July 22 Letter

Chase talked about his schedule - now that all the training is over:

"Monday's are pretty draining because we have breakfast in the morning, then gym, then MDT (missionary determined time) which is when we get to choose what we want, how, and where we want to study. So those were all of our breaks right away in the first half of the day, then after lunch we have class for 4 hours, dinner, then class for 4 more hours. My teachers are really good though, so its not so bad. Our main teacher told me that our district has picked up Spanish faster and other teaching concepts faster than any district he's taught in the past 2 years that he's been here. He said that we are a very special district and that only every once in a long time a district like ours comes through. He said that one reason for that is probably because I'm doing a really good job as district leader...it was a really good compliment.

I went to the RC (referral center) yesterday which is where you call people who asked the church to send them a Bible, BoM, movie, etc, and you ask them if they've received it and you try to tell them more about the church. So the first lady that picked up from me a some 62 year old black woman from Kentucky with a very thick accent. She was clearly one of those crazy ladies who don't get very many chances to talk to people so she was very excited to talk to me. She told me her whoooole life story and talked about a bunch of really random stories. I kept trying to relate everything back to our church so I could talk to her about it but she was more interested in what she had to say...it was pretty funny though. She told me she had problems sleeping at night and started telling me about some show she saw on PBS that comes on at 3am and she said some guy named "Bobby Pins" came on the show and she thought it was quite a hilarious name. I told her that if I have trouble sleeping at night I like to read the scriptures to help calm me down. Then she makes like 1 comment about the Bible and starts telling me some story about one of her kids. After like 15 min of trying to talk to her about the Gospel I had to tell her I had to go. I love the RC though...its great practice for being on the mission field. I'll have to tell you all that story when we talk on the phone because its much funnier if you hear it with the accents and all the crazy stories she told.

So gym is one of my favorite times of the day. For the first few week I went running with Elder Strickland who is the guy from the air force academy. This week we have all been playing soccer every day. It is so much fun. Its probably that much fun because I dominate everyone. I always score like 3 goals then go back and play defense and never let them score. It's really fun.

I don't remember if I told you but I decided to start doing pull-ups every night. The first night I did 8 pull-ups, not I'm up to 12. My goal is to be able to do 20 before I leave the MTC. There are 2 missionaries in my district who are like blackbelt martial art pro's so they've been teaching me martial arts stuff. Its pretty fun."