Elder Rice Mail Sunday, August 26, 2012

Hey family,

So the package was super awesome, the peanut butter was awesome… well
is awesome. I assumed since you gave me everything in multiples of two
I was supposed to give half to Elder Lee Dong Hui , so I did. Thank you
for the cake and brownie and cookie mix. We have an activity coming up
that we need them for. It’s called a dessert party !!!  

So, school starts soon and we get our young single adults back yay. 
So we will invite them to the church along with our investigators, and 
play games and share a message and the investigators can make friends 
with members, and the members can get excited about missionary work. 
I’m so excited for it! 

I love the pics of Adam, Grace and Josh too, they are on my desk 
and I have to second one of my “best buddy”, on my calendar. (MOM NOTE: 
Adam, Grace and Josh are Elder Rice’s nephews and niece in Las Vegas. His
Best Buddy is Grace... now, back to Elder Rice) (By the way… 
on the pic of Adam, the birthday card he is holding… from a girl named 
Ashley?... He should know our family doesn’t do well with Ashleys, haha)
(MOM NOTE: his brothers will understand that joke!)

Im so happy Mrs. Feddick added you (FB FRIEND) and is getting this letter! 
She was such an awesome teacher! I want to thank her for all the help she
gave me. She taught math better than any teacher I ever had, and she
was so nice, and she helped me stop sleeping in class (every time I did
she made me stand in the back of the classroom). She was the best!
Thank her for me please.

So my email is late today because we were with an investigator all
day, super fun. We helped him help his sister move, then we went hiking
and we hiked to a Buddhist temple and that was cool. Then we ate and
we walked around this traditional city Jeonju. It’s like built to look
like ancient Korea. It was awesome. I have pics I’ll send.(attached)

This week was really good. I learned the effect of a smile yesterday.
The more I smiled, the more others smiled, and street contacting went so
well. Yesterday we talked to 96 people on the street.  haha.
So much! I was so tired. 

I’m sorry this letter seems boring hmm. So Brother Perkins emailed me. 
That was cool! He got drawn for elk and deer. I guess if you’re a 
Plumber, Game and Fish takes pity on you, and draws you over
Supplier Recovery people…Sorry Dad.

So we were teaching an investigator last week, and we were teaching
commandments, and I was teaching about scripture study, and I said
how when I was younger, I never read, but I started for 5 min. a day,
and how much better my life got and how many answers I found, and as I
said it, he said, “Ok I will read for 5 minutes every night.” I was
surprised and so happy. We followed up and one day he  had read 20
minutes. So awesome what the Spirit can do. 

Our bishop is so awesome! So before I got here, there wasn’t a baptism
in our ward for over a year. We talked to him about our zone’s goal
for 30 baptisms this year, and he said he wanted us to get two before
I transfer out of here. He is awesome. He keeps thinking about the work
here and tells us his ideas. An awesome bishop.

So if dad is keeping a fish count this year, he needs to put 3000 for
me. Our bishop is a fish farmer and we helped him harvest this week. I
hauled 16 2-3 ish gallon buckets of fish from a pond. He has two tanks.
Like they have in fish hatcheries. So ya I think I won this year!
(MOM NOTE: We have a chalkboard wall and each year, all the fish caught by 
all of the Rice men are kept tally of. I don’t know if Dad will make
ALL of the 3000 hashmarks on that wall!)

So I have been reading the Doctrine and Covenants, (a book of LDS Scripture)
and it’s so cool. I’m highlighting and marking so much stuff, and when I 
read it, I feel the Spirit so strong. Everyone should read it. I love it. 
Especially because it talks a lot about missionary work.

But my spiritual thought is something I read this week.
I read how we all receive wages from who we follow. Meaning, the Lord
or the adversary. And I thought about it, and we get "paid by both but
its different pay". My companion talked how before his mission,  he
played some computer game, and on it, he sold things for real money and
made 3000 dollars and he spent it. I said what did you spend it on? 
But he didn’t remember. Then he said, “Money that you get easily, you 
spend easily,” And that’s true. When we sin,  we get paid right away, 
but we get paid right away and its gone… just like that. And after,
we can’t remember what we spent it on. Then, we are miserable and sad. 
On the other hand, obeying commandments and doing what’s right… you 
may not get paid right away, but you will always get paid. You may be
 "laying for yourself treasures in heaven" (Matthew 6: 19-20) 
or you just have to wait for the Lord’s time, not ours. But we
will get paid. And think whose is a better hand for our money
(blessings)to be in than the Lord's. And when you work hard for your money, 
it’s harder to spend it on dumb things and you always remember what you
bought with it. When we obey the Lord’s commandments, we will receive
joy and its not short term. It’s eternal joy, and I know that’s right. When we
aren’t doing right, it’s fun for a little while, but after, the pain and
sadness are way worse than that little bit of fun is. On the other
hand, when we are doing what is right, we’re happy and nothing takes
that happiness away but sin, and that’s the best happiness! It’s joy,
and I love it.Well, I hope that made sense. I’m a little scattered today sorry. 

Well ill add pics and close this I love all of you family. Be safe,
Send letters, or email...or cookies!

Love Elder Rice

Explanation of the pictures:
We bought peaches. koruna peaches are huge and so good, but expensive!
Like we bought 4 for 8 dollars, but later we bought a big box of 12
for 12 dollars. Ha ha so cool. 

The really huge tree is 400 years old, and
the other one im standing by is 500 years old.  ya love you bye


Note: Elder Rice can receive email but can only email reply to family
personally, though, as you can see, he includes you in his emails to 
all. If you would like to snail mail Elder Rice, his address is:

Elder Nathan Rice
Korea Daejeon Mission
Daejeon P.O. Box 38
Daejeon, Korea  300-600

For a typical letter, it is $1.05 postage. It takes about 10 days for
a letter to get there. 

Catching Up

FYI...I again have let this blog lag...seriously. No excuse...other than I just try to leave the computer off more...I end up getting more done that way. However, my mother of three, Primary President daughter with a hubby in the bishopric and working two jobs is NOT going to make me feel guilty this time when she posts before me. No sir-ree. So here is catch up. I begin adding after July 11, 2012.

Elder Rice Mail for Sunday, August 19, 2012

From: "Nathan Rice" <nathan.rice@myldsmail.net>
To: "deesuz" <deesuz@q.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 7:29:16 PM
Subject: 

Hey sorry i have limited time
I loved the letter you sent, Mom. It was super awesome to hear your
testimony. This week was awesome! We have 3 investigators come to
church, and after Sacrament meeting, we split with a ward member to teach
lessons, and I was with a former bishop. and we taught  the Word of Wisdom.
I was super nervous but the member helped so much and bore awesome
testimony, so cool. Koreans really love tea so it's good to have a
member explain the tea thing. 

I finished the book of momron last week and started doctrine and covenants.
Super good.  I never read it through before, so i am excited to learn. 

Oh i have been out almost 6 months but it doesn't seems like it. haha

Gotta go sorry love you all so much.

Love Elder rice

A Day in the Life of our Pizza Oven

I was asked to participate in our stake Emergency Preparedness Fair this year, to be held on Sept 15, 2012. Dee is teaching a couple of classes on gardening, and I am displaying alternative cooking methods, i.e. Wood Fired Pizza Oven, for the afternoon. I have cooked many things, including our Thanksgiving turkey, in the oven, but I had never tried to see just how much I could do in one heating. So, we lit the fire on Monday, August 13 at about noon. It takes four to five hours for it to heat, adding wood periodically. We rolled dough out at about 5: 30 pm and started Project Pizza Oven.

This is our pizza oven. It began as a whim in Suzzy's mind: how about building a pizza oven to feed the  North Pointe Prep Falcon Football team for summer practice....in two weeks! You can guess that this beauty wasn't complete in two weeks. Lots of concrete...lots of work...lots of brick and block and insulation and pipe...lots of  help from our boys...but it finally was completed in time for our 30th anniversary (if you see the lettering on top, Dee engraved "20  D -heart- S 10". It was completed in 2010...but the way he put the year, it also added up to 30...that's right) 

The oven, all loaded with needles Suzzy rakes from under our pine trees and  found wood...fallen trees, tossed branches, etc. The fire is lit and monitored for the 4 hour heating time...checking it about every 30 minutes, and adding wood as needed. You don't want just fire. You need the bricks to heat.

I have posted pictures of the pizzas being prepped and baked. This was one of the first ones out. 

While the pizza was baking, I did prep for the next round. I took three whole chickens, washed and patted them dry, and rubbed the interior and exterior with assorted rubs, and put them on racks, then on cookie sheets. I also chopped two pans of tomatoes, added some fresh basil, and tossed in olive oil and salt. 

After the pizza portion of the day was complete, we put the chickens and the tomatoes in, and placed the door on.

About an hour and a  half later, we had these: perfectly roasted chickens.  The tomatoes remained in the oven to roast. 

I deboned the chickens and filled 6 bags with the chicken meat, approx. half of a chicken in each bag. 

I am a crazy freezer wrapper. First, I use a freezer zip top bag, and then I wrap that in freezer paper , label and date. I had five packages for future meals and kept out one for tomorrow. 

We pulled these out late that night, and left them to cool all night. 

Now for Early Tuesday morning. I first ground some wheat and then put it right into my Bosch and mixed up dough enough for two loaves of bread. I set that out to rise, and ran those cooled tomatoes through my strainer (I have a Kitchenaid with a strainer attachment). The bowl on the left is the peels, etc. for our chickens and the right is the sauce. 

I package the sauce in labeled zipper freezer bags, labeling and dating. I don't need to double wrap these because they go very fast!

I had thawed two deer loins, and put them in a bag with some soy sauce and brown sugar to marinate. 

Here are the loaves of bread after their second rise, ready for the oven. I typically bake these in my conventional oven at 375 degrees F. for 18 minutes. We took a temp reading (one of those point and shoot readers from Harbor Freight) and saw the oven was around 328, so I decided 30 minutes would be a good start to bake them. 

While the bread was baking, I completed prepping the deer loin, adding bacon wrap.

I also made this pan of green chili chicken enchiladas, using one package of chicken from last night. 

Here is the bread when we took the door off.

We removed the bread, took another temperature reading (It had only dropped a few degrees) and settled on returning in an hour. 

Here are the loaves of bread. 

The oven was still hot, so I got some pumpkin from the freezer that we had pureed from fresh pumpkins last year and took four eggs from our sweet chickens...

And whipped up a batch of Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake

When the meat was done...via temperature gauge...we took it out, and put the cake in. leaving it for an hour.

Enchiladas are perfect. 

I checked the cake, which needed more than the hour to bake, and when I returned, my sweet hubby had sliced one of the venison loins...minus a slice or two!

Here is the cake right out of the pan...

And finished.

Now, the oven was still warm...not enough to bake bread or anything, but it could keep dishes warm, dry herbs, etc.

There...all in a day. I wanted to make a whole Thanksgiving meal in the oven before I present, but I doubt that the 105 degree weather here would make eating stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy too appetizing. Amazing what some brick and block and concrete and pine needles and wood can do!

Elder Rice Mail for August 12, 2012

In the package sorry i dont wanna sound like beggy but can you add zero bars, tide to go, kimchi stains have destroyed some shirts so I really need tide to go. Ya thats it. I love you oh and i accidentally spilled my bottle of iodine on the floor. so im out sorry.  no mess though korean floors are like a rolled matt that cant stain.

Family,
Another week has blazed by. We do service at this place and we feed older people food and once a month we go to a "retirement" home   and we give them some food. Like last week was 팟빙수 pot bing soo its ice and has red beanns and fruit and stuff on it. (from Mom: official definition - Patbingsu or patbingsoo (팥빙수) is a popular shaved ice  dessert in South Korea, especially during the hot and humid summer season. This snack originally began as ice shavings and sweetened azuki beans (known as pat, 팥).It was sold by street vendors. In contemporary culture,  it has become a very elaborate summer dessert, often topped with ice cream or frozen yogurt, sweetened condensed milk, fruit syrups, various fruits such as strawberries, kiwifruit, and bananas, small pieces of teok (rice cake), chewy jelly bits, and cereal flakes). Then we played games with them. Their favorite was bowling. It was so awesome. They loved it. I was so cool. Normally, they just sit and talk and i think they get bored, but we came and they were all laughing and having fun. It was the best. But ya so the service place put thing in the newspaper and guess who the picture they put in it was....me the link to the website that the article is also on it 
www.iksannews.com/Include/News/News_print.asp?tni_num=401204&local
....it cuts off i hope I gave you enough to find it. So ya I'm famous now,
jkjk . 

Im doing  good though. Sorry to hear about Grace (Elder Rice's niece) and lactose intolerance but that chocolate milk substitute is awesome. She will
love it!

So Ethan and Cameo (Elder Rice's brother and sister in law) are having a girl 
hahaha. That's cool.Will Ethan take her hunting or will she hate it is my 
question?

So my companion is super awesome! We practice our lessons in companion
study and our lessons go so much better, and our english class is so
much better. Before it was so boring now its fun.And we invited some people to come that saw our English flyer and they came and they will meet us again this week-super excited. My compainion loves Rubiks cube and he is super cool. And ya awesome.

This week was cool a couple weeks ago, I was on a bus, and when I got
on, these non Korean, non American people were looking at me and talking
(creepy right). Then, I'm sitting on the bus and some one comes behind
me and says something I don't understand. I was like "What? He was like
"Oh sorry,  I thought you were Russian." I was like, "No I'm American." Then
we talked for a while, and he is from Uzbekistan working here, and he
is super cool. Last Saturday, we played soccer with him and a
friend. I'm hoping this can turn in to a great finding and teaching
opportunity.But its cool, I never met someone from Uzbekistan before.
Now I have haha. 

Our super awesome couple with the baptisimal date... :( their "water broke" (term for baptism date falling through) and we  haven't been able to meet them. So we went and visited anyway and only stayed like 20 mins and he had to go teach English. There is an unseen force trying to keep us from meeting them, because there so awesome Agggggggg. But we will pray like crazy because we are on the Lord's side and that is and always will be the winning side.

So, today I want to talk about How much Heavenly Father Loves His children. People have a perception that He is mean. No He is not! If He was, He wouldn't give us prophets and prayer and scriptures. But there are rules that He has to follow: the laws of mercy and justice. He gave us commandments to make us happy, and in Doctrine and Covenants section 130,verse 20-21

20 There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations 
of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—
 21 And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience 
to that law upon which it is predicated.

It says for that for every command he gave us, there is a specific blessing attached. So when get get blessed, it's because we obeyed a commandment. How awesome. The scriptures tell us the commandments and the blessings attached to them. He told us this so that we can receive more blessings. Because He, like all good parents, wants us to be happy and He wants to bless us a lot. There is another side to this. There must  needs be opposition in all things. When we disobey, there is a punishment attached to it. But Heavenly Father, in His infinite love, has provided a way to overcome that. He gave us a Savior, and he suffered the immense pain of our mistakes so we can be forgiven AND be happy again and return to Him again someday. 


There is a scripture in 3 Nephi 9:13 (Book of Mormon), 

He says, "... will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, 
and be converted, that I may heal you?"

When I read this, it's like He is pleading with us saying, "Please repent.
I can help you. I want to help you, but you need to ask first." Heavenly 
Father truly loves all of us so much. He wants us to come back to Him. 
In fact, His only goal is for us to come back to Him:
 
"For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality
and eternal elife of man." (Moses 1:39).

He has given us every tool and ability to come to Him. I know that He 
loves us and knows us all. I remember once, I had the flu and it was right
before Christmas,and the family had gone to a Christmas party. I was laying 
on the couch and I felt horrible...the flu is the worst...and I felt like
Heavenly Father didn't care about me. Then I prayed and asked if He
loved me. and I sang the Primary song "Heavenly Father are you really
there"

LDS Primary Song  "A Child's Prayer"

Heavenly Father, are you really there
And do you hear and answer every child's prayer?
Some say that heaven is far away
But I feel it close around me as I pray.

Heavenly Father, I remember now,
Something that Jesus told disciples long ago.
"Suffer the children to come to me..."
Father, in prayer I'm coming now to thee.

Pray, He is there.
Speak, He is listening.
You are His child. His love now surrounds you.
He hears your prayer. He loves the children.
"Of such is the kingdom...the kingdom of heaven." 


and I felt the the most power comforting feeling come over me
and I knew that He loved me and was watching over me.

I'm so excited that Brother Huesing went to the temple. So amazing.
He is so awesome. I bet Elder Beaston would be so happy to see him right
now. I loved hearing Brother Huessing's testimony He knew it was true
and he saw the great blessing that comes from serving our Heavenly
Father. That’s so amazing.


Also I'm sorry to hear about Brother Stone. He was a great person. I
loved most when he taught us his testimony. He talked about life
outside the church and how much happier life is in the church. He
said how all the worldly things that look cool...he said they're not.
He said that true happiness comes from the Gospel. I remember he would
bear this firm testimony in the lessons he taught us and I loved that.
I remember he also told us about getting an education and really told
us the blessings of working hard in high school and he told us to go
on a mission and told all the blessings his son had received from
it. I could tell he really loved us and wanted to help us be good.

Well this is it. I love you family. Be safe send me cookies....
Love you
Love Elder Rice

Pictures:
That’s me and my companion and our English flyer picture. and the other
pic is the newspaper article.

Brigham Comes To Visit

We had the opportunity to have our nephew, Brigham, come for a visit. Dee had lots of things planned...and the weather did it's best to interfere...as in 116 degree days and 97 degree nights. Even with having to work on his vacation days...and even take a quick trip to Ontario, California to solve a problem, we had a great time. 

First...family pizza and swimming night...

Good pic of Brigham...not so good pic of Kayty...

Ethan was having a great time the whole night with the bunny ears!

Ethan's molar pizza...Dr. Johnson would be so proud!

Even our chickens had some...  

We all went swimming, and then Cameo made her wonderful No-bake Cookies

I think this was Amber's first time to taste Cam's cookies...and she thought they were great!

Rice Rule # 74: You must leave SOME cookies in the no-bake cookie prep pan so Dad Rice can scoop the remains. 

During the week, Brigham and Dad were able to do many things

Brigham learned to play Cribbage...and he's pretty darned good at it!

Brigham swam...a lot...

Dad had gotten some rocket kits at a yard sale, so Brigham was able to build his own. 

He sawed and polished rock

He milled holes in the rock

The finished rocket after painting and decor

First flight

Another rocket

Milling out a box from olive wood. He made the box the perfect size to hold the stone dice he made and polished. 

He helped smoke a pork shoulder roast...12 hours...and two chickens.

Painting the dots on his dice

He even celebrated National Root Beer Float Day on August 6th with us! He makes a great float!

Thank you Rollin and Sharynn, for sharing your wonderful son with us. Thank you Trina and Aprilynne for helping get him to us and back home.