Fallará La Juvented de Sión?.... Si

January 10, 2011








Hello Family.

How's it going? I don't why I always put rhetorical questions that you all can't immediately answer at the start of my e-mails. Anywho.... This week was full of interesting things that happened.

But first I'll start with the pictures that I forgot to post last week. There's our recent converts that were baptized on the 1st. Marta Arevalo and David Reyes. Marta is this old, old lady from Guatemala who was passed off to us from the other elders when she moved into our area. She was probably one of the easiest people to teach and baptize ever. Usually I hate teaching old people, it's very frustrating and pointless but Marta is pretty sharp and she was instantly ready to do anything we told her to. Upon teaching the word of wisdom we challenged her to live it and she said: "Well I drink coffee but now I won't anymore." It was as easy as that, she was willing to give up anything to be baptized. I wish we could find more people like that. The other people in the picture are David, who's 10, he a sharp kid, his mother Juani, is on the left holding the Book of Mormon, she was a less active member who is now getting back in the game. The girl next to David is his best friend, Abigail, she's also 10 and she would have been baptized too, but her family wants nothing to do with us. She usually hangs out at Davids house and we've been teaching them there, she's only 10 and since we gave her a book of mormon she's already read up to Alma. We're hoping her family will open up one day. The smallest Child is David's sister Dora. We always call her 'Dora the Explorer'. Oh and that annoying looking guy next to me is my companion Elder Green. The other pictures are of some sweet graffiti and a Chihuaua that has the same fur color as our dog and the same 'give me your phud' look.

Okay, now for the FIASCO OF THE WEEK. Again it happened on Sunday in church. Funny how so many things can go wrong at church and always do. We had 3 investigators who were to be given baptismal interviews. One of them, this man who was also being taught by the other elders and moved into our area. Has some serious issues and was to be interviewed by President Cue. When an investigator has serious issues they have to be interviewed by the mission president. And President Hansen doesn't speak spanish but luckily one of his counselors does. So he was having that interview. Our other two investigators, a mother and her 15 year old daughter were to be interviewed by our district leader. Now the girl is pretty amazing, both of them have been taught a while before I came to the area and they're weren't really going anywhere. But since we got the girl to go to mutual one day it's been a breeze. She's really social and made instant friends with all of the youth in the ward. She surprised everyone and all of the YW's leaders thought she was a member from a different ward. So they were going good until sunday when the Bishop tells us that he wants to interview this girl. And we tell him, that he can't do that, non-members are to be interviewed by the mission not by the ward. He then told us that he heard some things from the youth and, oh man, what confusion and unnecessary madness came of this.

So to make a long story short, the youth were preparing to go on a Temple trip to do baptisms and during these interviews (reportedly) some of the youth told the bishop that this girl (our investigator) had bi-sexual tendencies. Which got him in a fit, so he wanted to interview the girl. (Why in the world would the youth be talking about someone else during their own interviews?) Now we had gone over the baptismal interview questions with our investigators before so they knew what would be coming and as far as we knew this girl was just fine. She had just dumped her boyfriend who was almost twice her age to be baptized. After I and some of the other elders haggled with the Bishop we struck a deal with him, President Cue, after he had finished with our other investigator would interview this girl. So he did and it was a rather long interview but Cue said she was good to get baptized this saturday.

We were rather exhausted during this whole ordeal. We never sat for more than 10 minutes in any of the 3 hour bloc meetings. We constantly jumping in and out of the hall way making phone calls tracking down people in the building and all of this nonsense. All of this and we had 3 additional investigators at church that day who we had to keep an eye on as well. Never-the-less w

e eventually pieced together the picture of what happened. We noticed that young women whom our investigator had become friends with, were avoiding her and wouldn't make eye contact or anything. Our hypothesis is that many of the young women in the ward got jealous of this non-member girl (she was, and still is stealing all of the young men away from them, you will all see why next week when I send pictures of her upcoming baptism on saturday). So to try and ruin her they started these rumors about her being bi-sexual and even went the extra mile of telling the bishop about it during their own interviews with them, and thus this whole mess gets thrown into our hands. (That's were all the messes of the ward usually end up). But she passed her interview and she and her mother are going to be baptized this saturday. We got home from church completely drained and I checked to see if I had any gray hairs, and my poor companion, still being new and not understanding too much spanish, didn't quite get what was going on during church and he was just flipping out the whole time until I filled him in afterwards. Now the remarkable thing about all of this, is that we went to visit this girl and her mom the night after and they were still happy and excited for baptism. I'm still quite surprised, after having her new best friends stab her in the back she still wants to be baptized and come to church. We were afraid that she'd never want anything to do with the church ever again. Heck I'd probably feel like that after something like this happened to me.

So I'm really mad at the stupid youth but also very amazed and humbled that this girl still wants to stick with it even after such intense opposition from the very people she's going to join. I'm really frustrated with the youth, they very nearly came close to ruining a couple of people's chances at salvation, and someones salvation is pretty serious. This is serious stuff, bunch of morons, the lot of them. For the rest of the day I kept singing a line from that one hymn 'True to the Faith' which goes something like: 'Will the Youth of Zion falter? something something something.... and then I'd substitute 'no' for 'YES'. The youth of zion spectacularly faltered yesterday. Epic fail. I always remember being in church and hearing that spreading rumors was bad but I never really understood the importance of it until I've been out in the mission and seen such destruction it can cause. I had heard this ward was very ineffective before I got transferred here but I'd never thought that some of them would be working actively against us. We only barely escaped from that destruction and they're still good to be baptized this saturday.

Okay I'm tired of typing now so I hope you all have a good week and.... Yeah. I love you all. Peace.

Houston Texas Mission Conference Group Picture

Picaboche

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

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

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



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