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