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

EspanYOLO!

Not much to talk about this week. Some pump farther down the line from our Colonia is busted, so nobody in our neighborhood has running water for…going on 12 days I think... It’s. Awesome.

Well, we have one investigator that is really I feel like MY first real convert. He lives with his soon to be wife who is inactive. We just baptized their daughter this last Sunday, but she is 8 with at least one member parent and therefore doesn’t count as a missionary baptism. But the people here don’t know that. Anyways, we went and taught her, and at the same time her dad and now he is like our best friend. He is a “pull yourself up by your boot straps” hard working guy about 30 years old. He left his country for Guatemala at 16 years old. Anyways, he gives us rides all the time, and we had pizza with his family the other night. We are just waiting for his papers from Nicaragua so he can get married and we can baptize him.

My companion is great. He is very humble, and we get along very well. I can’t believe how fast time is going by!

If you could send some super sweet pictures of the Portland temple that would be great! J  Well, so far I have read up to almost the end of 2 Kings in the Old Testament, and Mosiah 19 in El Libro de Mormon. Interesting stuff J I read through Mosiah 4 this week (in Spanish). It is a very good chapter! The King Benjamin final words are a little bit more meat than most of the investigators are ready for, so I probably won’t leave this chapter for them to read, but it is very good! You should see my scriptures, you would be proud. All marked up with about 60 little color coded tabs :)  Also, you would be proud of all the cleaning I do too!

As far as people asking me for money, I don’t even carry my wallet on most days, so no problem there J  Also, I never actually give them money, but I always have to explain that we are here to help them spiritually, not economically. Also, with the flag I was thinking more of like a cloth patch type thing, but it really isn’t that big of a deal at all, maybe I’ll slap a Mexico flag on there J Having a super ghetto umbrella helps with the poor boy look too!

Don’t worry about sending my boots. 60 dollars is quite a bit if it is something that I can find here. I´ll look and see what I can find. I definitely have a little too much pride to wear rubber boots. I will look tomorrow and let you know what I find. (our P-day got changed this week because we are going to the temple tomorrow)

 I recently discovered that they sell refried black beans in these awesome squeeze bags here, so I have been eating a lot of burritos this last week! I don’t know why I never really ate beans before, because they are delicious! I heard somewhere that beans, rice, and corn together make a full protein, so with this info I have started my journey to get huge in the next 20 months! I anticipate at least 30% more baptisms if I can put on another 10 pounds of muscle. (just kidding!)

 Also, I am a little disappointed that nobody mentioned how awesome it is that I saw a volcano erupting L

Nos vemos,

-Elder Rice