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!