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