Noche Buena

 Our normal internet place is closed for the Noche Buena, and this place doesn´t have an up to date browser... sooooo... I get to spend tons of time loading up these photos and I can´t write while they load. The place here doesn´t let me multitask, it’s like internet Explorer 4. Anyways, you’re going to see the sweet coconut that I got for approximately 40 cents, some sweet rocks, a factory putting out outrageous amounts of smoke... some more rocks… my new companion Elder Martinez, and the calzone that I made from scratch in our toaster oven (we have been making some sweet food recently).

So we had to wake up at 2am to get to the temple by 6am on Friday for the Christmas activity. It was ridiculously early. I could hardly believe it, but just getting dressed-at 2am-both of us were sweating. It was incredible. It just never cools down here. For the Christmas activity we went to the temple at 6am, then we went to a nearby stake center and played sports for a while. After which we ate a super bomb dinner of mashed potatoes, roast chicken, brownies, and bread-not the same as eating at home-but still it was really good compared to what we usually have. Then we went out to get our packages, and I helped my companion carry his two. Mine didn’t make it. L (pause while Mom bursts into tears…)  I knew you would feel really bad, so I thought about just telling you I got it. It´s all good though, I´ll get myself a chocolate bar or something J  Our mission president got a few things for all the people who didn´t get packages. Basically the Latinos and meL kinda weird that mine didn´t make it though. I´ve actually been pretty bummed the last few days over that... buuutttt... it´s all ok.

So today we are going with a family that lives here tonight from 8:30 to 12:45 to celebrate Christmas, and then we are going to get up tomorrow at 6:00am to be able to get all our stuff done and then get phone calls. OK, got to go, love you mom, talk to you tomorrow.

 Love ya,

Collin

Same Area, Different Day

So I got my new companion last Wednesday! Elder Martinez. His family is from Nicaragua and Mexico. So I went up and introduced myself and started talking to him, and it was like that scene in that less cool Karate Kid with Jackie Chan that they just made, where the kid is in the airplane and speaks Chinese and the guy is just like ¨Dude, I’m from Detroit¨...except it was "Dude, I'm from Utah."

 LOL He´s great though. It´s nice speaking English again, and he is a powerful missionary. He is the district leader here, he has 15 months out in the mission and we are working together excellently. So as a mission this Friday we are having a Christmas activity that is going to be awesome. We are meeting up as a district at the fine hour of 3am to make it to the activity. This means waking up at 1am J but going to bed at 10:30 like always. Gonna be awesome. I was going to send some sweet pictures, but I don´t know where the data cable is... soooo... sorry! J

 So I will have 40 minutes to talk on Christmas. Call me at 10am your time please J I am very excited! I dunno what to talk about though.Our Christmas boxes are being saved until the mission Christmas activity. Plans for Christmas... We are trying to find someone’s house to stay at until 12:30, but only 1 person even came to elders quorum last Sunday... so we´ll see what we end up doing.

Love, Elder Rice

Mayan Rocks

So not too much has been going on recently. We baptized the people that were progressing and now we don´t have anyone really learning, so we talked with a whole ton of people this week. We contacted almost 500 different people this week, either knocking doors or talking to people in the street, and we found like 38 people to start teaching. About half have told us that they don´t want to listen to us anymore, but we still were left with a pretty good amount of people to teach.

 

We have changes tomorrow, so I get to wake up super early and travel in a hot smelly bus 2 or 3 hours to get there at 9am. Gonna be fun! I´ll be staying here in my area for Christmas, but I will get a new companion. Thanks for writing Elder Alvarz. I´ll let you know about my new companion next week J  

 

So this last week I split my pants open while we were lifting some heavy stuff about 15 minutes away from our house... quite a walk back to the house... But it´s all good, I already sewed them back up.

 I almost forgot about our P-day yesterday! We went exploring in a sugar cane field, because supposedly there were some cool rocks and stuff. So we found them, and they were AWESOME! Some huge rocks with faces carved in them and stuff. One of them supposedly represents Lehi, the Nephites, and the Lamanites, and the various tribes they had. I got some pictures I´ll try to send next week, it´s pretty awesome. They were just chilling in the middle of a huge field. I love how there they are and nobody here goes to vandalize them. They are just there for anybody who finds them.

Sorry to hear it’s so cold there. The heat here is terrible. It’s incredible sweating at 8:00am without doing anything. I have pretty much gotten used to it in the sense that I just sweat a lot and drink a lot of water and it doesn´t bother me that I´m dripping sweat all the time.

Elder Rice

Hagame un favor porfavor

Thanks for all the updates, and the picture! After a vigorous cleaning campaign and a great slaughter among the mosquitos, I have effectively purged our dwelling of the pagan insects. Also, I took some money out because we ran out of money, and my companion doesn´t have a personal card or money from his family or anything. I bought him McDonalds J

 So, it´s almost the end of this change, but better late than never right? Here’s a little info about my companion. Elder Alvarez is from here in Guatemala, in the capital. His mission was for Venezuela, but his visa never came. Instead of being reassigned, he decided to continue his mission here in Guatemala. He is something special. He really loves all of the people here and has an incredible way of telling stories. He knows a lot of stories, and uses them a lot. Right now we are about 4 hours from his house, but his first area was 15 minutes away walking. He didn´t stay there long though. He is super friendly with everybody, but not too challenging…So I get the privilege of being the tough missionary when people don´t do what they say they will-which has been a bit of a change adopting an Alpha personalityJ. We get along exceptionally.

That’s really all for this week I think.Other than we had to get up at 4:30am 3 days in a row this week... seriously difficult...

  I still haven’t heard anything about calling on Christmas. Can I just get you our number here and have ya´ll call me?

 So my companion doesn´t get much email. If you could write him something short and sweet and Google translate it that would be super nice Jrigoberto.alvarez@myldsmail.net

thanks! Love, Collin