The Sixth Epistle of Elder Hobbs

The Sixth Epistle of Elder Hobbs.

When I spoke to my brother concerning my epistles earlier, he said they were simply too long and thus he hadn't read any of them.

However he recommended I have a sort of summary / chapter heading like in the Book of Mormon, so I'll do that.

Mission Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ffTdfUoqUfe9ysnD8

Sketchbook Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/gd9QLB9Et3ck3no49

Culver grows rich from preacher's pockets, Churches are used for recreation, Ancient Carols are improved, Felled trees are shattered and immolated, Missionaries are poisoned by gluttony, men speak in tongues in pursuit of capital, hymns are sung rapidly, Risk takes another victim

The Sixth Epistle of Elder Hobbs:

Monday:

We first called with family while our laundry was being cleansed and dried by machines in the apartment. Then, we took a trip to Walmart for groceries, a great host of items was to be found; far greater than I had anticipated.

But we purchased only necessary groceries, and I acquired bowls and cups for 50 cents each since we had very few.

After this I did some guitar practice, then we went thrifting with the English elders for a bit (and I found no items that were appealing), then we went to the mall and met with most of the mission. After some aimless wandering and visiting stores, I saw a very interesting cold-weather poncho with an italian tricolor pattern with a large monochrome image of mary upon the center.

It led to nothing however, and we went to Culver's for a district lunch. Every single time we get fast food, my companion always gets his food last. Among all groups, he is last.

Then we went to the ward, we played a bit of cards while I played my guitar. Then some played basketball while I attempted to play some melodies on a church piano to varying degrees of success.

Then we did calls for like 3 hours and the day concluded.

I also learned that "If You Could Hie to Kolob" was written to the tune of an older carol called "Dives and Lazarus". If you want to find the original, use google, but I found the original and found it lousy to sing and with a weird structure. So I changed a word or two, added a few verses, and made the condemnation of Dives much stronger. And now it's a lot easier to sing to the tune of "If You Could Hie to Kolob":

(I think dives is pronounced as dive- es for singing this song)

1 As it fell out upon one day,
Rich Dives made a feast,
He invited his compatriots,
Who persecute the meek.
Then Lazarus laid him down and down,
And down at dives' door:
"Some meat and drink, Brother Dives,
Bestow upon the poor."

2 "Thou'rt none of my brothers, Lazarus,
That beg upon my door;
No meat, nor drink I give thee,
Nor to bestow on the poor.
"Then Lazarus laid him down and down,
All under Dives' wall:
"Some meat, some drink, Diverus,
Or hunger starve I shall."

3 "Thou'rt none of my brothers, Lazarus,
That lie begging at my gate;
No meat, no drink I give thee,
For Jesus Christ His sake.
"Then Dives sent forth hungry dogs,
To bite him as he lay;
They hadn't desire to bite one bite,
They licked his sores away.

3 "Thou'rt a scheming devil, Lazarus,
Who begile my loyal hounds;
But I will not relent or pause,
For you lie upon my grounds.
"Then Dives sent to his merry men,
To drive poor Lazarus away,
They'd not the power to cast one lash,
Their whips were flung away.

4 As it fell out upon one day,
Poor Lazarus aged and died;
There came two angels out of Heaven,
His soul therein to guide.
"Rise up! Rise up! Brother Lazarus,
And come along with us;
For you've a place prepared with God,
To joy for eternity"

5 As Dives feasted one lovely day,
Rich Dives choked and died;
There came two serpents out of Hell,
His soul therein to guide.
"Fall down! Fall down! Brother Diverus,
And come along with us;
For Satan has a home in Hell,
For greedy men like thee."

6 Then Dives looked up with teary eyes
And saw poor Lazarus blest;
Christ the Lord embraced with him,
While fire filled dives' breast
Dives was all filled with regret,
But it was much too late,
Belief in God is all for naught,
Without works to support it.

7 His golden rainment pulled him down,
To serve that fiery throne,
Devils scorned and Jesus wept,
For Hell was his new home.
"O, was I now but alive again,
The space of one half hour!
O, my riches I would cast away,
Then the devil would have no power!"

Tuesday:

I ate breakfast, I am now watching the Book of Mormon videos while I eat. 1 Nephi 1-8 were completed during breakfast and personal study.

We worked out as well, I've been a big elliptical guy. It's very easy, maybe I'll do some treadmill next.

Tomorrow is district council. My trainer/companion is our district leader; he has assigned me to lead a training on baptism, and to play the opening and closing hymns on my 12 string.

During personal study, I prepared my lesson plan and practiced some more guitar.

Then we got dressed in P-day clothes and went to a member's house. We met a very friendly dog and ate a bounteous feast of Mexican food, naturally prepared by an English member.

There was a plate of baked beans covered in melted cheese, a pan of pulverized meat of unknown origin, a plate of corn tortillas, a plate of flour tortillas, a bottle of a sweet red juice, a bottle of a sour grey juice, a bowl of green sauce with small wooden spheres scattered throughout, and a tray of a tangy red fluid.

I may be the worst at describing food.

And I had a strange chocolate containing a core of pistachio. It was verily sweet to the taste above many other chocolates, it also seemed somewhat spicy; I wonder if I'm allergic to pistachios or something? Supposedly the chocolate hailed from the distant city of "Dubai".

Then we split and stacked several trees worth of firewood, and then returned to the apartment to do comp study.

During comp and language study we focused on general Spanish phrases so I could share my testimony in español.

After this we drove, called a referral, and got an entirely unplanned lesson. It was pretty unusual; the friend was literally at work and they spared us the time to teach a lesson. We've ought to baptize them.

Then we went to dinner with a young member family who had a pair of highly energetic children. With them we ate chicken croissants, mashed potatoes, and gravy. It was a nice break from Mexican food.

We then shared a general conference talk with them and then moved onto English connect.

English Connect was pretty cool, from what I saw it was a free church-run program that teaches people the English they need to know for work. It's both charity and self reliance - which is precisely what the church strives for.

My companion ate too much at our two member meals and he suffered from a stomach too full.

Wednesday, I practiced guitar and had a root beer float for breakfast.

We carpooled with the English elders to district council. I played How Firm a Foundation well, but it was a bit quick. Our key indicators are pretty good but they could be better.

Frequently people we are teaching are simply too busy. Many are so completely drained by labor, studies, etc... that they are simply too tired to remember principles or read the Book of Mormon.

My baptism training went pretty decently. Then playing the closing hymn worked out great.

Then I had ramen and cranberry juice for lunch, planned the day's lessons, practiced my watercolors a bit, and worked on a bunch of Spanish studies.

Then I saw the absolutely odd verse of the day. Normally they're hopeful, definitely not like today's.

Jeremiah 2:12 Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord.

Thursday

I bought Risk and we did some Walmart streeting. We encountered a friend we have taught frequently. She's an old lady who's been on baptism date like 4 times. She has been taught all the lessons 3 times, and she's ready to live the big 3 (word of wisdom, law of chastity, law of tithing). She just doesn't feel ready for baptism yet.

Friday

I realized Risk takes a while and it might get boring. So I wrote an entirely new ruleset based on Risk, Risk: Europe, and a few Paradox games.

Feel free to scroll past this if you don't care.

How to Play Elder Mario Hobbs' Risk:

Setup - First each player rolls a die. The person who gets the highest roll is the first player. Turns go clockwise from the first player.

The first player chooses a territory to be their capital, then picks the corresponding card in the deck and places it face up in front of them. Finally they place an infantry on their capital territory. Then everyone else does the same. (Note: Players cannot have their capital in the same continent as another player).

Then territories are assigned. Starting with the first player, each player takes a turn placing an infantry on a territory adjacent to their lands. This concludes once a player is incapable of claiming a valid territory.

Then players are given 18 troops to assign however they please, in either units or buildings.

Then the game begins.

Each player gets a turn consisting of 2 phases, Attack, and Prepare

First you attack, you can attack any adjacent territory connected via border or sea-line. You must always leave behind at least one unit to stand guard in a territory.

To attack, push the attacking units into the enemy territory.

Attacks consist of 3 phases: Artillery, Cavalry, and Infantry.

First is the Artillery Phase. The Attacker and Defender each role 2 dice per artillery they have in the battle. For every roll 3 or higher, an enemy unit is destroyed. Each player decides which of their units are destroyed. This phase ends when all Artillery is rolled for.

Second is Cavalry Phase. It is identical to Artillery phase, however cavalry only roll 1 die.

Third is Infantry Phase. Attackers and defenders each role dice depending on how many infantry they have in battle. At maximum defenders roll 2 dice and attackers roll 3; regardless of whether or not they have more infantry than that.

Dice rolls are compared, If one side has more dice than the other; still roll it but disregard the lowest roll of the person with extra dice.

Compare rolls and for each die that beats another die, an enemy unit is destroyed.

Ex: A -5,4 D 3,3 -> 2 defender units destroyed.

If there is a tie, the defender wins.

After this, this repeats. A battle is fought until everyone on one or both sides is dead. Retreat or Surrender are acts of treason.

A player can attack as many times as they want during the first phase of their turn.

Artillery can be used to bombard adjacent territories. This is essentially an artillery attack that cannot be counter attacked. If an Artillery is used in a bombardment it cannot be used in an attack that turn. You can only bombard once per turn per artillery.

Then the preparation phase begins:

First a player is given 3 troops. Then they're given troops equal to their total territories divided by 3 rounded to the nearest whole number. Then they're given a troop for each capital they occupy (including their own). And finally they get two troops for each factory they have.

Then they can place their new troops. After the new troops (infantry) are placed they can choose to sacrifice some to create a cavalry unit, create an artillery unit, or buy a factory.

The new units can be placed anywhere, factories are tracked on a seperate scorecard or sheet of paper.

After new units have been assigned to the board: you may move units from one territory to any other in your territory OR you may move any number of units into a territory adjacent to them under your control.

Once movement is done, the turn is complete.

Prices:

Infantry - 1 Troop (literally putting a troop on the board)

Factory - 3 Troops

Cavalry - 5 Troops

Artillery - 15 Troops.

Winning and Losing:

You lose once another player wins, but you can get kicked out of the game early by losing all of your territories (aka, having your army defeated.)

The game ends once one of these win conditions are satisfied:

Only 1 player remains,
No Hostile actions within the past 5 turns,
All continents except for one are under a single player's control,
A single player owns 2 other capitals and retains control of their own.
A majority vote to end the game passes.

Once the game is over the places and winner is decided by this:

Country Score:
+50 points per held capital
+30 points per completely controlled continent
+50 points for controlling afroeurasia
+30 points for controlling the Americas
+5 points per held territory
+3 points per factory

Army Score:
+15 per Artillery
+5 per Cavalry
+1 per Infantry

War Score:
+500 points per destroyed enemy
+100 points per held enemy capital

Optional scoring:
+10 points per battle won
-10 points per battle lost
+3 points per enemy artillery destroyed
-3 points per artillery lost
+2 points per enemy cavalry destroyed
-2 points per cavalry lost
+1 point per enemy infantry destroyed
-1 point per infantry lost
+1 point per bombardment of enemy

Victory is whomever places the highest in all 3 categories.

And that is my Risk ruleset thus far. It's a bit of a transformation of the game. Initially I wanted to just add some Risk: Europe elements, but I figured I might as well add more mechanics while I'm already rewriting the rules.

Honestly I changed so much its basically a new game that uses old components.

Then we went to St. Peter or St. Paul, we encountered a lovely friend who had been expecting us. Unfortunately he can't drive to church, and his son had gotten arrested for driving unlicensed the day before.

After that, we had a lovely dinner with a member family, we had meatballs made with ground beef, a sort of tomato sauce, and rice. All of those ingredients comprised a meatball. To compliment these meatballs we had rolls, a normal salad, a fruit salad, and sugar cookies.

Apparently the member family's parents had been converts to the church. I did not expect this since they had 5 daughters and 2 sons. I had always assumed having massive families was more of a church culture thing that was passed down from the polygamy days; but the fact that converts were having seven kids has made me reconsider this assumption.

The family also lived in a sort of rural suburb 15 minutes out of Mankato. If I had to guess, most of the lots were probably around 5 acres. Though there were also some massive farm houses on some of the farms.

The smaller lots were sort of ranches kind of, they'd have a large house and then many animal pens. Generally from what I saw the pens contained luxury animals such as horses, with a few containing useful animals like chickens.

The larger lots were large agricultural farms. They had massive fields of corn. These lots also had large machinery, I don't know much of agriculture so I'm going off memory for terms: there were large tractors dragging large plows to plow newly harvested fields. There were large combines cutting down the stalks of corn as well.

And occasionally there was a semi-truck driving on the farmland, likely collecting the corn. These trucks then drove to large grain silos.

There were also larger silos, sometimes they were near fields, sometimes they were on their own. The massive silos had large loading and offloading areas for trucks. These silos also had connection to rail.

Back before my mission I liked to learn of logistics networks a great deal. I played a game called: "Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic". In that game you essentially have to manner production, transportation, and transaction of resources. So I now have a rudementary understanding of logistics.

So based on my rudementary knowledge, here's how I assume agriculture works in Minnesota.

0 - Winter - No agriculture possible, so farmers plan the year, sell crop futures to a company, and purchase seeds and needed supplies from Monsanto, John Deere, etc...
1. Spring - Fields are plowed and planted, and fertilized by tractors after initial snowmelt
2 - wait until crops grow
3 - After crops have grown, combines harvest and then trucks take the harvest to local silos.
4 - Negotiations are made, and farmers transport their harvest to a corporation's local silo.
5 - Corp sells crops to another company and trains take the harvest to a factory for processing
6 - processed goods are then shipped via train and truck.
7 - repeat

Then it was Saturday

For lunch we went to what may be the greatest McDonalds on earth

1411 Madison Ave, Mankato, MN 56001

Firstly, the food was absolutely delicious. The burger tasted buttery and juicy instead the usual dry. The soda had extra syrup so it didn't taste bland. Service was quick too.

Secondly, the manager was working alongside the employees. He was managing, manning the register, and even bringing food to people. You could tell that he was a manager, because much like us he wore a white shirt, a tie, and a name badge.

Just like king Mosiah working among the people.

If every member of the petite-bourgeoisie and every member of the real bourgeoisie could do this, then class collaboration could actually help everyone. But alas 'tis not so.

Then we went to the thrift store so I could hopefully find a winter coat but I was unsuccessful. However, I found a pair of jeans that were perfectly my size and I didn't even need to use a belt. It turns out I was actually a waist size 28in when I thought I was a 30in.

Though it turns out waist size 28in isn't too common among men's pants, so I might have to just give up on the idea of pockets and thrift in the women's section.

I also got 2 Christmas ties.

Then we ate a feast with a few members, then we went to the ward trunk or treat, and we finished the day off with some Walmart streeting and stop-bys. And I finished my Risk ruleset found on yesterday's thing.

Sunday

A nice inspirational quote

Jeremiah 20: 11 But the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed; for they shall not prosper: their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten.

We went to church. Then cooked a frozen pizza and mozz sticks for lunch, then we attended a meeting and filled out spread sheets.

Then we attended a ton of meetings and the day was over.

As I write these final words I realize I'll be 19 on Tuesday, rather crazy. Trust God, beware of devils, good luck!