Hello Fam...
This week was a long week. It feels like forever since I wrote that last e-mail on Monday. However, first things first. The box I sent was in fact for me. I decided that I had too much stuff, it's full of books that I've found on my mission that aren't quite authorized additions to the 'missionary library' or that I don't really need nor have room for. So please just put that with my other boxes and let it be. And as for my address I don't know what it is yet, but I am close enough to the mission office that it won't be too much of a big deal. So just stick with the mission office address for now.
Now then... My first week in Houston... Was pretty good. On Tuesday I met my new companion, Elder Green from the-middle-of-nowhere, Utah. This is his 2nd transfer so he's had a total of 3 and a half months as a missionary including his time in the MTC. He's an interesting fellow. The term I have to describe him is 'business elf'. He's quite short with big ears and has a sort of impish demeanour about him. He's very cordial, he says things like "I fear that..." and "It would seem that..." Language that no normal human being would use in every day speech unless you were trying to imitate someone from... Victorian-era England. It's kind of funny. He makes a lot effort to be very polite, professional, and well mannered. It's kind of funny, easy to get along with but kind of boring, he's kind of girly too. His 'thing' is the whole choir-drama club-ballroom dance type deal. One day we were driving and we passed two streets named 'Temple' and 'Shirely', the conversation went as follows:
EG: *Laughs*
ER: "What's up?"
EG: "Those two streets, Temple and Shirley, that's funny."
ER: "Like... Don't call me shirley surely?"
EG: "No, like Shirley Temple"
ER: "I think I've heard that name before, who's that?"
EG: "Shirley Temple played Annie in the movie 'Annie' "
ER: "Oh..., I've never seen it but-"
EG: "How can you have not seen Annie! I have been in at least two plays of-"
ER: "Hey, you can't say anything! You haven't even seen 'Indiana Jones' remember? You basically have no childhood..."
We've had many such conversations and it's rather funny but it gets old and slightly irritating after a while but I've had companions of all spectrums by now so I'm not too bothered. He's a good missionary, good work ethic, obedient, etc. He only lacks experience and spanish. Which again seems to be a problem because he's rather stubborn when it comes to how missionary work is done and he thinks he knows what he is doing and how to go about doing it, even when he has no idea what's going on. Time will teach him though, of the many things I've taught him so far some of them include: Not standing in front of people's houses and writing things down in your planner, when contacting a refferal or when someone you don't recognize opens the door introduce yourself and tell them who we are first before asking if so-an-so is there, don't explain and then offer preisthood blessings to people who have no idea what they are, don't indignantly shout "Why not!" to people passing by who don't want to learn about God, etc. He's a good guy though and a good cook, With time he'll get sharpened into an effective missionary.
So... This new are is pretty sweet. We live in the ghetto with an active member family, they have an apartment type thing above their garage that we live in. It's tiny but comfortable and well kept, I haven't seen a single roach yet. The area is super, super ghetto. It looks like Mexico, all of the roads are under construction, broken sewer pipes everywhere, the whole city smells like sewege, and people here drive like maniacs, we've almost been hit like a dozen times now. All of the car accidents that happen in our mission come this area and the areas around us. These pictures are acutally of dowtown Houston that's right next to our area and outside of the mission boundaries. One day we accidently took the wrong lane on the 8 lane free-way and ended up outside of the mission and inside Houston, Elder Green started to freak out a bit, but I laughed, handed him my camera and told him to start snapping picutres while we found our way out of there. So those pictures you see are of a part of downtown. I don't have any good pictures of the ghetto yet. The other two pictures are of the infamous Pulga, or hispanic flea makert. The other great thing about finally serving in Houston is that we get to do shifts at the pulga. We have our own little table set up in there with all the rest of the stuff with dispalys of pamphlets, pass-a-long-cards, and Books of Mormon. The shifts are two hours long and you stand there in front of this table and try to get people passing by to stop, listen to you, and get them to write down their address and stuff in these binders we have that eventually turn into the media refferals we get through the phone. Hispanics will come from miles and miles away to the Pulga to sell and buy hispanic junk. And we, the spanish missionaries love it because we get to buy hispanic junk as well.
They're only open on saturdays and sundays, I went for the first time in my mission on saturday. At first I was like "THIS IS SO COOL!" After serving out in the country and in the suburbs my whole mission I was excited to see so many hispanics in one place all at once They're just walking around everywhere, stands selling elotes, and weird hispanic snack foods, hotdogs wrapped in fried tortillas, pork rinds in the shape of wagon wheels carried in a huge back filled with hot sauce, lime and chile powder candies that the little kids lick out of little plastic containers. They have the hispanic music going and everything, it looked like a lot of fun. Well after 20 minutes or so I was like "Okay, I'm tired of this, let's go home now." I can't decide if it's worse than tracting or not. There's far more rejections per minute, and since we don't have them cornered on their doorstep they're a bit more rude. Well after two hours we had literally spoke to hundreds of people and only 5 of them were good people, actually interested who wanted to learn more and wrote their names down in the notebook.
The fun part comes once your shift is over and the next missionaries arrive, then you can go around and look at everything and buy stuff. So I did a bit of Christmas shopping for y'all at the Pulga. So y'all have that to look forward to for Christmas, I didn't really get any good pictures of it because I didn't want to be too creepy, we're creepy enough as it is, two white guys walking around dressed like the FBI.
On Sunday I got to meet the ward. I can see why most missionaries who have served in this ward hate it. Our correlation meeting with the ward leadership was interesting. The bishop wants us to report our stats to him, to see if we're working hard enough, they don't want us to give rides to investigators because they think it will make them lazy and they should instead be self sufficient and take the metro to church, and they seem to have this idea that success comes from how many doors we knock a week rather than having members visit investigators with us. So yeah... I walked out of the meeting wanting to go back to Katy, but after being in church and for the combined priesthood-relief society meeting, we, the missionaries were in charge of the lesson so we taught about the role of members in missionary work. It went well, and I had a better view of this ward, there are lots of good people and there's a lot of potential here. We just have to be patient with them and encourage them.
Well I'm running out of time but I'm having a good time, we don't have any time to tract because of all the appointments we have everyday. So I'm doing great, so I hope you all are having a good time, and I forgot one thing, I lost my hoodie in my last area after football on Thanksgiving, I think one of the english members might have accidently taken it. So if you could please send me one or two of my hoodies that I left at home that would be nice. I just need something warm to wear around in the apartment, it's getting rather chilly, and I do not need a coat. Mine is good enough but a couple of those sweaters I mentioned would be handy. So I hope you all have a good day and I love you all, peace out.
-- Elder Rice
