Alumnos y Porristas

May 23, 2011




Hello Family.

This week was much better than the previous one. The principal reason being that I now have a new companion, Elder Cawley. He's really quiet, extremely quiet but cool enough we get along pretty well. Also with Elder Green gone we can now try to do different things in the area, the results of which are showing. The area has been pretty dead lately but this week we've been focusing more on finding new people to teach, we picked up a few new investigators this week and we've done some other adventurous activities.

So... With our favorite family of nutcases,. we had a long discussion about commitments and priorities. They admitted that they hadn't been that great lately and we recommitted to the whole thing. Rosa said she wouldn't be able to make it to church this week but next week she could. Irma could make it to church but she didn't want to because it starts at 9:00. What followed was pretty funny. One of Irma's daughters comes in and says that they don't need to go to church on sunday because the world was going to end on saturday. Now we had heard this from some other people previously last week. Apparently someone somewhere that it says in the bible that the world was to end on may 21st at 3:00 or perhaps 6:00, and it's been spreading around. We just laughed but they all were actually concerned about it. We told them that it was extremely unlikely, if not impossible for two reasons. First, that Jesus said that nobody, not even himself, knows when that's going to be. Only God the Father knows. And Second that there are certain events that need to pass before such a thing happens. We told them a little bit about what the book of Revelations says (which is odd since most people try to use that book against us, this was one of the few occasions I've had actually using it to prove one of our points). We told them a bit about what is supposed to happen with Armageddon and the two prophets being slain in Jerusalem as they are defending the Jews. And we said that obviously none of that has happened yet so therefore unless all of that happens on within the next day then the world was not going to end on saturday. Now by this point we had wandered far off the subject of commitments, baptism, priorities, and going to church. Luckily though an opportunity came up to help them realize some of the things that they need to be doing. I said: "Okay let's suppose for a moment that world is indeed going to end on saturday. We used that to point out that life is short and the time to repent, be baptized, and go back to church is now. Now is the time to focus on important things. Work and other stuff is important but the things of God are even more important, so they should reorganize their priorities a little bit and put God as #1. Meaning that they needed to read the chapters we leave them to read, pray, and go to church and stop giving us lame excuses for not doing this things. So it went pretty well, and since then we've been calling them every single night reminding them to do their homework, and to go to church on sunday. Well sunday came and Irma and one of her daughters actually showed up! A half hour late but they came none-the-less. It was the first time she's come in like 7 years. I was surprised.

I think that's about all of the interesting things that happened this week. On saturday we had a soccer game with our ward and the other spanish ward that shares our chapel. not too many people came, even though we announced it a month ago and have announced every sunday since. But we had a good 20 or so people come and we played for most of saturday evening. It was great to take a break from the monotony of driving around and finding people not home or knocking doors. Just a couple of hours of playing soccer in the park. It was great. The other elders had some investigators come too and they got to know some people and see that the mormons aren't as boring as they had always thought.

Well that's about everything. The pictures are the following: 1) The Granados family and Rubiel, they left to Mexico, they were originally going to leave in June but something happened, we're not sure what and we didn't really want to know the details but for whatever reason someone threatened to kill them all, and I guess it was serious enough that they decided to leave a month early. Hno. Granados is not in the picture, he left to Colorado but he and his wife were sealed in the Temple just a few weeks ago. The mom and the kids; Irais, Ana, and Eric. Left for Veracruz and the Hno. is going to go down there and join them in a couple months. Rubiel just lives there with them, so we got a picture with them the night before they left.

The rest of the pictures are of with Hna. Silva making tamales. She was making Tamales one night and I asked if she could show me how to make one. So I made one. It's really not that hard, I don't know why they always make such a big fuss about making tamales, my companion and I concluded that they fuss about how time comsuming it is because every time they make tamales they make like 50 million of them.

Yup, so that's all for today. I hope you all have great week.

-- Elder Rice

Chabacano

May 2, 2011


Hello family.

Once again nothing to noteworthy has happened this week. It's the same old stuff, our newest important inestigators Rosa and Angelica, aren't doing so great. It's great whenever we have a lesson with them but they couldn't make it to church this week because Rosa's husband wouldn't let them go. Whoever this dude is, he's becoming a huge problem. He refuses to meet with us, and there's really not much we can do about it.

What else did we do this week? Oh yeah... So this Wednesday we're to have a 'Church Tour' training with our ward leaders. A few months ago a new 'tactic' was introduced to the mission, a thing called 'church tours'. What they are basically, is you have the investigator come to the church and show them around a bit and then have a short lesson in the room where the baptismal font is, after showing them the font. The whole idea is not to show them the church, but rather to teach someone in a dedicated building (they will be able to feel the spirit better) with no distractions like TVs and other noisy things that people keep in their homes. According to the handout we got these church tours were originally started by the Washington Tacoma Mission. Once they got a formula figured out and applied it their baptisms doubled in one year, and then doubled again the next year. They found that 1 out of every 10 people who went on a church tour got baptized and 1 out of every 3 got baptized if there was a member present in the tour and lesson.

Naturally when our mission found out about it they were eager to adopt it, President Hansen is a business man and figures like that would say something to him. Now the thing about these tours is that they have a very rigid order, it's a specific formula that, as our leaders are always reminding us, must be followed to the letter. Basically it's this: You start in the foyer, have an opening prayer, briefly talk about our basic doctrines (faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the holy ghost etc.), go into the chapel show them the sacrament table talk briefly about the doctrine of the sacrament, show them the podium and explain that we don't have a paid ministry, and have them choose where'd they like to sit on Sunday. Then you go into the relief society room where the baptisimal font should be, and you open it up and show them, and you show them a the picture of John baptizing Jesus on the wall and then talk about baptism. Then you sit down in there are have a brief lesson on the Restoration of how all of this came to be and you challenge them to baptism.

Sounds all well and good but there are few problems, mostly because our chapel is built rather retardedly. For example we have the scariest looking baptisimal font ever, it looks like a cage to put animals in, the font is not in the relief society room, it has it's own room. And another element of the tour is, as your walking along in the hallways is to point at all the pictures of Christ and drive the point home that we are a Christ-centered church. Well we don't have a single picture of christ from the foyer to the font. Just pictures of pioneers burying other pioneers, Lehi's boat, and Mormon compliling the plates.... yeah.... And we don't have a picture of Jesus' baptism so we (or rather the other companionship) went and found a small card stock one and pretty much nailed it to the wall next to the font. It looks so tacky but most hispanics don't seem to have a tacky filter. Also the tour insists that you use Mattew 3 to teach the doctrine of baptism and Jesus' baptism.

So this week we went and translated the handout that goes through the whole thing into spanish and hopefully when we have our training this wednesday with the ward leaders we can get them on the same page with us.

So yup. That's pretty much all that's going on. This week will be weird, on Thursday I hit 21 months on the mission and on Friday I hit 21 years of mortality. Kind of weird. Well I hope you all have a good week and enjoy the cold because we are dying in the heat down here....

I almost forgot, we haven't heard on the times when we will call home this sunday but it will likely be in the evening 6-7-8ish. Happy mother's day! I love you mom.


-- Elder Rice

Chamuco en la Regadera

April 25, 2011

Hello family.

Again another mostly boring week.

On the bright side after long weeks of fruitlessness we found two new investigators and they accepted the challenge of baptism. They're some family of a less active family in the ward. They actually live right next door to them as well. It's another Mother-Daughter combo, Minerva and Dianna being the last one. They're named Rosa and Angelica, both seem much more intelligent than our last mother-daughter combo, they also have they're own car too. Prospects are looking bright.

The downside is that they are just as Minerva and Dianna, we call them every night to remind to read two pages of the pamphlet we left with them and they still haven't done it. And perhaps the biggest "threat" would be that Rosa has a husband, who doesn't want anything to do with us whatsoever. We can't even teach them in their own house, we have to teach them next door in their mothers house which is a crazy nigthmare as it is a tiny house yet there are always at least a couple dozen people going in and out. We call it the house of short-shorts because in addition to the army of small children running in and out of the door there are like 5 or 6 teenage girls going in and out of there always wearing short shorts and high heeled sandals that hispanic women are so fond of -we've never seen them wear anything else ever, even the little girls who are 5-6-7 years old wear short shorts and high heeled sandals, we didn't even know they made that stuff child size! It's difficult to teach in such a place with people coming in and out and yelling at each other, doors slamming, the old grandma yelling at the children and chihuahua puppies everywhere. It's just a huge mess, a lot of clutter and garbage all crammed into a tiny house. And they live a couple streets away from the train tracks so periodically some enormous train will just roar through and lay on the horn like nothing else. I always have a headache after having a lesson over there.

Other than that things are the same. The ward is actually doing a lot better with, well, running itself, and keeping up with our recent converts. Oh this is pretty funny, our last recent convert, Tomas, we've noticed they keep pulling him out of elder's quorum every week, and we've been wondering what they've been doing with him. He has no idea, we asked him one day and he said it was just another class the same as elder's quorum, one day we asked the 1st counselor while at his house for dinner and he said that they've been taking him to be with the High Priests.... We didn't even bother to ask why, who knows what motives the ward leadership has. We thought about it a long time and honestly couldn't come up with a rational explanation as to why the high priests group would be better for Tomas, he's not that old or anything. Well we decided it's not worth worrying about. We only need to worry about if he actually comes to church or not, what they do with him there is up to them.

So yup... That's about all interesting that has happened lately. I hope you all have a good day.

-- Elder Rice

Churasco

April 18, 2011

Hello family,

Well, again not too much to report this week. It was slightly better than last week, we've found some more people now and we have more people to teach. We'll see where they go. And....... yeah...

So my tiredness is still prevailing, on exchanges with Elder Armstrong we were visiting a member, it was his birthday that day and he's old and blind, his family was outside preparing a surprise party for him so they wanted us to go inside and stall him. We were supposed to stall him until they got the fajitas cooked on the grill. So we sat there and talked with him, shared a scripture, and I was really tired and went out instantly. Which was perfectly fine since this Hno. is blind and didn't notice. Armstrong informs me that I was asleep for 20 minutes, and he was getting pretty sleepy too so he was about to wake me up and then we would switch off and he would sleep while I carried on the conversation with this Hno. Actually it was funny that I fell asleep first because Elder Armstrong is probably the most torpid person ever, he always falls asleep. He even fell asleep standing up once. Well one of the kids got home from school and that woke me up, and then we sat there for another half hour or so talking to him, or rather listening to him talk. Finally they motioned to us that the party outside was ready and his daughter led him out and it was a surprise and we stuffed ourselves with fajita. It's been kind of weird actually, this months seems to be fajita month because for the past couple weeks everyone has been feeding us fajita. Which is great, of course that's not good for our health.

Since I got to this area in December I've gained about 10 lbs. We have 6-7 fixed dinner appointments every week, we get almost no exercise and the consequences are starting to show. Since gyms are banned, and our apartment is tiny, and our neighbourhood is not one you'd want to go out running in, early in the morning for fear of getting mugged, we've started going to the chapel every morning and running around in the gym. It's stupid but better than nothing.

So today is day 5 without hot water. It hasn't been fun at all, showering with cold water. We're starting to feel like real missionaries, missionaries that serve in 3rd world countries and live with things like this. Also the dryer hasn't been working for the last month so every P-Day we just hang dry everything in our apartment. Now the members we live are unaffected by the water, they have a separate water heater for their house, and the non-functioning dryer doesn't phase them, they said they'll get a new one eventually. Today the people are supposed to come and fix the water heater or whatever is wrong with it. We think it might just be the lack of gas for the water heater since the stove doesn't work either, there is no gas running to anything. So yeah... We're almost the point of real missionaries now.

One more amusing anecdote them I'm done. So on that same exchange with Armstrong we were in a McDonald's working on the weekly progress report for our meeting that night with the ward mission leader. He's supposed to take the same progress report to PEC the next day on Sunday, but he rarely goes to PEC, he never wakes up in time, he barely makes it to church on time. So we were in McDonald's sitting there and filling this thing out, when this black guy, who was behaving rather oddly, as though he was trying really hard to not be noticeable comes up to us holding two spray bottles, they were name brand cleaning chemicals for car interiors. Well he comes up and starts talking to Armstrong, I didn't hear a single word he said and if I could have heard what he said it's doubtful that I would have understood any of it. It looked like at first that he was asking us to move so he could clean the tables, but he was dressed in civilian clothes, he didn't look like he worked there, then he puts the bottles down on the table right in front Armstrong and sits down across from him, still talking the whole time, and miraculously produces 5 or 6 more of these same bottles from within his pants! I was impressed, he was able to smuggle in like 6 of these thing in his pants without looking like he had them! Then again, most black dudes around here wear such baggy clothes that they could hide all sorts of things in there. Well it was apparent that he was trying to sell us these chemicals (I don't think you can do that in another business establishment). Armstrong, being the mellow soul that he is just kind of sat there looking like he was about to say something. It was about then that the genes I inherited from Dad kicked in and I told the guy rather brusquely that we were not interested and to go away. I would have done it sooner but the revealing of all the spray bottles that he smuggled into there in his pants was impressive enough that I was kind of speechless.

Yeah, so that's pretty much all that's happened this week. I love you all and hope you have a good week. Peace out

-- Elder Rice

Agriio

April 11, 2011

Hello family.

Well not much to say this week. It's just been the same old stuff, actually this week I've been so tired, I haven't been this tired since I first got to my last bike area. I've been falling asleep during studies, at church (I've almost mastered how to sleep sitting up), at meetings, in the car (not while driving), and even during lessons with people. They mostly just think it's funny.

Other than that not much to report, we're mostly just making sure all of the recent converts keep coming to church. And the other day we fixed someones computer. It occurred to us that it's amazing how far a high-school education will get you. Most of the people we associate with dropped out of school as a child so they could help their families work, then they move here to the US and struggle in school, they usually make it to high school but then their interest in such things wanes dramatically and they drop of out of high school and work the rest of their lives as mechanics, construction workers, cooks, housewives, janitors, and yard workers. They don't read or write very well and many of them simple can't (not at all helpful to us when we try to leave them with homework of reading the archaic scriptures). Reading is just something not very fun for them. So we translate their mail, tell them about how to read a bus map, instruct them in traffic laws, help them pay taxes, help their kids with their homework, use dictionaries, fix their computers, show them how to use the Internet, end e-mails, and just all sorts of stuff like that. We've been doing so much of that for the last couple weeks and they think we're so smart for knowing all of this and all we did was just graduate high school.

Yeah, so that's pretty much all we've been doing. No pictures this week, nothing really amazing has happened. I love you all.

-- Elder Rice

Chipocludo

April 4, 2011

Hello Family.

This week was rather slow, really boring, Conference was a good end to it, though we mostly just poked and jeered at each other, mostly to the missionaries who have little time left, whenever one of the many talks about 'GO GET MARRIED NOW' came up, which seemed to be like almost every other talk. Luckily I wasn't the oldest missionary in my district, there are two who go home like a month before me so they received the brunt of our jeers.

Actually the week wasn't too bad because I spent most of it on exchanges. The one thing I like about being in leadership is that you can go on exchanges with other elders pretty much whenever you want. It's pretty fun, it's kind of like a vacation, you get a vacation from your area and your companion, and when in another area you have 0 responsibility to call the shots. It's great. Far too many times on my mission on exchanges when I've stayed in my own area it'll be a day where we will have absolutely nothing to do and you have to say, 'well, I guess we'll go tract or something'. When you're in someone else's area you just to sit back and have them take you around everywhere. So that was fun, most of this week was spent on exchanges.

Other than that....... Not too much has happened. We have only one real investigator at the moment, named Carlos. He's a Catrracho in his 60's or 70's now. The members that live next store to him drag him to church every week and we get to teach him about twice a week, but he won't even touch the Book of Mormon, or eat anything that has the meat of an animal with cloven hooves. He just clutches his little Bible to his chest every time we try to teach him and will refuse to read anything that's not in it. (He hasn't ever read it). We suspect that he's been in with the Adventists or J-Dubs or some other such sect that clings tenaciously to the bible and has dietary commandments that make our Word of Wisdom look weaksauce. The rest of our time is spent doing retention work, guess how many of our recent converts made it to conference? TWO! That's quite good, I was definately expecting worse, but those two, the most recent ones, Rubiel and Tomas, only made it to the sunday morning session. Actually that's pretty much the only one that the members made it to. Often I realized that I took for granted the fact that in Utah you can watch it on TV without needing cable and listen to it on the radio. It's not the same out here, if you have you cable your fine but if you want it in another language that's a whole different story. I don't remember what we did last year to get it to work at some member's house that had cable but basically it's easier for the hispanic members to simply go to the chapel.

Speaking of which... Guess who showed up on saturday morning to set everything up? No one.... We had been told a week before that the satellite box was now functioning. Of course we were the first people to show up and we got it all to function this time, except that the speakers were burned out in the chapel or something was wrong because the sound quality was horrible and you could barely understand anything through the static. The spanish broadcast was to be played in the chapel and english in the Relief Society room. The sound was fine in the other rooms for the english and on the TVs but not in the chapel. We could not figure it out but we came up with an alternate solution, we brought a TV into the chapel, had it going on there as well as the projector screen in the chapel, killed the chapel's audio and turned up the volume all the way on the TV, and it worked well enough.

So that was this week, the transfer also ended, Conference was a good way to end the transfer. Transfer calls came and nothing has changed really, I'm still going to be here with Elder Green. But there were very few changes made. Everyone speculates that President Hansen is trying to freeze everything as best he can, change as little as possible to make it easier for the new mission President who comes in June. I also realized that it will be pretty lame to have my final departing interview with the new president, someone I don't even know, I'd really prefer to have that with President Hansen, he's been a great mission president, I'm going to miss him a lot.

Okay I'm done. I hope you all have a good week, peace out.

--Elder Arroz

Wapiti

March 28, 2011

Hello Family, how's it going?

Not much to say this week, in fact this email will be short. I received an e-mail saying that my registration date is April 5th, which is like next week. So I'll be spending most of my time looking at classes and junk. I really have no idea what to take.

Couple of quick highlights of this week. We had another baptism. This is pretty crazy, like 3 weeks in a row of baptisms. Totally weird. Tomas was baptized, the funny thing is that we've only taught him, like 3 or 4 times. His work schedule is such that he is only available on sundays so we taught him once a week for a few weeks and then he was baptized. Something like that never happens, it was rather amazing. He's the one next to me in the picture, the two members are Hno. and Hna. Galeano, the members who are friends of Tomas and have been bringing him to church.

The only other really interesting thing that happened was that we ate octopus one day. This member family just plopped down these huge plates of octopus tentacles in front of us. They were prepared simply by boiling them with a bit of salt. But served cold. Well as always we can't be rude so we choked them down. It actually didn't taste that bad, but the texture just wasn't fun, kind of rubbery but yet mushy at the same time, and when you bit into it the suction cups on the tentacles would pop off and bounce around everywhere in your mouth. Luckily we had condiments and I was able to eat all of it after drowning it in lemon juice and burying it with lettuce, tomato, onion, and salt. Blech...

So that's all, the other pictures are of some more sweet graffiti. Oh and I will probably send an e-mail off either today or next monday with the classes I want to be signed up for. I'm thinking about maybe having Kent do it, he registers a day before me and there is this sneaky thing you can do where you have someone who registers before you sign himself up for your classes to hold a seat and then drop it right before you register. We'll see I send that e-mail soon. Well I hope you all have a good day. Peace

-- Elder Arroz