someone else can baby-sit him. It's so exhausting just putting up with him 24/7, I'm about to lose it. Well we have interviews with President this week so hopefully he can do something about him.

Well I'm done for today, oh and I did get that book mom, It's actually quite lame but it had a few good ideas, thanks for that. Last P-Day I did my own looking around and I can't seem to find a good one so perhaps there isn't a good gospel object lesson book. Though everyone could send me ideas every now and then, that'd be cool. Okay I'm done, I love you all and hope y'all have a good week. Peace out.

-- Elder Rice



Inguieta

October 4, 2010


Hey fam.... Que paso?

Well this week has somewhat of a high note. We have two investigators with baptismal dates, one a 9 year old girl of some less actives and one way old lady whom everyone in the ward thought was a member, missionaries have been teaching her on and off for the past 6 years but we finally got a date for december (when her son-in-law get's back from Iraq). I don't know if I already mentioned this the last time. So that's about all that's going on.

My companion ran out of his St. John's Wort pills and is back to his usual nasty self. I can't stand him anymore, now at least we can get out the door without too many problems, and he will follow me around well enough but he complains unceasingly. About every single thing, from the mission rules to the amount of light bulbs in the bathroom. And he won't stop critiquing everything, I can't buy so much as a tube of toothpaste without him informing me why I'm wasting my money and why I should buy whatever he's buying, it's like that with everything, especially food, he goes on and on about how unhealthy my diet is and how much saturated fat/calories/carbs/etc, etc, etc, etc, is in everything. (And all of this coming from a guy who used to weight 255 lbs, and probably still would were it not for a month of constipation). (That and he doesn't eat healthy at all now). He thinks he knows everything, it's driving me absolutely insane! Last night when I called in our weekly stats I was almost begging our district leader asking him when we are to go on exchanges. It's getting that bad, he offends the members by refusing to eat certain things that he doesn't like or refusing to eat at all if he's not hungry. And if I glare at him and whisper very threateningly at him to eat the stinking food, he gets mad and then starts to eat by eating really fast, just shoveling it into his mouth and making little snarling noises while he does it. It's ridiculous! Afterwords I tell him to freaking grow up... Man.... He is so self centered, he doesn't care about anything other than his own well-being, he didn't even want to watch Conference, he wanted to stay home and sleep.... It's weighing heavily upon me, I wouldn't be surprised if I have a few gray hairs by the end of this transfer. I don't know what to do with him, In my e-mails to president he just counsels me to have the spirit more, have more companionship unity, etc. Vague stuff, but interviews are next week so hopefully I can figure something out with him.

Yet all of this grief has kind of been a blessing to me, I look back and this transfer with Elder Lamoure I think has been the transfer where I've grown the most, this transfer I've made more effort to work hard and be obedient than I ever have before on my mission. I have this really cool Book of Mormon study manual and in this one section there's a quote from Hugh Nibley where he talks about how it was a blessing for the Nephites to have the Lamanites always attacking them, it kept them on their toes and reminded them they needed to rely on the Lord more and more. That's how it's kind of been for me this last transfer, with a horrible companion I've definitely been more on the ball with missionary work and have been relying on the Lord much more to get me through this horrible experience. Still though I want to be rid of my companion.

Other than that things are pretty much the same. I'm tired of this area despite being here for only almost 2 transfers now, I'm tired of these rich sub-urbs. I want to go downtown where all the fun is, and where there are no white people. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get transferred. Transfers are in two weeks. General Conference was great, it was a good one and I took good notes, I can't wait for the November Ensign. And do you think that when it comes out you could send me a copy? And a spanish version in the Liahona? Here we get the Ensigns but we only get one copy for the apartment, we have to share and it stays in the apartment so I'd like my own personal copies to mark up. If you could do that when it comes out that'd be swell. Well that's all I got for today. The weather has been great, feels almost like Utah and I've been loving it. So have a good week, I love you all, peace out...

-- Elder Rice

Remachado

September 27, 2010

Hello family...

Well that's quite odd that Frost and Bone ended up in the house. I'll bet that was weird. Well this last week has seen some interesting developments. We got a new investigator on Tuesday, we set a baptismal date and everything, it's a 9 year old girl of a less active family that moved to Katy from Houston a few years ago and they've been hiding under the radar up until now. They decided that they want to come back and get their daughter baptized so we will see what happens with that. They didn't come to church on Sunday on account of having "visitors" over. Things will probably go slow with them. Elder Lamoure is getting better. Last week he was in the vitamin isle in wal-mart and decided to by these "St. John's Wart" pills that supposedly improve ones mood when taken regularly. And it's actually worked, he's been much more pleasant lately, now we just need to work on his laziness.

Thursday was a brutal day. Two days previously as we were coming out of our apartment this old lady in a car asked us if we could help her move out her friend, this 70-something year old man with one leg and Alzheimer's disease. Lived two floors below us and couldn't pay his rent and he was getting evicted from the apartment. We happily agreed and said we set up a time on Thrusday morning at 7:30 to get this guy moved out. We expected the move to take about 2 hours at the most. Well we finished at about 9:45 pm that night. The thing this woman had failed to mention was that they hadn't packed anything. It was ridiculous, this man had a ton of nasty old junk, he's a huge pack rat and he had all sorts of old junk and trinkets that he didn't want to leave behind, and a ton of furniture, like 3 huge glass cabinets full of expensive china, and all of these large dressers, hundreds of old books and papers, this man was a Catholic Priest back in the day and he still had his clerical wardrobe and all the incense, prayer books, and whatnot. We had one member from the local english ward helping us out, his name is Tony and he's 21 and just got back from Iraq. He's way cool, he and his family are Colombians who were originally in our ward but they switched the english ward a few years ago. So we had him and two sets of english elders who jumped back and forth between helping us and their appointments. We made so many phone calls that day, this sort of work is what members are for. But unsurprisingly nobody from our ward, and two english wards could help out except for this one guy. We couldn't just leave them though, this man and his friend, two aged people literally didn't have anyone else to help them. And the whole time the old man drove us nuts, wheeling around on his wheel-chair, complaining, making sure we didn't throw anything away, asking where his prosthetic leg was after we had told him that we had already packed it. The poor guy wasn't all there and we got so tired of him that we came very close to locking him in the bathroom while we packed up all his old nasty junk. The lady had rented a 17 foot U-haul truck. And from this little apartment this guy had it took two trips. His new apartment was actually out of the mission boundaries, it was 20 minutes south of us more towards downtown Houston. We called up the Houston Texas South Mission hoping to get some of the missionaries down there waiting on the other side so they could unload the guy but typically they were all "too busy" and wouldn't get help from their wards either. Except for two elders who had a 30 minute window to help us unload. It was a massive project so we got permission from President Hansen to go down there with our member in the U-Haul truck and unload. So we got down there, and the South elders helped us for about 20 minutes then they had to leave, leaving the three of us to unload this truck by ourselves. It took us a while, we were dead tired and our arms were like noodles but we did it, started on our way back, got stuck in Houston traffic, and finally got back around 6:00, we had left at 2:00. We had planned on the english elders finishing the rest of the packing so that it would all be ready to go by the time we got back. But it was not so, so we got back and packed and the truck was finally all ready to go by 8:00. Obviously we couldn't go unload the second trip because our curfew is 9:30. The best we could do was the give the woman the number of the south missionaries and we dropped the truck off in front of her sister's house who didn't live too far from the new apartments. We were exhausted, that whole day we didn't shower, shave, or even get dressed in proselyting clothes. All we had to eat the whole day was a yogurt for breakfast and a granola bar for lunch. After we had dropped off the truck Tony took us through the drive through of Taco Bell and the three of us gorged ourselves on cheap tacos and burritos. Then he took us home, we showered and went to be, completely exhausted. And ever since then we've had a crappy week, being sore and stiff and generally too tired to do anything, that and all of our investigators bailed out on us. We don't quite get it, an exhausting 14 hour act of charity and our area goes down the drain. You'd think that we'd be more blessed after doing something like that.

Whatever, I hope everything is going good at home. The weather is getting better here, it's starting to cool down. Today it feels almost like Utah outside. Well I'm out of time, I love you all and hope you have a good week.

-- Elder Rice

Atascada

September 20, 2010

Ahoy there family,

This week has been rough, the process of whipping my companion into shape goes slowly. I have to drag him out of bed and out the door everyday. It's been rough, with not a few instances of gnashing of teeth. Though I did get my bike back on Friday so we were no longer on foot which has helped a lot. Other than that not much is going on. Though I think the work is starting to pick up, have some people who we are going to try and set some baptismal dates with this week. We've found some cool new investigators as well. One such person was a media referral we got through the phone and at first we thought it was a joke because he had some crazy name that we weren't entirely sure how to pronounce. We concluded that it must be someone with some indigenous Mayan name or something. Well we found the guy and he's an old man from Colombia but his parents or grandparents immigrated to Colombia from India, hence his bizarre name. He said we could call him 'Salim'. He's way cool though, keenly interested in the Book of Mormon, we gave one to him, talked about it a bit and set up a return appointment for saturday. I hope it goes well.

We also have a possible source of new families to teach. In this one apartment complex there is this Dominican Family in our ward and we go over every now and then to check on Travis, a 12 year old recent convert. The family consists of a single mother and 4 or 5 kids, I'm not sure how many, ranging from ages 4-14. So every time we are over there, the apartment is just full of the kids and they're friends just coming and going. Now Travis has an incredibly short attention span so most of our new member lessons with him are these cool little games and object lessons. The past couple times all of the kids friends have sat in on the lesson and have been amazed by the stupid little magic tricks we do to demonstrate gospel principles. In fact some of the older children, who are 10, 11, 12, etc. Showed up to the Fiesta de Patrias we had a couple weeks ago and have been asking their parents if they could go to church with this family. And they have, we've had a couple of these kids friends come with them to church the past couple weeks, it's amazing. I never would have guessed that children of such young age would even have the slightest interest in the church. What we're banking on is to start teaching these kids' families if we can get this family to start inviting their friends over for our little visits. It will be sweet. The problem is that we are almost out of ideas for stupid little games and magic tricks. From my time in the mission I've learned a few from my many companions, we have about 5 really cool little tricks/games that demonstrate gospel principles really well. But we're almost out of them. So I need ideas, in fact I've seen some book called "The Missionaries' little Book of Object Lessons" that some missionary had. So I was wondering if you all could find that book, or something like it, some little book full of cool little things you can do with common household items and send it to me, 'twould be much appreciated. Also send some postage stamps with it if you could. I'm completely out.

And, uh... Yeah. That's just about all I got to say this week. This area is really boring, all suburbs, and nothing really epic or crazy happens. Oh and mom I've started working on some letters, but as I said I need stamps if they are to go anywhere anytime soon. Oh and I got the package, turns out it did arrive on the 3rd it's just that the apartment office didn't notify me or the little package slip they put in our mail was lost or something but I got it. Thanks, it was really sweet. Okay I'm done now, I hope you all recover and have a good week. Peace out...

-- Elder Rice

Inquieta

September 13, 2010

Hello FAm...

This has been a rather stressful week. My bike is still broken so we walked everywhere, we went by every member in our area to see if they or anyone they knew, knew how to fix bikes. They all had their own theories and all of them tried but none of them could, I myself have spent hours on it, and nothing has come of it. So I gave up and today we went by the local bike shop and dropped off to be fixed. Knowing how bike shops are it'll probably cost me an arm and a leg but whatever, I don't care anymore. They said they'd have it done by Thursday so we're not through walking yet.

My new companion, Elder Lamoure, is an interesting fellow. He started his mission in the Dominican Republic and after being there for three months, got seriously ill and was sent home. Apparently the local diet got him, they eat nothing but rice over there and he entered the mission weighing 255 lbs, all the rice plugged him up and he couldn't use the bathroom for a month, and in that same month he lost 70 lbs. He's not sure where it all went seeing that he couldn't poop for a month but it went somewhere. He was at home another three months recovering then he was reassigned to this mission. He's not quite over whatever happened to him over there, he can't eat rice, bananas, or pasta, and only has to poop twice or three times a week. He's been in this mission for 4 months, so he has 7 months total as a missionary. So he's still pretty new and his spanish isn't good at all, I've been pretty much teaching by myself this last week and he's just been following me around. I try to get him to do something but he generally has a very negative attitude about... everything, I've felt the temptation on multiple occasions to tell him to suck it up and get his act together... This transfer is looking to be a challenge, hopefully things will go better this week, last week was a little rough but we're a little better off now.

So in addition to walking everywhere and not teaching too many people our ward had it's "Fiesta de Patrias" saturday night. It was cool, it was a good turn out and lots of potential investigators came. It's basically just a party in which everyone brings food, clothes, and dances from their native countries and shows them off to everyone else. It was great, there was so much food, I got to try all sorts of weird things from all sorts of weird countries. We had Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Peru, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. I took lots of pictures as you can see. There was this really bizarre dance performed by the Bishop and his wife, some Venezuelan thing where he hopped around like a monkey beating his stick on the ground while holding a rope that was tied around his wife while she stumbled around pretending to be a donkey or something. It was one of the most odd things I've ever seen in my life, and we weren't alone the whole ward was like: "What the freak...?" The bishop and his wife are the only Venezuelans so the rest of us didn't seem to get it.

Oh and that's way weird that Alyssa ran into Frost and Bone, very weird...

Okay so the pictures are of the area and me with the bike. Myself and Elder Rupp with the two english elders we live with, Elder Gustafson and Elder Miller, and the others are of the Fiesta de Patrias. I still haven't gotten the package, we'll swing by the apartment office tomorrow and see what they say. If not then I don't know, I don't really care about too much right now, mostly just trying to stay awake and getting my companion out the door. Okay, that's all for this week. Hopefully next week's e-mail will have better news, and sorry mom I haven't had anytime to write any letters, hopefully I can start some soon though. Adios.

Tortica

September 6, 2010

Hello family.

This is going to be a short one since today is transfer day and we couldn't e-mail yesterday because of the holiday. My companion Elder Rupp is getting transferred and I shall once again be getting a new companion. Which kind of stinks since I just barely got here and barely know this area and it's a lot harder to get to know your area when you're on all bike. My new companion will be Elder Lamoure, I've never met nor even heard of him. I think he's pretty new. We will see how that goes.

It's been raining a lot this last week and seems like it's going to rain a lot more this week so we'll likely not have too much to do. One quick amusing anecdote. My bike has been giving me all sorts of problems lately. On friday the rear breaks locked up and we tried to fix them with no avail and finally on Saturday we found a member who had worked in a bikeshop before and the 3 of us together finally fixed it. Turns out the wire thing was messed all down the inside of the thing tube that runs up the body of the bike to the handle bars. I would never had guessed. So we fixed them and the brakes work now just not as good as they did before however. Then Sunday morning we found to our dismay that our tires had been slashed. We live on the 3rd floor of our apartment complex so we keep our bikes on the 1st floor locked up under and to the stairwell. Well somebody decided to slash up our back tires, just the back ones. So once again we were on foot that day. So yesterday we bought new tires and new intertubes, but fortunately the bike place was having a sale on everything so we got some pretty sweet discounts. Then after that when we were biking in a drizzle my bike slipped out from under me and while I came out of the crash completely unharmed, I didn't even hit the ground, I just jumped off and ran next to it. Some metal sprocket thing that the chain goes through next to wheel got all bent up and once again we were hoofing it the nearest members house, luckily the member is a pretty handy guy and we managed to bend it back in to place more or less. One thing I've come to admire about the hispanic people as that almost all of them are really handy like that. Since many of them can't go to school and get upper-class jobs, most of them work as mechanics, construction workers, and people who do yards. So they can fix just about anything.

Okay I'm out of time. I'm, looking forward to the package whenever it may come and I love you all and hope you have a good week. Peace!

--Elder Rice