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
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