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
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