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
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