echando fuego

This week we hit a new record for my mission. 76 Lessons in one week- which is a new record for me! Whoaaaa hold up Elder Rice, stop working so hard, you’re going to get tired! We also had 36 lessons with a member present, which is pretty awesome except that they all walk slow, so we can´t have as many lessons when we are with them.

House inspections are coming up a week from tomorrow. We have been cleaning like crazy. We have several 50 gallon bags filled with trash, dirt, and other assorted things that were piled up on our back porch, and our house is starting to look pretty sweet. The weather’s been the same. (88 degrees every day) Last week it rained like 4 days in a row, the thing is though that right now is the dry season, so everyone is up in arms.

We have been teaching this lady and her adopted son. They have some serious communication issues. Mostly the issue is the kid was a monster when he was younger (read:badly raised), but he is 14 now and wants to change, but the lady just says she’s done, and there is no hope and he can´t change and she is going to the United States and leaving him here to fend for himself. So I got in there and talked a little about the Gospel and stuff and then told them we were going to do an activity.  I had them take turns saying positive things about each other. The kid came up with about 2 (she makes his food, and washes his clothes) and the lady just kept saying there was nothing good about him and would start to go on, but before she could say anything I just stood up and told her to pause (or translates more to like ´´stop´´) and I would tell here that right now we are working on the positive and the negative comes later. I had to do it several times and finally she said he keeps his hair cut like a good sharp man. She just yells at him all the time L It´s all good though, we are totally going to turn that around.  I am learning a lot about relations with difficult people. But my companion and I actually get along fine now and are working harder than ever.

We have a family that we are teaching right now. The GuiGui family. They are both 18 and they have a newborn boy. They are legally married (which is actually pretty rare) and pretty awesome. They don´t have any serious problems in their home or with any kind of vice. It´s really awesome to be teaching a well put together family. They have been to church once and are getting baptized on the 30th if everything comes out well. We found them one night on the way back to our house in the street. We just started talking to them and they told us to come by the next day. Pretty cool stuff. 

 Adiós, Elder Arroz

 

March Madness

As a mission here we set a goal to baptize 400 people in the month of March. That’s a ton of people! Everything in the mission is in overdrive right now. Shorter P-days, less meetings, more effort from everyone, it´s crazy! This is the most tired I have ever been in my life. But it is all paying off. We set a goal of 7 baptisms here in our area this month, and if everything goes well, we are going to smash that number out of the water and double it! I´ve got a make shift white board we made out of packing tape and a big sheet of white paper on the wall where I am keeping track of all the people we are teaching. To get in the spirit of March it is in sports bracket format, with a scoreboard next to it. My new companion doesn´t understand it at all J Apparently March Madness is not as popular here. My new companion is Elder Garcia from El Salvador and has 14 months in the mission. In 3 days I´ll have 10 months out.... Wow... Coming up on the home stretch!

Love, Elder Rice

Elder Rice, se va!..... A quedar!

Well, we got the dreaded changes phone call, andddd.... Elder Rice Stays! I now have at least 6 more weeks of fun in the unbearable sun and 42 more ice cold showers. Other than that though I am actually really excited to be staying here!

 

Working in a branch instead of a ward is way more fun! This whole week went be ridiculously fast... We baptized the Rosales family last Sunday, and a ton of people came. It was pretty cool!

The Rosales family got married on Saturday and baptized on Sunday. Jovani signing the paperwork

Right before the baptism. I came out looking pretty good in this one ;)

Griselda Signing those papers :)

I learned a great lesson about repentance this week! Just a little background: here they have what are called Pilas, where you can wash your clothes and your dishes and stuff. They are basically like 3 cement sinks side by side, the one in the middle just holds water and the other two are where you pour the water over whatever you are washing. Our pila had a spot that kept growing mold on it, and we would keep washing it off, and it just grew back again in like 2 hours. It was insane how fast it grew.  I got in there with a scrub brush and some pure bleach and went at it, left, and 3 hours later it was back. I noticed that where the mold was growing, the paint had been worn off, and it only grew there. So I came up with a genius plan. I would use the spray paint left over from a prior project (see personalized yard and garden tool) and I would repaint that spot.  I went to work and made a cool stencil. The only problem was all I had was red and black. So I go ahead and just put it on there and it looks awesome. I was quite proud of my work.

The next day, looking at it in better light, it just looked like somebody had tagged our pila. Knowing that house inspections would be coming shortly, like a thief in the night, I was left to worry over what our mission president was going to say when he came to inspect our house. I didn´t waste any time in beginning to undue the danger I had done. I bought some sandpaper and started scrubbing... and scrubbing, and scrubbing... Very slowly the paint started to come off and show the bare concrete. Finally after much suffering, I got it down to a bare spot without any paint, but it still looked pretty ugly.  I went on over to the local hardware store and bought a can of spray paint that matched the pila, and covered up the damage left over from my mistake. All in all the pila looks the same as it started, but I had to do a ton of work. I’ll let you draw your own repentance analogy from that.

Love, Elder Rice