Dear Family,
My new companion's name is Elder Pedersen. He's huge...hes like 6'3 or 6'4 or something. Hes a football player. He graduated high school then left for his mission. SUU has offered him a full ride (EVERYTHING paid for) scholarship to play football for them. A couple weeks ago Bronco Mendenhall talked to his Dad and said he wants to meet with him in February and talk about recruiting him for BYU. If that goes well and Bronco can give Elder Pedersen a scholarship, he is going to play there. He's a receiver. He has only been out on his mission for about 9 months, so hes pretty new. Hes only been out like 6 months more than me. He is our new district leader and hes pretty nervous about everything. He's nervous about being district leader and because we are pretty much whitewashing the area. We're pretty much starting over with all new investigators and everything because most of them moved out during the storm. I'm not really very stressed out about it because I don't see any reason to be. I figure if we just do what were supposed to and work our hardest every day, opportunities to teach will arise and this area will be up and running again. So as long as I'm trying my hardest every day, I'm not really stressed out about whats going to happen.
Elder Pedersen is a good missionary though. Its been interesting to see how he does things as opposed to Elder Nielson. He does get kind of frustrated about having to whitewash though because its hard to know what to do sometimes. As time goes on it'll be fine though. It has been pretty hard to know what to do sometimes though...especially when it gets dark. It gets dark at like 7:30, so after that we cant find people to teach and we don't have a ton of investigators to set up appointments. Elder Pedersen is also a really deep sleeper so he sleeps through any and every alarm, so I wake him up every morning. That helps me get out of bed though. I guess the only weird thing about him is that he rarely closes the bathroom door when he's going to the bathroom. The last week has been interesting with him though because he's pretty much just following my lead. I have to decide who to visit and I'm the one who has to lead the way there. I'd only been in the area for like a week and a half and now I was the one responsible for knowing where everything was. I'm proud to say we never even got lost and we've been doing pretty well. Luckily Galveston is pretty easy to navigate in. Its been kind of fun being the leader though.
My stay in Texas City was pretty good. I love working with other missionaries because it gives me more exposure to different techniques and just different ways of doings things. It gives me experience. I learned a lot of valuable things in Texas City...some good things to do and some things I shouldn't do. They aren't exactly the hardest workers. They drive around and visit members for pretty much the whole day. They stay at each place for like an hour and a half too. They don't even share a spiritual thought with them half the time either. After a while I just started sharing the spiritual thoughts and started hinting that we had to go. I could tell the members would get uncomfortable with us there for so long but apparently the other Elders don't see that. One of them has been here a long time and hes just waiting to go home and the other one has only been out 6 months or so and he just follows along with what his companion does. I know I'm going to have at least one companion who doesn't really want to work on my mission, so I just always know in my mind that I'm going to always do what were supposed to regardless of what people around me are doing. I got a little practice with that in Texas City. I woke up on time and did all my studies when I was supposed to. The other missionaries weren't really bad but they were slow to get up and study and do the things were supposed to. It was all a good, learning experience for me. Being in a companionship of 3 wasn't too weird for me. I think a lot of people thought we were like FBI agents though. It is kind of intimidating on people who don't know us. It was funny to watch people's reactions.
Yes I'm still in the same area, its called Galveston East.
Yes were allowed to baptize illegal immigrants...I'm pretty sure there are several that attend the Galveston branch.
I did get those nasty pictures of your foot, I'm not sure if those are the pictures you're talking about.
No I did not receive the flash drive. I came across a little problem with that. I don't have the cord that connects my camera to the computer and I need that in order to put pictures on the flash drive. Maybe I can just try to buy one at Wal-Mart if I'm ever there again. I also thought of a back-up plan. I can just make a CD with all my pictures on it and send that home. I might try to do that today.
No I haven't received my absentee ballot. there was actually a problem with that. I didn't get a chance to fill out those papers that first week because my time ran out on the computer and I don't think you could print there anyway. So I sent it out last week and I think that was right on the deadline. hopefully that turns out alright.
So...I'm assuming we finally got our family pictures. Can you make a copy of one and send it to me? That would also be really nice if you could send me a bunch of stamps along with it. I'm out of stamps and I don't think I'm going to be able to go to a post office any time soon.
I found my new favorite thing last week. A powerade slushy from Sonics. They are soooo good. Its a blue powerade slushy. From like 2-5 they are half off too. Ive only gotten fast food like twice on my mission, but last time I had one of those and it was delicious.
In Texas City we visited this one Hispanic family and they were cooking dinner out back on their grill. That was the most meat I have ever seen in one place before. They had a massive grill FULL of meat. On the table they already had 3 plates stacked high of all sorts of meat...sausage, steak, ribs, chicken, etc. They were also cooking a huge thing of brisket. Apparently they just leave the brisket in the BBQ overnight. Definitely dangerous but it looked good. The food I ate was amazing too. People are pretty big on BBQing around here and they always buy ridiculous amounts of food.
I don't think I've ever told you about bed bugs before. Apparently bed bugs are real. They are tiny black bucks that hide in cracks in couches and beds and come out and suck your blood when you're sleeping. During my first stay in Texas City I got eaten every night by them. I've never even seen them though. Luckily we don't have bed bugs in our new apartment...those things are annoying.
Ok, I need more suggestions for food to make. I already make grilled cheese and BLT's all the time. Yesterday I thought of making those tacos we make at home with meat, cheese, lettuce, and beans. Quesadillas with chicken might be good. What else is good and easy to make?? I need ideas!
Ok, that's about all for this week. Were doing our best to find people to teach every day. We are visiting a lot of the people we did service for, the only problem is most of their houses are destroyed and they aren't living there right now. We are slowly finding more and more people though. Its a slow process but its hopefully going to get up and running pretty quickly.
Alright I love you all and I'll talk to you next week!
Love,
Chase
Monday, October 27, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Received Mon Oct 20, 2008
Today has been a pretty crazy day.
It is the end of the transfer already and my companion is going home. We dropped him off in Sugar Land about an hour ago and I'm here with the zone leaders doing e-mail at a library.
After this I will go and stay with the Texas City elders and we will be a companionship of 3 until Wednesday when I will get my new companion.
Yesterday I was really sick. I'm not sure what it was, but I think it might have been from the food I day the night before. We ate once at 4pm at a Hispanic lady's house. It was like pasta then some tortilla's with steak. That was pretty good, but it had a ton of onions. Then we ate at 7pm at another members house. They made some weird Indian food with couscous and they poured some weird stuff on top and put yogurt in it. It was a bit strange, but it actually tasted alright. I felt good and even ate again before I went to bed, but the next morning I woke up at 5am and felt really sick. I threw up a little after that, then I threw up about 4 more times until about 2pm. After I had thrown up so many times I had nothing left to throw up, so I wanted to get a little something in my stomach. I drank some powerade and that healed me up quite nicely. I felt a lot better after that. I ate a little bit of yogurt too. I did that at like 2 and didn't throw up again. My nausea went away and everything. I think powerade is a miracle drink. I had to ask the senior missionaries to go get some for me and I even knew which color would be the best for my stomach at that time. I napped for most of the day and went to sleep for the night at 7. I lost 4-5 pounds in that one day, but I feel fine today. That morning I was kind of in denial that I was sick though because it had been so long. I would throw up, then rest for like 5 min, then go shower or do my laundry or do whatever else I would normally do. After about the 3rd time I didn't have enough energy or strength to walk more than about 10 steps and realized I should probably rest. I'm all better now though.
Last week I got to go shopping and buy real food for the first time since I've been here. I might have already told you but I've been living pretty much off frozen foods that you just heat up, because we have been moving around all over the place so we couldn't really buy cooking stuff. So I bought a whole bunch of fruit and good food. For lunch some of the things I've had are chili dogs, a couple BLTs, and chicken fingers. I always eat my food with some grapes, an orange, and some fruit juice. Its made a big difference to be eating a lot healthier.
I also got my haircut at supercuts. I said what Christopher told me to say, which is, a 3 on the sides and trim the top. I was the only person there and some Asian guy cut my hair. After I told him that he never said another word. Usually they ask you how you want your sideburns or the back done and if you are satisfied. He just cut everything without saying anything and he took forever. He cut the front part like a retard too. He just combed it straight down and cut it straight across. Mom always cuts criss cross kind of so its not just like straight across, but apparently this guy didn't know. Everything else was fine though. I'm just happy I have shorter hair.
Hmm...what else happened this week. We have been mostly visiting less active members and members this week so I could get to know them before Elder Nielson left. I have also been trying to get to know the area, because my new companion will know nothing. There are about 3 active families in the Spanish ward right now. We have been visiting this one less active Spanish lady named Milagro this last week and we got her to go to church on Sunday! She hasn't been to church for 16 years and she finally agreed to go! It was really exciting. Were going to keep visiting and working with her.
Ok, I wrote down a bunch of random things I've thought of that I haven't told you from the past, so the rest of my e-mail will be random thoughts.
Dad do you remember that BYU quarterback named Gifford Nielson? He is the stake president of the Houston South Stake and we worked with him every day. Elder Nielson and I went to his house too...I didn't even know who he was at the time. Hes also a sports caster for a TV station down here. Tracy McGrady also lived down the street. He's got a huge house surrounded by a big gate.
I noticed this week that about 75% of the Spanish speakers that we are teaching are illegals. They usually aren't even that secretive about it to us either. One guy named Pachuca told us that the cops came and knocked on his door 3 times already, but he just went out the back door and hid. Hes been here in America for a couple years and his family doesn't want him to come back until he can get legalization papers for his whole family.
Haha...that reminded me of when we were trying to get Milagro to come to church, she knew Elder Nielson wanted to become a lawyer after his mission and she said she'll go to church as long as he comes back eventually and helps her get her legalization papers. He said he wont be done with school for another 7 years or so, but she said she didn't care and that she could wait. I think she was only half joking.
I was also just wondering how Brother Melton is doing. And has anyone talked to Jake Melton to see how he's doing at BYU?
Mom I think it would be best if you bought the flash drive and sent it to me. I don't know when I'll be able to go to a Wal Mart again. We usually just do our shopping at a nearby grocery store. I'm hoping next week I'll be able to get some of my pictures printed off, because I'm not going to be able to this week.
Ok well that's about all for this week. I cant believe a transfer has already passed. English missionaries have 17 transfers and Spanish missionaries have 16. I'm down to 15 left already! I'll have a new companion in a few days. I hope hes willing to work hard because this area is going to require a lot of work. We only have about 2-3 investigators who didn't move away because of the storm. There are a lot of really good finding opportunities though and this area has huge potential. We just have to be willing to work really hard for it. Regardless of how my companion is, I'm going to do my best to take advantage of what we do have.
Ok Ill talk to you all next week! I love you!!!
Love,
Chase
Ps. I got the absentee ballot thing yesterday and I'll send it in today.
It is the end of the transfer already and my companion is going home. We dropped him off in Sugar Land about an hour ago and I'm here with the zone leaders doing e-mail at a library.
After this I will go and stay with the Texas City elders and we will be a companionship of 3 until Wednesday when I will get my new companion.
Yesterday I was really sick. I'm not sure what it was, but I think it might have been from the food I day the night before. We ate once at 4pm at a Hispanic lady's house. It was like pasta then some tortilla's with steak. That was pretty good, but it had a ton of onions. Then we ate at 7pm at another members house. They made some weird Indian food with couscous and they poured some weird stuff on top and put yogurt in it. It was a bit strange, but it actually tasted alright. I felt good and even ate again before I went to bed, but the next morning I woke up at 5am and felt really sick. I threw up a little after that, then I threw up about 4 more times until about 2pm. After I had thrown up so many times I had nothing left to throw up, so I wanted to get a little something in my stomach. I drank some powerade and that healed me up quite nicely. I felt a lot better after that. I ate a little bit of yogurt too. I did that at like 2 and didn't throw up again. My nausea went away and everything. I think powerade is a miracle drink. I had to ask the senior missionaries to go get some for me and I even knew which color would be the best for my stomach at that time. I napped for most of the day and went to sleep for the night at 7. I lost 4-5 pounds in that one day, but I feel fine today. That morning I was kind of in denial that I was sick though because it had been so long. I would throw up, then rest for like 5 min, then go shower or do my laundry or do whatever else I would normally do. After about the 3rd time I didn't have enough energy or strength to walk more than about 10 steps and realized I should probably rest. I'm all better now though.
Last week I got to go shopping and buy real food for the first time since I've been here. I might have already told you but I've been living pretty much off frozen foods that you just heat up, because we have been moving around all over the place so we couldn't really buy cooking stuff. So I bought a whole bunch of fruit and good food. For lunch some of the things I've had are chili dogs, a couple BLTs, and chicken fingers. I always eat my food with some grapes, an orange, and some fruit juice. Its made a big difference to be eating a lot healthier.
I also got my haircut at supercuts. I said what Christopher told me to say, which is, a 3 on the sides and trim the top. I was the only person there and some Asian guy cut my hair. After I told him that he never said another word. Usually they ask you how you want your sideburns or the back done and if you are satisfied. He just cut everything without saying anything and he took forever. He cut the front part like a retard too. He just combed it straight down and cut it straight across. Mom always cuts criss cross kind of so its not just like straight across, but apparently this guy didn't know. Everything else was fine though. I'm just happy I have shorter hair.
Hmm...what else happened this week. We have been mostly visiting less active members and members this week so I could get to know them before Elder Nielson left. I have also been trying to get to know the area, because my new companion will know nothing. There are about 3 active families in the Spanish ward right now. We have been visiting this one less active Spanish lady named Milagro this last week and we got her to go to church on Sunday! She hasn't been to church for 16 years and she finally agreed to go! It was really exciting. Were going to keep visiting and working with her.
Ok, I wrote down a bunch of random things I've thought of that I haven't told you from the past, so the rest of my e-mail will be random thoughts.
Dad do you remember that BYU quarterback named Gifford Nielson? He is the stake president of the Houston South Stake and we worked with him every day. Elder Nielson and I went to his house too...I didn't even know who he was at the time. Hes also a sports caster for a TV station down here. Tracy McGrady also lived down the street. He's got a huge house surrounded by a big gate.
I noticed this week that about 75% of the Spanish speakers that we are teaching are illegals. They usually aren't even that secretive about it to us either. One guy named Pachuca told us that the cops came and knocked on his door 3 times already, but he just went out the back door and hid. Hes been here in America for a couple years and his family doesn't want him to come back until he can get legalization papers for his whole family.
Haha...that reminded me of when we were trying to get Milagro to come to church, she knew Elder Nielson wanted to become a lawyer after his mission and she said she'll go to church as long as he comes back eventually and helps her get her legalization papers. He said he wont be done with school for another 7 years or so, but she said she didn't care and that she could wait. I think she was only half joking.
I was also just wondering how Brother Melton is doing. And has anyone talked to Jake Melton to see how he's doing at BYU?
Mom I think it would be best if you bought the flash drive and sent it to me. I don't know when I'll be able to go to a Wal Mart again. We usually just do our shopping at a nearby grocery store. I'm hoping next week I'll be able to get some of my pictures printed off, because I'm not going to be able to this week.
Ok well that's about all for this week. I cant believe a transfer has already passed. English missionaries have 17 transfers and Spanish missionaries have 16. I'm down to 15 left already! I'll have a new companion in a few days. I hope hes willing to work hard because this area is going to require a lot of work. We only have about 2-3 investigators who didn't move away because of the storm. There are a lot of really good finding opportunities though and this area has huge potential. We just have to be willing to work really hard for it. Regardless of how my companion is, I'm going to do my best to take advantage of what we do have.
Ok Ill talk to you all next week! I love you!!!
Love,
Chase
Ps. I got the absentee ballot thing yesterday and I'll send it in today.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Received Mon Oct 13 2008
I'm finally in Galveston!!! We are staying in that condo with the senior missionaries...it is reeally nice. Me and Elder Nielson get the master suite because we have to put our desks in there to study. It is a really big condo and its new too. I took some picture of it. I think I'm just going to go to a walgreens or something to print out a lot of my pictures and send them home. Our schedule has been pretty much the same this last week. We work in the mornings until like 2 or 3 then come back to our apartments to proselyte for the second half of the day. A lot of people still arent back on Galveston yet so we dont have a ton of people to visit, so the half days have been working well. On Saturday we did have a full normal missionary day though. It was pretty good, but not a single person was home that we visited until like 5pm. We OYMed a lot of people at a washateria. (OYM = Open Your Mouth. Thats were you walk up to random people in the streets and talk to them. Tracting is when you go from house to house knocking on doors). So we did find a few potential investigators. We are also teaching one hispanic guy named Germán. Hes actually really smart and he is picking up on everything we teach him. Elder Nielson has been teaching him for a few months. His only problem is that he is living with his girlfriend, which is stupid because he tells us she always goes out and cheats on him. Thats even more awkward because he tells us when his girlfriend is sitting right there beside him. I guess thats not too weird in their culture. Another of our investigators is named Janaki. She is from India and she is Hindu. Shes definitely a very interesting person. Elder Nielson has been teaching her for a couple months too. She wanted to take our picture before we started our lesson because she is going to go back to India to visit her family in November and she wants to show all of her friends the missionaries that always visit her. She also invited us to come with her to India and she promised us she could provide us protection because the US Embassy is near where she lives. We told her we couldnt leave our area and she was disappointed. She also asked for like 5-6 Books of Mormon in her native language so she could give them to her friends. Shes a pretty good investigator...shes already spreading the gospel to people in other countries. The weirdest thing is that she believes everything we teach her, but she also believes her Hindu religion. We asked her if she believed the story of Adam and Eve and she was like, well yes of course! She understands how God blesses you for following the commandments and everything too. She goes to her Hindu church every Friday still though. She says that she believes everything we teach her and that she goes to her Hindu church to preserve her culture because that is something she never wants to lose. She's a pretty funny person. She says the word "evidentally" in just about every other sentence. She gave us some Indian bread too before we left, that was pretty good. She also told us she wants us to visit her for the rest of her life. I guess thats why we have home teachers!Oh yeah, I remebered I totally forgot to tell you last week that we had a Temple Zone Conference. For zone conference we got to go the temple in Houston! It was awesome. We go to a session in the morning, then have a 2 hour conference afterwards. It was really nice to be able to go back to the temple again.I also finally got that box with the trenchcoat and helmet delivered to me. Its a really nice trenchcoat...it will be good for when it gets really cold. That lighter raincoat that you sent me a picture of will be really good to have too. It has only rained one time since I have been here too, which is really unusual apparently. The weather has been pretty much perfect every day. Because of the lack of rain, the humidity hasnt been very bad at all either.I've been able to start biking more now because we proselyte at night time and I love it. We ride down along the sea wall so there is a cool ocean breeze that blows against you and you ride right along the ocean. Have I explained the sea wall to you before? The whole side of the island has been lifted up like 17 feet, so in order to get down to the beach you take these stairs to get down to the water. They did this to prevent flooding. So the sea wall is a big wide pathway that goes along hte ocean. There is a street that goes along the sea wall too...it is called Sea Wall blvd. So its nice to ride, and like how I explained last time it is really easy.One neat experience that I got to have was during service some guy in charge needed some Spanish speakers to help translate so he could communicate with a hispanic guy who neededed help with his house. Me and Elder Nielson got to go do it because Elder Nielson is one of the Elders to speaks Spanish the best. I actually did some of the translating too...it was really really cool. Another good experience was when we were doing service at another Spanish members home, so of course we were speaking Spanish to each other the whole time. Then when I was taking something outside, I was talking Spanish with one of the people there and one of the neighbors walked up to me and was like "Do any of you here speak English?" That made me pretty happy.I'm not going to be able to write a hand-written letter today so I'm going to give you my little informational tidbit about the island here. I think I'm going to keep doing this as I learn more about this place. I find all these things interesting, and I think it helps paint a picture in your mind about where I'm serving. So Galveston is mostly made up of two main groups. One group are young people who are going to the UTMB hospital for their doctoral residence or whatever its called. (I dont know if I told you, but the UTMB, University of Texas Medical Branch, hospital place is on the island) These people make up a lot of the Galveston ward. There are UTMB students and workers all over the island. The other group are the business owners. There are a lot of tourists here so people set up stores all over the place. The island definitely is not very wealthy. I doubt theres a single house here that was made after 1950. The only large houses are these big huge houses that were made in the late 1800's so they are really old. I took a picture of one of them...a recent convert lives in one of them. All the other houses are small and old. A lot of them are more like shacks. But they have recently closed down all the projects. That is most likely because a lot of the people who live there are the ones that do the looting. So they exported all of those people out of the island. They also have set a curfew is one portion of the city, which happens to be the poorest/ghetto part of the island. Nobody is allowed to be outside in that area past 10pm.I STILL havent had a normal meeting here in Galveston. Yesterday we had stake conference. It was really good. The Houston temple presidents live in this stake and they spoke for a few minutes. The main theme was service. They encouraged everyone to help each other out. One speaker made an analogy to bees. He said we all need to be more like bees. Not only are they always busy and doing something, but they always work together. A bee cannot exist alone, it always depends on its colony. I also found out that I think every choir has at least one overzealous singer, like the lady with the big red wig in our ward. The one in this choir was hilarious. She belted out those high notes...I still have problems holding the laughs down when I hear people like that sing.Ooo...I also learned one more thing this week. Remember how I told you how people always say Im fixin to do something? Well I just heard the ebonics form of that. Its, I'm fi'in to. It sounds more like "Im fin da eat some food" or something like that. It took me a second to catch on. I'm gonna be trilingual by the time I come back home...I'll know Spanish, English, and Ebonics.Hmm...well in other news we found out that we are going to do full time normal missionary work this whole week! President Allred is going to continue rotating through the mission and sending districts to come help with service each day, but our district is going to put a hold on service for now and start workin our areas. I'm way excited. This week is going to be awesome. It will definitely be hard though, because I know not a lot of people are home right now and their houses are unlivable.I remember one more thing I think I forgot to tell you. Remember how we walked into Sister Boone's (MTC pres's wife) and asked her if we could sing Army of Helaman? Well that happened our last week in the MTC when President Uchtdorf came to speak. They even got permission to change the words "And we will be the Lord's missionaries" to "And we are now the Lord's missionaries." It was awesome...I think every person there was singing. It was cool to know that we got to do that because of us asking. I guess learned that from Mom...you'll never know if you can get something until you ask for it.Today for P-day we went to Moody Gardens. Its this place that has a big aquarium, some rainforest place, a hotel, and a bunch of other stuff. We went to the aquarium...it was pretty cool. I couldnt take many good pictures though...camera's dont shoot through glass very well, especially when its dark. I'm also going to go get a well-needed haircut.Well, I'm going to fill out this registration ballot. Ohhhh yeah, Mom the address you have is wrong. That is the old apartment which is now ruined. I think the new address is 500 Ferry, #322. You should call in and get the new address. It should be something very similar to that. Ok I think that's just about it! I love you all and I'll talk to you later!!Love, Chase
Monday, October 6, 2008
Received Mon Oct 6, 2008
Hmm...where to start.
I got 3 letters from you I think. I got that manila envelope with return address labels, and a letter including the blog post. It made me laugh...that was a pretty creative idea to put the post + comments on a piece of paper. I'm also glad you send me those return address labels, they make things a lot easier. Christopher's wooden pen thing was crazy. That definitely sounds like a neat class. Its something I would enjoy taking.
In that one envelope you sent a picture of that raincoat thing and asked if I wanted it. I think that would be perfect. It would be good if you could get it in the darkest color they have. I think I saw a navy blue there...that would work perfect. I've been really lucky. It hasn't even rained once since I've been here! The weather has been perfect almost every day. The sky is always blue and the clouds are all just puffy and white; none show any risk of raining. I did hear that for the next 3 days they forecasted rain. So far the skies look pretty blue, but we'll see.
I really enjoyed conference a lot. The Galveston chapel still didn't have any power so we drove to the stake center in a city called Friendswood. We stayed there all day on Saturday...from the morning session until after the priesthood session. Then yesterday they had some massive generator (it filled up the whole back of this guy's truck) come and give power to the building so we could watch conference there. We even had AC...I was happy for that. Dallin H. Oaks gave almost the exact same talk to us in the MTC when I was there...he makes some really interesting points. There is so knowledge and so much to learn from every talk that it is simply impossible to pick it all up on your first time hearing it, so I am excited to be able to read through them again when the Ensign comes out.
We invited one of our investigating families to come to general conference and they were until they got into a car accident. They said it wasn't really serious, but it was almost a head-on collision. I have only taught one lesson so far, and it was to them. They have been conveniently living here in Texas City in a hotel while their house has been getting fixed, so we and taught them on Friday. The Mom's name is Kathy and she has two daughters named Kaitlyn and Taylor. They are 17 and 11 respectively. This was actually the first time Elder Nielson has been able to teach Kaitlyn because she has always been gone and at work when they came to teach Kathy and Taylor (they had been teaching then for about 3 weeks before the hurricane). The place Kaitlyn worked at happened to be one of the piers that was out in the ocean that got completely washed away. All you can see are the little wooden stilts that use to hold it up. And they don't have school for another week or so, so she doesn't have too much to occupy her time. At the end of the lesson we asked them to be baptized on October 18th and they all said yes. For Kaitlyn we said that we knew she had only been taught once, but we asked her if she would follow the example of her mother and sister and be baptized on the same date as she continues to learn of the truth of the gospel. She said yes too. Kathy does smoke though, so we are going to have to help her get over that. They are really a pretty amazing family.
Last night we went out for the second time to visit a member who lives here in Texas City. (The ward boundaries for the Galveston ward includes the whole island plus Texas City). She is somewhere in her 70's and she was baptized in 2000. She is a widow and lives by herself. We were really happy we decided to visit her because apparently one of her closest friends died that day and she was feeling pretty bad. She needed somebody to vent to for a while and just talk to. She felt a lot better by the time we left. That is the extend of my teaching so far!
I do have an update on my living situation though. Once again, it was pretty unexpected. We this condominium place pretty close to where we used to live. The condos are way nice, but they are also expensive. They are about $900 every month. So the president decided to put 2 of the senior missionaries in there with us. So me and Elder Nielson are going to be living with 2 married old people...I'm not gonna lie, that will probably be kind of weird. At least it is a really nice apartment though. We are going to move in as soon as they turn the power on. The building itself has power and they are turning the power on to the individual apartments when they pay their deposit. We already paid, were just waiting for them to flip the switch to turn the power on. I cant imagine that will take very long. So hopefully when I write next week I will be writing from Galveston.
Here is my exciting story for the week. So on Thursday of last week we had just gotten done with doing service all day when the sister missionaries called us and asked if we could help them unload boxes for a grocery store called Arlan's. We were like uhh...no why would we do that. They have employees for a reason. After a little more confusing we found out that one of our recent converts, Abraham, had called the sisters and asked them to come pick up some food or something. We decided that we might as well go and help out our convert with whatever he needed. So we show up and this Arlans is all boarded up because it had gotten flooded. Abraham took us around the back inside where the insurance adjuster and store owner was. They only got a few inches of floodwater in the building, so barely anything got ruined, but they couldn't guarantee that all of it was completely untouched and uncontaminated, so they legally couldn't sell it. So there was a grocery store full of perfectly good food that they couldn't sell. Apparently the insurance adjuster was Mormon and wanted to donate the food to the missionaries. This is probably one of the coolest things that has happened to me. He gave us some boxes and said we had free access to all the cereal, poptarts, cake mixes, and candy in the store. We got to fill like 3 boxes full of food for ourselves. Then we filled up boxes for the rest of the mission. We spend hours there boxing food and loading it into a trailer. Me and Elder Nielson only took 3 boxes for ourselves, but I got everything I wanted. I stuffed the boxes full of Trix, Apple Jacks, Froot Loops, and a couple other cereals. Then I put in a carton of Skittle, a couple bags full of reese's, a couple bags of twix, and 4-5 boxes of honey buns. I also got like 6-7 cake mixes. Oh yeah, then we took 5-6 huge boxes of Tide detergent. Each box of that stuff costs like $8.67...that must be some good detergent. We got all that stuff plus even more I'm sure I'm forgetting. But that was definitely a good day.
Wow Mom...sounds like you're having quite an adventure with your leg there. Sounds pretty painful too. I'm sure you drugged yourself up pretty well though. I think you're the only person I know that could stay so busy even with a broken leg. I guess you can only go up from here though..your leg is going to be getting healthier and healthier every day. All you have to do is wait it out and soon it'll be completely gone. That's the good thing about healing..you don't even have to do anything, just let time pass and it just automatically heals.
That place called Gilchrist where there was only 1 house standing is on the Bolivar Peninsula. The only way to get there is by driving onto Galveston and taking a ferry across to the peninsula. I've heard the story about that house several times and I've seen pictures of it too...its pretty amazing. The ferry to Bolivar hasn't even opened yet though. Its actually in our area, but we never visit it because its pretty impractical to go over there. It would be a whole day ordeal and there aren't even very many people over there, so we pretty much ignore it.
Sounds like Dad has been keeping himself pretty busy fixing all that stuff. That is actually something I would enjoy doing. I would like to learn how to fix sprinklers and do all that kind of stuff, because its practical and it will undoubtedly be useful for me one day. I bet I'll have plenty of chances to learn those things though. But hey, if our house ever gets flooded then I'll know exactly what to do. I've actually been in charge a couple of times of showing people what to do and how to take care of these houses. Pretty much all you do is carry the heavy stuff out, tear out the carpet and anything underneath, then cut a line about 4 feet high around the walls and tear off the bottom slab of sheet rock and throw it in the curb. Unless the mold has crossed the 4 foot mark, then we strip the walls to the top. Its pretty fun, especially smashing out sheet rock. Its just like when me and Steven were helping Craig at his house and we got to punch holes in the garage walls. I'm doing that pretty much all day. Well...I guess its more fun when it doesn't reek the worst smell you could ever imagine.
OK...time to answer Mom's questions:I'm in Texas City still, hoping to move to that condo in Galveston.Yes I used my bike last night actually. I love biking..I'm actually glad I'm in a biking area. I can't wait to be able to ride my bike along the sea wall in Galveston. You ride right along the beach and you have that cool breeze blowing at you all the time. That's going to be way fun. But anyway, last night we rode our bikes to that widow's house. My companion lead on the way there because he knew where he was going. On the way back I wanted to lead and I told him we should ride fast so we could get a little exercise in. Biking in Texas is really easy..it is completely flat everywhere. I was in my hardest gear the whole time, pedaling pretty easily the whole time and I don't even think I started breathing harder than I would be if I was just walking around. I'm not sure how you're supposed to get tired when you bike here...I guess that's a good thing. We got back pretty fast..well at least I did. My companion fell back kind of far, but I waited for him outside the apartments. It was down a reeeally long road so I could see him way back there the whole time. It was a good ride. Nope, haven't been in the rain. Maybe I will for the next few days though! Yep, taught that lesson to Kathy and her family. No...not really speaking much Spanish, sadly. Hmm...looks like I already answered most of these questions already. I guess I'm getting better at writing.
Oh yeah, I still have 1 question. What do you think is the best way to send pictures home? I've taken a ton. I was thinking it'll be easiest to just get the printed at some place here so I can write on the back of the pictures and explain them. But I also have a bunch of pictures of the destruction and I don't think it'll be worth it to print like 20 of those. Maybe there's some way to send them online. Or maybe we could just send a flash drive back and forth or something, so I could send all the pictures digitally, as well as a hard copy. That way I could send home some of the less interesting ones on the flash drive and print all of the other ones. Christopher would know best about that kind of thing probably. Anyway...I should probably go. It sounds like everyone is doing well as always. I'm excited to get back onto Galveston. When we get there we're going to be able to do a lot more missionary work, that'll be fun.
One more thing. I don't know if I mentioned it but there is a chapel on Galveston. There is the Galveston Ward and the Lehi Branch. They both have the same boundaries and use the same building, but the Lehi branch is the Spanish branch...not sure why they call it the Lehi branch. I don't really get a lot of things though...like how the bishop of the ward (which speaks English) is a native from Venezuela who speaks Spanish perfect and his English is pretty good but not perfect, and the branch president of the Lehi branch is a white guy that just learned Spanish on his mission. Anyway, I went to the ward council meeting for the Galveston Ward yesterday and the Galveston ward is definitely suffering from the hurricane. So many leaders and members left and won't be back for several months, and some aren't even coming back. For example, the only Young men's leader here is the 2nd counselor, and now he's in charge of all the young men's program. There aren't many leaders left so people are filling a lot of space. If the ward is doing that bad, you can only imagine what is left of the branch...not much. Someone even asked if it still existed. It pretty much only exists right now because the branch president is still here. Well, I guess that means we're going to have to baptize a new ward and a new branch. We better get on that pronto.
Ok, well it was great hearing from you and I'm happy to hear everything is going well back at home. I love you all and pray for you!
Love,
Chase
I got 3 letters from you I think. I got that manila envelope with return address labels, and a letter including the blog post. It made me laugh...that was a pretty creative idea to put the post + comments on a piece of paper. I'm also glad you send me those return address labels, they make things a lot easier. Christopher's wooden pen thing was crazy. That definitely sounds like a neat class. Its something I would enjoy taking.
In that one envelope you sent a picture of that raincoat thing and asked if I wanted it. I think that would be perfect. It would be good if you could get it in the darkest color they have. I think I saw a navy blue there...that would work perfect. I've been really lucky. It hasn't even rained once since I've been here! The weather has been perfect almost every day. The sky is always blue and the clouds are all just puffy and white; none show any risk of raining. I did hear that for the next 3 days they forecasted rain. So far the skies look pretty blue, but we'll see.
I really enjoyed conference a lot. The Galveston chapel still didn't have any power so we drove to the stake center in a city called Friendswood. We stayed there all day on Saturday...from the morning session until after the priesthood session. Then yesterday they had some massive generator (it filled up the whole back of this guy's truck) come and give power to the building so we could watch conference there. We even had AC...I was happy for that. Dallin H. Oaks gave almost the exact same talk to us in the MTC when I was there...he makes some really interesting points. There is so knowledge and so much to learn from every talk that it is simply impossible to pick it all up on your first time hearing it, so I am excited to be able to read through them again when the Ensign comes out.
We invited one of our investigating families to come to general conference and they were until they got into a car accident. They said it wasn't really serious, but it was almost a head-on collision. I have only taught one lesson so far, and it was to them. They have been conveniently living here in Texas City in a hotel while their house has been getting fixed, so we and taught them on Friday. The Mom's name is Kathy and she has two daughters named Kaitlyn and Taylor. They are 17 and 11 respectively. This was actually the first time Elder Nielson has been able to teach Kaitlyn because she has always been gone and at work when they came to teach Kathy and Taylor (they had been teaching then for about 3 weeks before the hurricane). The place Kaitlyn worked at happened to be one of the piers that was out in the ocean that got completely washed away. All you can see are the little wooden stilts that use to hold it up. And they don't have school for another week or so, so she doesn't have too much to occupy her time. At the end of the lesson we asked them to be baptized on October 18th and they all said yes. For Kaitlyn we said that we knew she had only been taught once, but we asked her if she would follow the example of her mother and sister and be baptized on the same date as she continues to learn of the truth of the gospel. She said yes too. Kathy does smoke though, so we are going to have to help her get over that. They are really a pretty amazing family.
Last night we went out for the second time to visit a member who lives here in Texas City. (The ward boundaries for the Galveston ward includes the whole island plus Texas City). She is somewhere in her 70's and she was baptized in 2000. She is a widow and lives by herself. We were really happy we decided to visit her because apparently one of her closest friends died that day and she was feeling pretty bad. She needed somebody to vent to for a while and just talk to. She felt a lot better by the time we left. That is the extend of my teaching so far!
I do have an update on my living situation though. Once again, it was pretty unexpected. We this condominium place pretty close to where we used to live. The condos are way nice, but they are also expensive. They are about $900 every month. So the president decided to put 2 of the senior missionaries in there with us. So me and Elder Nielson are going to be living with 2 married old people...I'm not gonna lie, that will probably be kind of weird. At least it is a really nice apartment though. We are going to move in as soon as they turn the power on. The building itself has power and they are turning the power on to the individual apartments when they pay their deposit. We already paid, were just waiting for them to flip the switch to turn the power on. I cant imagine that will take very long. So hopefully when I write next week I will be writing from Galveston.
Here is my exciting story for the week. So on Thursday of last week we had just gotten done with doing service all day when the sister missionaries called us and asked if we could help them unload boxes for a grocery store called Arlan's. We were like uhh...no why would we do that. They have employees for a reason. After a little more confusing we found out that one of our recent converts, Abraham, had called the sisters and asked them to come pick up some food or something. We decided that we might as well go and help out our convert with whatever he needed. So we show up and this Arlans is all boarded up because it had gotten flooded. Abraham took us around the back inside where the insurance adjuster and store owner was. They only got a few inches of floodwater in the building, so barely anything got ruined, but they couldn't guarantee that all of it was completely untouched and uncontaminated, so they legally couldn't sell it. So there was a grocery store full of perfectly good food that they couldn't sell. Apparently the insurance adjuster was Mormon and wanted to donate the food to the missionaries. This is probably one of the coolest things that has happened to me. He gave us some boxes and said we had free access to all the cereal, poptarts, cake mixes, and candy in the store. We got to fill like 3 boxes full of food for ourselves. Then we filled up boxes for the rest of the mission. We spend hours there boxing food and loading it into a trailer. Me and Elder Nielson only took 3 boxes for ourselves, but I got everything I wanted. I stuffed the boxes full of Trix, Apple Jacks, Froot Loops, and a couple other cereals. Then I put in a carton of Skittle, a couple bags full of reese's, a couple bags of twix, and 4-5 boxes of honey buns. I also got like 6-7 cake mixes. Oh yeah, then we took 5-6 huge boxes of Tide detergent. Each box of that stuff costs like $8.67...that must be some good detergent. We got all that stuff plus even more I'm sure I'm forgetting. But that was definitely a good day.
Wow Mom...sounds like you're having quite an adventure with your leg there. Sounds pretty painful too. I'm sure you drugged yourself up pretty well though. I think you're the only person I know that could stay so busy even with a broken leg. I guess you can only go up from here though..your leg is going to be getting healthier and healthier every day. All you have to do is wait it out and soon it'll be completely gone. That's the good thing about healing..you don't even have to do anything, just let time pass and it just automatically heals.
That place called Gilchrist where there was only 1 house standing is on the Bolivar Peninsula. The only way to get there is by driving onto Galveston and taking a ferry across to the peninsula. I've heard the story about that house several times and I've seen pictures of it too...its pretty amazing. The ferry to Bolivar hasn't even opened yet though. Its actually in our area, but we never visit it because its pretty impractical to go over there. It would be a whole day ordeal and there aren't even very many people over there, so we pretty much ignore it.
Sounds like Dad has been keeping himself pretty busy fixing all that stuff. That is actually something I would enjoy doing. I would like to learn how to fix sprinklers and do all that kind of stuff, because its practical and it will undoubtedly be useful for me one day. I bet I'll have plenty of chances to learn those things though. But hey, if our house ever gets flooded then I'll know exactly what to do. I've actually been in charge a couple of times of showing people what to do and how to take care of these houses. Pretty much all you do is carry the heavy stuff out, tear out the carpet and anything underneath, then cut a line about 4 feet high around the walls and tear off the bottom slab of sheet rock and throw it in the curb. Unless the mold has crossed the 4 foot mark, then we strip the walls to the top. Its pretty fun, especially smashing out sheet rock. Its just like when me and Steven were helping Craig at his house and we got to punch holes in the garage walls. I'm doing that pretty much all day. Well...I guess its more fun when it doesn't reek the worst smell you could ever imagine.
OK...time to answer Mom's questions:I'm in Texas City still, hoping to move to that condo in Galveston.Yes I used my bike last night actually. I love biking..I'm actually glad I'm in a biking area. I can't wait to be able to ride my bike along the sea wall in Galveston. You ride right along the beach and you have that cool breeze blowing at you all the time. That's going to be way fun. But anyway, last night we rode our bikes to that widow's house. My companion lead on the way there because he knew where he was going. On the way back I wanted to lead and I told him we should ride fast so we could get a little exercise in. Biking in Texas is really easy..it is completely flat everywhere. I was in my hardest gear the whole time, pedaling pretty easily the whole time and I don't even think I started breathing harder than I would be if I was just walking around. I'm not sure how you're supposed to get tired when you bike here...I guess that's a good thing. We got back pretty fast..well at least I did. My companion fell back kind of far, but I waited for him outside the apartments. It was down a reeeally long road so I could see him way back there the whole time. It was a good ride. Nope, haven't been in the rain. Maybe I will for the next few days though! Yep, taught that lesson to Kathy and her family. No...not really speaking much Spanish, sadly. Hmm...looks like I already answered most of these questions already. I guess I'm getting better at writing.
Oh yeah, I still have 1 question. What do you think is the best way to send pictures home? I've taken a ton. I was thinking it'll be easiest to just get the printed at some place here so I can write on the back of the pictures and explain them. But I also have a bunch of pictures of the destruction and I don't think it'll be worth it to print like 20 of those. Maybe there's some way to send them online. Or maybe we could just send a flash drive back and forth or something, so I could send all the pictures digitally, as well as a hard copy. That way I could send home some of the less interesting ones on the flash drive and print all of the other ones. Christopher would know best about that kind of thing probably. Anyway...I should probably go. It sounds like everyone is doing well as always. I'm excited to get back onto Galveston. When we get there we're going to be able to do a lot more missionary work, that'll be fun.
One more thing. I don't know if I mentioned it but there is a chapel on Galveston. There is the Galveston Ward and the Lehi Branch. They both have the same boundaries and use the same building, but the Lehi branch is the Spanish branch...not sure why they call it the Lehi branch. I don't really get a lot of things though...like how the bishop of the ward (which speaks English) is a native from Venezuela who speaks Spanish perfect and his English is pretty good but not perfect, and the branch president of the Lehi branch is a white guy that just learned Spanish on his mission. Anyway, I went to the ward council meeting for the Galveston Ward yesterday and the Galveston ward is definitely suffering from the hurricane. So many leaders and members left and won't be back for several months, and some aren't even coming back. For example, the only Young men's leader here is the 2nd counselor, and now he's in charge of all the young men's program. There aren't many leaders left so people are filling a lot of space. If the ward is doing that bad, you can only imagine what is left of the branch...not much. Someone even asked if it still existed. It pretty much only exists right now because the branch president is still here. Well, I guess that means we're going to have to baptize a new ward and a new branch. We better get on that pronto.
Ok, well it was great hearing from you and I'm happy to hear everything is going well back at home. I love you all and pray for you!
Love,
Chase
Hand Writing! We received this Fri Oct 3rd
Written September 29, 2008
Hand written and re-typed by the mother!
Dear family,
Wow…today was my first almost normal P-day! We haven’t really done too much. We bought food at Wal-mart, e-mailed home, then went to Denny’s as a district for lunch. Denny’s was delicious. I got a grand slam breakfast and ate every last ounce of it.
Well I just wrote my e-mail and updated you on my situation. We’re just trying to find a place to stay on Galveston. President Allred is anxious to get us on the island too. Hopefully something comes up. We’ve also got a family of 3 (the ones that came to church) who we are planning on giving a baptismal date to if all goes well they will be baptized by the end of the transfer. Who knows what the future is like right now though?
I did hear one pretty crazy story a few days ago. I was talking to the manager of an apartment complex right by the water. He told me about how he decided to evacuate. His apartment was on the second story so he figured he’d be alright. The flooding was really bad there…the worst I’ve seen anywhere. The water got so high that it completely submerged the first story and started going into the 2nd story. The manager told me he had planned out that he was going to go up to the attic, then if the water got up there he was going to kick a hole in the roof and swim away. Luckily that didn’t happen. But as he was walking through his living room he looked out his big front window (it was one of those sliding glass doors) and he saw two sand sharks swimming past. It scared him so bad he ran up to his attic and stayed there. Another family near there saw the two sharks swimming around with their fins sticking out of the water too. That’s pretty crazy two sharks were swimming around in an apartment complex.
Hmm...I’ve got like 3 other random things to say that are completely unrelated, but I’ll just say them.
I’ve heard BYU has been doing amazing and shut out UCLA bad. What are they ranked? Why are they doing so well? Is Max Hall doing really good or something? What about Harvey Unga? Andy other guys doing really good? Someone needs to give me an update. There are a couple guys in my mission who play for BYU. The main one is named Elder Mees, he is one of the AP’s. I think his first name is Carter. He plays free safety. Apparently he’s pretty good and I heard he was in the church news or some news paper recently. Another guy is Elder Cook. I think he’s like a 2nd or 3rd stringer though. He was one of Brian Kiel’s back-ups. The last guy is some huge white guy who is like 6’10” and probably around 350. He’s one of those big linemen or something…I forget his name.
Next random thing: I forgot to say, when we were driving here from the airport we drove past Joel Olsteen’s or whatever’s name is, building where he preaches. A lot of people around here watch him. It’s a huge office building thing. He’s got his own logo on it and everything.
Did I tell you last week about how all the Texans say “I’m fixin to------“ meaning I’m about to/I’m going to go eat/sleep, whatever. They also like to make street names really confusing. In Texas City they have streets named This Way, that Way and Any Way. And they are all near each other and intersect in different places. In Galveston the streets aren’t very hard. It’s on a grid system so North/South streets are numbers and East/West streets are letters. The only problem is after the letter M they started having letter ½ streets. Like M, M1/2, N, N1/2. And streets A - L all have alternate names too, like Post Office, Mechanic, etc. It’s pretty interesting. There’s also another area called fish village where every street is named after a fish.
My last random thing is about one of our investigators. It’s a black family with like 5 kids. This family has relatives all over the island. The father’s name is E.J. He has 5 – 6 brothers and sisters on the island who each have families of their own with at least 4 kids each. There’s like 40 – 50 of them all over the island. Elder Nielson has been teaching most of them. Unfortunately all of them are pretty bad investigators. They’re all really nice, but they never keep commitments or do what we ask, so they aren’t progressing. E.J’s family is pretty good though. He just got his GED a month or two ago. He is 27. He is the first person out of all his brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, parents or grandparents to ever receive his GED. Nobody else has graduated. They seem like a really interesting family. Hearing about my investigators always gets me really excited and anxious to start doing missionary work. Hopefully we get into a semi-normal schedule soon.
Hmm….one last random informational thing. I’m pretty sure I told you already but Galveston is a bike area. The mission does have a lot of cars though All the sister, senior couples, and most leaders have cars. All the other missionaries who have big areas have them too. The zone leaders have mini vans, so they can give people rides. Normal mission cars are new corollas, Mazdas, or Ford Fusions. The Assistants to the President have a pick-up truck. The president has another pick-up and an Avalon. Their house is really nice….I took one picture of it. Each companionship also has a cell phone, so that’s pretty cool. It shows how times are changing.
Ok, well I’ve got to go. We are moving pretty close to getting back into Galveston. WE have one potential place lined up….I hope that works. Hopefully next week I’ll be able to write saying we finally are staying in Galveston. At least we get to do service there every day. Ok, well it was good hearing from you all!
Love,
Chase
Hand written and re-typed by the mother!
Dear family,
Wow…today was my first almost normal P-day! We haven’t really done too much. We bought food at Wal-mart, e-mailed home, then went to Denny’s as a district for lunch. Denny’s was delicious. I got a grand slam breakfast and ate every last ounce of it.
Well I just wrote my e-mail and updated you on my situation. We’re just trying to find a place to stay on Galveston. President Allred is anxious to get us on the island too. Hopefully something comes up. We’ve also got a family of 3 (the ones that came to church) who we are planning on giving a baptismal date to if all goes well they will be baptized by the end of the transfer. Who knows what the future is like right now though?
I did hear one pretty crazy story a few days ago. I was talking to the manager of an apartment complex right by the water. He told me about how he decided to evacuate. His apartment was on the second story so he figured he’d be alright. The flooding was really bad there…the worst I’ve seen anywhere. The water got so high that it completely submerged the first story and started going into the 2nd story. The manager told me he had planned out that he was going to go up to the attic, then if the water got up there he was going to kick a hole in the roof and swim away. Luckily that didn’t happen. But as he was walking through his living room he looked out his big front window (it was one of those sliding glass doors) and he saw two sand sharks swimming past. It scared him so bad he ran up to his attic and stayed there. Another family near there saw the two sharks swimming around with their fins sticking out of the water too. That’s pretty crazy two sharks were swimming around in an apartment complex.
Hmm...I’ve got like 3 other random things to say that are completely unrelated, but I’ll just say them.
I’ve heard BYU has been doing amazing and shut out UCLA bad. What are they ranked? Why are they doing so well? Is Max Hall doing really good or something? What about Harvey Unga? Andy other guys doing really good? Someone needs to give me an update. There are a couple guys in my mission who play for BYU. The main one is named Elder Mees, he is one of the AP’s. I think his first name is Carter. He plays free safety. Apparently he’s pretty good and I heard he was in the church news or some news paper recently. Another guy is Elder Cook. I think he’s like a 2nd or 3rd stringer though. He was one of Brian Kiel’s back-ups. The last guy is some huge white guy who is like 6’10” and probably around 350. He’s one of those big linemen or something…I forget his name.
Next random thing: I forgot to say, when we were driving here from the airport we drove past Joel Olsteen’s or whatever’s name is, building where he preaches. A lot of people around here watch him. It’s a huge office building thing. He’s got his own logo on it and everything.
Did I tell you last week about how all the Texans say “I’m fixin to------“ meaning I’m about to/I’m going to go eat/sleep, whatever. They also like to make street names really confusing. In Texas City they have streets named This Way, that Way and Any Way. And they are all near each other and intersect in different places. In Galveston the streets aren’t very hard. It’s on a grid system so North/South streets are numbers and East/West streets are letters. The only problem is after the letter M they started having letter ½ streets. Like M, M1/2, N, N1/2. And streets A - L all have alternate names too, like Post Office, Mechanic, etc. It’s pretty interesting. There’s also another area called fish village where every street is named after a fish.
My last random thing is about one of our investigators. It’s a black family with like 5 kids. This family has relatives all over the island. The father’s name is E.J. He has 5 – 6 brothers and sisters on the island who each have families of their own with at least 4 kids each. There’s like 40 – 50 of them all over the island. Elder Nielson has been teaching most of them. Unfortunately all of them are pretty bad investigators. They’re all really nice, but they never keep commitments or do what we ask, so they aren’t progressing. E.J’s family is pretty good though. He just got his GED a month or two ago. He is 27. He is the first person out of all his brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, parents or grandparents to ever receive his GED. Nobody else has graduated. They seem like a really interesting family. Hearing about my investigators always gets me really excited and anxious to start doing missionary work. Hopefully we get into a semi-normal schedule soon.
Hmm….one last random informational thing. I’m pretty sure I told you already but Galveston is a bike area. The mission does have a lot of cars though All the sister, senior couples, and most leaders have cars. All the other missionaries who have big areas have them too. The zone leaders have mini vans, so they can give people rides. Normal mission cars are new corollas, Mazdas, or Ford Fusions. The Assistants to the President have a pick-up truck. The president has another pick-up and an Avalon. Their house is really nice….I took one picture of it. Each companionship also has a cell phone, so that’s pretty cool. It shows how times are changing.
Ok, well I’ve got to go. We are moving pretty close to getting back into Galveston. WE have one potential place lined up….I hope that works. Hopefully next week I’ll be able to write saying we finally are staying in Galveston. At least we get to do service there every day. Ok, well it was good hearing from you all!
Love,
Chase
Friday, October 3, 2008
Chase Writes by Hand!
We probably received this letter Mon, Sept 29th 2008 It was a regular, handwritten, mailman delievered letter.
Chase wrote it 9/24/08
Dear Family,
Wow…I’ve definitely had a very unique start to my mission. So the last time I wrote an e-mail I was in Lake Jackson just getting started on missionary work there. So then that morning I think I already told you we got asked to go do service with that guy from CA. We did that for a day, then went to the senior missionary’s apartment and used their laptops to e-mail home that night. That is why it was a late c-mail….we were working all day and never got the chance to e-mail. That night the President said my companion and another Elder were going to go to Galveston to do assessments on property damage and help the CA guy do more service. Then I was to stay with that other Elder’s companion and get trained by him for the next several days. It didn’t really make much sense because that Elder had only been out a few transfers and he was an English Elder. I honestly wasn’t very excited about that. All this was supposed to take place on Thursday. On Tuesday a member form Galveston called us and asked if we could help him clean up his house in Galveston. So we did that all day. So that night president calls again and says both Elder Neilson and I along with 8 other missionaries were going to go to Galveston to do assessments. He told us to bring all our stuff and that we would not be going back to Lake Jackson, but he didn’t know where we would be staying. So we did that all day today and we still didn’t have any place to stay, so we decided to go live with the Texas City Elders. Texas City is a city near the bridge that takes you into Galveston. So the President drove us there to that apartment with all our luggage where we found the Elders weren’t back yet, so we are locked out. That’s where I’m at right now! They should be back pretty soon. Crazy isn’t it?
I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about Texas itself yet. So when we were flying into Houston to land I was surprised to see that everything was green! There are a lot of little lakes and rivers. There’s trees everywhere and everything is naturally green. It definitely isn’t the desert I expected it to be. The weather hasn’t been bad at all. I’ve been outside doing service for two weeks and it hasn’t ever been unbearably hot. I definitely sweat a lot more here though. Swear streams down my face when I’m working hard and I’m definitely not a big sweater. On Galveston and here in Texas City there is always a nice cool breeze coming off the ocean, so it’s nice. On Galveston most of the houses are on stilts that are like 5 – 15 feet high depending on where they are. There’s actually a requirement to how high a house has to be because they know the island floods.
My area is not the entire island of Galveston. We have the East half. They split it by east/West not North/South. It’s a little confusing. The two sets of sisters have the West end. There is a 17 foot tall sea wall on the East side to prevent flooding. The water of the ocean is like 20 – 30 feet away from the sea wall. So the buildings are pretty close to the water. On the west end there is no seawall so they always get flooded pretty bad. In the hurricane the storm surge rose all the way up to the sea wall and waves splashed over up onto the island. Water came in through the west end and just spread all over the island. Nearly every house was covered in at least 3 feet of water. So everything that even touches 3 feet or lower needs to be replaced, including the walls. So almost everyone has to strip their entire houses and start over again. It’s really devastating.
Hmm…what else about Texas. Because of all the water there are a lot of snakes and frogs around. There are bugs everywhere too. Cicadas are probably the most annoying bug I’ve ever seen. They are these little beetles that fly around and I don’t know why but they make this loud, obnoxious noise when they’re sitting around. It’s just a really really loud noise. First it sounded like a big electrical noise or something, then I found out it was those stupid cicadas. And they’re all over! Well at least inland they are. Over here by the coast I haven’t heard any. I’ve seen some huge 4”-5” cockroaches too. We cut up this one tree and like 30 of them came running out. Oh…how could I forget the fire ants? One of the firs things people told me was to stay way from random mounds of dirt you see around, because they are fire ant colonies. They look exactly like a little normal mound of dirt, but as soon as you step on them, hundreds of angry fire ants pour out. They come out and sting and it apparently hurts very badly. It leaves read marks on you for a long time too. So far I’ve managed to avoid them.
Hmm…what else about Texas. I’ve told you all the li9ght signals are horizontal instead of vertical. A lot of the smaller roads are made out of concrete instead of asphalt. They have this food here called Kolache’s. They are usually a breakfast item. They are these rolls that are filled with like eggs, bacon and ham or whatever you order. They are reeeally good. Hmm…almost every city has at least one water tower too. It is completely flat here in Texas. I took a picture of the only “mountain”, which is actually man-made. It’s a landfill or something. Well, that’s all that comes to mind right now3. Hopefully I can start doing normal missionary work soon so I can start telling you about the people here. My companion has told me a lot about the members and investigators in our area. There are definitely a lot of funny, strange and also very nice people here.
Ok, well I thought you might like to hear a little bit more about all the daily tings I encounter because in my e-mails I only ever have time to talk about all the crazy unusual things that are going on. I’m sure things will settle down later, but I’m planning on continuing to send out these handwritten letters too. Ok, will I love you all and I’ll do my best to keep you updated on my crazy mission experience!
Love,
Chase
P.S. I bet I’m the first missionary here to have only worn proselyte clothes 3 times in my first two weeks. I bet I’m also the only one to have lived in 3 areas in my first two weeks. I’m’ going to move again soon too!
Chase wrote it 9/24/08
Dear Family,
Wow…I’ve definitely had a very unique start to my mission. So the last time I wrote an e-mail I was in Lake Jackson just getting started on missionary work there. So then that morning I think I already told you we got asked to go do service with that guy from CA. We did that for a day, then went to the senior missionary’s apartment and used their laptops to e-mail home that night. That is why it was a late c-mail….we were working all day and never got the chance to e-mail. That night the President said my companion and another Elder were going to go to Galveston to do assessments on property damage and help the CA guy do more service. Then I was to stay with that other Elder’s companion and get trained by him for the next several days. It didn’t really make much sense because that Elder had only been out a few transfers and he was an English Elder. I honestly wasn’t very excited about that. All this was supposed to take place on Thursday. On Tuesday a member form Galveston called us and asked if we could help him clean up his house in Galveston. So we did that all day. So that night president calls again and says both Elder Neilson and I along with 8 other missionaries were going to go to Galveston to do assessments. He told us to bring all our stuff and that we would not be going back to Lake Jackson, but he didn’t know where we would be staying. So we did that all day today and we still didn’t have any place to stay, so we decided to go live with the Texas City Elders. Texas City is a city near the bridge that takes you into Galveston. So the President drove us there to that apartment with all our luggage where we found the Elders weren’t back yet, so we are locked out. That’s where I’m at right now! They should be back pretty soon. Crazy isn’t it?
I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about Texas itself yet. So when we were flying into Houston to land I was surprised to see that everything was green! There are a lot of little lakes and rivers. There’s trees everywhere and everything is naturally green. It definitely isn’t the desert I expected it to be. The weather hasn’t been bad at all. I’ve been outside doing service for two weeks and it hasn’t ever been unbearably hot. I definitely sweat a lot more here though. Swear streams down my face when I’m working hard and I’m definitely not a big sweater. On Galveston and here in Texas City there is always a nice cool breeze coming off the ocean, so it’s nice. On Galveston most of the houses are on stilts that are like 5 – 15 feet high depending on where they are. There’s actually a requirement to how high a house has to be because they know the island floods.
My area is not the entire island of Galveston. We have the East half. They split it by east/West not North/South. It’s a little confusing. The two sets of sisters have the West end. There is a 17 foot tall sea wall on the East side to prevent flooding. The water of the ocean is like 20 – 30 feet away from the sea wall. So the buildings are pretty close to the water. On the west end there is no seawall so they always get flooded pretty bad. In the hurricane the storm surge rose all the way up to the sea wall and waves splashed over up onto the island. Water came in through the west end and just spread all over the island. Nearly every house was covered in at least 3 feet of water. So everything that even touches 3 feet or lower needs to be replaced, including the walls. So almost everyone has to strip their entire houses and start over again. It’s really devastating.
Hmm…what else about Texas. Because of all the water there are a lot of snakes and frogs around. There are bugs everywhere too. Cicadas are probably the most annoying bug I’ve ever seen. They are these little beetles that fly around and I don’t know why but they make this loud, obnoxious noise when they’re sitting around. It’s just a really really loud noise. First it sounded like a big electrical noise or something, then I found out it was those stupid cicadas. And they’re all over! Well at least inland they are. Over here by the coast I haven’t heard any. I’ve seen some huge 4”-5” cockroaches too. We cut up this one tree and like 30 of them came running out. Oh…how could I forget the fire ants? One of the firs things people told me was to stay way from random mounds of dirt you see around, because they are fire ant colonies. They look exactly like a little normal mound of dirt, but as soon as you step on them, hundreds of angry fire ants pour out. They come out and sting and it apparently hurts very badly. It leaves read marks on you for a long time too. So far I’ve managed to avoid them.
Hmm…what else about Texas. I’ve told you all the li9ght signals are horizontal instead of vertical. A lot of the smaller roads are made out of concrete instead of asphalt. They have this food here called Kolache’s. They are usually a breakfast item. They are these rolls that are filled with like eggs, bacon and ham or whatever you order. They are reeeally good. Hmm…almost every city has at least one water tower too. It is completely flat here in Texas. I took a picture of the only “mountain”, which is actually man-made. It’s a landfill or something. Well, that’s all that comes to mind right now3. Hopefully I can start doing normal missionary work soon so I can start telling you about the people here. My companion has told me a lot about the members and investigators in our area. There are definitely a lot of funny, strange and also very nice people here.
Ok, well I thought you might like to hear a little bit more about all the daily tings I encounter because in my e-mails I only ever have time to talk about all the crazy unusual things that are going on. I’m sure things will settle down later, but I’m planning on continuing to send out these handwritten letters too. Ok, will I love you all and I’ll do my best to keep you updated on my crazy mission experience!
Love,
Chase
P.S. I bet I’m the first missionary here to have only worn proselyte clothes 3 times in my first two weeks. I bet I’m also the only one to have lived in 3 areas in my first two weeks. I’m’ going to move again soon too!
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