***Disclaimer*** Elder Rice is now recording his journal entries and then sending them home to me so that I can type them up and put them on his blog, so names, places, etc. might be mispelled. Also, I have not reread entries, as he is now putting more in his journal since he can record things that happen. So...you are warned! Longer entries!
Monday, July 12, 2010
Had a good day, but of course a P day. Started off the day by going to the Carrs. She gives us our hair cuts for free. It was a really nice job. So I finally got a haircut after being back for 3 months. And then kind of a funny story happened. One of the members in the ward asked us to come and give her a jump and we did because her battery was dead and 5 minutes later we get a call from her again saying that her car died on the side of the road. So we ended up having to go push it out of the way and she ended up having to wait there for a few minutes to go for help, but we were there. Then we went and played basketball and no one was there again so we didn’t end up really playing basket ball, we ended up playing volleyball. It was still fun though. We went and did some shopping and to a couple different places, and then went out to eat with some of the other missionaries from Riverside. Just a lot of fun and a good day. Then we had dinner with the Markewurst (spelling??). She is a single lady but her parents are in the deaf branch here in Riverside. They are a way sweet family. Then after dinner we had a dinner with Vivian Lee, she is a less active person. Her son just got back from a mission from Congo or something like that. It was a good lesson and we talked about Temples. Then I came home, folded some laundry, and finished up our P day stuff. It was an all around good day. Had a good email session with my mom and I guess Grandma Rice came and she wrote me too. I got to write her. That’s always fun to talk to her and see what she has been up to. So that was Monday.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Another really good day, had a good study in the morning. Studied on some stories in the Bible about Jesus Christ and the way he taught about the parables. They actually changed Preach My Gospel a little bit, it is 8 lessons instead of 5. They actually don’t even start with the Restorations, they start with God is our Heavenly Father, the Gospel Blesses Families, and then goes right into Jesus Christ’s Ministry, like Repentance, Baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. And it’s really good, there have been a lot of people that have been baptized because of it. Just been an all around good time, but Tuesday, of course, is DDM or district meeting. I get there and I have the phone and Sister Alvarez calls me and her grandson is in the hospital up in Redlands and she wanted us to get someone up there to give him a blessing, and so I was trying to figure it out. She kept calling me like every 5 minutes asking me if I was doing it, and I was like, yes I just need to get it done. It was funny. And then afterwards we went and had lunch—just our normal routine. I took a nap because it has been so hot here—105 and 109. And so it just so bleeding hot so I took a nap. Then we had to go to the Toyota dealership in Riverside here because they had another recall on the faulty accelerator. It was so funny because the guy was like it will be 2 hours before we are through, OK we will just go out and just tract in one of the other missionaries’ area. We were supposed to go on splits that night, which is one of us goes with our district leader and the other goes with the district leader’s companion. I was in my area and with my district leader’s companion, which me and him are really good friends. He was birthed in Movall, and so we always have fun together. We ended up getting together at like 12:30, 1:00, or like 2:00 or something like that. We went out tracting in his area. It so reminded me of Movall because it was so ghetto but it was so much fun and I enjoyed it. It was way cool. And then we ended up having to wait until like 4:45 and dinner was like at 5:00 and it was all the way across town and so I was just hauling because I can’t be late, and I was like Oh my gosh--so we were just hauling. And then we had dinner with the Scovilles, which he is a returned missionary from Jamaica and was the AP there. He is way sweet and he comes out with us every once in awhile. Then we went out on splits with Brother Peterson. Brother Peterson does concrete work and we go and see these 2 families with him every Tuesday, the Dunsmores and Sebolds. The Sebolds are less active, we went and saw this week, and I had a good lesson on Jesus Christ and finding faith in him. They keep making a little bit of progress, not too much in there, but they do good. All around good day, and then me and Elder Ellis came back and had to go and drop off Elder Schallenberger’s stuff off and then we came home. And yeah, that was the day.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Once again, just a fun, fun day on the mission. Enjoying it, being back out here is a lot of fun. This morning we started off with service, we have been doing a lot of service lately just trying to offer help to anybody that we possibly can. Actually, people are taking it well and they are letting us come. We helped this lady today that we set up an appointment with and she has been wanting us to come back for quite awhile, but none of the other missionaries ever stopped by. So me and Elder Ellis, since we were on exchanges, we stopped by. We helped her out with some service, picking up these like clover things all over her yard that took like 2 hours, until lunch, and we got there at 10:00. It was just a long morning, but then we came in for lunch and got showered up. Then me and Elder Ellis had had lunch and went back out and went tracting over by school house. We talked to this one lady and talked to another, but they weren’t interested. Then we talked to this kid that was at this other door and he was awesome. I mean answering the questions right, everything. I just got this overwhelming feeling, “Don’t leave without giving him a Book of Mormon”, so we started talking about the Book of Mormon and how it came about and stuff. I said, “We would love to give you a copy of this and have you read it for yourself and pray about it to know if it is true, because you don’t need to believe us, it will manifest the truthfulness to you by Heavenly Father.” So we gave him a Book of Mormon, and he was like, I definitely want to read this. He wants us to come back, but not until April 30th, so it is kind of a little ways away. Hopefully, he reads it, but I think he will because he was really good. Then we had to go to the office because yesterday we went to the Toyota dealership to get the accelerator fixed. It was just a long wait, then we finally got the paperwork we needed and then we went to the office to drop that off. When we got to the office, we got to talking to President and Sister Reeves and some other people and then there was some mail. My companion gets like 6 letters a day, I swear. It’s actually pretty funny to hear all of the letters he gets because they are kind of weird. We got done with that, then we had to change back and we had dinner yesterday with the Hansens. The Hansens are a senior couple in the ward that are really great, just awesome. So we got done with them, and Brother Hansen used to live in Idaho Falls. He went to Bonneville High School when it was at the Rocky Mountain Middle School, right by Bonneville now. It was way awesome, everything has changed since 1968 (maybe he said 1958??), and so it was just so funny. Then we were going to go get the bikes out for a little bit before we had an appointment with a less active, so we went and tried to get the bikes out but then the sister missionaries called us because we called them. We had some people that we needed to look up that were in their area and we couldn’t go into there because it was just way too far away. They were over there, so they came down and they were going to go and look it up for us. Just an awesome, awesome day. Then we went and saw the Garcias. They were baptized in November and they have kind of fallen away from the Church a little bit because their parents are members but then the mom and dad are just like “whatever”, so they don’t have a way to get to Church. We’ve been trying to get them rides every week and Sister Arnold has been doing a really good job with that. Sometimes they’re just not there, so they can’t come. We had a good lesson with them, and asked them just to come to Church on Sunday. It was an awesome lesson. We just talked about the Church and what they thought about it, and they had a friend there that had some questions and stuff, so it was good. Everything is good, we haven’t actually tracted that much. We OYM’d 5 people, and 4 out of the 5 we taught other lessons too and offered them a card or a pamphlet to, so that’s good. The work is progressing really well here. We just got to find people right now, that’s the big thing that we have to do. The members are actually helping us out really well, we have a couple of new investigators that we are going to try and get a hold of from the ward. So hopefully that works out, because, you know those always work out the best. That was my Wednesday.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Today is Thursday, so you know what that means—weekly planning. If you look in Section, I think 10, or no Section 8, it talks about using your time wisely and then if you go to page 147 to 149, that’s our weekly planning schedule. That’s what we go through to plan for every single one of our investigators. The big one that we are really trying to focus on is Dave Fisher because he has actually been getting really close to being baptized. We feel that he’s going to get baptized, hopefully, this Sunday. That would be so sweet if he did! But who knows. We had lunch after weekly planning, but then we actually had to go back to the dealership because the key quit working. So they had to get a new key and program it for the car, so we had to all of that. We get there and they say that it will take about an hour at the most, and so we are sitting in the dealership. They have these really comfortable seats, so I kind of fall asleep on accident—I acted like Dad there for a second, that was kind of weird. 2 hours later the car was finally ready, and like holy moly-car dealerships take like forever. It was fun, we talked to some people. We didn’t end up going tracting, but we did go and see some less actives. We ended up going and seeing the Alvarez family—the one that on Tuesday called us and their son was in the hospital sick. It was a good meeting, just trying to ask them what was going on with the son, how he was doing, and how the surgery went. Hopefully, they start coming back out to church because they know they need to but they’re just not kind of thing. So, hopefully that works out. We had dinner with the Carrs, and the Carrs are a younger family in the ward. They have 4 kids and are a way awesome family. They kind of remind me of our family when Elder Robertson was serving. They are just a way cool family and fun to be around. She is the one that gave us our haircuts on Monday. We love going there. Then we ended up getting out of there late, so we didn’t get to see anybody. We didn’t get out of there until like 8:00 or 8:30, so we just headed on home and planned—had a good planning session for an hour. We just made sure that we planned well for Friday. I ended up reading my scriptures and doing some other things. After that, Then I went to bed early, I was wasted. It’s been smokin’ hot here, it’s not even funny—yesterday it got up to 112. It’s way fun though, yeah it’s hot, but you got to get through it, so that was Thursday.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Well, today had a good study time, I read about Jesus Christ ordaining his Apostles. It has been really hot here and I haven’t been able to sleep very well, so kind of tired in the morning during study time. We went and did service with the Cortez’s, which they are investigators. He’s way sweet--he wants to join, but his wife has kind of backed off and she doesn’t really want to join. He just wants us to take our time and stuff. He’s not a member yet, but he will be soon so we helped them with some service. The cool part was that he was taking out a water pump, so I was able to get my hands all greasy again and was able to help him do that. That was way fun, I miss working on cars and stuff. That was really good and I enjoyed it. Then we had lunch and it has been so hot here. Today it hit 112, and I am just dying. It is so hot, it’s still good. We went tracting, went tracting up Muffler Street—I didn’t know there was a Muffler St. in my area, but its sweet. Had a good day just tracting. Everyone we talked to gave us a bottle of water. It was the funniest thing in the world. They were just like, “you want a bottle of water?” and we said yes. So we ended up having like 12 bottles of water, it was so funny. When we were done tracting, we went and tried to go and see less actives. We were actually pretty successful today. Picked up some good names and we were able to go and talk to people. We had dinner with the Jobs. They are an older couple in the ward and still have a 13 -14 year old son and 2 other sons. One is on a mission and one is just getting ready to go on a mission. They have like 12 or 13 kids, something like that. Then we went and saw the Arnolds, which the Arnolds are the Ward mission leaders. Just tried to talk about what happened with one of our lessons that they wanted to know about, so that was really good. Then we did some work for Sunday because we have meetings every Sunday, and just had a really good time with it. Then we went and tried to go see some more people. Then we ended up stopping by and seeing the Palmers at night because they were there then and we wanted to go and see how they were doing and stuff. We go see them a lot, they are a way sweet family. We enjoy hanging out with them. They have us over like once a week for dinner, I swear. They are like a family that I would love to come back and see. Jacob, the oldest son, is getting ready to get his pilot’s license. He was showing us this flight simulator thing—it was way so sweet. That was pretty much our day. We talked to 18 people, taught 3 other lessons. It was pretty much an all around good day. I really enjoyed it and I love being out here and it’s a great thing. Tomorrow is Saturday. The weeks just fly by now. Tomorrow should be fun. We have a lesson with Dave. Hopefully, we can put him on date for Sunday. Tomorrow is Saturday, so the next day we will baptize him, that’s what we are hoping. We just really hope that he commits this time. And that was our day.
Friday, July 16, 2010 (continued)
A funny story happened today. Me and Elder Schallenberger were starting to listen to music and we got into a little bit of a tussle on what was apostate and what was not. It’s not like we actually meant it, it was just that the sun has been kind of bugging us. We just wanted to have a laugh or two, and so just a lot of fun stuff. I love my companion, we have some great times. We have some really fun times. Everything seems to be going really good, we just always have fun. It’s a great thing.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Well, it was a really good day. Had a really solid lesson with Dave. He has been having some problems, but I will get to that later in my journal. First, we started out by going and tracting. We tracted Roberts Road and this road is so long. It’s like, it kind of reminds me of Idaho where it is far between every house and a long driveway. It’s kind of fun tracting, a good time to talk and see how things are going. We ended up talking to these 2 people that were born again Christians that actually were really nice. They were working on a truck that they got for free. I was kind of helping them out a little bit, they didn’t really know what they were doing. We started talking about what they believed in and what we believed in. We were there for like an hour or hour and a half. It was a really good lesson, just talked to them. Had just a really successful day and it was just fun. Then we came back for lunch, and since we had dinner with the Fishers and she always goes over and beyond what normally we get. She like cooks all day long, so I don’t normally eat when we have her and we have dinner at 7:00. I’m normally just good without eating lunch, so after lunch that we went and contacted some people. Elder Schallenberger kind of struck out on all of his people, but it was OK. We went and started seeing some of my list, and the first people we saw were the Limmeaus (spelling??) and they live on Stoneybrook. They are less actives and he is a returned missionary and does not go to church at all. The kid came in and asked, “What church are you guys from again?” and he didn’t know. Most less active kids know who we are, but he doesn’t even know, but that’s OK. That’s not that bad. We were there for about an hour and a half just talking to them and seeing what was up. Then we went to see some other people, but nothing really as good as that one. We just talked to them about things—he went on his mission to the Dominican Republic in the 90’, like 94 to 96. He loves the Church he just doesn’t like the people in there, I guess. We’re not really sure. We ended up just spending time going and seeing people up until 7:00. We were there for quite some time. We ended up having dinner with the Fishers, and Dave’s got to give a whole bunch of information, I don’t know what it is called, to the cops because he is a truck driver and he’s got to show them that they are charging the right amount for each person, that their being honest with everybody and honest with the county and the state when they give them the money. We had dinner while we talked with them and we decided to give him a lesson on Priesthood blessings and stuff. We decided not to give him the baptismal commitment today because he has been really stressed and stuff. We talked to Indiana before, which is his wife, and she just said don’t do it. She is already a member and she is way strong in the Gospel and loves the Gospel to death. She’s great—she is so grateful that she found it and so we started talking about Priesthood blessings, what they are, and what goes on in one. He’s had one before, but it’s been awhile and no one explained what they were doing. It was kind of weird and he thought people should have at least explained what they were doing, but I guess people do it differently; and different missionaries so we decided to tell him what was going on and what happens in a Priesthood blessing. It ended up that he wanted one, so we gave him one and it was really powerful. Elder Schallenberger gave it and you could just totally feel the spirit there. Then we ended up going home and planning for tomorrow. Tomorrow is Sunday. Man, weeks just fly by, I can’t believe it. It’s already Sunday, so that is just like yesterday that it was Sunday. That was our day to day—all around good day. Talked to a ton of people.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Today was a really good day. Started out with Church and Church went really well, actually. Kind of a cool story that happened. We got stopped on our bikes 4 or 5 days ago, on Tuesday or something, and this guy pulled us over and wanted to know where our church was and wanted to know some information. So, we gave him our phone number and how to get a hold of us, and I didn’t really think that much about it because people do it all of the time but never really follow through with it. So, we are at dinner on Saturday with the Fishers, and it was this guy wanting to come to Church. It was way sweet because he was like way excited to come to church. So, we got him a ride and he showed up on Sunday and I was just shocked! I was, like, “Oh my gosh!” It’s never happened before on my mission. It was way sweet and we taught him a little bit about Church and what was going on. Then we came home and had lunch for about a half hour and then we found out that one of our less actives son was in the hospital. We got permission to go over to Redlands to give him a blessing. Before that, kind of a funny story. We’ve had an odd number of missionaries since I have been back out because a lot of people have gone home for health reasons or something they have done and are not worth anymore. We have this one Elder, he’s not an Elder yet, but he’s a member of the Church and he is actually in our ward and a recent convert. He’s been on a couple of missions (recording skipped, not sure what he said) for almost 6 months. Then, we tried to (he came home for a family event because he wanted to come home for that so he came home) then we talked to President, and President said try to take him back (to his mission I guess). We tried taking him back, and he basically came out and said No, I’m not going and go away—that kind of thing. We told President, and President said don’t worry about it. Anyway, we went to Redlands and gave a blessing. His name is Mario Jr. and he was bad. He looked way sick and we gave him a blessing and I guess he is doing a lot better than he was and that is really good because he looked way bad, like on his deathbed before we got there I guess. Two Elders gave him 2 more blessings before us and then we came today gave him another one. Supposedly he looks a lot better than what the other elders said, and that’s good. We ended up going to see Chet Truppa. If you remember he was the one that called my home because he was driving through Idaho and wanted to just talk to my parents a little bit, and so he called them. We were there until dinner, and then we had dinner with the Rathalls. They are a way cool family. Then we went and saw the Reeds and Coonharts because we had some information on Brother Coonhart’s stepson. We ended up staying there a little longer than what we wanted to, we were there for like an hour and a half. We were just kind of playing around, just talking to them, and seeing how they’ve been and stuff. They had problems with their phone, and it was really lagging and my parents have the same phone as them, so I was showing them like all of these cool things that made the phones not so slow. Then we went over to the Palmers and talked to them and set up dinner. They played their guitars and stuff. It was just real fun. I always love the Palmers, the Palmers are cool. They are going to go see my family when they go to Idaho. It was just way fun and that was pretty much our day. Tomorrow is P day and that’s it.
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