un araña

I brought my camera this week to send some photos... but I forgot the cable... So you will all have to wait another week J You asked what I miss most: I don´t really miss too many things from home, more so the things that I could do- like go swimming, go to the movies, hang out with friends and family, shoot guns... stuff like that. We have pretty good’ish food, real beds, hot’ish water to shower. Not too many physical things that I miss.

Every Monday we go buy groceries for the week. I have about 3 weeks worth of oatmeal, and 2 weeks worth of pancake powder right now, so usually I just have to buy tortillas, beans, and cheese. The super market here is like a super cheap smallish supermarket in the states. Its clean and well organized, indoors with AC. I can buy pretty much anything that I could want here. They have candy from the states. But we don’t have money to buy that type of thing. I started making pancakes for breakfast. Its normal powder stuff to make pancakes, but it has vanilla flavor! It’s awesome!

We usually walk everywhere we go during the day. Every once in a while we take a bus, but not very often. The streets here are crazy. And the sidewalk- if there is a side walk-is usually blocked by cars or telephone poles, so we usually just walk in the street. The drunk hobos usually try to follow us around and ask us for money, but we walk SO fast. It took the first 2 months here to get used to walking so fast all day. It takes about 30 minutes for us to walk from one side of our area to the other, but that is walking super fast.

This week a monster, the locals call it un araña, entered our house while we were away, and to my great horror we discovered it in our house at about 9:30pm. I had to kill it with the broom. It was about the size of a half dollar, a little bit bigger, but it wasn´t the kind that has super skinny legs, this bad boy lifted weights. It was the biggest spider I have ever seen, and it was an evil black color.

Glad to hear both Jared and Andrea are stone cold killers (at water polo). The rainy season ends in about a month, so I am just going to suck it up and wait and buy new shoes when I need them. Also, I got assigned as the leader of retention of converts in our district. Pretty cool.

Love, Collin

Otra semana ha venido y pasado (another week has come and gone)

So yesterday we got a bunch of the youth together to play some more soccer. About 10 minutes in a crazy rainstorm rolled in and soaked everybody! But we only have one day a week to play soccer, so we made everyone stay and keep playing J

This last Sunday, September 15 was Independence Day here in Guatemala. It was loco. All of the school bands marching around playing instruments.. all day... Tons of homemade fireworks everywhere in the streets.. all day.. every single little kid had a whistle that they blew.. all day.. annddddd nobody was home to teach.. Other than that it was pretty sweet! They go all out for the 15th of September, even though pretty much nobody knows why they do any of the traditions that they do here.

We have changes this Wednesday, but Elder Maldonado and I are both staying here another 6 weeks at least. That’s pretty much all for this week, I´ll try and get some more pictures for next week. It takes all of the time we have to send like 9 or 10 pictures

 Sorry to hear you all are tired out. Sadly as missionaries in Guatemala Central, we don’t have time to rest J The field is white and ready to harvest, therefore, thou mayest rest when thou diest. I imagine that it’s actually a little like the army being here in this mission. Our theme as a mission is the stripling warriors and how we are soldiers in war with Satan. We work so hard... Life is going to be a cakewalk when I get back J

Thanks for the updates!

Peace out, Elder Rice

 

hola mi amigos!

 

I don’t have a lot of things to write about, but we had some cool stuff this week. Yesterday we had P-day as a zone. We went to a big synthetic grass field and played soccer for two hours. We have 18 people in our zone, so plenty to play full field. Soccer is one of my new favorite pass times, and even that Latinos say that I play very well! J I got suuppper tan yesterday, and have an awesome watch line!

 

I noticed in the water polo pictures you sent that Andrea took my number. (Go #2!) I really miss swimming.

 

We had some pretty big earthquakes here this past week. It is a pretty sweet feeling! Like, the whole earth is just... shaking! It’s awesome! Luckily there wasn’t any damage in our area.

 

 Our water has been fixed for a while now, we are back to our regular low pressure dirty running water. We still have tons and tons of rain, with crazy thunder almost every day. We haven’t seen any more volcanic activity, but we keep watching!

 Anndddd... I am still living quite happily on oatmeal, tortillas, beans from a bag (which are the consistency of toothpaste, and come out... like toothpaste.. it’s awesome) and mozzarella cheese- which for some reason is much cheaper. The burritos taste kinda like pizza, but it’s not worth the extra money for different cheese J

Keep it real, Elder Rice

Ever wondered what it means to be a Mormon?

If you've ever wondered what it means to be a Mormon, or are just curious about our church, this is a fabulous video with an overview of what the Church of Jesus Christ (the Mormons) is all about. Take the 10 minutes to watch it. It's pretty cool!

Week 17

This week I will be describing one activity that we do regularly for fun! So we have these buses here that we use to travel around the city. They are all school buses brought down from the USA, and then painted like race buses. They put a hand rail thing on the roof in the middle, because the bus rarely ever stops, they just slow down enough for you to get on and off. Its super fun! Anyways, every time we get on a bus one of us stands up in the front and shares a short message with everybody on the bus, and then we pass by everyone and try to get their address to visit them another day. Its pretty fun walking around the bus while it’s moving and turning and stuff!

 

Something very different here is that everyone is Christian, and professes to be Christian (whether they practice it is another story) so we always have a pretty easy time starting out talking with people.

 

Also, a short funny little story. We had a reference that we went to teach a couple times. So we went by there for like the 3rd or 4th visit, and her 4 year old daughter came to answer the door. So we ask to talk to her mom, she runs back in the house, and comes back and says (in Spanish of course) ¨She’s not here¨ so we ask her who told her to say that and she responded ¨mi mama¨. Now whenever we pass by there the daughter always says her mom isn’t there right away, even when her mom waves at us and we talk with her. J

 

Also, I found some potential candidates for boots, about 500 or less quetzales. I’ll wait another week or two and see what I can find, because I don’t want to buy something that is going to suck. I am not sure there are good enough boots to keep my feet dry, I might look for shoes with drainage instead J

 

Things are great with the comp! Glad to see you guys are enjoying the summer! Thanks for the pictures!

Keep it real, Elder Rice