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
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
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