I'm Still Alive!

Well, I didn’t prepare any stats for this week; I will do better for next week. I guess I’ll explain a bit of the lifestyle I’m living now since I don’t have much to say this week. We have a gnarly green spider that Elder Vallejo’s feeds cockroaches and other dismembered spiders. I won’t go anywhere near it, (Collin is afraid of spiders J) but at least it keeps the mosquitos under control. It is kinda cool to watch it eat thumb-sized cockroaches.

Everyday we wake up at 6:20am, do 30 minutes of exercise, shower, and get dressed in our white shirt and a tie. I have a nice huge bowl of oatmeal with equal parts oatmeal and brown sugar. J Then we have an hour of personal study (reading the scriptures in Spanish), 2 hours of companionship study (where we plan out a few lessons for the day, and share anything we learned in individual study) and then an hour of language study.

After that we leave our house and head to the house of a member that lives about a half mile away who makes us lunch. We have rice and tortillas everyday, with some kind of meat, usually chicken, and fruit. Oh how I dislike fruit... Any time I can get away with it I don’t eat the fruit. I have improved at not making faces when eating things I don’t like though. One day we had this crazy vegetable that was sweet like a fruit, and tasted ever so slightly of cow manure...That was a bad day L

Then we leave, and usually go to the park to contact people. The parks here are places where people actually hang out. It’s like a paved plaza with benches and a few trees and a few shops. We just talk with people, say we are missionaries, share a short message, and ask if we can pass by another day with their family. We usually have 300 or 400 contacts in a week, and MAYBE 20 lessons that come from those. I have heard just about every excuse you could imagine. I would rather people just said “Sorry, not interested”, but it’s all good. Sometimes I just troll the people after I know they aren’t going to accept anything.

Anyways, after that, we head off to teach whatever lessons we have for the day. We are always overbooked for lessons, because the culture here is that if they are home when we are planning to stop by its all good, but if they need to go to the store or whatever, or visit family, then they just go. And nobody really is offended if we don’t show up for an appointment, so we always have more lessons planned than we can teach. We usually teach lessons until about 8:30 or 9:00pm and then go back to our house between 9 and 9:30. Then we plan for the next day, eat- if there is time, and then go to sleep. Teach, baptize, repeat.

If you have made it this far I have a little Biblical treat for you, 1Corinthians 14:34-35. I came across this the other day and think that ya´ll might benefit from it... (Teehee J).

Yesterday we went to Antigua as a zone for P-day. I have pictures, but I forgot my camera at home again, so you will have to wait a little more for some pictures. It is basically your typical tourist trap, complete with an over abundance of white people that can’t speak Spanish and overpriced attractions and souvenirs.  Still cool though. It is gorgeous there. It’s like they don’t let any of the bad stuff in. It was so great to watch all the white people try to negotiate in the shops, thinking they know something about Spanish. And then watch them get p’wned by the prices, thinking they just made the deal of their life. (Mom, maybe you should choose a more politically correct term for white people before you post this on the blog)

Also, I finally received letters, thank you to those who wrote me! I have a lot to respond to, so please be patient. I will be getting mail about every 4 to 6 weeks, so you can get away with a letter every month if you are among those who committed to writing me.

Anyways, That’s all for this week, enjoy life -Elder Rice