Hello Family.
This last week was good, we had two baptisms on saturday and we have many more on the way. I'm still astounded at how fast the work moves down here, it's almost too easy. Just yesterday we were visiting an old investigator who we hadn't seen a while and who didn't seem to be going anywhere. This old lady that just talked and talked about her health problems. After listening to her talk for a good half hour or so I was starting to get bored so I interrupted and said: "Hey... Do you want to be baptized?" She paused for a moment and said yes. We set a date and it was as easy as that. Stuff like that happens in this area all the time, it's almost too easy.
Luckily though the ward keeps that easiness in check. Yesterday almost everything that could have gone wrong concerning the confirmations during sacrament meeting went wrong. First our ward mission leader didn't go to the ward council meeting before church so the bishop was uninformed on who was to do the confirmations. Something I didn't realized until after sacrament meeting had started. And when sacrament meeting started the people who had been baptized yesterday hadn't shown up yet. Luckily the opening hymn was a long one and one of them showed up. And when the Bishop invited them up to be confirmed and asked some us, the elders, to come up, he asked us who was going to do the confirmation and we just asked him if he could do it. (Our Ward Mission Leader was supposed to ask him that morning). He agreed and did it. Our other person still hadn't shown up yet so they went ahead and did the sacrament and I was thinking "crap, crap, crap, crap" The whole time. And wondering if they would ever show up and more importantly if the bishop would let us do it. Some bishops are pretty strict on that and if they don't show up before the sacrament they have to wait a week or get baptized again. Luckily they showed up during the sacrament and the bishop went ahead and let him be confirmed. Now our ward mission leader was supposed to confirm him but he didn't show up, so I went ahead and did it. It was my first time ever confirming someone and I was afraid at first that I wouldn't remember some of the necessary parts. Luckily I did it right, it's not too hard, the only thing different from other priesthood blessings is that you have to confirm them a member of the church and then command them to receive the holy ghost, and then say what the spirit tells you. So it wasn't too much sweat.
So that was the weekly fiasco. Not much else happened this week. New Year's Eve was boring, we had to be in by dark, luckily we had permission to sleep over at the apartment of our ZL's (who are pretty chill, both of them I know really well) and our whole district. So we just hung out with them all night, played card games, and listened to all the gunshots outside all night long. The parking lot of their apartment complex was just full of drunk black people the whole night, it was pretty loud.
Well there's not much else to say, nothing too crazy or interesting has happened. Oh I forgot to bring my camera to the library today so no pictures of us and the recent converts so that'll have to wait till next week. Well I love you all and hope you have a good week. PEace...
-- Elder Rice
Pupiles
December 27, 2010
Howdy
Well this e-mail will probably be short since I just talked to y'all a couple days ago. Not much to report. Christmas was rather boring, actually very boring. We spent most of Christmas day hanging out with the other elders and wondering what we should do. I fear New Year's eve will be worse, we have not yet heard what the rules are but last year it was in your own apartment by 5:00 no exceptions whatsoever, so that will be pretty boring. But whatever, everything is boring.
The past couple days have been brutally cold, and likely will continue to be so for a long time. And.... Wow, I'm really out of stuff to say, oh we should have a baptism this saturday on the first, that will be good, and the same day we are going to be working in the pulga so hopefully I can get some good pictures of the pulga. I don't know if anyone will be there on New Year's day but we'll find out I guess. Well I love you all and enjoy the break, because I don't get one!
-- Elder Rice
Howdy
Well this e-mail will probably be short since I just talked to y'all a couple days ago. Not much to report. Christmas was rather boring, actually very boring. We spent most of Christmas day hanging out with the other elders and wondering what we should do. I fear New Year's eve will be worse, we have not yet heard what the rules are but last year it was in your own apartment by 5:00 no exceptions whatsoever, so that will be pretty boring. But whatever, everything is boring.
The past couple days have been brutally cold, and likely will continue to be so for a long time. And.... Wow, I'm really out of stuff to say, oh we should have a baptism this saturday on the first, that will be good, and the same day we are going to be working in the pulga so hopefully I can get some good pictures of the pulga. I don't know if anyone will be there on New Year's day but we'll find out I guess. Well I love you all and enjoy the break, because I don't get one!
-- Elder Rice
Se Me Fueron Las Chivas Al Monte
December 20, 2010
Howdy fam...
Well this week was rather good, we now have five investigators with baptismal dates, last week we had one, but in this last week we've been lucky and have had all of this success. Three of them will be baptized on the 1st and the others later in January.
So let's see... Any amusing stories? Okay I thought of one. So Friday was the ward Christmas party, in which I participated far more that I wanted to. Firstly the week before the elder's quorum president had asked us if we (the missionaries) could perform a musical number. Of the six of us in the ward three are gifted with musical talents, and as y'all are aware I'm not one of those 3. What we ended up doing was singing 'Silent Night' my companion on the violin, another on the piano, and the rest of us singing. It went rather well, even if it hadn't sounded good it would have been fine, hispanics, as a people, can't sing nor do they know what good singing sounds like. That wasn't so bad, the part that was bad is that a few days before it, we were leaving the gate when the mom of the member family that lives with us, caught us going out and asked if we could held them with the Christmas party, we said yes, we'd be happy to help. She then said that they needed an angel for their little nativity play, she pointed at me and said: "Tu eres el mas alto y el mas güero." Meaning that I was the tallest and most white person of the six of us, and that she wanted me to be the Angel in the play. Now I'm neither the tallest nor the most white of our district, (the funny part being that the whitest elder of us all is named Elder white, and the tallest is an asian named Elder Whittle). But I agreed so for the Christmas nativity thing I was the angel. I didn't have to say anything, the whole thing was narrated so I stood there and motioned around as if I was talking and gesturing. I wore a white reflective gown with wings a Halo and eveything, the whole nine yards. So that wasn't too fun but oh well. We had a great turn out though, almost all of our investigators made it to the party and they all enjoyed it.
I think that's about all that happened this week. All interesting or that I can think of, and I'm going to talk to y'all on saturday. I will probably call that night, this year they're a little bit more lax about calling schedules so we can call anytime we want. I'll probably call like 7 or 8 at night. Meaning 8 or 9 for you all. Well I'm done, I'd like to thank everyone for all the cool stuff they've sent. So yeah, I love you all, have a good day and peace out.
-- Elder Rice
Howdy fam...
Well this week was rather good, we now have five investigators with baptismal dates, last week we had one, but in this last week we've been lucky and have had all of this success. Three of them will be baptized on the 1st and the others later in January.
So let's see... Any amusing stories? Okay I thought of one. So Friday was the ward Christmas party, in which I participated far more that I wanted to. Firstly the week before the elder's quorum president had asked us if we (the missionaries) could perform a musical number. Of the six of us in the ward three are gifted with musical talents, and as y'all are aware I'm not one of those 3. What we ended up doing was singing 'Silent Night' my companion on the violin, another on the piano, and the rest of us singing. It went rather well, even if it hadn't sounded good it would have been fine, hispanics, as a people, can't sing nor do they know what good singing sounds like. That wasn't so bad, the part that was bad is that a few days before it, we were leaving the gate when the mom of the member family that lives with us, caught us going out and asked if we could held them with the Christmas party, we said yes, we'd be happy to help. She then said that they needed an angel for their little nativity play, she pointed at me and said: "Tu eres el mas alto y el mas güero." Meaning that I was the tallest and most white person of the six of us, and that she wanted me to be the Angel in the play. Now I'm neither the tallest nor the most white of our district, (the funny part being that the whitest elder of us all is named Elder white, and the tallest is an asian named Elder Whittle). But I agreed so for the Christmas nativity thing I was the angel. I didn't have to say anything, the whole thing was narrated so I stood there and motioned around as if I was talking and gesturing. I wore a white reflective gown with wings a Halo and eveything, the whole nine yards. So that wasn't too fun but oh well. We had a great turn out though, almost all of our investigators made it to the party and they all enjoyed it.
I think that's about all that happened this week. All interesting or that I can think of, and I'm going to talk to y'all on saturday. I will probably call that night, this year they're a little bit more lax about calling schedules so we can call anytime we want. I'll probably call like 7 or 8 at night. Meaning 8 or 9 for you all. Well I'm done, I'd like to thank everyone for all the cool stuff they've sent. So yeah, I love you all, have a good day and peace out.
-- Elder Rice
Tirando Barra
December 13, 2010
what up fam?
This week was busy and fast paced, we have like zero time to do anything just jumping around from appointment to appointment, trying to squeeze everyone into our already tightly packed days. I like it, it feels more fulfilling, to come home each day exhausted. But only about half of all that is actually useful work, that is helping people make commitments and progress, a lot of it is being full time home or mostly visiting teachers. Elder Green kind of has this mentality that we should be like bishops or something, basically doing the ward's job, today we even went and got a prescription filled out for a homebound member's medicine. I've talked to him about this before, about how we should get the ward involved on what they should be doing but he seems content on doing it ourselves. Now I have no problem with helping out people outside of our responsibility but doing that without trying to get the ward to get on the bandwagon, thus making it our responsibility, is a problem. He's also concerned about certain members and their worthiness and whatnot, again I told him that's between them and the Bishop, we're not to get involved in such things. But Elder Green is rather stubborn, I have the the opposite problem with him than I did with Elder Lamoure. Elder Lamoure was lazy and wouldn't do anything, which is irritating but at least I could see that we got things done the right way. Elder Green is not lazy at all, but as an inexperienced greenie he doesn't know what he's doing, but he thinks he does, and tries to do everything. So I end up having to mend the fences along the way, everywhere we go. It's tiring but at least it's better than last transfer.
So... Amusing anecdotes of the week. On Wednesday we had 3 dinners with members, it was really good food, caldo de verdaduras y pollo, enchiladas rojas, mole, and of course with each meal lots of arroz, frijoles, and tortillas, it was a ton of food we were so full we wanted to die. And now that I'm in the ghetto we were getting REAL mexican food, so real that the next morning we were taking turns in the bathroom for several hours. We both got pretty sick from it, it was the first time I'd ever been really sick on my mission. Luckily the day that we got sick we had only one appointment, so we went to that and then crashed for the rest of the day. We were back up the next day, just fine and again went about everywhere at break-neck speed teaching people.
As aforementioned the ward council refuses to give rides to investigators, we have to go around them and individually ask members to give people rides. Anyway for sunday we had a plan, we had two investigators and a part-member family who live pretty close to each other and we were going to try to get them on the bus to the church. From the previous week we found out that simply telling people where the church was, telling them to take the bus, and hoping to see them there, isn't enough. So we tracked down maps of the bus routes and asked members who use the bus and formulated a plan. Sunday morning we were to go wake everyone up at 10:00, go back to the church to correlation meeting, then go back, and walk each family to the bus stop, get them to wait there, while we went and got the others and walked with them to the bus stop, once they were all there the active member who also uses that bus-stop would come and be with them on the bus and herd them to the Church. The only thing we lacked were sheep dogs.
Well our plan was a complete failure, one family had some family visiting so they had "other things to do" that day. Same with a few other investigators, the only ones that were ready that morning were Maria and Katrin, an older hispanic woman and her 10 year old daughter who is actually a member who was baptized a year ago. Now to all of these people we had carefully explained the plan, so when we came to pick them up and walk with them to the bus-stop, which was actually like a half mile away, they walked out of the house and straight to our car. They assumed that we were just going to take them to church in our car. As I started to explain to them the plan all over again they both stood there, wrapped up in there jackets and things, shivering and as I was telling them that they were going to take the bus I saw their faces fall. I kind of just slowed down and stopped talking, it was really cold, there was this nasty biting wind, the bus stop was a ways away, and they might or might not have a few bucks on them for the bus fare. They did what the dog likes to do and gave us the big brown eyes, this little old mexican woman and her kid. Then I told them to get in the car, we would take them this time and show them where to get on and off the bus and everything, but next week they were going to take the bush for sure. Their faces instantly brightened up and lept into the car. Elder Green, who was struggling to keep up with the conversation saw them get into the car and, realizing what we were about to do started to protest but I told him to get in the car and we drove them to church. So yeah, we broke the rules, we can't have investigators or even members in our car unless they're Melchizedek priesthood holders, etc, etc, etc. But whatever, we took them to church, and they had a good time. So of all the 8 or so investigators we expected to come to church only one came, that we drove there, there were some others who were supposed to come independently but didn't show. Maria and Katrin did take the bus home though with a member so we didn't have to take them back. I don't know, Jesus would have probably given them a ride....
So yeah.... Oh and sunday was 'El Dia de la Virgen Guadalupe'. I had forgotten all about it, which may explain why none of our investigators came to church. It's basically a holiday in which mexicans celebrate their worship of Mary. Apparently back in the day some mexican, Don Miguel, or something prayed and Mary appeared to him and ever since them they started calling her Guadalupe, for who knows what reason. But on the day previous to it we were in a teaching appointment, and the family had their front door open because they were cooking and it was hot in the house, and down the street as we were teaching comes this huge crowd of mexicans, we didn't see them because the door was parallel to the street but we heard all of this clanging and voices and then one lady shouts: "!SALUDEN A LA VIRGEN GUADALUPE!" literally: 'salute virgen guadalupe'. And then there was cheering and stuff and much clamour, I wish I had gotten a video of it, it was pretty funny.
Okay, I'm out of time. I sent y'alls Christmas box today so it should come later this week. Nothing's wrapped so don't open the box till Christmas. And Dad's present is actually in the box that I sent home a couple weeks ago, but there's a note inside of this box explaining all of that. So yeah.... Oh and mom I hope you got from the e-mail last week that I needed a couple of my hoodie-jacket things, I hope they're in the Christmas package, if not please send them ASAP. So I love y'all and have a good week.
-- Elder Arroz
what up fam?
This week was busy and fast paced, we have like zero time to do anything just jumping around from appointment to appointment, trying to squeeze everyone into our already tightly packed days. I like it, it feels more fulfilling, to come home each day exhausted. But only about half of all that is actually useful work, that is helping people make commitments and progress, a lot of it is being full time home or mostly visiting teachers. Elder Green kind of has this mentality that we should be like bishops or something, basically doing the ward's job, today we even went and got a prescription filled out for a homebound member's medicine. I've talked to him about this before, about how we should get the ward involved on what they should be doing but he seems content on doing it ourselves. Now I have no problem with helping out people outside of our responsibility but doing that without trying to get the ward to get on the bandwagon, thus making it our responsibility, is a problem. He's also concerned about certain members and their worthiness and whatnot, again I told him that's between them and the Bishop, we're not to get involved in such things. But Elder Green is rather stubborn, I have the the opposite problem with him than I did with Elder Lamoure. Elder Lamoure was lazy and wouldn't do anything, which is irritating but at least I could see that we got things done the right way. Elder Green is not lazy at all, but as an inexperienced greenie he doesn't know what he's doing, but he thinks he does, and tries to do everything. So I end up having to mend the fences along the way, everywhere we go. It's tiring but at least it's better than last transfer.
So... Amusing anecdotes of the week. On Wednesday we had 3 dinners with members, it was really good food, caldo de verdaduras y pollo, enchiladas rojas, mole, and of course with each meal lots of arroz, frijoles, and tortillas, it was a ton of food we were so full we wanted to die. And now that I'm in the ghetto we were getting REAL mexican food, so real that the next morning we were taking turns in the bathroom for several hours. We both got pretty sick from it, it was the first time I'd ever been really sick on my mission. Luckily the day that we got sick we had only one appointment, so we went to that and then crashed for the rest of the day. We were back up the next day, just fine and again went about everywhere at break-neck speed teaching people.
As aforementioned the ward council refuses to give rides to investigators, we have to go around them and individually ask members to give people rides. Anyway for sunday we had a plan, we had two investigators and a part-member family who live pretty close to each other and we were going to try to get them on the bus to the church. From the previous week we found out that simply telling people where the church was, telling them to take the bus, and hoping to see them there, isn't enough. So we tracked down maps of the bus routes and asked members who use the bus and formulated a plan. Sunday morning we were to go wake everyone up at 10:00, go back to the church to correlation meeting, then go back, and walk each family to the bus stop, get them to wait there, while we went and got the others and walked with them to the bus stop, once they were all there the active member who also uses that bus-stop would come and be with them on the bus and herd them to the Church. The only thing we lacked were sheep dogs.
Well our plan was a complete failure, one family had some family visiting so they had "other things to do" that day. Same with a few other investigators, the only ones that were ready that morning were Maria and Katrin, an older hispanic woman and her 10 year old daughter who is actually a member who was baptized a year ago. Now to all of these people we had carefully explained the plan, so when we came to pick them up and walk with them to the bus-stop, which was actually like a half mile away, they walked out of the house and straight to our car. They assumed that we were just going to take them to church in our car. As I started to explain to them the plan all over again they both stood there, wrapped up in there jackets and things, shivering and as I was telling them that they were going to take the bus I saw their faces fall. I kind of just slowed down and stopped talking, it was really cold, there was this nasty biting wind, the bus stop was a ways away, and they might or might not have a few bucks on them for the bus fare. They did what the dog likes to do and gave us the big brown eyes, this little old mexican woman and her kid. Then I told them to get in the car, we would take them this time and show them where to get on and off the bus and everything, but next week they were going to take the bush for sure. Their faces instantly brightened up and lept into the car. Elder Green, who was struggling to keep up with the conversation saw them get into the car and, realizing what we were about to do started to protest but I told him to get in the car and we drove them to church. So yeah, we broke the rules, we can't have investigators or even members in our car unless they're Melchizedek priesthood holders, etc, etc, etc. But whatever, we took them to church, and they had a good time. So of all the 8 or so investigators we expected to come to church only one came, that we drove there, there were some others who were supposed to come independently but didn't show. Maria and Katrin did take the bus home though with a member so we didn't have to take them back. I don't know, Jesus would have probably given them a ride....
So yeah.... Oh and sunday was 'El Dia de la Virgen Guadalupe'. I had forgotten all about it, which may explain why none of our investigators came to church. It's basically a holiday in which mexicans celebrate their worship of Mary. Apparently back in the day some mexican, Don Miguel, or something prayed and Mary appeared to him and ever since them they started calling her Guadalupe, for who knows what reason. But on the day previous to it we were in a teaching appointment, and the family had their front door open because they were cooking and it was hot in the house, and down the street as we were teaching comes this huge crowd of mexicans, we didn't see them because the door was parallel to the street but we heard all of this clanging and voices and then one lady shouts: "!SALUDEN A LA VIRGEN GUADALUPE!" literally: 'salute virgen guadalupe'. And then there was cheering and stuff and much clamour, I wish I had gotten a video of it, it was pretty funny.
Okay, I'm out of time. I sent y'alls Christmas box today so it should come later this week. Nothing's wrapped so don't open the box till Christmas. And Dad's present is actually in the box that I sent home a couple weeks ago, but there's a note inside of this box explaining all of that. So yeah.... Oh and mom I hope you got from the e-mail last week that I needed a couple of my hoodie-jacket things, I hope they're in the Christmas package, if not please send them ASAP. So I love y'all and have a good week.
-- Elder Arroz
Andando con los Cholos
December 6, 2010
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
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
Caseras
November 29, 2010
Family.
This week was a rather good one. For Thanksgiving we had 5 dinner appointments, it was brutal. That morning we played football with the english wards then played fútbol with our ward. Then we went to our 5 dinner appointments, luckily we weren't biking, we were going to everyone with the sister missionaries in our ward. So I pretty much got sick of turkey. In this ward since everyone is pretty rich and Americanized they all have American style Thanksgiving, unfortunately. I would have preferred Mexican food. So it was turkey, turkey, turkey, and more turkey, I never really liked turkey much before but now I hate it, it just tastes so boring. We got a ton of leftovers as well, and our bathroom has smelt like turkey for the last 5 days...
On Saturday we had the big game of Westgreen vs. Bear Creek soccer game.... 9:00 was too early nobody came until 10:00 and we had to call several people of the ward to wake them up and get them out of bed. This may be the reason why all the little hispanic churches start at 1:00. For the first hour it was Westgreen vs. the missionaries. All the people that had showed up so far was Hno. Lopez, his kids and some of the youth of the ward. Which was sufficient, the score was 6-2 before more people started showing up. 10 year old hispanic boys are far better than any of us. The only advantage we had was that we had longer strides, even Elder Lang, who played soccer in high school and is pretty good was having trouble. More people started to show up and we mixed up the teams a little bit. Only 1 person from the Bear Creek ward showed up, and they even announced in their ward on sunday while our bishop refused to announce it. Kind of ironic. But we did have some non-member friends of a family in our ward that showed up and they live in the sisters' area so they have some new investigators now. So that was a good result of it.
We also found out that Karla did in fact like the cookies, though she said she needed a glass of water because they were spicy. She says the funniest things. Since she's been baptized we've been reading through the Book of the Mormon with them. When we read about the part where Nefi cuts off Laban's head she said: "Oh that's just like this movie Freddy vs. Jason, where they cut off this guy's head and... blah, blah, blah, it was kind of scary." And this other time when we read about the Tree of Life and we read about the river of filthy water representing the 'profundidades del infierno'. She commented on how it was like this movie called 'Paranormal Activity'. It's really funny, she and her sister are some of the most desensitized kids I've ever seen but they somehow are still so innocent. It's really funny.
And now for the good news... I'm getting transferred! Finally! I'm done babysitting Elder Lamoure. He in fact is going to my last area, Oakcrest, which isn't quite what I predicted for him but it's close enough, it's easily one of the worst spanish areas in the mission. I'll be going to Houston, that's right, for the first time on my mission in Houston Texas, I will actually be in Houston. I'll be going to the Houston 3rd Ward, in a way ghetto area, it's the only area that has a part of downtown Houston in it. Supposedly it's puro mexicano, no more white people. I'll be going with Elder Green, this will be his 2nd transfer and I will be "greenie-breaking" him as they say. So I'm excited, I'm still sad to leave Westgreen, it's a great ward, the strongest spanish ward in the mission, most active people, most active youth and everything. But the area stinks, it's hard to find people. Where I'm going is supposedly the opposite, easy to find and teach people but that ward struggles a lot, it's very poor and the members are more concerned about where their next meal is coming from rather than going to church or giving investigators rides.
Well... That's all I got to say today, tomorrow is transfers and I'll go to my new area. So I hope you all have a good week. Peace out.
-- Elder Rice
Family.
This week was a rather good one. For Thanksgiving we had 5 dinner appointments, it was brutal. That morning we played football with the english wards then played fútbol with our ward. Then we went to our 5 dinner appointments, luckily we weren't biking, we were going to everyone with the sister missionaries in our ward. So I pretty much got sick of turkey. In this ward since everyone is pretty rich and Americanized they all have American style Thanksgiving, unfortunately. I would have preferred Mexican food. So it was turkey, turkey, turkey, and more turkey, I never really liked turkey much before but now I hate it, it just tastes so boring. We got a ton of leftovers as well, and our bathroom has smelt like turkey for the last 5 days...
On Saturday we had the big game of Westgreen vs. Bear Creek soccer game.... 9:00 was too early nobody came until 10:00 and we had to call several people of the ward to wake them up and get them out of bed. This may be the reason why all the little hispanic churches start at 1:00. For the first hour it was Westgreen vs. the missionaries. All the people that had showed up so far was Hno. Lopez, his kids and some of the youth of the ward. Which was sufficient, the score was 6-2 before more people started showing up. 10 year old hispanic boys are far better than any of us. The only advantage we had was that we had longer strides, even Elder Lang, who played soccer in high school and is pretty good was having trouble. More people started to show up and we mixed up the teams a little bit. Only 1 person from the Bear Creek ward showed up, and they even announced in their ward on sunday while our bishop refused to announce it. Kind of ironic. But we did have some non-member friends of a family in our ward that showed up and they live in the sisters' area so they have some new investigators now. So that was a good result of it.
We also found out that Karla did in fact like the cookies, though she said she needed a glass of water because they were spicy. She says the funniest things. Since she's been baptized we've been reading through the Book of the Mormon with them. When we read about the part where Nefi cuts off Laban's head she said: "Oh that's just like this movie Freddy vs. Jason, where they cut off this guy's head and... blah, blah, blah, it was kind of scary." And this other time when we read about the Tree of Life and we read about the river of filthy water representing the 'profundidades del infierno'. She commented on how it was like this movie called 'Paranormal Activity'. It's really funny, she and her sister are some of the most desensitized kids I've ever seen but they somehow are still so innocent. It's really funny.
And now for the good news... I'm getting transferred! Finally! I'm done babysitting Elder Lamoure. He in fact is going to my last area, Oakcrest, which isn't quite what I predicted for him but it's close enough, it's easily one of the worst spanish areas in the mission. I'll be going to Houston, that's right, for the first time on my mission in Houston Texas, I will actually be in Houston. I'll be going to the Houston 3rd Ward, in a way ghetto area, it's the only area that has a part of downtown Houston in it. Supposedly it's puro mexicano, no more white people. I'll be going with Elder Green, this will be his 2nd transfer and I will be "greenie-breaking" him as they say. So I'm excited, I'm still sad to leave Westgreen, it's a great ward, the strongest spanish ward in the mission, most active people, most active youth and everything. But the area stinks, it's hard to find people. Where I'm going is supposedly the opposite, easy to find and teach people but that ward struggles a lot, it's very poor and the members are more concerned about where their next meal is coming from rather than going to church or giving investigators rides.
Well... That's all I got to say today, tomorrow is transfers and I'll go to my new area. So I hope you all have a good week. Peace out.
-- Elder Rice
Arrastrando La Cobija
I am not sure if I should say "Oh dear..." or "TMI" or both!
Lisa
November 22, 2010
Hey fam...
This week I actually have something interesting to report. On Tuesday we had Zone Conference, 8 AM to 3 PM, it was a killer, I can't stand long meetings anymore, I could barely handle church before my mission now it's just gotten worse I can't handle meetings. Well after Zone Conference Elder Lamoure talked with President and Sister Hansen about his bowel problems (up to this point he hadn't pooped in 10 days and it was difficult for him to walk). They called up Missionary Medical and they decided that Elder Lamoure should go to the emergency room. So we went to the ER, the english Elders dropped us off there and we were there for the next 6 hours. Elder Lang and I hung out in the waiting room all that time, it got pretty boring. At about 10:00 PM they finally let him out, they gave him two "enemas" I'm not sure what those are but to make a long story shorter they didn't get it all out, just enough so that he could get around comfortably, they said the problem was out of their league and they said he needed to go to a GI doctor. But they did tell him something he could get that would help, so the english elders picked us up at 10 and we went to the local drug-store where he went to get his thing. The whole time in the car he was complaining and complaining about his problem, and how the doctors can't figure it out. I got tired of it, he tells everyone that he's tried everything including a healthier diet and lots of exercise. I got tired of hearing it and I called him out and told him that if he actually tried to stick with a good diet and really exercised he could do it. Elder Lamoure probably has the worst diet of anyone I ever met, it consists of soda, beans, pizza, chili cheese fries, and cereal. He hates eating fruits and vegetables, I've been with him for almost 3 months now and that's all he eats. I told him that, also told him that he doesn't really exercise, we go to a ghetto little gym in our apartment complex and all he does is sit on the bike machine, peddles a little bit, and watches the TV in the gym. I told him that if he honestly tried he could probably overcome this. Well, he got mad and had another one of his hissy-fits.
I'm so sick of him, he's so negative about everything all the time, and that's saying something, I know that I'm rather pessimistic but Elder Lamoure makes me look like a ray of sunshine. It's simply suffocating to be in his presence when he's talking, and he keeps bringing up the same subjects over and over and over again as if we've never heard them before. If there is anything I have learned from my time with him it's that we should try to have a positive attitude. Luckily though this is the last week of the transfer, I'm pretty sure that I won't be with Elder Lamoure. So I only have one more week, I just need to hold out a little longer without killing him. He might actually go english next transfer, President was asking him if it was the hispanic food that gives him these problems, President is thinking about sending him english, which is the greatest fear of all spanish missionaries. That's what happens to all of the useless spanish elders, they go english. There was one elder who was a slacker and didn't keep up on his spanish and just didn't really care about being a missionary much and he got sent to an english area to be an english area, that would suck hardcore. I think Elder Lamoure is in for the same fate, especially seeing as though he's had almost a year in the mission and his spanish is at the same level mine was in my 2nd transfer. He's in for it.
On a higher note I have a more happy, amusing story. Yesterday was Karla's birthday, our recent convert. The last time we were at their house was Thursday, she was eating a bag of hot cheetos as she told us it was her birthday on sunday, we said that we were going to have to make her a cake or something, and then we jokingly suggested that we make her a hot cheeto cake. She said that would fine, she proceeded to tell us that she loves spicy food and she eats everything with chile. Which is odd, Karla and her family are Hondurans, and in Honduras they don't eat anything spicy at all and most hate spicy food. But not Karla, she's been mexicanized and eats everything with chile and lime. Fast forward to saturday when we remembered that it was Karla's birthday the next day. We wanted to make her something. I recounted to my companions that my mom had made jalapeno cookies once and that they were pretty good, and since Karla loves chiles we should make some jalapeno cookies. My companions were a little skeptical at first, but I pressed them so we decided to do it. We went to Mcdonalds (because it has free wi-fi and Elder Lang has an i-touch, one of the reasons why he likes to going to Mcdonalds all the time). We looked up recipes for jalapeno cookies. Elder Lang chose this recipe for jalapeno-cranberry cookies. It sounded interesting so we decided to do it. We went to Wal-Mart and bought the necessary ingredients. We decided to make them sunday morning before church and give them to her at church. (Our ward meets at 2:00, they hate having the late schedule but they've had for two years in a row now because the english wards don't want it either and when it comes to push and shove the spanish wards always get the shaft, it's quite sad actually. The english wards blame everything on the spanish wards, messes, and maintenance and everything.
Anyway... The dough was made of cream cheese, butter, and flour. We had fresh cranberries and jalapenos and you make this mixture out of it using vinegar. I don't really know, Elder Lang made the sauce I did the dough, and Elder Lamoure slept. What we were supposed to do was cut the dough into 2 inch squares, dabble a tablespoon of the cranberry jalapeno sauce on it and make a roll-type-deal by bringing just two of the opposite corners of the square together. Well it was taking too long to measure and cut 2 inch squares out of the dough so we found a ginger bread man cookie cutter and used that, dabbled the sauce onto each gingerbread man and then tucked their heads in between their legs, thus making a sort of roll shaped thing. We were supposed to use something called "confectioners sugar" but we couldn't find any at wal-mart so we used regular sugar instead. We baked them for 12 minutes and then pulled them out. They didn't look too pretty, some of them looked okay but most looked like small exploded animals. I forgot to take pictures (sorry mom). But they looked edible, and they were actually really good. I liked them a lot, Elder Lang really liked them too, Elder Lamoure wouldn't try one, he's lame like that. So we put them all (we had like 30 of these cookies) in a tupperware along with a birthday card we got for her and some pictures of her baptism. Everything was going according to plan. The sister missionaries picked us up to take us to church. They were impressed with our cookies, or rather they were impressed that we made the effort to make cookies, but not so impressed with how they tasted, they didn't like them at all. At chruch before sacrament meeting when everyone mills around during the prelude music everyone was like "Oh Elder, for me? You shouldn't have."or "Heeeyyy... What do you got there Elder?" And then I'd tell them and they'd go "Ewww... Really?" And nobody wanted to try one. Also, one thing about having jalapeno-cranberry sauce in a cookie is that it starts to smell very... pungent... after a while. People would smell it and go ewww.... Of all the people that dared to try one, only 2 liked them, 1 said it was okay, and 4 or 5 others ran to the bathroom or the nearest trash can to spit it out. So we were really striking out with these cookies. I guess hispanics don't really do the whole sweet and spicy thing, it tasted a lot like jalapeno jelly and whenever I tell them that back home we grew habaneros and made jelly out of them and ate it with peanut butter in a sandwich they are usually aghast at such and idea. And to top off the whole thing, the Enamorados didn't show up. Karla didn't come. So for a the whole 3 hour block we had these strong smelling cookies on us. Which was kind of a blessing, it gave Elder Lang and I something to eat during Elder's Quorum.
Well later that night after chruch we went by the Enamordo's to at least give all the stuff to Karla, they weren't there but some guy who'd we never met before named Javier was there (this is very typical of hispanic households, there are so many people coming and going that might be family that you meet someone new every time you go buy. We gave him the junk and told him to give it to Karla. We then went home and went to bed. Twas a lame ending of a lame day. It was kind of funny though. And those cookies were good, Mom, you should make some. Though I think that only you and maybe the boys would like them.
Well that's all I have to say. This week should be pretty fun, eating and soccer. We set up a soccer game between our ward and neighboring hispanic ward for saturday. We planned it with the missionaries of that ward for a while now but come sunday our Bishop refused to announce it because he said that activities involving multiple wards needed approval from the stake. So we just went around telling everyone that there was going to be soccer on saturday morning in a park and if another ward just happened to show up wanting to play soccer then what a coincidence it would be. We're also playing with the ward on Thrusday, and the missionaries are playing today for P-day. And for Thanksgiving we've had like 5 families invite us over. So we're going to go to all of them, 2 plates per house we decided, Elder Lamoure does not like that idea, he'll probably explode but I wouldn't have a problem with it unless he explodes anywhere near me or my stuff. So this will be a week of soccer and food so I'll be having fun. And mom I'll get you a Christmas list for next week, so have a good week, I love you all!
-- Elder Rice
Lisa
November 22, 2010
Hey fam...
This week I actually have something interesting to report. On Tuesday we had Zone Conference, 8 AM to 3 PM, it was a killer, I can't stand long meetings anymore, I could barely handle church before my mission now it's just gotten worse I can't handle meetings. Well after Zone Conference Elder Lamoure talked with President and Sister Hansen about his bowel problems (up to this point he hadn't pooped in 10 days and it was difficult for him to walk). They called up Missionary Medical and they decided that Elder Lamoure should go to the emergency room. So we went to the ER, the english Elders dropped us off there and we were there for the next 6 hours. Elder Lang and I hung out in the waiting room all that time, it got pretty boring. At about 10:00 PM they finally let him out, they gave him two "enemas" I'm not sure what those are but to make a long story shorter they didn't get it all out, just enough so that he could get around comfortably, they said the problem was out of their league and they said he needed to go to a GI doctor. But they did tell him something he could get that would help, so the english elders picked us up at 10 and we went to the local drug-store where he went to get his thing. The whole time in the car he was complaining and complaining about his problem, and how the doctors can't figure it out. I got tired of it, he tells everyone that he's tried everything including a healthier diet and lots of exercise. I got tired of hearing it and I called him out and told him that if he actually tried to stick with a good diet and really exercised he could do it. Elder Lamoure probably has the worst diet of anyone I ever met, it consists of soda, beans, pizza, chili cheese fries, and cereal. He hates eating fruits and vegetables, I've been with him for almost 3 months now and that's all he eats. I told him that, also told him that he doesn't really exercise, we go to a ghetto little gym in our apartment complex and all he does is sit on the bike machine, peddles a little bit, and watches the TV in the gym. I told him that if he honestly tried he could probably overcome this. Well, he got mad and had another one of his hissy-fits.
I'm so sick of him, he's so negative about everything all the time, and that's saying something, I know that I'm rather pessimistic but Elder Lamoure makes me look like a ray of sunshine. It's simply suffocating to be in his presence when he's talking, and he keeps bringing up the same subjects over and over and over again as if we've never heard them before. If there is anything I have learned from my time with him it's that we should try to have a positive attitude. Luckily though this is the last week of the transfer, I'm pretty sure that I won't be with Elder Lamoure. So I only have one more week, I just need to hold out a little longer without killing him. He might actually go english next transfer, President was asking him if it was the hispanic food that gives him these problems, President is thinking about sending him english, which is the greatest fear of all spanish missionaries. That's what happens to all of the useless spanish elders, they go english. There was one elder who was a slacker and didn't keep up on his spanish and just didn't really care about being a missionary much and he got sent to an english area to be an english area, that would suck hardcore. I think Elder Lamoure is in for the same fate, especially seeing as though he's had almost a year in the mission and his spanish is at the same level mine was in my 2nd transfer. He's in for it.
On a higher note I have a more happy, amusing story. Yesterday was Karla's birthday, our recent convert. The last time we were at their house was Thursday, she was eating a bag of hot cheetos as she told us it was her birthday on sunday, we said that we were going to have to make her a cake or something, and then we jokingly suggested that we make her a hot cheeto cake. She said that would fine, she proceeded to tell us that she loves spicy food and she eats everything with chile. Which is odd, Karla and her family are Hondurans, and in Honduras they don't eat anything spicy at all and most hate spicy food. But not Karla, she's been mexicanized and eats everything with chile and lime. Fast forward to saturday when we remembered that it was Karla's birthday the next day. We wanted to make her something. I recounted to my companions that my mom had made jalapeno cookies once and that they were pretty good, and since Karla loves chiles we should make some jalapeno cookies. My companions were a little skeptical at first, but I pressed them so we decided to do it. We went to Mcdonalds (because it has free wi-fi and Elder Lang has an i-touch, one of the reasons why he likes to going to Mcdonalds all the time). We looked up recipes for jalapeno cookies. Elder Lang chose this recipe for jalapeno-cranberry cookies. It sounded interesting so we decided to do it. We went to Wal-Mart and bought the necessary ingredients. We decided to make them sunday morning before church and give them to her at church. (Our ward meets at 2:00, they hate having the late schedule but they've had for two years in a row now because the english wards don't want it either and when it comes to push and shove the spanish wards always get the shaft, it's quite sad actually. The english wards blame everything on the spanish wards, messes, and maintenance and everything.
Anyway... The dough was made of cream cheese, butter, and flour. We had fresh cranberries and jalapenos and you make this mixture out of it using vinegar. I don't really know, Elder Lang made the sauce I did the dough, and Elder Lamoure slept. What we were supposed to do was cut the dough into 2 inch squares, dabble a tablespoon of the cranberry jalapeno sauce on it and make a roll-type-deal by bringing just two of the opposite corners of the square together. Well it was taking too long to measure and cut 2 inch squares out of the dough so we found a ginger bread man cookie cutter and used that, dabbled the sauce onto each gingerbread man and then tucked their heads in between their legs, thus making a sort of roll shaped thing. We were supposed to use something called "confectioners sugar" but we couldn't find any at wal-mart so we used regular sugar instead. We baked them for 12 minutes and then pulled them out. They didn't look too pretty, some of them looked okay but most looked like small exploded animals. I forgot to take pictures (sorry mom). But they looked edible, and they were actually really good. I liked them a lot, Elder Lang really liked them too, Elder Lamoure wouldn't try one, he's lame like that. So we put them all (we had like 30 of these cookies) in a tupperware along with a birthday card we got for her and some pictures of her baptism. Everything was going according to plan. The sister missionaries picked us up to take us to church. They were impressed with our cookies, or rather they were impressed that we made the effort to make cookies, but not so impressed with how they tasted, they didn't like them at all. At chruch before sacrament meeting when everyone mills around during the prelude music everyone was like "Oh Elder, for me? You shouldn't have."or "Heeeyyy... What do you got there Elder?" And then I'd tell them and they'd go "Ewww... Really?" And nobody wanted to try one. Also, one thing about having jalapeno-cranberry sauce in a cookie is that it starts to smell very... pungent... after a while. People would smell it and go ewww.... Of all the people that dared to try one, only 2 liked them, 1 said it was okay, and 4 or 5 others ran to the bathroom or the nearest trash can to spit it out. So we were really striking out with these cookies. I guess hispanics don't really do the whole sweet and spicy thing, it tasted a lot like jalapeno jelly and whenever I tell them that back home we grew habaneros and made jelly out of them and ate it with peanut butter in a sandwich they are usually aghast at such and idea. And to top off the whole thing, the Enamorados didn't show up. Karla didn't come. So for a the whole 3 hour block we had these strong smelling cookies on us. Which was kind of a blessing, it gave Elder Lang and I something to eat during Elder's Quorum.
Well later that night after chruch we went by the Enamordo's to at least give all the stuff to Karla, they weren't there but some guy who'd we never met before named Javier was there (this is very typical of hispanic households, there are so many people coming and going that might be family that you meet someone new every time you go buy. We gave him the junk and told him to give it to Karla. We then went home and went to bed. Twas a lame ending of a lame day. It was kind of funny though. And those cookies were good, Mom, you should make some. Though I think that only you and maybe the boys would like them.
Well that's all I have to say. This week should be pretty fun, eating and soccer. We set up a soccer game between our ward and neighboring hispanic ward for saturday. We planned it with the missionaries of that ward for a while now but come sunday our Bishop refused to announce it because he said that activities involving multiple wards needed approval from the stake. So we just went around telling everyone that there was going to be soccer on saturday morning in a park and if another ward just happened to show up wanting to play soccer then what a coincidence it would be. We're also playing with the ward on Thrusday, and the missionaries are playing today for P-day. And for Thanksgiving we've had like 5 families invite us over. So we're going to go to all of them, 2 plates per house we decided, Elder Lamoure does not like that idea, he'll probably explode but I wouldn't have a problem with it unless he explodes anywhere near me or my stuff. So this will be a week of soccer and food so I'll be having fun. And mom I'll get you a Christmas list for next week, so have a good week, I love you all!
-- Elder Rice
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