September 29, 2008

Continuing with my last story about how we were going to Galveston and hoping to find a place to live...we ended up coming to live in Texas City in the Elders apartment here. We are sleeping on the couch and floor. Texas City is a city right by the bridge that leads to Galveston, so we are not quite on Galveston yet but we are getting closer. We are trying to find a member to live with, but most people's houses were ruined. If their house wasn't ruined, they have a daughter living at home so we cant live there. Hopefully something comes up soon.

I wrote you a letter on Tuesday I think, we'll see when that one arrives. In the mail I got two letters from home. One was a copy of the e-mail I already got and the other was a normal letter. I also got a letter from Ryan Carreon (he's in the McAllen Texas mission if you don't remember). He said his mission prayed harder than ours, so the hurricane changed directions from their mission to ours...I thought it was funny.

Mom asked me a bunch of questions in that letter...I'll answer them here:I have no idea when I'll get to go to my real area, nobody does really. The answer is as soon as we find a place for us to live. There are a lot of people out there helping us look for places, so hopefully something comes up soon. I have all of my luggage already, so yes I do have a change of garments. I have like 10 actually. I am sleeping on a couch in the apartment here in Texas City. The apartment is SO crowded. Someone gave them an extra couch to deliver to someone else, but they never did it so they have this big couch sitting in the kitchen. All the floor is taken up my desks and beds so there is not even a walking path. I took a picture of it so you can see it later...its pretty amazing.

A lot of my companions things were ruined. When he was told to evacuate the hurricane was still headed south, so he thought he'd just sleep in Sugar Land for a day then come back to Galveston. Then the hurricane changed courses and hit Galveston directly. He only brought enough stuff to last him like 2-3 days, but he did bring most of his essentials. The mission president and his wife went to the apartment and salvaged what they could. Sister Allred washed it all for him and everything, so he does still have a lot of things. He's going to need to buy shoes and a couple other things though.

No, I haven't seen a picture of the pen Christopher made. Did you send that in a letter or something? Maybe I haven't gotten it yet. I think how the whole letter system works here is that you send the letters to the mission office then whenever the next time someone from the office sees us, they give us our mail. They send people out here all the time though, so I don't think it would be more than a week before we get our mail from them. Its still pretty slow though.

We are still doing service though. On Saturday and Sunday 500-600 people came from Dallas/Katy/other areas around there to come do service. The missionaries who knew the area were the guides for them, so Elder Nielson and I led a crew. The whole week before we had gone around filling out these papers that are called Work Orders, where we assess the houses damage and say what needs to be done there. We like 200 of these, so each group got a work order and after they finished the work order they just went down the street and helped everyone else. We took our group to one of our investigator families. They really appreciated it a lot, then we invited them to church and they came! It was pretty neat. It's a single mother named Kathy and her two daughters, one is 17 the other is 11. Elder Nielson had been teaching her for a few weeks before the hurricane and we are going to give her a baptismal date the next time we teach them.

Church was pretty interesting again this week. We had church at a members house here in Galveston, because the building still has no power and all the worker volunteer people were going to do a big sacrament meeting there. About 31 people came to our sacrament meeting. None of the bishopric was there and neither was the elders quorum president, so the high priest group leader conducted. We had sacrament and Elder Nielson gave a talk. The whole time these 3 crazy kids ran around yelling out the star wars theme song and fighting and doing stuff like that. Nobody could control them. It was still nice to have sacrament meeting though.

So basically we are just waiting to find an apartment and we just do what were told every day. We don't know what we are going to do tomorrow..they usually give us a call the night before. But that's where we're at.

I don't think I have really talked that much about the damage of the hurricane and all that stuff. If I have, that's ok I'll refresh your memories. The average house around here got about 3 feet of flood water in their house. The flood water isn't just normal water either. Its sea water mixed with sewage water, because all the sewage overflows and comes out the pipes. Nobody was allowed back on the island for over a week so all the water just sits there rotting. Most of the water leaks out of the house and goes back into the ocean but everything is still soaking wet and if there were any buckets or drawers or whatever, those got filled with water and never emptied out. Basically the houses stink worse than you can imagine. Mold is growing everywhere all over everything. There usually isn't too much you can salvage in the houses. I kind of explained this in my letter home, but everything that touches anything below the flood level has to be thrown out. That includes all the furniture, all the appliances, clothes, shoes, toys, walls, and carpet. We go into these houses, move all the heavy stuff out of the house and tear out the carpet and the sheet rock/dry wall. Its pretty nasty work because everything has been soaking in that nasty water. If anything is made out of material that absorbs water, like carpet and the padding underneath that, when you pick it up water spills out everywhere and releases that nasty stench. And the WORST thing that anybody can do is to open the refrigerator. Not only is it filled with nasty water, but all the meat and everything in there has been rotting. You are supposed to tape the fridge shut and carry it outside, never opening it. I've been in the house a few times when people have opened the fridge and the odor consumes the house immediately. Its pretty much impossible to breathe so everyone runs out of the house and waits for it to clear. Yeah...its pretty nasty. We all wear those mask things and gloves, but you still get that water all over you. I don't think I've ever looked forever to a shower more in my life before. What's even funnier is that when these volunteers come and help us with the work for a day they don't realize that we have been doing this ever since the storm hit and they talk about how hard they worked that day and how sore we are going to be the next day. They all say things like, "I bet you've never been this excited to shower before." I just laugh. Sometimes I'll tell them we've been doing it for two weeks so its not really that much of a change. They are all pretty astounded because most of them can barely walk after doing just 1 day of service. I have to say though, I do go to sleep pretty easy now.

Yesterday all of the volunteers met at the church at like 8, had sacrament, then went out to work. Elder Nielson and I went to the other sacrament meeting at the members home to accompany our investigators. It turns out that whole morning there were a bunch of photographers and news people there documenting everything. They had a camera set up right where the missionaries usually stand. The one day we weren't there all the news people decide to come...haha. Later that day someone from a nearby stake came to a house that our group was working on to take pictures of us for the public relations committee. She ended up only liking 1 picture she took, but I happen to be in the front of it. So I had to sign some release form saying its ok to publish my picture. Its going to be in their stake newsletter, and they're going to send it to Church News so they can use it if they want. That was kind of neat. There's about 500 of those pictures being sent in though.

Ok I have 1 more question. I have been documenting all the carnage and destruction with my camera, but I'm not quite sure how to send the pictures home. What do you think would be the best way to do it? Ok I've got to go now, but I am planning on writing another hand-written letter if I have time.

I love you all!!
Love,
Chase





click on the map, you will be able to see where Texas City is

Monday, September 22, 2008

The phrase "Called to Serve" has an all new meaning to me now. That's all that I have been doing lately. Doing service every day for about 8 hours.

That's really cool that they made an article about us in the church news. We have really made a huge difference on this whole community. So many people recognize us all over town. They call us the Yellow Shirts. Not everyone realizes that were from the church. We were actually just at Chili's wearing our yellow shirts and some guy came up and asked if we could come help him. The member we were with was like "oh so you've seen us around before" and the guy just laughed and said "yeah of course. Everyone has seen your yellow shirts." It was pretty cool.

Ok on Thursday or Friday...I don't even know, me and Elder Nielson were told to go to Lake Jackson and live in an apartment with 2 other elders and help the Spanish missionaries out there. The apartment has 2 bedrooms...its a really nice apartment. We have our own washer and dryer and everything. Sadly, the other two elders are big goofballs. This district has had a really tough time I think. They don't really follow the rules and most of them are just cruising through their missions. The whole raising the bar thing helped get rid of the people who really don't want to be here and got rid of most of the rebellious Elders, but there are still a ton of really neutral people. They just go with the flow, so all it takes is 1 Elder to lead them astray. I wasn't very surprised to hear that there hasn't been a baptism in this particular area for like a year. Hopefully we can make a difference while were here.

We just barely heard today that we are going to be here until Thursday, then we will go to Galveston and live in an unknown place for and unknown amount of time. We don't really get informed about what's going on. We are just doing as they ask.

I did have 2 almost normal days of missionary work though! We did missionary work for half of Saturday and on Sunday as well. So the first door that I knock on was definitely a strange one. I knocked on like 10 doors in this apartment complex without anyone opening the door then finally someone answered the door. It was a woman...or so I thought. It had womanly features and long hair. I started talking and realized this "woman" really needed to shave. It was definitely a transvestite. It had painted fingernails and everything. Definitely a man's voice though. There was also another man living in there with it too. It was really nasty/weird. I told them we were missionaries from the church and I pretty much just asked if they knew of anyone that would be interested in our message. Yeah...definitely did not want to go into that house. We did talk to a lot of normal people too though. We found 4 new investigators. Two of them seem genuinely interested and really want to know more. They both started asking us where our church was at before we even invited them to church. A lot of people recognized us because we were giving out hundreds of boxes of food in front of our church building, so a lot of people were really interested in listening to us.

So yesterday was my first church experience here in Texas. We went to the Spanish branch here in Lake Jackson. It was barely formed about 3 weeks ago. It was definitely a different experience. Their church is not a chapel, it is in a strip mall. It actually fits a lot of people though. There were probably 30-40 people there. There was no piano or CD player or anything, so we had to sing acapella. It was pretty much a solo for the missionaries...it was kind of funny. After the first song the branch president came up and had to explain to the people that when you are singing a song you don't go down the lines like you are reading a book, you have to read all the first lines, then all the 2nd lines, etc. It was funny. There were about 8 of us in Elder's Quorum, 4 of us were missionaries. It was pretty hard to understand everything everyone was saying, especially because I haven't heard native Spanish for a long time.

Elder Nielson and I speak Spanish a lot to each other. Surprisingly that is uncommon. Some Spanish missionaries get mad when people speak in Spanish all the time. There are a lot of stupid missionaries here. Elder Nielson is really good though. He follows all the rules and genuinely loves missionary work. He even said he wants to extend his mission for a transfer if he can so he can actually thoroughly train me in Galveston.

I'm at a member's home tonight e-mailing and another Elder still needs to E-mail so I have to finish up really quick. So, today we were told that we are going to do more service for a week with a man from California that will be here for a week. He has a tractor and a dump truck and all this professional stuff. There's 6 of us that will go with him every day...were some of the only Elders still doing service. We worked all day today, so we haven't really had a real P-day. The senior missionaries were nice enough to let us use their laptops to E-mail though. The guy we are doing service with is pretty rich and he's not exactly shy about it. He's very generous though. His wife is here too...she went and bought us all Quizno's for lunch then they took us to Chili's. It was reeeeally good. Guess what I got? A bacon burger. Yes of course I ate it all Dad. I would have taken a picture of me eating the last bite, but I didn't have my camera with me.

Ok, I'm going to try to write a hand-written letter this week, we'll see how it goes though. I was hoping to print your e-mail and respond to it more thoroughly in a written letter but I don't think they have a printer. I did already read the e-mail though. Ok I love you all!! I'm excited to see what this ever-changing mission has in store for me this week.

Love,
Chase

Confusing Letter

On Friday we received a hand written letter from Chase, we were all excited to hear how he was doing, what and where he was doing it!

The letter is dated - (in Chase's own hand) September 16th. I start reading the letter, but everything he is saying, I already know, but how could I? Too confusing! I keep reading, it sounds like he is talking about just arriving to the mission home way back on September 10th.

So then I look at the post mark on the envelope, which is Sept 11! What I think happened is that Chase VERY mistakenly wrote the date as the 16th when it was the 10th. It took 9 days to get the letter because of the hurricane.

Most of the letter was exactly the same as his First P-day letter (last Monday). I will write out what was new:
FROM CHASE:
There's definitely some pretty ghetto areas around here though. There was some guy trying to break into a car in some parking lot then the car alarm went off and he ran away. The AP's have some pretty crazy stories. All these signs on the freeways are saying a hurricane is coming & to fill up your cars with gas.

We'll spend the night here in the mission home. Tomorrow we'll have some training meetings then go out to our areas at 3:00 and get started. It's going to be awesome. (from Julie: I find this most interesting and funny, because little did he know what would really happen! We don't even know if he is in his area yet! Did you see the Church News? There is a picture of missionaries and other church members doing service in Houston. They are wearing the yellow t-shirt Chase also talked about in his letter. I looked closely, but Chase is NOT among one of the ones pictured.)

All the stop light signals are sideways - it's so weird. I'll have to take a picture of them sometime. That and all the other weird Texas stuff I see.

Love,
Chase

Note from Pres. Allred

Dear Parents & families -

All the missionaries are doing fine. I am in touch with them daily. We now have 86 of the missionaries back in their apartments with power, water, etc. We have 20 missionaries still at the Lexington Building (Stake Center). The members are taking care of us wonderfully. We have a generator, water, bathrooms, showers, cots and everything we need. We have 32 missionaries staying with members outside of their proselyting areas. These homes have power and water.

We are all involved in cleanup projects with the members and the communities. The missionaries are working hard and providing much needed service. All that we serve are very grateful, and this has created missionaries opportunities as well.

I have been so impressed with the willingness of the missionaries to work and serve and to cooperate during these difficulties. It is an honor to serve with them. Everyone that works with them is impressed by their cheerfulness and their willingness to work. We are trying very hard to arrange for all of the missionaries to email their parents on Monday.

It is a unique and gratifying experience to witness missionaries joining with other to provide service to those truly in need.

Thank you for your support.

Love,

Pres. Allred

First P-Day in Texas! Sept 15, 2008

FROM JULIE/MOM: I usually try to spell check and put a few paragraphs in, but no time this morning, I am just letting it out there it is GREAT and INTERESTING news, and I have no time.


Hmm...where should I start. Mom sent me an E-mail with about 50 different questions but I think if I just start from the beginning and talk about everything that happened it'll answer most of her questions. If not I'll try to remember to answer them at the end.So.....I got to talk to everyone on Wednesday when I was in the airport...that was really fun. In a couple months here we'll get to talk again too. But anyway...so on Wednesday we landed in Houston and we were greeted by President and Sister Allred just like they said they would. We put all our luggage in the mission van and started driving down to Sugar Land, where the mission home is. They gave us sandwiches and other snacks and things, which I was very helpful for. By the way I had a cinnabon and a pina colada for breakfast in the airport. It was sooo good. That was the first non-MTC food I've had for the past 2 months. Anyway, the APs (assistents to the president) dropped off all our luggage at the mission home then took us out tracking. There were other missionaries there and we split up into groups of 2 or 3 and went tracking in a bunch of different areas. I went with one of the APs. It was really fun. We ran across the street to a Laundramat and started talked to people all around in there and outside. After like 45 min we talked to 6-7 people and 5 of them agreed to have the missionaries come back and teach them more. 3 of them were in Spanish. I did all of them except for 2. Well...I didnt do them myself, but I was the one who initiated the conversation and got our little mini-lesson going. We were really successful...we found 5 more possible investigators for whoever works that area.So that night we got to sleep in the mission home and we all pretty much got our own beds. It was reeeeally nice. It was hard to get up in the morning. But anyway...on Wednesday night we just got word that hurricane Ike took a sudden change and started heading straight for Houston. Isn't that funny how as soon as I land that hurricane changes its path immediately and heads directly to the city I was at. And thats where my mission so far as taken a huge turn.So the next day we went to the local stake center to get trained and oriented on all the logistics and other random stuff. Then we got to meet our trainers and find out where our first areas would be. My area is on Galveston Island. If you look on a map its that long skinny island right off the coast from Houston. I'm really really excited about that. Theres a big long bridge that goes from Houston out to Galveston Island and thats the only way to get to the island. We have the whole upper/eastern half of the island then 2 sets of sisters cover the lower/western part of the island. One companionship of the sisters speaks Spanish and the other speaks English. Since me and my companion are the only ones on the upper half of the island, we cover everyone regardless of what language they speak. My companion said usually only about 30-40% of the lessons we teach are in Spanish. Theres a bunch of governmental housing/projects on the island. Theres also a bunch of rich people. Theres apparently a ton of black people there too. There is only one English ward and one Spanish branch on the island. I'm really excited.My trainer is Elder Neilson. Hes from Bountiful Utah. This is his last transfer before he goes home. I think the best way to describe him would be to say imagine Eeyore (or however you spell it). He talks really really slow, monotonous and a deep voice. He has a really funny sense of humor. It always says things jokingly but nobody realizes hes joking unless you know him. He's actually a really funny person. He has been in a couple of English only areas, one Spanish only Area, then he's been in Galveston which is a bilingual area for like 7 months. His Spanish is pretty good though. He knows a lot of vocabulary. I cant say he sounds like a native when he speaks though, because he speaks Spanish just like he does English; with a really slow monotonous tone. Its funny. I think he'll be a really good trainer. We're already good friends.So at the same time I found out who my trainer was and what my area would be, they also told me we were all evacuated from the island. So...I havent even been to my area yet and I've already been evacuated. Luckily there are a lot of members around here and they volunteered their houses to us. Me, my companion, and 2 other elders from our district are staying here at the Alemany's house. You have already talked to them twice apparently. They are very funny people and they make us all laugh all day. Brother Alemany is a teacher at Rice University and he converted about 5-6 years ago. He's pretty much your stereotypical nerdy scientist. He does some sort of nuclear chemistry something or other. He tried to explain it but it was way over my head. The first thing I noticed about him is that he's paranoid of everything and he gets really stressed out about everything. We showed up right as the hurricane was coming so you could only imagine how he was. He was already boarding up all the windows and preparing everything for the storm to come. It seemed like we were preparing for a nuclear winter or something. He was running all around the house and the yard in the biggest rush and the hurricane wasnt going to come for like a day and a half...it was really funny. We helped him with everything we could. Sister Alemany is the opposite. She is very laid back and relaxed. She was relaxing in the living room and getting ready for dinner as her husband was running around in a frenzied panic...it was really funny to see the huge contrast. We have all agreed that our vocabulary has increased a lot after living with brother Alemany for 3 days. He uses a lot of strange words. He never says anything normal either; he always uses the technical terms. Like instead of saying car, he says vehicle. It makes me laugh every single time.So anyway...by the next day we had already boarded up all our windows (we were the only people in this whole area to board up our windows) and we had the freezer stocked to the brim by that night. That night is when the storm hit. I was kind of disappointed to be honest. All the windows were blocked off so I couldnt see anything!! You could hear the wind was really really strong and you could hear stuff flying around hitting stuff, but thats about it. Every once in a while we could hear a tree snap or something. I slept through most of it. Brother Alemany stayed up all night and peeked out the front door every 30 minutes because he was afraid the tree in the front yard would start to lean over the house and then snap. That morning we woke up and we walked over to a single mother in the ward to make sure she was alright. There were leaves and branches ALL over. There were trees knocked over in the street and streets signs blown over. Dont worry Mom...I took my camera and documented everything. Pretty much everything was a mess. That day we started doing service around the neighborhoods and we have been doing that ever since. In this particular neighborhood we got power back by Saturday evening. Right now most places still dont have power. Galveston Island had 4-5 feet of water over the whole island. The mayor issued a mandatory evacuation for everyone on the island before the storm hit, but apparently mandatory means optional when it comes to this. Only 60% of the island evacuated. As of right now theres still water on the island and they dont have electricity or even running water. The island is still closed to the public. We are not sure when we're going to get to go back. Hopefully we dont get reassigned...I'll be very disappointed. So for the past 2 days we have woken up and gone to the stake center by 9am. There they formed a bunch of teams of like 6-8 people, each team with a team leader who is a member of the ward. From there we spread out all across our mission and we do service until about 5pm. Its hard work but its fun too. We have cut up entire trees and cleared off tons of people's properties. Today my group patched peoples rooves. We drove around in the neighborhood and looked for people whose homes had had shingles blown off and we ask them if they want any help. Almost every one of them tell us they have been desperate for help and that their house has been leaking. Then we climb up on their roof and patch it with tarps that were provided to us by the church. One of the best parts is that we all got Mormon Helping Hands T-shirts. Theyre these bright yellow T-shirts that say have a picture of hands and say Mormon Helping Hands and have our church name on it. This was all definitely worth a free t-shirt.So thats basically what I've been up to. No real missionary work and we really have no idea whats going to happen in the future. For the past couple of days there have been 63 missionaries sleeping in the stake center building because they dont have electricity or water in their apartments. People have been allowed to go back to their apartments as they get electricity and water restored. They actually shower in the baptismal font every night...its pretty unusual but also funny.The weather hasnt been so bad, but I did get a sunburn today. I'm not exactly surprised though...I was on top of rooves under the scorching sun for like 8 hours straight today. I've pretty much gotten use to the humidity already. The only time that still gets me is at night time at like 9pm when you walk outside and its still ridiculously humid and unusually warm. The humidity never leaves, regardless of time. It doesnt cool down at night time.Oh, on Sunday we didnt have church in this whole area. We did service instead. That's partially because nobody/no church buildings had any power and because the stake center was being ocupied by missionaries.Yes I got the package, but that along with 2 of 3 of my bags of luggage are in the mission home and they'll remain there until we move out of the Alemany's. Yeah I only have 1 pair of church shoes now..it would probably be a good idea to get another pair. I only wore them on the first day here though. Every other day I just wear my running shoes (which are filthy now), jeans, and my mormon helping hands t-shirt. Luckily they have a washer/dryer here that we can use every day.My Spanish is pretty good actually. I've gotten a lot of compliments. The AP that I went tracting with was really surprised by how much I knew and so was my trainer. We have spoken barely any Spanish with each other up until today. I told him I wanted to speak as much Spanish as we could, so we started speaking it a lot today.No it hasn't rained since the hurricane. It actually didnt rain that much during the hurricane, which was really unusual. I think it rained 5" in this area. The wind was like 100mph though. The storm was also like 700 miles wide so it was ridiculously big. It was a strong category 2, borderline category 3 hurricane when it hit us. I learned that the categories are all determined by the wind speeds. I think it starts with Tropical Storm, then it goes to Hurricane category 1, then it goes upward from that. They get a lot of tropical storms around here I think, but Houston actually doesnt get hit by hurricanes that often. This is the 2nd time my companion has ever been evacuated and the last time was just for a tropical storm and it turned out to be nothing.Ok this is a pretty massive e-mail, I think I need to finish up. So much has happened these past few days that I could write a lot more, but thats basically what I've been up to. Definitely not your average mission. I know I didnt get through all of Mom's questions but I'll try to finish them off next week. Yeah, by the way my P-day is on Mondays. Ok, remember to ask me questions about other things you want to know. I've got to go now! I love you all!! Love, Chase

An E-mail from Chase's Mission President

Dear Parents & families:

I have been in touch with all of the missionaries today and all are fine. They are now involved in clean-up efforts and are enjoying being of service. Thank you for your prayers and concern. We have been blessed.

With love,

Pres. Allred

Chase Gets Evacuated!

Zak got a call this afternoon from a man who is hosting some missionaries in his home. He said he was in Southern Houston. All the missionaries have been evacuated. He said they did expect to get some "weather" where they were at, but he wanted us to know that Chase was safe.

He gave Zak his home phone and cell phone numbers. He said we could call if we wanted. I will try NOT to call. I'm sure Chase will be fine. He is probably very excited. One of his goals on his mission was to be in a hurricane! Third day in, he is going to get his wish!

The Phone Call!

Chase called and woke me up this morning at 7:00 CA time. He was at the airport, waiting to get on the plane for Texas. He had about 2 hours to wait.

Of course Zak and Kerry had been up for hours (seminary) and Kylie, Griffin and Quinn were up too.

He sounded very good. Said he got up at 4:30am! The packing was not a big deal. He had the time and room in his luggage. He is sending home a bad (old?) white shirt, shoes that he brought that were too small, old scriptures.

He went to go and get a cinnabon for breakfast, they were out, he had to wait 10 minutes, then they would have fresh. Yummy.

The only information that he received about Texas was that he (they, all the missionaries) would be met at the airport by their mission president, Pres. Allread. They get on the plane around 10:00, arrive around 2:40. The missionaries will not sit together on the plane. Chase bought a Book of Mormon that he could give away if he got the opportunity. He also had plenty of pass along cards.

He said he was really ready to leave the MTC and begin this part of his mission. He felt good about his Spanish. He and his companion speak Spanish a lot. He sounded positive, secure and happy.

Oh, yes, yesterday they had a devotional. Pres. Uchtdorf spoke! He said it was very good.

That is all I can remember. It was nice to hear his voice.

Received Tues Sept 9, 2008

Ahh...my last day here in the MTC.

I think normally stateside missionaries leave on Tuesday but there was some mission presidents conference or something, so we leave on Wednesday instead. I'm happy for that though...we get to go to the temple once more and go to more last devotional. Speaking of devotionals, Quinten L Cook came to our last devotional. He was on the committee that made Preach My Gospel, so of course he talked about that. It was an amazing talk. But anyway, half our district already left...all the international ones. They left yesterday.

Alriiiight...I remembered to bring my DearElder's with me this time. I still haven't responded to Mom's labor day letter where Zak, Quinn, and Mom wrote me. So...Quinn it looks like you're catchin up to me on pullups. I can probably only do 11 right now. I gave up on those because our stupid pullup bar is made out of metal and it pinches my hands when I use it. I do it anyway sometimes...I should take a picture of my hands after I use it next time...you can see exactly where the pull-up bar pinches me. How is Mario Kart Wii? It sounds like it should be pretty fun. I'll have to whoop you when I get back, so you better start practicing.

Bub...that was a good football update. I totally did not expect Brett Favre to come back. That's gonna be weird seeing him play for the Jets. And the story about Ocho Cinco made me laugh out loud. I also did hear that BYU won their first game. Our branch president told us that night when he came to our residence halls to visit us. And have fun waking up for seminary...even I don't have to wake up that early. Missionaries all have to wake up by 6:30, but here in the MTC we have to be in class by 7, so if you want to shower in the morning you have to wake up earlier. I usually wake up at like 6:15. But if it makes you feel any better, I have to report to the travel office here at 6am tomorrow, so I'm waking up at 4:45. That's going to be fun. Waking up in the morning is still definitely hard for me. Its not getting easier to wake up, but I think I'm just getting use to being tired in the morning. I wake up and I'm too tired to even open my eyes so I just walk around with my eyes closed walking into stuff, then I start to wake up more after I shower and get to class. Oh and Mom told me you have Sister Swift for English. I didn't know her either until I saw her at high school then saw her at church...it kind of scared me the first time. Just wait until you get sister To'o for a sub...haha...thats always interesting. While we're on the subject of football, I had better bring up fantasy football. Mom did update me on the Falcons, but I didn't hear if the Chargers won or not. I think I'm safe to assume they did. Looks like I won my first week of fantasy football too. I guess Bub gets some credit for overseeing my team.

OK....back to mission stuff again. No, nobody talked to me about Texas or any of the hurricanes. The only thing I know is that I'm supposed to be in the travel office here by 6:00am and that my flight takes off at 10:00am and lands at 2:19pm. I'm pretty sure there's a 1 hour time zone difference so the flight is only 3 hrs 19 min. That's plenty of time to convert all the people on the plane. haha...but in all seriousness they don't even give us Books of Mormon to give out, so I'm going to buy one for myself in case I find a good opportunity. I've stocked up on like 6-7 passalong cards too. I'm pretty set to go.There are 11 missionaries in my travel group, I'm not 100% sure if they are all going to my mission. 4 of us are from my district. Me, my companion, and the 2 hermanas. I did start packing. This last week one Elder was delayed because of some visa problems and the rest of his district left, so we picked him up as a 3rd companion until he left yesterday. We had to take him back to our rooms on Sunday to pack, so I just packed at the same time. So I'm pretty ahead of things. I've got a lot of room...packing as gone really nice so far. They do have a ton of rules about the weight of the bags and that you can only have 2 bags checked for free now or something. Pretty stupid rules...but I guess they need to find more ways to take money from people to make up for gas prices. I don't know when my P-day will be in Texas. E-mailing me the first week sounds like a good idea to me. We'll see how it goes and I'll figure something out. I remember Christopher (I'm not sure about Steven) would always print out the e-mail right away and just respond to the previous weeks email that he printed out and read the last week. I haven't been doing great with the whole taking pictures thing. I'll try to take a bunch before I get done packing though.

About my phone call...so Mom you told me your doctors appointment is at 9:30 PM?? did you mean AM? I'd assume so because that is a weird time for a doctors appointment. I'll call your cell phones though if nobody picks up at home. I think I'm just going to buy like a 15 minute calling card and use that. And the flash thing is just when you call someone you can hit flash and dial a 3rd person so its like a 3 way call.

No I am not sick of the MTC food. Sometimes it is nasty, but they always have like 3-4 food options and there's always something fairly edible. Its going to be a change having to cook everything for myself. I have been sleeping pretty well. At first it would take me like and hour or maybe 2 to get to sleep, not I can do it like 20 min. I am feeling well. Usually when a big change is about to happen a ton of anxiety builds up, but I feel fine now. I usually don't even realize when I have all that anxiety built up in me, but whenever it happens I can only eat like half as much as normal. This morning for breakfast I had 4 bowls of frosted flakes, a donut, and 2 glasses of powerade, so i think I'm fine. I'll definitely miss the easy access to unlimited donuts.

I don't get too nervous speaking Spanish. I know its going to be pretty rough for the first few weeks in the field, but I think I'll adjust pretty well. I really like speaking Spanish a lot though. I'm excited to be able to start speaking like natives and learn their little expressions they always use. All in all I've been doing really well. I just gave a blessing to one of the hermanas that is super stressed out. It was a really powerful blessing. It was a really good experience. She feels way better. After the blessing she wrote down everything about it she could remember in her journal.

Ahh...I'm running out of time!! A lot of things happened this week, but I guess its not so bad because I'm going to get to call home tomorrow anyway. Ok...I'm excited to talk to you tomorrow! I've got a lot of stuff left to do today. I love you all and miss you!!

Love,
Chase

IKE

Chase may get a taste of his first hurricane on Saturday! Ike is reported to reach Galveston on Saturday. Galveston is right on the coast, Houston is just inland from there. Maybe we will get news from Chase today about that!

Thinking of Writing Chase?

Chase leaves for Texas on Wednesday!

So if you want to write to him now, send him a letter right to Texas. Here is that address:

Elder Chase Barton Cole
Houston South Mission
4627 Austin Parkway
Sugar Land, TX 77479


Send him a letter! He would love to get a "hi" from ALL of you!

Received Tue, September 2, 2008

I got my flight plans this week!!! I'm leaving for the Houston Intercontinental airport on September 10 at 10:00am. I leave Salt lake at 10:00am and get to Houston at 2:19pm. I'm leaving the MTC at 6:00am. Our branch president is going to talk to us this Sunday and tell us all about what's going to happen and everything, so I don't know that much right now, but I do know that we get to call home for like 15 min before we take off in Salt Lake, or maybe in Houston after we land...I'm not sure.

I think I just have a normal P-day next week so I'll probably be able to E-mail with more information, but I should be calling home sometime on Wednesday. I'm assuming Mom will be home. If you want we can do a flash call or whatever and call everyone else who's available. If not that's OK too...it'll only be like 15 min anyway.

That was a good story about the girl who just got back from my mission. It's good to know I'll be in good hands. That's funny that she said ya'll all the time...I guess that's inevitable after living in Texas for 2 years. I'm sure that'll happen to me too. I'm assuming that girl was an English speaking sister, so it was probably a lot easier for her to pick up the Texas accent.

I just realized something really cool about being serving a state-side Spanish speaking mission. At first I was hoping that I would only ever speak Spanish after I got into the field and never use English. But just yesterday I realized that being able to speak English is a gift. I will truly be bilingual, whereas if I went to a fully Spanish speaking country, pretty much everyone only speaks Spanish, so you only use one language. In Texas, there will be random people in the streets who speak English and Spanish, and I know both languages. Another thing is that I'll meet Spanish speakers from all over the world. People come to America from all over the place. I'm assuming the majority will be from Mexico, but I know that there's a pretty diverse range of Spanish-speaking ethnicities. So I'll get a little taste of everything. I'm way excited to get out into the field.

I'm glad you liked the bookmark Dad, I have one for myself too. I didn't even notice it was in chronological order until I had it for a week or two.

Kylie that is some pretty impressive stuff. Doing a flip and a half has always been pretty scary for me because I'm afraid I'm going to slam my face into the water. It looks like Kylie is going to give me some competition on the diving board by the time I get back. Especially because I'll be pretty out of practice.

I bet Griffin is so excited to finally be able to be on his own soccer team. Griffin's probably going to be a star player on his team.

So the Olympics came and went and the only things I ever heard about the Olympics were from Mom. The MTC really is a giant bubble. We are so excluded from the outside world to the point where its funny. We definitely have no idea whats going on. We don't even have newspapers or anything. Out in the field we'll probably at least hear of these things from members or in other random places.

I think when I left California, gas was around $4.55. That's good that gas is finally going down a little, but is the stock market still way down? Our teacher told us it was dropping pretty bad for a while.

Ok I have a pretty crazy story. So last Tuesday I was sitting in a devotional and these 2 senior missionaries were sitting by me and the man looked so familiar. I thought I had just seen him around or something. We went through the whole devotional without ever saying anything to each other. Then after the devotional we started talking and I told him where I was from. He said that his wife's brother (I think) is Bill Card. Then I was like...wait a second. Did you use to work on the LA temple? He said yes and we both remembered that he was one of the temple workers who was there when I took out my endowments. His last name is Christenot (pronounced Chrisnot I think). It was a pretty huge coincidence to first have randomly met each other in the temple then to randomly be sitting next to each other in a massive room during a devotional. I've seen like at least once every day since then. They're going to Virginia on a military service mission or something like that. He use to be a navy pilot.

Ok I have one question. So I'm going to be leaving in a week and I've kind of thought about packing. I think I should probably send my old scripture and my shoes that are too small, back home. I also have a whole bunch of letters. Do you think I should save these letters or should I send those home too? I could probably put them in the same box as the stuff I'm sending home. Christopher and Steven, did you save your letters or did you just throw them away? I felt kind of weird about throwing letters away, but I also don't really want to carry them around with me everywhere.

We'll this week is a really important week for me. Here in the MTC we focus on learning and studying, then we practice teaching on the side. I know that when we get into the field we are going to be focusing on teaching then only do a little learning and studying on the side. So, anything I really want to study hard or learn well I should study this week. So I've got to be really selective on what I study. I've learned a ton though and I'm getting pretty ready to go. I've gone through over 100 sheets of papers taking notes and preparing lessons. My study binder is getting stuffed.

Ok well I'm just about out of time now. The last DearElders I got were from Friday because yesterday was labor day and you don't get dearelders on weekends. Our district leader just went to get all our mail, so I'll have to respond to it next week. My Spanish is coming along pretty well. I am am still working with subjunctive. Its coming very slowly, but its still coming. I feel comfortable teaching lessons and I can communicate with natives, so I feel good about that. I'm sure it'll take a while to get use to it all in the field, but I'm excited for that.

Ok, I have to go now!
I love you all!
Chase