Received Tues, Aug 19th

I've got only 3 weeks left here in the MTC!

I am getting more and more excited and anxious to get out to the field every day. We have learned every Spanish grammar principle and we are just reviewing ones we need work on now. We have gone over pretty much everything in Preach My Gospel and we're just reviewing things we want to work on. For these last few weeks I'm just going to try to speak as much Spanish as possible and review grammar that I need work on. I'm also teaching in the TEC (where you teach teachers who pretend to be investigators, then they give you feedback) as much as possible. Everyone says these 3 weeks go by faster than any other ones...I hope so.

Ok I actually remembered to bring my letters with me to respond to today, so I'm going to go through those real quick. I hope Dad had an awesome birthday. I totally forgot about the taco truck. I'm not too disappointed on missing out on that though...I'm going to be getting 2 years worth of authentic Mexican food anyway. I actually already knew about all the callings a week before you sent that DearElder...Dad told me in the letter he sent me. I loved the descriptions of each of the Elder's quorum guys though. It made me laugh out loud. I think the Cards will do awesome at seminary. No I have not gotten a letter from the Parks yet and I didn't get cinnamon rolls or anything from the Garry's. I did get a letter from Catherine Card and also one from Torri McEntire..her letter was pretty funny. Ryan Carreon is in the McAllen Texas mission. Apparently hes already been evacuated for a hurricane once already. So is this the week Melanie Warner comes in or is that next? I'll keep an eye out for her.

Did you know that every Wednesday when we get a whole new wave of missionaries, there is only 1 district of intermediate Spanish speakers and only 1 of advanced? There are only 2 zones in the whole MTC that have intermediate Spanish speaking classes. Like 90% of the districts that come in are beginners, so I was pretty lucky I guess. Our teacher also told us last week that he's never pushed a district as hard as ours before, but we are taking it so easily. He said he's going to turn up the heat even more this week. We told him to bring it on. My Spanish is going pretty well. I can understand like 90% of what a native speaker says as long as they don't have really weird accents. We teach all our lessons and everything in Spanish now. One day we had a substitute teacher from Mexico and his cell phone rang and it scared him and he yelled, Ay Chispas!! Its been a big joke in our class since then. Ay chispas is one of my favorite sayings now.

I think my favorite Spanish songs are Secreta Oracion and Jesus es Mi Luz. We sing Secreta Oracion all the time...it's an awesome song. Do you remember those songs Christopher? Our teacher, Hermano Peterson, is awesome though. We do a lot of practices where he will pretend to be an investigator that he taught on his mission. It makes it so much more real and the problems we are dealing with are real. After we go through and teach him the best we can, he tells us how he did it when he came across it in the field. He has some incredible stories. It's really fun. His other brother just got back from his mission and he is teacher at the MTC now too. He also has a younger brother who is here learning Japanese, so all 3 of them eat together all the time. Our branch president's son is also here so they get to eat together at least every Sunday. Oh yeah...Christopher's blue Spanish learning book thing he gave me has been a hit in my class. I started using it last week to try to understand subjunctive a little better and I was pretty fascinated by how the guy in the book teaches these things. Other people asked me about it and ever since then its been passed around to just about everyone in my class.

Christopher/Steven do you think you guys could get Tony's address for me? You could probably just ask him over facebook or something like that.

This Sunday is when my companion and I were officially made the Zone Leaders. I'm not to worried though. We've just got a couple extra meetings and responsibilities. I'm working every second I'm awake anyway, so I don't mind doing Zone Leader stuff too. We sit up on the stands with the bishopric during church too, that's kind of fun.

How is life at home?? Football season starting soon isn't it? Are people excited for fantasy football? Are Christopher and Steven getting ready to come back up to BYU? You're going to have to let me know how BYU is doing. And also how the chargers do. How's your leg doing now Mom?

Ok well my time is pretty much out now. Everything is still going great. No real problems. I'm working every second I can and I feel like I've got a pretty good vision of what I want to get done and what I want to accomplish while I'm here. I love you all and I love hearing from everyone. It always makes a day better. I'm going to TRY to get a handwritten letter in today where I can say a couple sentences to everyone individually. We'll see though. P-days are always ridiculously busy.

Love,
Chase