Apparently things are AWESOME!

I sent pictures last week instead of a letter. I know you were all super worried that I didn´t write and all. J

 Glad to hear all is well at home! We have had a lot of baptisms, and all of the pictures where I am dressed in white I baptized at least one person. It’s pretty awesome. We do a ton of tracting door to door and talking to random people. We have to talk to at least 35 people every day, and invite them to learn more about the gospel.

The rain is going to quit supposedly pretty soon. Our umbrellas got destroyed like a month or two ago, so we just walk around completely open…but completely soaked.. It’s awesome! J

 General Conference was pretty awesome too! They had it on a projector here in the chapel, voiced over in Spanish, but all of the North American missionaries watched it in another room live streamed over the internet. We watched all 10 hours. Conference weekend here is affectionately called P-day weekend, as we pretty much just hang out with our whole zone in the chapel all day. Between sessions we left to bring more people to watch the next one, or else teach lessons to investigators that came and are staying for the next one. That was pretty much the highlight of the week. I got like 10 pages of notes from the conference, and I only wrote things that I could use in missionary work. There was so much stuff said! This was the first conference that I didn´t fall asleep-and watched all of the sessions. It was awesome! (check out lds.org if you'd like to know more about what general conference is)

 Tomorrow we are going to the zoo with our zone. It is going to be super cool! I wanted to go play soccer on a big synthetic field with the zone, and we were going to go do that, but then somebody changed their vote to go to the zoo instead. It´s all good, as long as it doesn´t rain too much it will be super awesome.

I am coming up on 6 months, and nobody refers to me as the new elder anymore. In fact, I have been in the zone longer than almost everyone else. I love my mission, and I am trying my best to make the most of it. I have learned that sometimes people pass through really hard times, but hard work, preparation, and planning will always bring great satisfaction.

Lots of love,

Elder Rice

 

 

Not much written, but he sent some pics

We get to have the weekend to watch all of the sessions of General Conference, and then P-day Monday. Whoop! https://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch?lang=eng

I don’t know about the call home for Christmas yet, I have heard it’s through Skype, but I’m not sure. Prepare some talking points and questions and stuff! Ideas for  Christmas... socks maybe J the nice strong kind. I really like these ones with the bright colored toes, because they never get mixed up in the laundry with my companion. A pair or two more of these sweet pants that we got at the LDS missionary store. A Portland Timbers soccer jersey, long or short sleeve, size medium... And maybe some candy. White or normal chocolate, skittles, Reeses pieces, etc. But I can get candy here, so maybe not. Anyways, some ideas there.

That's super awesome about Jared and Andrea being in the newspaper!

Here's some pictures- I can´t see what they are though, so I pretty much just sent a bunch of random ones...

Family we baptised

My companion and I...being awesome

My comp at our apartment- there's some pics of me on the wall if you look close!

Lake Amatitlan on a P-Day visit. Beautiful!

Check out my tan line!

Family Baptism

Internet time is over, back to work!

Love you lots, Collin

 

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