Herding Missionaries

The last 2 days have been the craziest of my mission! Tuesday morning we started out early (5:30am) in a rented tour van for the all change taking place in our mission. Obviously, my companion and I got up early to get weight lifting in one more time together. So we got to changes and everything went normal. I got a new companion (Elder Morris) from Park Valley, Utah. Then when we finished... the games began:

The goal: Get 9 sister missionaries, and 4 elders (along with ourselves as well) and their luggage from the church building to the mission house in the next city over. We were able to convince the assistants to let us throw all the bags in with the people that are leaving the mission. Mistake number one: Sisters don´t like to wear the same clothes 2 days in a row. So we get all the bags sent off and now we have to figure out how to get all of these missionaries to a place where they could spend the night and get ready for the conference with Elder Neil L. Anderson the next day. We walked with them over to the nearest Little Caesers and bought ALL the pizzas. Then we hopped on one intercity bus, got off, got on another one. Then from there we had to walk to the bus stop where the old school buses (turned public transport) pass, and cram all 15 of us onto a bus that was already full. From there we got on another one of these buses before finally arriving at the secretaries´ house and dropping off the elders. Then we got on another bus with the sisters to take them to THE NEXT town over and drop them off. So we then realized that the sisters needed their bags! The bus with all the luggage showed up at the mission house at about 10pm. Sadly, it was all mixed up with the luggage of those that are leaving, and nobody knew whose bags were whose. We did the best we could though.

The next morning we got up at the crack of 2am to load the bags into a different private van we rented specifically for the purpose of moving all the bags and went to go drop them off with the sisters. Only... we were missing 2... So we hauled it back to get them and had everything in place by about 5am. Then instead of wasting time going back to the mission house and coming back to bring the sisters, we just decided to chill out on the sidewalk. Anyways, a lot of other stuff went down, but all in all it was a planning nightmare that we somehow figured out and got everybody’s´ stuff back up here to Solola. Except for 2 little bags that I might have forgotten to grab that the assistants had to drive up to drop off today in the early morning. But at least it is over now!

The conference was awesome!!! Sadly, I missed all of the speakers except for Elder Anderson since I wasn´t able to sleep the night before. He is a great speaker though! His Spanish is so-so, but he is such a powerful guy that it didn´t even matter. He mostly talked about the things we should do differently here than in the States as far as how we teach people. He taught us that we need to teach the doctrine how it is, and if people don´t accept it then it is their choice, and not something we need to try to adjust to their liking.

I should be home on the 30th of April. I would like to drive the car home from the airport, but it is possible I will be too tired... We shall see right? I think one week will be long enough for me to stop introducing myself as Elder Rice, so maybe that next week after I get back I could start working if it can all get arranged.  I do plan on going with you guys in July to Bear Lake and Utah, and I’d like to spend some time there with some of my companions. I´ll probably got to Rexburg also to check it out and see Jared, so I will need to figure that out with my work schedule.

 Anyways, all is well here, we have got about 40 something more days left!

Love you lots! Elder Rice