Gandalla

March 21, 2011


Hello fam.

This week was pretty good. Slower than usual but good. We had a baptism on the weekend. Rubiel Hernandez Cruz, he's really cool. We've taught him for only two weeks, we set a baptisimal date on the 2nd visit. He's really smart, a deep thinker, and always does the homework we leave him. Would that I could say the same about the member family he lives with. But the coolest thing is that we got Daniel (the man who was baptized last week) to baptize him! He got the Aaronic priesthood last sunday and we asked him to baptize Rubiel. Poor Daniel was terrified, but we spent a whole night going over how to perform the ordinance and everything. He was far more nervous about the baptism than Rubiel was. But the baptism went fine. Rubiel is happy and content and very interested in the way the church works.

Now for an update on Minerva and Dianna. Turns out that the supposed hospital bill of $4000+ wasn't really a bill. It was just showing them what they would to have paid if it had not been covered by their insurance or something or another. I dunno, but whatever the case it's not a problem anymore. Now for a particularly funny but horrible story with the two of them.

We went by last night to see them, they didn't go to church yesterday. So we came in and Dianna proudly showed us her new piercing in the top of her ear. We were like "Cool.... but.... uhh.... Not really". We talked a bit how extra piercings look nasty such as ones in the nose and lips, and she was like, why? We then explained that there's this sort of standard that we have in the church and modern prophets counsel us that we ought not to have any piercings anywhere except for women and just on the ear lobe. We mentioned the same about tatoos and she was kind of bummed because she had always wanted to get a tatoo on her backside (no pun intended). And then Elder Green whips out 'For the Strength of Youth' and decides to have a lesson on the section about 'Modest Dress And Grooming'. We read through it and oh my gosh, That is the last time I teach out of 'For the Strength of Youth'. It was really funny and really akward because Dianna usually does not dress very modestly at all and she wasn't too happy while reading through that. But Minerva was loving it, she said "Good, we can throw out all of your short-shorts and mini-skirts." Well Dianna wasn't very happy and said that such a change would 'take time' because she 'didn't want to be a hypocrite' and dress like a person she was not. Now I had been frantically pulling the eject lever during the whole thing but Elder Green was really fized on talking about this with her. Her imodesty had been bothering him lately.

Now this is one of the funny things about Elder Green. The other day we were at a less active family's house and we were talking with their kids and one of them had seen they were about to turn 16 and Elder Green says "So are you excited that you will be able start dating?" He got a bunch of blank looks from the whole family and I leaned over and whispered "Elder Green.... We're not in Utah." He was kind of offended and retorted that they were members. I told him that it doesn't matter, we're not in Utah, such standards simply don't exist here. It's true really, the members of the Church in Texas are very different from those in Utah, especially the members in the Hispanic wards, it's an entirely different world. So anyway Elder Green has started this sort of personal crusade to educate everyone of the standards held among members of the Church in Utah.

Now I'm all for everyone having standards... But that is definitely NOT the job of the missionaries. It was horribly akward but also hilarious, it's a good thing Minerva and Dianna know us so well or it could have been very, very, very, very akward. So basically that's a subject better suited to be taught by the YW's leaders and NOT by missionaries. I think mentioning the standards would have been fine, but teaching them and then commiting her to live them? Not so much.

So yeah... I think that's pretty much all that's interesting that happened this week. There's this one family that loves to feed us and takes requests and I've been asking them to feed us lots of authentic mexican food, the weird stuff. So last monday we had liver, apparently they love liver in mexico. So we had this liver cooked in grease and onions with beans, rice, lettuce, and tortillas to make tacos. I've never had liver before but it was pretty good. It tasted just like meat only it seemed like it had been vacuum packed into a liver shape. I liked it, Elder Green was choking it down. He was definately not a fan. It's pretty funny because he's not a fan of mexican food. He hates beans, spicy foods, and greasey or oily foods. So the fact that he's on a spanish speaking mission is hilarous. So this week we will be having tacos de lengua. (cow tongue) I've never eaten tongue before so I'm excited. Well I hope you all have a good week and I'll get you those pictures mom.

-- Elder Rice

Los que Tranzan no Vanzan

March 14, 2011

'Ello fam.

Well this week was really crazy. We're just so busy all the time driving around everywhere, visiting many people, and getting fed way too much. We've eaten so many beans, chicken, and tortillas this week that I'm sick of it all and feel as though I just want to eat salad for the rest of my life. Well as you can see in the picture we had a baptism. Daniel was finally baptized, we've been teaching him for a long time. It was amazing to see the change in him. When we first started teaching him he was a nervous wreck in the middle of an ugly divorce. After a month of teaching him he wanted to be baptized but he had some issues to take care of so we had to push his baptism back two months.
The two kids are a family that we took over after the other area was closed down. The mom, the blond lady, Rocio, is a less active member with two kids, Alexa and Kevin, 10 and 8. A long time ago the sister missionaries started visiting her after she had divorced from her husband and they got her to stop smoking and get rid of other bad habits. Alexa would have been baptized a long time ago but the husband didn't want the kids baptized into the mormon the church he wanted them to be catholic. Even though they've been divorced for a while now they still share the kids but I believe Rocio still has the legal guardianship. But she is still intimidated by her ex and so for a long time now the kids haven't been baptized. Well the elders we replaced got close and had their baptisimal forms filled out and their interviews done but they couldn't get Rocio to stand up to her ex. Well we came along and taught her about how we ought to fear God more than other people and that we need to do the right thing in the face of pressure. Well it worked and we set a baptisimal date and they were baptized. Now here's the cool thing, that man in the black is the ex husband. When Rocio finally stood up to him and told that they were getting baptized and that he had no say in the matter I guess he took it well and wanted to come. So he came and they were pretty happy to see each other. Weird...

The baptisimal service itself was very nearly a disaster. It was supposed to start at 7:00. Daniel was the only one who showed up on time, we had asked him and the family to be baptized to show up at 6:30 so we could get them all dressed up. Most everyone else started showing up at about 7:20ish. We know that MST (mormon standard time) is about 5-10 minutes behind regular time. But add MST to HST (Hispanic standard time) and thusly the service started at 7:40. Other problems were that the closet that contained all of the baptisimal clothing didn't have any clothes at all that would have fit a child. Everything was huge, apparently in the 3 wards that share this chapel nobody is ever baptized at 8 years old because there was not any clothes at all that were small enough for Alexa and Kevin. That was pretty stupid. And of the clothes they did have they had yellow stains and stuff all over them. It was frankly embarrassing as we were with them going through this closet looking for something that would fit them. Well we found the smallest clothes we could and rolled up the pant legs and we even used white ribbon to hold their pants up. Ridiculous. Oh and we realized that nobody from the bishopric was there. Our ward mission leader was supposed to have made all of the appropriate calls but nobody from the bishopric was there. When a baptism is performed you have to have the bishop or one of his counselors there to preside over the whole thing. Luckily, one of them was in the building. Every saturday night the stake has some sort of marriage classes in the building, he and his wife were in there so we yanked him out of there so he could preside over the whole thing. So we finally started and everything was going well until we got the portion were the ordinances were to be performed. Kevin was baptized, but Rocio wanted him to see his sister's baptism so we had to wait until he got dried off and changed. Then Alexa was baptized, then came Daniel's turn.

Well the other elders have been teaching Daniel's wife for a while now and they haven't seen each other in like 6 months, but they told her about his baptism and she was thinking about coming. We tought it would be really cool for her to assist his baptism and have both of them feel the spririt at the same time. Daniel didn't know she was coming. Well she didn't show up and Danile and Elder White were down there in the water when the other elders said to stop and wait till she got there, they had called her and she said she was on the way. She took 20 mintues to get there (she lived 2 mintues away). And there was a long akward moment as both of them just stood there in the water with everyone else in the room just watching. We closed the accordian wall and had some people share their testimonies, then there was a false alarm as someone thought she had just come in so they opened it back up. And it would have been even more akward to close it again so they left it open for another 10 mintues and everything was just akward.

Well she finally showed up and Daniel was baptized. Now I'm down to about 4 mintues so I'll have to go really fast here but. It was all good and we blew everyone away with a special musical number done by all of the missionaries, we had everyone in tears, even Rocio's ex, it was great. I'd like to describe what it was but I don't have time for that and I'm typing really fast so there's probably a lot of mispellings and things but oh well I'm oput of of time we're having a baptism this week as well sot hings are thgoing tgood. Peace out and have a good week I lvoe you all bye.

-- Elder Rice

Mitzmutzatzacuiltitimanizque

Hello family.

Before I forget I'll let mom know that my release date is August 10. Sorry it took so long but I read the letters and by the time Monday comes around I've already forgotten anything that you asked me to do. But yeah, that's my release date. Oh and Minerva and Dianna are from Mexico, like everyone else around here. They're from one of the more northerly provinces of Taumolipas. Speaking of them I appreciate how you want to help them out Mom. Minerva, unfortunately does not speak english, she's also pretty blind, she has to hold things right in front of her nose to see anything. I forget what it was that happened to her or that she has but it has something to do with cataracts, I think that's what they're called. Somehow someway her eyes got messed up and she can't see. She is %100 dependent on Dianna just to get around or do much of anything. And being undocumented citizens living on $70 a week they're opportunities for medical help are rather limited. In fact just recently they got the bill from the Mental Hospital where Dianna was and it came out to be a little bit over $4000. They were rather beside themselves what to do about that, their nearby family is all chipping in a little bit but all of them are generally unhappy about that. The whole episode is rather embarrassing, especially seeing as though it was the Bishop who checked her in there and as far as we know, is leaving them to hang on with this huge bill. So needless to say they haven't been all that happy lately. But at least the Adventists haven't come back since we drove them off last saturday. It's an improvement, instead of defending them from a whole other church and our own ward, now we only have to defend them from our own ward.

Despite all of that this week was pretty good. Actually it was great. The area we've taken over contains many wonderful opportunities. This week we set baptisimal dates with three new investigators on the very first time we taught them, which were in members' home with the members themselves present. Which is perfect, that's really the ideal lesson, teaching an investigator in a member's home with the member actively participating in the lesson. The part is both of these guys have been coming to church to weeks now, one of them actually lives with a member family and recent convert, and the elders who were in this area before never knew about them at all. When we talked to them we told them about all of this and they were just like "Hhuh... That's cool." They didn't have any idea that a couple of member families had been bringing investigators to church for a few weeks now.

We also had a "specialized training" meeting this week with the Mission President and his wife. One of the many subjects was 'working with the ward council'. Which was the perfect opportunity see if we could get some of the higher powers in the local church authorities to fix some things about our ward leadership. One of the ZL's in the meeting asked me to sort of describe some of the difficulties we have with working with the our ward council. I then explained about how our ward council insists that investigators should get themselves to church and that members were not to give any rides, I also described about how we generally avoid working with the ward council and we ask individual members to give rides to investigators and ask them not to mention it to the Bishop. At that point President interrupted and said that has to stop. We can't make the members choose between us and the ward leaders that creates unhealthy divisions in the ward and makes us enemies of the Bishop (Too late!). He said that the system we have in the church must be upholded and even if it isn't running how it should be we should respect our leaders. He then said that our leaders definitely don't seem to be doing what they should be doing and that he would have a word with the Stake Presidency (success!) and would see what he could do. He said that we must do all we can to help the bishop and other leaders realize what their responsibilities are. He then made an interesting comment that we (the missionaries) have to come at them or pressure them from the bottom, that he and the stake leaders had to come down or pressure them from the top, and that others have to pressure them from the sides. We need to be doing all we can to get the ward leaders to do their job but at the same time we can't tell them how to do their job, we just have to 'teach correct principles and let men govern themselves'. He encouraged us to make visits to our ward leaders and go through a few things out of Preach My Gospel with them and do it in a non-offensive non-condescending way.

YEah... So that battle still goes on, though now we finally got the momentum of the stake leadership coming down on the bishop's head so hopefully we can expect to see things improve soon. So that's all I have to say today.

The pictures are of some graffiti and me and a part member family, Artemio, Maria, and Katrin. The girl, Katrin is a member, her parents aren't baptized because they're not married to each other and they can't get married to each other yet because they're not yet divorced from their spouses, both of which are in Mexico and they haven't seem them for like 10 years. It's been a frustrating nightmare trying to get ahold of layers, the Mexican consulate, and people who might know anything about how to get divorced from someone who lives in another country and don't know his or her whereabouts. They're way ready for baptism, they just need to get married. Also they're really, really, really simple people. They're so ignorant of so many things it's almost cute. Artemio grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere Mexico, never went to school, can barely read and works as a butcher. Maria grew up on the outskirts some little Indian village on the slopes of some Volcano somewhere in Mexico, likes to talk a lot, and teaches us all of these cool Aztec words and sayings. For both of them the world of lawyers, laws, parking tickets, licences, and other such trappings of the modern civilized world are completely alien to them. And they're trying to go through this horribly complicated legal situation. All we've been doing is telling them to go to the Mexican consulate (which lies out of the mission boundaries, so we can't go with them) and get some lawyer to divorce them. I'm so afraid that some lawyer will just take total advantage of them and rob them of all of their money and leave them no better off than they were before. It's scary just telling these two to go down into the downtown and go into the consulate and having them work it out themselves. So we ask around and we have the Ward Mission leader help them out a bit, but the ward in general is generally unhelpful (no surprise). They're so funny though, we stopped by one Friday night and all of three of them were just sitting in their little two room house doing a puzzle! A puzzle! Friday night, a small family together and doing a puzzle and enjoying each other's company?! Crazy! Who actually does that? It's hilarious! They're just so happy all the time! How do they do that? I really love them, they're one of my favorite families and I hope we can figure out how to get them married somehow.

Okay. Well that's all for today. Have a fun week, peace....

-- Elder Arroz

Que Fracaso

February 28, 2011

Hello Family.

This week has seen a few interesting things. As I mentioned last week our area is now twice as large and we cover a lot of ghetto now. It's super ghetto, I thought our area before was ghetto but no it's nothing compared to what we have now. It's really junky. To illustrate we had an appointment with an investigator that lived next door (literally like 5 feet) away from a less active family in the ward. Well the investigator wasn't there but the dad of the last active family was out ambling about in front of his porch. We had never met him before so we went to say high and he was quite intoxicated with something or another. Probably alcohol, the other elders had told us that he hasn't been to church in a while and is an alcoholic. Well that sure seemed to be the case. His eyes were completely yellow and bloodshot and he was talking really funny and holding a rather sharp looking paint scraper. Well he wanted us to come in and talk with him. He obviously out of his mind and I didn't think that would be a very good idea so I asked if we could stay outside, the weather was good and all. He kept trying to get us to come in but I wouldn't budge, Elder Green almost went in, he was kind of spooked about the whole thing, I don't think he's ever had to deal with someone completely plastered before. We convinced him that outside would be fine and we talked with him for a bit and he was just completely drunk and was almost crying telling us about how he never wanted to be baptized but the sister missionaries made him get baptized and he wanted to quit drinking and he was just generally crazy. Elder Green, as usual was just being stupid and trying to get him to read D&C 89. Yeah so he was crazy and we got out of there and left. But we did manage to get him to throw away all of his beer into the trash can.

A few days later on Friday night we had an appointment with this same family and we went over and the wife opened the door and said that now probably wasn't a good idea because her husband was drunk again and had said to her if the missionaries came by he would chase them off his property. Then she just started crying and was telling us all of this stuff about how she just couldn't take her husband drinking anymore and it was all really sad. The really sad thing is there isn't much we can do about it. We can only teach and encourage people to do the right thing. During her sobbing and sad stories I just took a minute to look around and it was Friday night, not the best time to be in the ghetto I guess. Down the street there were a bunch of teenagers with alcohol fighting and on the other side a house full of noises of revelry and crude language and then some car books it down the street at 40-50 mph driving backwards. The whole neighbourhood itself smelled like human waste and there was garbage strewn everywhere. So I just stand there while all of this is going on and I just say to myself. "What in the world is wrong with this place?" I have never felt father away from civilization that I did at that moment. Crazy!

Well the next most noteworthy event was on saturday. We had an appointment at 5 with Minvera and Dianna, our favorite drama prone recent converts. Well we get there and knock and door and Dianna opens up and seemed rather surprised, she jumps out of the door and then turns around and opens it up and she has that sort of embarrassed smile that she always has on her face when something very awkward is about to happen. (We knew that look quite well by now). So we walk in and Minerva is sitting on the couch with a bible open on her lap and on the other couch is two old women with their own bibles and some printed propaganda. Well it turned out that they were none other than the 7th Day Adventists. Well.... Hmm... How to best describe? Well they were nice at first but you could tell they were just ready to jump at as any moment. For a while they had been visiting Minverva and Dianna while we have been visiting them but we had never encountered each other at the same time. And both of us had been teaching them and telling why the other church was completely wrong. Thus came the conflict and the day of reckoning. Now I hate bible-bashing so I was thinking about saying that we could come back another time. But there were our recent converts and we couldn't just leave them here all defenseless with their tiny fragile testimonies of the truth against the sophistries of the Adventists.

Well we were invited to sit down and as we sat they offered to say the opening prayer. And one of them did. After the prayer was finished they said to Minvera, "Now what was it was it you were confused about? The SABBATH?" I interjected and said. "Okay, we know there's a conflict here. We belive that the sabbath is on Sunday and we know that you all believe it's on saturday, now we don't want to-" I was about to say we don't want to get into a battle here and we'll leave since there's no point in arguing, but I was interrupted by the larger of the two who said something along the lines of: "We don't believe the sabbath on on saturday, we KNOW it is, and we know the commandments, and we obey them, you can't say we believe this or that and blah blah blah." And then they started on the normal routine that the Adventists always take, starting with Genesis about how God sanctified the 7th day and blah blah blah, God can't change blah blah blah, the law cannot change blah blah blah, we must obey the law blah blah blah." Elder Green had started to say something but I kicked him and motioned for him to be quiet, knowing Elder Green I decided that it was best that he didn't say too much. They had us turn to a scripture in Mark that says that the Lord is the Lord of the Sabbath and we must keep his Sabbaths. They substituted sabbath for saturday like they always do, I don't know if that's how their bible reads or if they just automatically do that. Anyway we had Elder Green's bible open. And we pointed out that our Bible didn't say saturday at all, it just said sabbath day, it didn't specify which day. They told is it was saturday because if you went and looked into a dictionary you find that sabbath meant saturday. I said that it was kind of stupid that they were getting their doctrine from the dictionary, we get our doctrine from God! That's probably a better source than the dictionary! They then ranted on a bit about how in their church they have scholars who study hebrew and know what all of these things mean and blah blah blah.

Now I didn't have my bible with me at the moment bible, but I do carry around a small notecard with all of the useful scriptures written on it. I told them that indeed the sabbath was on saturday under the law of moses but that it was changed with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. They said exactly what I thought they would say and said that the law cannot change. I had them flip to Hebrews 7:12 where it says the following: 'For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.' That was the mortal blow, they spent the next twenty minutes trying to come up with explanations why that scripture doesn't say what it says. It was kind of funny really. They said the law can't change, over and over, and they quoted the usual 'not one jot nor tittle hath passed away from the law..." And I said "Then why does it say the law changed right here?" They'd would ask for a one scripture, just one, that said that the law was changed. I would say "We already read it, it's right here, it's pretty clear, it says the law the was changed." They were getting pretty mad by this point, they're faces were red, they kept interrupting us and talking us down, and talking quite fast. Elder Green just didn't say anything, I could tell he was way angry, he gets frustrated really easy. I just kept a chill and smooth disposition. Perfectly calm and collected, they kept trying to tell me to turn to other scriptures but I kept telling them that we still haven't finished with this one yet, because it says quite clearly that the law was changed. They're were like: "NO you're very confused my child, you're taking this completely out of context! Rawr rawr rawr!" They said that we didn't keep the law but that they were perfect keepers of the law. I asked them if they still sacrificed goats and things, they said no... Then they thought they had us.

"Aha! That's what changed, this verse is talking about the sacrificial rites! That's what changed! Aha!"
They were pretty excited, they thought they had us. I thought about telling them that it said LAW rather than sacrificial rites, but I had a better idea. I said:
"Okay, okay, so why did they do those rites?"
They explained why.
"Okay, okay, so who told them to do those rites?"
"Well... God..."
"Uh-huh, and then he took them away so they didn't have to do it anymore."
"Yes..."
"So therefore God gave something and took it away, he changed something, God changed something he gave, God can changed whatever he wants, including the law."

Well they got really mad at that part, foam was flying from their lips almost. Then I decided to use a secret weapon. Minverva and Dianna had been cowering this whole time and I asked them how they knew our church was true. They started to bear their testimonies, and it drove the Adventists so mad that they packed up their things and left.

Now I've left out a lot but I have to log out in two minutes. But basically VICTORY! We totally got them! Haha! We defended our recent converts and it was great and we won and it was Minvera and Dianna who with their infant testimonies delivered the killing blow.

Okay I'm out of time. I love you all have a good week bye.

Kikiriyuta

Hello Family....

Well... I think I actually have a few interesting things to say this week. First of all it's the start of a new transfer, one of the other areas in our ward got closed down. The infamous "Crosstimbers" area. It's generally regarded as the most dangerous area of the mission. It's the only area in the mission that covers the also supposedly infamous "5th Ward" area of Houston (And no it's not referring to a "ward" as in we what we lds think of, just some geographical area, similar to New York's Bronx I believe). Now the funny thing is that for the longest time it was a Sister missionary area, who knows why, they were never allowed to go tracting or anything like that in that area. Well a few months ago President moved the sisters out and replaced them with elders because some random black guy off the street just walked up to sisters and smooched one of them and that week their apartment was broken into and totally destroyed (luckily they were not in the apartment when it occurred). So the sisters were moved out and elders were moved in. Well President got wind of some sort of crazed machete murderer gang on the loose somewhere over there so he decided to close the area all together. So it was closed and it was divided up between us and the other elders. So Houston 3rd Ward went down from 3 companionship's to 2. Our areas just doubled in size and now we got to go and take care of all the work they left there. If I see crazy people with machetes I'll be sure to get some pictures for y'all.

In other news we are convinced that the ward leadership is trying as hard as they can to make our recent converts go inactive. Last Sunday Minerva and Dianna didn't make to church because all of the members they called for a ride told them to call someone else that lives closer. And the 7th Day Adventists will come and pick them up in their church bus whenever they want! So if you will recall from last week our plan to get them away from the Adventistas was to basically jump start their testimonies by getting them to the Temple on Thursday to do baptisms. We had been prepping them all week, making sure they weren't going anywhere else on Thursday night. We visited them on Thursday afternoon to make doubly sure that they would make it.

The first obstacle came up when the Young Women's president refused to take Dianna's mom Minerva on the grounds that it was 'just for youth'. Now we had already gotten it cleared with the Bishop weeks before, that she and our other recent converts could go with the youth on this occasion. The YW's President was planning on coming by to get Dianna but not Minerva. So we made several calls and eventually called the YW's President back and told her to take Minerva because Hno. So-an-so of the Bishopric said she could go. The bishop was out of town this last week, we are still un-sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. So we left thinking that all would be well.

The next day we go by to see how it went and it turns out that Minerva didn't go, she didn't feel like it at the last minute, Dianna went, but she didn't like it. Now we had told her what it was she was going to do, she was going to get baptized and confirmed for some people that have already died. We explained to her what was going to happen so she wouldn't be freaked out. Well on the way she asked the other people in her car about the details of what they were going to do and they (thinking they were being funny) didn't tell her anything except that she was going to get wet. So she was nervous the whole way there and the whole time in there. And knowing her already unstable mental condition this couldn't have been good at all. Now here's the climax, here's the cherry on top of the whole thing here, we couldn't believe this but, thinking that it would be good for Dianna's first time, they made her do ALL of the baptisms. All of them, except for the ones for deceased men of course. The other young women just all sat and watched as Dianna was dunked several times, over and over and over again. She didn't really like that, it kind of freaked her out. So she said that she didn't like it, she didn't like the whole experience. But she did say that she'd consider doing it again sometime, she wasn't against the idea of going again in the near future.

Heh heh, so how did we react to this? Kind of like *FRUSTRATION*!!!!! We were like, oh-my-gosh, we are sorry, it shouldn't have gone like that. Uhhh.... Now just yesterday they didn't come to church again, but they did go to the 7th Day Adventist church on saturday, and because they went then they forgot to buy food and stuff and Minerva had diabetes so when we called her sunday morning she said they wouldn't be going because she didn't feel good and she was waiting for her son to wake up and go buy her food because with her diabetes something crazy would happen with her blood sugar and therefore she could not spend the next three hours in church.

Ay..... Not fun, I really don't know what to do with these people. A rather interesting thing that I've experience a lot as a missionary is that oftentimes you feel like your own salvation depends, or rather is parallel or inseparably linked, to those you are working with. So when they don't go to Church you feel like you didn't go to church, when they didn't read their scriptures or pray you feel like you haven't read your scriptures or pray, when they're lazy and stubborn and don't seem to grasp the eternal perspective you feel exactly the same. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I've already been baptized or that at least I'm still going to church and working for eternal life.

Well on the brighter side of things we found a churro stand in the other elder's area that sells the most absolutely amazing churros or anything else for that matter that I've ever tasted. Indeed it may be said that the churros they have there are the best sweet sugary things that I've ever eaten in my entire life. And they're only a buck a piece. I'm going to get some pictures of it soon. Also as you can see in the photo we saw two nuns stealing a child one day(ha-ha). It was really funny, they were coming out of McDonald's when we first spotted them so we assumed that they snagged some child out of the ball-pit in the play land and were making their escape. The other picture is of our district and our ward mission leader Hno. Izzaguire, he's a funny guy, perhaps not the most reliable guy, but really funny.

Well that's all for today. I hope you all have fun, and yeah... Peace out.

-- Elder Rice

Sangargarinconado

February 14th 2011

Hello family..,

Well this week was horribly cold, again. Like 30 degrees once more for a few days, actually I guess it wasn't too bad because we did go to the Temple on Tuesday but other than that it was not a good week. It came to a final and brilliant climax of epic on Sunday (this seems to happen a lot, I wonder if there is a pattern here). Not a single investigator came to church, we were doing our usual sunday morning round up and even though it wasn't raining and the weather was reasonable nobody wanted to get up to come to church. We even had two people who when we stopped by were getting ready to go to church and yet they never showed up. Not very many members came either. The gospel principles teacher didn't come (which is odd because she's the bishop's wife, she's usually always there) so it was up to us to teach the lesson. There were like 4 people in gospel principles, four people other than us 7 missionaries I might add. It was probably just as well that nobody came because we were woefully un-prepared, and it was a dumb topic anyway, about the the scattering and gathering of Israel, something completely unimportant to investigators and new members.

Well after church we decided to swing by Minerva and Dianna, they didn't make it to church for some mysterious reason. We went to see if they were okay and to remind about a youth fireside that night. We go in there and they were a little bit more cold than usual, it was weird, and then we found out why when they started demanding that we show them where in the Bible it says that Sunday is the Sabbath Day. Apparently the day before they had some neighborhood friends over who just happened to be the 7th Day Adventists who filled them full of lies and false doctrine. Well we clearly and calmly explained to them that under the Apostolic Ministry the sabbath was changed to Sunday in honor of Christ's resurrection, for he was resurrected on the 1st day of the week. We told them that we know this through modern revelation that we get through modern prophets and there really isn't much convincing evidence in the bible that it was changed (there's like two rather vauge verses that mention breaking bread on the 1st day of the week and the saints collecting on the 1st day of the week, I've used them before when talking with the Adventists but they just don't work all that great). So even after we carefully explained all of this that we know this because we get our doctrine straight from God and not so much from the Bible, they still weren't very pleased, and they wanted us to leave them the scripture references so they could show them to these "friends" of theirs. We didn't, the last thing we want is our new members with their delicate new testimonies trying to bash with people from another church. They were so put out by this that they didn't want to go the Family History Center and enter in the information for Minerva's mother who she was planning to get baptized for. The youth and all of the recent converts of our ward are going to the Temple on Thursday to do baptisms for the dead and we want Minvera and Dianna's first experience to be very personal being baptized for their deceased family. It was quite frustrating and disheartening, luckily we managed to coax them into going on Wednesday to the Family History Center and do it. I just hope that they can still do it the day before, I'm not sure how the system works. We're really quite worried for them, but we figure if we can just get them to the Temple they'll have an epic experience there and that they'd never give in to the lies of their "friends". Man, the 7th Day Adventists are the worst, they're far worse than the J-Dubs, it's easy to prove with the Bible that Jehovah and Christ are the same person but there really just isn't too much proof in there that Sunday is now the sabbath day.

So we drove away feeling rather down, we went to the house to go eat and do studies, well as we got there we noticed this thug out in the street limping down the road toward our house. His neck and chest was drenched in blood, and we thought about pulling over and asking him if he was okay, well right in front of our house, or rather the Ayala's house with whom we live. There was a truck in the middle of the street blocking the road, we parked in our usual daytime parking spot on this patch of grass in front of our house but a little ways back, we were about to jump out and ask the guy if he was okay, when he stomped up the truck, yelling and screaming, this other guy came out of the neighbour's house with his 2 year old toddler in his arms, shaking his fist, yelling and screaming, and there were like three guys in the truck all yelling and screaming. Well they all converge on the truck and the guy who had come down the street rips one of the doors open and tries to get into the truck, while the guy inside, who we noticed had a hole in his head and just blood everywhere, started fighting him. They're all hispanics by the way. And then the guy with the kid jumps into this fight too and we were like: "Oh my gosh, at least put the kid down you idiot!" But no, he jumped right in there while his kid started crying. It was at this point that we decided that this probably wasn't the best place to be at the moment. Now we have this rule that when you're backing up your companion has to be out of the car and making sure you don't run into anything. We decided to disobey that rule, and I started backing out but I stopped when I realied that we were starting to back into the deep ditch on the side of the road behind our patch of grass (every road in Texas has a deep ditch on either side). So our only escape was forward and there was a truck with this brawl going on in the way. So we sat there and watched for a minute, the other neighbors were already outside on the phone with the cops so we just watched. There's something just very disturbing and unsettling about watching human beings trying to tear each other to pieces, and the poor kid just terrified out of his poor little brain right in the middle of it all. Well the guys inside the car succeeded in ejecting the thug with the blood all over his chest out of the car, and they close the door and started to drive away, but he jumped into the bed of the truck and we watched them drive off while he tried to bust in the windows with his fist, they started swerving all over the road trying to throw him off. They turned a corner and went out of site, while the guy with the kid just walked after them shaking his fist and screaming some more. We decided that we probably ought to leave and go visit some people or something and come back for lunch and studies later. We drove away and when we came back a half our later the cops were just all over the place, search helicopter flying low and circling the area, when we turned onto the road like 6 police cars just booked it out of there sirens going and everything, spreading out and looking for them. Now with the street completely deserted except for us and a few groups of inquisitive neighbors - we decided to parked and go in. During our studies some of the cops came back and pulled up in front of our house and started talking to the neighbors, Elder Green suggested that it was our 'civic duty to report what we had witnessed' and that we go out and talk to the cops. I frankly disagreed and told him it was best that we don't get involved, he protested but I made him stay in the apartment.

The rest of the day was a rather fruitless, nobody was home, or rather, wouldn't open their doors when we knocked on them. But it ended well, we got two new investigators from Guatemala who remembered being taught by missionaries many years ago in their country, and we stopped by a less active family who just happened to be having a big carne asada so we finished the night by stuffing ourselves with fajita. So not a bad end to the week I guess.

Well that's all, I hope you all have a good week and... yeah. Peace out

-- Elder Rice

Gangosos

February 7, 2011

Hello fam...

Well this week's e-mail ought to be slightly longer and more interesting than last week's. First of all it was stinking cold all of last week. Like brutally cold, the average was 30 throughout most of the week. We had heard from the people that it was supposed to snow on Friday, they were pretty freaked out, all the schools planned to close down that day and nobody was going to work, all of the businesses were to shut down, you'd think the plague or something was on it's way. We didn't think it was going to happen. Well come Friday and sure enough it didn't snow. It was really cold though. And it actually helped us out a lot. It was so cold that nobody wanted to leave their homes so it was really easy for us to finally catch people at home. Few if any people were outside, driving or whatever, it was like a ghost town, absolutely still and frozen outside. We were the only people out their driving around.

On Tuesday Hna. Hernandez taught us how to make gorditas and pupusas. As you can see in the pictures, it's really easy actually. A gordita is basically the same thing as a pupusa except that after you cook it, you slice it open and insert whatever you want. A pupusa you seal up whatever you want in it before you cook it. That's only difference, oh and pupusas are fried in grease, whereas with gorditas you can chose to dry cook it in a pan or cook it in oil, either way it was way easy. Or so I thought.

A couple days later I attempted to make a monster pupusa at our apartment. We already had all of the necessary ingredients, I had planned to make a huge pupusa with beans, onion, and cheese in it. Well my first mistake was to put too much beans in it, so that it all wouldn't fit inside the dough, there wasn't enough to wrap around all of the beans and stuff. So I thought I just make more and build around it, like an igloo. So I made more dough and made this mountain of dough and beans and dropped it in the pan. It weighed like 2 pounds. I wasn't going to cook it in oil or grease or anything but even so the abomination was too huge to be maneuvered effectively and the beans and stuff would start to ooze out of the cracks forming in the crust of my tectonic nightmare. After flipping it over a couple times it started to break apart, thus forming new continents, the whole experience reminded me of the super continent of Pangea that was around several millions of years ago and how it started to break up and drift thus forming the continents as we know them today.

Well my monster pupusa under went a similar experience, and the dough was so thick still that the outer crust was blackening while the inner just barely warm. I gave up and dumped the abomination in the trash. I decided to try again but making smaller ones, and I was out of beans so I made two normal sized ham and cheese pupusas. And they were pretty good. I'm definitely going to be making more such creations this week. And tomorrow Hna. Hernandez is going to teach us how to make sopes.

Well... Moving on to the next notable madness of the week. I got a letter from Dad on Saturday describing the great ineffectiveness of a ward he was in on his mission. It's really funny, because it foreshadowed the events of the following day. Sunday was to be Stake Conference, but it was some kind of regional type conference where it was to be broadcasted to us from Salt Lake. We alerted all of our investigators and made intensive plans to get everyone to church at the right time. Well come sunday and we show up to the church an hour or so before it's to start. We get there and the bishop and his wife were right there in a the door and basically said: "Oh elders thank goodness you're here, do you know how to set the machines up?" Well... To their credit they did find the projector. Well the next couple hours demonstrated..well I won't go there..

For some reason they couldn't receive anything through the satellite receiver, they couldn't get any signal at all out if it. And in the best priesthood leadership fashion they were pushing random buttons, flipping switches, plugging and unplugging things and whatnot. All of this about a half-hour before the broadcast was to start. One elder who had been in this ward for the last general conference said this was exactly what happened last conference. They didn't think about it till an hour beforehand and they started randomly messing with things until they gave up and let the missionaries mess with it until it started. They said that last year they didn't get it working until a half-hour into the first session, and they didn't get it in spanish until the 2nd session.

One elder in our district, Elder White, before his mission worked for a few years selling and installing cable systems and satellite dishes, and he was the one who had got it to work for the previous conference. So just picture about 20 or so men in suits in the gym crowded around a tiny door that lead into the room with the satellite box watching two bishops randomly push buttons for an hour. I stood in the back with Elder White (they wouldn't let him look at it just yet). And he was saying all they needed to do was let it reboot. It's exactly what happened last conference, you just had to turn it on and let it sit for a few minutes. But they wouldn't wait, they wanted it working right then.

So we're standing there and this crazy old white guy, I think he is the elder's quorum president, in the english ward kept suggesting we give the box a priesthood blessing. Everyone ignored him, then he started pestering us, the missionaries, to give the box a blessing, we kind of ignored him, and then told him that we can't give inanimate objects blessings and that maybe we could say a prayer or something.

While He was arguing with some of the elders about that, my companion heroically fixed an outlet in the primary room. We had wheeled a TV into the primary room for people to watch, when my companion noticed that the telephone outlet was askew and the actual line could not be reached really easy. Now one thing about Elder Green is that he can't sit still, he has to always be doing something, and not just like keeping himself entertained, he has to always being doing something to "fix" the situation and show everyone how intelligent and useful he is. So he daringly spent twenty minutes taking apart this outlet with his keys and putting it all back together again, making a big of it and how useful he is to everyone.... Yeah...

Well during this I was talking to some of the elders of the spanish ward who had been there for a really long time and had said that by now they had learned NOT to invite investigators to general conference or anything that had to be broadcasted to the chapel. Which seemed like a good idea, We had three investigators there, and they along with everyone else was sitting around wondering what was going on. The conference was being broadcasted to the stake center several miles north, the stake center next to the mission office. Towards the end the white people in the english ward started complaining loudly, that they had been told to come here and not to the other building, and they started making a big scene and lots more wonderful things... Somebody called somebody high up and supposedly, Salt Lake told them that the "line was fried". Elder White finally got a chance to look at it and it indeed appeared that the line was fried or something because he couldn't get it to work.

So to make a long and sad story short they recorded the broadcast at the stake center and said that they would show it at 1:00 and we would all have to drive up to the stake center for it. Well our investigators weren't too happy about that, and even after we got rides for them, and gave them directions and offered to guide them there and everything not a single one of them showed up to it....

It was a good conference though. President Monson and Elder Ballard spoke. It was great, we were pretty bummed that none of our investigators came. This all could have been avoided had they decided make sure everything worked the night before or something. But that kind of foresight would be asking a little too much now wouldn't it? XD

So that's how the week was. Lots of madness and cold, and it's all just very funny... It's all so ridiculous that I just laugh at it all now. Elder Green was rather upset and frustrated at all of this but I've learned just to laugh it off and don't worry about such things. Sure it was disappointing that our investigators missed out on hearing the prophet speak but whatever... There's nothing we can do about it except laugh.... Okay. I'm done, other pictures include this crazy car we saw in someone's driveway, my new nametag, and some Chihuahua puppies that were so cold that this family made little sweaters for them and hammocks for them out of their hats. So that's all I have to say, yesterday it was 70 degrees so it was back to short sleeves. I love you all and hope you have a great time... peace...

-- Elder Arroz