Dang it...I had just gotten done writing a big long e-mail when some error popped up and the computer just shut down. This week we decided to try to e-mail at Galveston community college. The only problem is there are only 2 computers and they are really slow. We'll probably just go to Texas City again next week.
But anyway...I'm just gonna try to sum up everything real quick as best as I can because I can't stay for very long. This week has been pretty good again. Kim is going to get baptized on November 30th...she just passed her baptismal interview a few days ago. Her Dad is the recent convert named Abraham, and he is going to get married to someone named Paulette. Paulette has been taking the lessons from missionaries where she lives in Dallas, but ever since they got engaged she's been down here a lot so we kept teaching her. She is going to get baptized hopefully on November 30th too. The plan is for Abraham and her to get married on the 29th then Kim and Paulette will both get baptized on the 30th. Kim asked me to baptize her, even though we really tried her to ask her dad to do it. She kept on insisting though and she said that we taught her, not her dad, so she wants one of us to do it. Abraham is just happy she is getting baptized and it doesn't make a difference to him who does it, as long as Kim is happy.
We are going to give a baptismal date to Angie (the crazy Lord of the Rings man's girlfriend) this week. We've talked to her several times without Max and we found out she is a really solid investigator and she has her own testimony of the church. She even said that whether or not her and Max stay together she is going to join the church. We're also planning on giving a date to Erica within the next week or so. So things are going pretty well.
Oh yeah...so today I wrote letters to Grandma and also Tony. As I was putting the stamps on the envelopes I noticed how I always have really girly stamps. At first I had hearts, now I have flowers. I am guessing this was not on purpose. It doesn't really bother me that much, but it made me laugh. And I also decided that whenever you send another package, I would like to have my shoes that I left at home and also my swishy pants. I don't really like wearing my nasty shoes that I've worn every day doing service. The swishy pants will also be good to sleep in when its freezing cold at night.
Ok, well I have to go now. Maybe I'll probably write a long e-mail next week because I'll have to include stuff from this week too. I think today were going to take the ferry over to Bolivar Island and just walk around there and see the destruction if there is any left. A couple weeks ago there were apparently alligators all over the island. There's always crazy rumors about Bolivar going around. People said they found human body parts in the alligators stomachs, I don't know how much I believe. But anyway, I love everyone and I'll talk to you next week!!
Love,
Chase
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Pictures
Chase sent 176 pictures. Obviously, I can't (won't) post all those, but I will post some. Here are pictures until I am sick of posting. I will put the caption above each picture:
A favorite house of Chase's. He sees great possiblitiy to throw water balloons down on people form one of the balconies.
A favoriet car of Chase's. Notice the tail and all.
Chase said, "our house NEVER gets this dirty!"
One of his apartments. Missionaries, what are they thinking!
Chase teaches someone who lives in this house. It was built in the early 1900's.
This house belongs to that man.
Chase with his Trainer and anothe elder trained by Chase's trainer
A favorite house of Chase's. He sees great possiblitiy to throw water balloons down on people form one of the balconies.
A favoriet car of Chase's. Notice the tail and all.
Chase said, "our house NEVER gets this dirty!"
One of his apartments. Missionaries, what are they thinking!
Chase teaches someone who lives in this house. It was built in the early 1900's.
This house belongs to that man.He had a large gun collection.
Chase helped clean out the house.
Apparently he enjoyed the guns.
Apparently he enjoyed the guns.
Remember the story of the grocery store owner letting them take some groceries? This is the booty...or some of it.
A boat where it doesn't belong. Chase sent many pictures like this. The boat owners do not know what to do.
This would have been Chase's first apartment in Galveston. The "clean-up" was already done by the time Chase got there. He said in some cases, you can see 10 apartments down because of the drywall removal.
There are/were piles of trash like this all over and for a long time, maybe still. This big crane comes by the cleans it up. There is more the next day. There are lots of these trucks.
A big semi came to the church parking lot loaded with supplies. Chase helped unload it.
In Chase's words: "My sweet bike".
Huge tree fell from the hurricane.
Chase has seen loads of these cockroaches. He said they were 3 - 4 inches long. Whenever they cut down a tree loads of them came scurrying about, crawling on and over whatever including Chase's shoes.
A house Chase helped clean out. He said the smell was awful.
Streets were lined with fallen trees.
Dirty from a days work.
Workers marked house when they went through them.
People had pre-cut-to-size boards to put over their windows. It was very dark inside when the boards were up.
Stop sign blown over
Chase hates the sound these cicada's make.
The tree branch impaled the roof.
That's it!
A boat where it doesn't belong. Chase sent many pictures like this. The boat owners do not know what to do.
This would have been Chase's first apartment in Galveston. The "clean-up" was already done by the time Chase got there. He said in some cases, you can see 10 apartments down because of the drywall removal.
There are/were piles of trash like this all over and for a long time, maybe still. This big crane comes by the cleans it up. There is more the next day. There are lots of these trucks.
A big semi came to the church parking lot loaded with supplies. Chase helped unload it.
In Chase's words: "My sweet bike".
Huge tree fell from the hurricane.
Chase has seen loads of these cockroaches. He said they were 3 - 4 inches long. Whenever they cut down a tree loads of them came scurrying about, crawling on and over whatever including Chase's shoes.
A house Chase helped clean out. He said the smell was awful.
Streets were lined with fallen trees.
Dirty from a days work.
Workers marked house when they went through them.
People had pre-cut-to-size boards to put over their windows. It was very dark inside when the boards were up.
Stop sign blown over
Chase hates the sound these cicada's make.
The tree branch impaled the roof.
That's it!I am not spell checking.
24 is on - I must watch it.
Hope you enjoyed it!
Monday, November 17, 2008
Clarification From "The Mom"
I (Chase's Mom) am happily sharing Chase's e-mails with all of you. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do! I am happy to hear Chase's "voice" every week and hear that he is doing so well, working hard, and enjoying what he is doing.
Just remember that he is writing in response to my letter to him every week. In this letter he speaks about politics a bit. They are just his feelings, what he sees. Just see it for what it is; Chase talking about politics.
Chase also mentions 2 funny family stores. One is about Griffin's new sandwich idea - you can see it here, and the other is about his brother's Halloween costume; you can see that here.
Hope you enjoy.
You know Chase would love to receive a letter from you! His address is right over there to the left!
Just remember that he is writing in response to my letter to him every week. In this letter he speaks about politics a bit. They are just his feelings, what he sees. Just see it for what it is; Chase talking about politics.
Chase also mentions 2 funny family stores. One is about Griffin's new sandwich idea - you can see it here, and the other is about his brother's Halloween costume; you can see that here.
Hope you enjoy.
You know Chase would love to receive a letter from you! His address is right over there to the left!
Received Mon, Nov 17 2008
This week has been another pretty good week.
We had 3 investigators at church again. Erica came again, and she brought her sister, Monique, her son, and Monique brought her two kids. The kids loved primary.
The thing that I've seen that most people like about our church is the families. Everyone always says that love seeing lots of children at church and they love it when they scream. At other churches they don't allow parents to bring their children and they don't care that much about family. Erica said she loved watching the families because when a kid would start screaming she would see the husband look at her wife and then roll his eyes and realize it was his turn to take the kid out to the foyer and he'd get up and do it. She loved how the husband and wife worked together and everything. I thought that was neat. The only problem with her is that she doesn't believe there is one true church. She believes that each person has a church that works for them and helps them be faithful to return to God again. She told us she wants to be a latter day saint and that she believes this is the church for her. We think that the reason why she has this belief is because she cares about her family a lot and her parents are pretty hardcore catholics and they're really good people. She can't accept the fact that her parents could be wrong. We're going to teach the Restoration lesson again and really focus on authority. We'll see how that goes.
We gave a baptismal date to Kim! She's the one who is the recent convert's daughter. Her scheduled baptismal date is November 29th. Hopefully everything goes smoothly until then. Most of her friends are pretty bad influences and shes trying to escape her old life. She used to be into drugs and all that stuff. She has her tongue and lip pierced...shes one of those punk rocker girls. She has changed a ton though. She went out to Sugar Land this weekend to visit her friend and her friends Mom and she brought Books of Mormon for them and she's excited to tell them about the church. We're still teaching Angie, who is the one who moved in with the another recent convert named Max. We have only taught her twice so far. Max is probably one of the biggest weirdo's I've ever met. He is definitely a little crazy. He use to be a drug dealer and he believes he saw a vision and saw a bunch of angels and stuff. He says he had almost the same experience as Joseph Smith. He had this experience while he was watching all 3 Lord of the Rings extended versions. He was clearly not sober and his mind was going crazy. He refers EVERYTHING we teach him to the Lord of the Rings or wrestling. He has all these crazy weird analogies. He says wrestling (like WWF wrestling you watch on TV) is all symbolic of Bible stories and stuff. Right now his plan is to become a favorite wrestler so he can share the gospel with everyone with his mask on, so nobody will know who he is. He's if he spreads the gospel to everyone without a mask then the people back in Houston will shoot him if they ever see him. We get all sorts of crazy stories when we go over there.
Oh yeah...so last week or whenever that was I didn't even realize the election was happening. I re-sent in my absentee ballot the day before the election thinking the election would be held in a few weeks. Apparently Obama is president now. Everyone here thinks the 2nd coming is near now. Everyone thinks he's a terrorist and an America hater. They're all angry that he didn't salute the flag or something. I'm a little skeptical just because he has hardly any experience. I don't think someone with so little experience is qualified to lead the nation. We'll see though. I'm not too afraid of him doing anything crazy because we aren't living in a monarchy or anything. That's why we have checks and balances. I'm not at all surprised he got elected though...this whole island pretty much voted for him. A lot of black people voted for the first time so they could have a black person be president, so I'm sure that happened all throughout the south. They're all pretty happy about it around here though. We're already starting to hear comments from black people like, "Obama is president, I can do whatever I want." It's kind of funny.
Me and Elder Pedersen have picked up a little hobby over the last couple of weeks. As we ride down the sea wall every night we ride past a lot of the same hobo's, so we decided to start naming them. We named the one who is always shoeless Shoeless Joe Jackson. He is always sitting on a bench meditating. We named the scruffiest, most hobo-like one Hobo Jones. The coolest one is named Dexter. Whenever we ride past him he always yells, I LOVE LATTER DAY SAINTS!! and stuff like that. We named him Dexter because he sounds like a really educated person when he speaks, but he's definitely a hobo. Then one day we actually saw him riding around on a segway. We have NO idea how he got a hold of one, but we haven't seen him since then. He must have escaped with it. I'm sure he'll be back.
I finished putting all the pictures on a flashdrive and put captions on them all, so I'm going to send that home today. You should be able to open it on mom's computer and open it with the Windows Picture viewer or whatever its called...I don't know. Its the picture viewing program that comes with vista...I wrote the captions on there, so if you open it with that you should be able to see them. You can figure it out.
This last week I thought that I should start taking pictures of some of the crazy painted houses here, because I know Mom would be fascinated by them. Almost nobody paints their house a normal color. The most common color is lime green. Some houses paint each window or each area a different random bright color, its pretty funny to see. I haven't taken any pictures yet, but I should before I leave.
I got those two packages with the pictures and stuff in it. I thought it was hilarious. I took that picture of CJ and STC and showed it to the Browns (the old people we live with) and just said, These are my two brothers! He (brother brown) didn't believe they were my brothers and he asked who these two weirdo's were. I thought it was hilarious. After messing around with him some more I finally told him it was just for Halloween.
I am shocked to hear Dad beat me this week on fantasy football. I'm also honestly surprised that I'm doing so good when the Chargers are doing so bad. Oh yeah, so this week is the BYU Utah game. Elder Pedersen asked president if we could watch the 4th quarter of the game if we go visit a less active member who is watching the game. President said no, it was worth a try. He'll be calling in 1-800-555-TELL though to get the scores I'm sure. But tell me how that one goes.
OK I'm sure I've already asked this question before, but if I need to buy something should I use my debit card or credit card??Alright well I've got to go now! There are only two weeks left in this transfer, its going by so fast! Alright well I'll talk to you all later!
Love,
Chase
P.S.
I just sent me e-mail and when it closed I saw mom's question about how I got to Texas City. The sister missionaries come and pick us up every day at about 11 and we drive to Texas city to e-mail, shop, and go bowling or do whatever we planned. Ok, great stories this week. The sandwich story made me laugh out loud. And I want to hear how CJ's MLS game went. I've always wondered if those would be fun. Ok bye!Love,Chase
We had 3 investigators at church again. Erica came again, and she brought her sister, Monique, her son, and Monique brought her two kids. The kids loved primary.
The thing that I've seen that most people like about our church is the families. Everyone always says that love seeing lots of children at church and they love it when they scream. At other churches they don't allow parents to bring their children and they don't care that much about family. Erica said she loved watching the families because when a kid would start screaming she would see the husband look at her wife and then roll his eyes and realize it was his turn to take the kid out to the foyer and he'd get up and do it. She loved how the husband and wife worked together and everything. I thought that was neat. The only problem with her is that she doesn't believe there is one true church. She believes that each person has a church that works for them and helps them be faithful to return to God again. She told us she wants to be a latter day saint and that she believes this is the church for her. We think that the reason why she has this belief is because she cares about her family a lot and her parents are pretty hardcore catholics and they're really good people. She can't accept the fact that her parents could be wrong. We're going to teach the Restoration lesson again and really focus on authority. We'll see how that goes.
We gave a baptismal date to Kim! She's the one who is the recent convert's daughter. Her scheduled baptismal date is November 29th. Hopefully everything goes smoothly until then. Most of her friends are pretty bad influences and shes trying to escape her old life. She used to be into drugs and all that stuff. She has her tongue and lip pierced...shes one of those punk rocker girls. She has changed a ton though. She went out to Sugar Land this weekend to visit her friend and her friends Mom and she brought Books of Mormon for them and she's excited to tell them about the church. We're still teaching Angie, who is the one who moved in with the another recent convert named Max. We have only taught her twice so far. Max is probably one of the biggest weirdo's I've ever met. He is definitely a little crazy. He use to be a drug dealer and he believes he saw a vision and saw a bunch of angels and stuff. He says he had almost the same experience as Joseph Smith. He had this experience while he was watching all 3 Lord of the Rings extended versions. He was clearly not sober and his mind was going crazy. He refers EVERYTHING we teach him to the Lord of the Rings or wrestling. He has all these crazy weird analogies. He says wrestling (like WWF wrestling you watch on TV) is all symbolic of Bible stories and stuff. Right now his plan is to become a favorite wrestler so he can share the gospel with everyone with his mask on, so nobody will know who he is. He's if he spreads the gospel to everyone without a mask then the people back in Houston will shoot him if they ever see him. We get all sorts of crazy stories when we go over there.
Oh yeah...so last week or whenever that was I didn't even realize the election was happening. I re-sent in my absentee ballot the day before the election thinking the election would be held in a few weeks. Apparently Obama is president now. Everyone here thinks the 2nd coming is near now. Everyone thinks he's a terrorist and an America hater. They're all angry that he didn't salute the flag or something. I'm a little skeptical just because he has hardly any experience. I don't think someone with so little experience is qualified to lead the nation. We'll see though. I'm not too afraid of him doing anything crazy because we aren't living in a monarchy or anything. That's why we have checks and balances. I'm not at all surprised he got elected though...this whole island pretty much voted for him. A lot of black people voted for the first time so they could have a black person be president, so I'm sure that happened all throughout the south. They're all pretty happy about it around here though. We're already starting to hear comments from black people like, "Obama is president, I can do whatever I want." It's kind of funny.
Me and Elder Pedersen have picked up a little hobby over the last couple of weeks. As we ride down the sea wall every night we ride past a lot of the same hobo's, so we decided to start naming them. We named the one who is always shoeless Shoeless Joe Jackson. He is always sitting on a bench meditating. We named the scruffiest, most hobo-like one Hobo Jones. The coolest one is named Dexter. Whenever we ride past him he always yells, I LOVE LATTER DAY SAINTS!! and stuff like that. We named him Dexter because he sounds like a really educated person when he speaks, but he's definitely a hobo. Then one day we actually saw him riding around on a segway. We have NO idea how he got a hold of one, but we haven't seen him since then. He must have escaped with it. I'm sure he'll be back.
I finished putting all the pictures on a flashdrive and put captions on them all, so I'm going to send that home today. You should be able to open it on mom's computer and open it with the Windows Picture viewer or whatever its called...I don't know. Its the picture viewing program that comes with vista...I wrote the captions on there, so if you open it with that you should be able to see them. You can figure it out.
This last week I thought that I should start taking pictures of some of the crazy painted houses here, because I know Mom would be fascinated by them. Almost nobody paints their house a normal color. The most common color is lime green. Some houses paint each window or each area a different random bright color, its pretty funny to see. I haven't taken any pictures yet, but I should before I leave.
I got those two packages with the pictures and stuff in it. I thought it was hilarious. I took that picture of CJ and STC and showed it to the Browns (the old people we live with) and just said, These are my two brothers! He (brother brown) didn't believe they were my brothers and he asked who these two weirdo's were. I thought it was hilarious. After messing around with him some more I finally told him it was just for Halloween.
I am shocked to hear Dad beat me this week on fantasy football. I'm also honestly surprised that I'm doing so good when the Chargers are doing so bad. Oh yeah, so this week is the BYU Utah game. Elder Pedersen asked president if we could watch the 4th quarter of the game if we go visit a less active member who is watching the game. President said no, it was worth a try. He'll be calling in 1-800-555-TELL though to get the scores I'm sure. But tell me how that one goes.
OK I'm sure I've already asked this question before, but if I need to buy something should I use my debit card or credit card??Alright well I've got to go now! There are only two weeks left in this transfer, its going by so fast! Alright well I'll talk to you all later!
Love,
Chase
P.S.
I just sent me e-mail and when it closed I saw mom's question about how I got to Texas City. The sister missionaries come and pick us up every day at about 11 and we drive to Texas city to e-mail, shop, and go bowling or do whatever we planned. Ok, great stories this week. The sandwich story made me laugh out loud. And I want to hear how CJ's MLS game went. I've always wondered if those would be fun. Ok bye!Love,Chase
Monday, November 10, 2008
Received Mon, Nov 10, 2008
Happy Birthday Christopher! I hope you went to tucano's...thats what I would have done if it was my birthday. Laser eye surgery sounds like a pretty good present. I realized last week that I had left my contacts in for like 6 or 7 weeks, so I took them out and went a day or two without contacts. Not having to hassle with them would be pretty nice.
This week has actually been pretty tough. Two of our really good investigators told us they don't want us to visit them anymore. They were perfect investigators and were pretty sure the anti-mormons must have given them a couple visits. They definitely would have been baptized. That was tough. Then our other few investigators that were good also dropped us. We also found out a lot of the recent converts are having problems. Its pretty tough to know what to do sometimes. But we just keep working and things fall into place and we find more people. We had 3 investigators come to church with us yesterday, that was awesome. One of them is named Erica. She's the one who pulled up to us in her car on Halloween to give us a bag of candy and told us she loves latter day saints. She decided she wants to change her life for the better and she is seeking for the truth. We've been having really good visits with her and she had a really good experience at church. I'm excited to see how she progresses.
Another one is named Kim and she's a recent convert's daughter. She just moved back in with him and she's kind of in the same boat as Erica. She wants to change for the better. Her dad's name is Abraham and he is probably the most amazing recent convert I've ever seen. He shares the gospel with everyone and he absolutely loves the scriptures and the church. He was pentecostal before and his dad was a big time preacher in LA, so it was a huge change for him to join the church. He got pretty much disowned by his family. His daughter was raised pentecostal too and apparently they bring in people to talk specifically about Mormons and about all this anti stuff, so we're helping her resolve doubts.
The last one is named Angie, she is a recent convert's girlfriend. The problem is that they're living together. The recent convert, named Max, knows how important the church is and he took her to church with him. He's been talking to her about it and she likes it all so far. We're just being careful that she's not just trying to be baptized so she can be with Max. Max is kind of a weird guy though...he talks about how he saw angels before or something. Its some long story about how he was watching the extended versions of all the lord of the rings movies in a row and he started having visions or something. So those are the 3 that we had come to church. We're also teaching Germán, a Hispanic guy. He's been getting taught for a while and we had him read 2 Nephi 31 and talked about baptism. We invited him to pray to find out whether he needs to be baptized. He was like, the decision to be baptized isn't the hard part, enduring to the end is. He knows he needs to be baptized but he wants to keep reading the Book of Mormon and praying to find out if its true. He said he's about 70% sure its true right now. He used to be a missionary for his church in Guatemala so he's making a pretty big step to convert too. He's also living with his girlfriend, but I think he'll be willing to separate once he knows for sure the Book of Mormon is true.
One time during this week we had two reaaaally old men threaten me and Elder Pedersen. We were riding down the street and saw two old men on the street corner slowly making their way to the car, so we said hi to them. One of them turned slowly to us and started shaking his finger at us and said "We're going to beat the poop out of you" (censored of course). It was so random and it made us both laugh. I said, "Uh oh, we better get out of here!" It was almost as if a 6 year old boy was threatening us. Afterwards Elder Pedersen said he should have furiously thrown down his bike and said, "BRING IT OLD MAN!" That would have been pretty funny.
We also tried to contact this one referral, then some super old lady answered the door. I told her we were missionaries and we were here to give her the book she ordered. She said she couldn't hear so I said it louder. She said again shes hard of hearing and stepped closer, so then I just yelled it out. She could finally hear me but it was pretty hard to have a conversation when I was literally yelling at the lady. It was also hard not to laugh because it was so unnatural to be standing there yelling at some old lady. We could barely keep a straight face until she shut the door and we laughed for a good 10 minutes after that. I was kind of glad she didn't want us to teach her because I would have had a sore throat by the end of every lesson.
I got the package with the camera cord, pictures, stamps, ect. Thanks a lot. Yes that is my camera cord and I'm going to try to put all the pictures on it today. The Brown's have a laptop that I can use to put captions on the pictures. Hopefully it'll work the same way on the computers at home. The laptop has windows vista so if you look at the pictures on Mom's computer with the same program then it should work fine, I'm sure you can figure it out.
Alright I've got to go now before they try to kick me off the computers. They only guarantee 30 min on the computers here. We e-mail at a library in Texas City because the one in Galveston is flooded. I love hearing about everyone every week. I'll talk to everyone next week!!
Love,
Chase
This week has actually been pretty tough. Two of our really good investigators told us they don't want us to visit them anymore. They were perfect investigators and were pretty sure the anti-mormons must have given them a couple visits. They definitely would have been baptized. That was tough. Then our other few investigators that were good also dropped us. We also found out a lot of the recent converts are having problems. Its pretty tough to know what to do sometimes. But we just keep working and things fall into place and we find more people. We had 3 investigators come to church with us yesterday, that was awesome. One of them is named Erica. She's the one who pulled up to us in her car on Halloween to give us a bag of candy and told us she loves latter day saints. She decided she wants to change her life for the better and she is seeking for the truth. We've been having really good visits with her and she had a really good experience at church. I'm excited to see how she progresses.
Another one is named Kim and she's a recent convert's daughter. She just moved back in with him and she's kind of in the same boat as Erica. She wants to change for the better. Her dad's name is Abraham and he is probably the most amazing recent convert I've ever seen. He shares the gospel with everyone and he absolutely loves the scriptures and the church. He was pentecostal before and his dad was a big time preacher in LA, so it was a huge change for him to join the church. He got pretty much disowned by his family. His daughter was raised pentecostal too and apparently they bring in people to talk specifically about Mormons and about all this anti stuff, so we're helping her resolve doubts.
The last one is named Angie, she is a recent convert's girlfriend. The problem is that they're living together. The recent convert, named Max, knows how important the church is and he took her to church with him. He's been talking to her about it and she likes it all so far. We're just being careful that she's not just trying to be baptized so she can be with Max. Max is kind of a weird guy though...he talks about how he saw angels before or something. Its some long story about how he was watching the extended versions of all the lord of the rings movies in a row and he started having visions or something. So those are the 3 that we had come to church. We're also teaching Germán, a Hispanic guy. He's been getting taught for a while and we had him read 2 Nephi 31 and talked about baptism. We invited him to pray to find out whether he needs to be baptized. He was like, the decision to be baptized isn't the hard part, enduring to the end is. He knows he needs to be baptized but he wants to keep reading the Book of Mormon and praying to find out if its true. He said he's about 70% sure its true right now. He used to be a missionary for his church in Guatemala so he's making a pretty big step to convert too. He's also living with his girlfriend, but I think he'll be willing to separate once he knows for sure the Book of Mormon is true.
One time during this week we had two reaaaally old men threaten me and Elder Pedersen. We were riding down the street and saw two old men on the street corner slowly making their way to the car, so we said hi to them. One of them turned slowly to us and started shaking his finger at us and said "We're going to beat the poop out of you" (censored of course). It was so random and it made us both laugh. I said, "Uh oh, we better get out of here!" It was almost as if a 6 year old boy was threatening us. Afterwards Elder Pedersen said he should have furiously thrown down his bike and said, "BRING IT OLD MAN!" That would have been pretty funny.
We also tried to contact this one referral, then some super old lady answered the door. I told her we were missionaries and we were here to give her the book she ordered. She said she couldn't hear so I said it louder. She said again shes hard of hearing and stepped closer, so then I just yelled it out. She could finally hear me but it was pretty hard to have a conversation when I was literally yelling at the lady. It was also hard not to laugh because it was so unnatural to be standing there yelling at some old lady. We could barely keep a straight face until she shut the door and we laughed for a good 10 minutes after that. I was kind of glad she didn't want us to teach her because I would have had a sore throat by the end of every lesson.
I got the package with the camera cord, pictures, stamps, ect. Thanks a lot. Yes that is my camera cord and I'm going to try to put all the pictures on it today. The Brown's have a laptop that I can use to put captions on the pictures. Hopefully it'll work the same way on the computers at home. The laptop has windows vista so if you look at the pictures on Mom's computer with the same program then it should work fine, I'm sure you can figure it out.
Alright I've got to go now before they try to kick me off the computers. They only guarantee 30 min on the computers here. We e-mail at a library in Texas City because the one in Galveston is flooded. I love hearing about everyone every week. I'll talk to everyone next week!!
Love,
Chase
Monday, November 3, 2008
Received Mon Nov 3, 2008
This week as been a pretty crazy week. But I guess that's not really unusual for me.
Hmm...where should I start. Lets see...we have been having a really hard time with our bikes. There are nails and thorns all over Galveston right now, so we have been getting flat tires all the time. Tuesday Elder Pedersen had two holes in his tires so we patched that up.
Then on Tuesday evening we planning an awesome day with backup plans and everything. We were pretty excited about it. Then at like 10:32, Elder Brown (the senior missionary were living with) knocked on our door and told us that we needed to do service tomorrow at the church and help clean out this shed to store all the tools or something. We were already in bed and everything, but we had to throw out our plans and just do it. He said it was probably a two hour job. Nope, we didn't finish until like 4pm. Then we had to go to a member's house and help them replace a huge hole in their ceiling. So we didn't get to go out that day.
Then the next day Elder Pedersen had a leadership meeting out in Sugar Land. The zone leaders came and picked us up and drove to their apartment in a place called Friendswood. There all the district leaders carpooled to Sugar Land for the meeting. The zone leaders gave me the key to their apartment and said I was going to work their area with a brand new missionary who had just come in like a week before. I knew about these plans like a day or two in advance so it wasn't a huge surprise. So we did our studies there and I took the new missionary out and we knocked doors. This was a tough area...everyone was either rich and thought they had everything already or they were old and said they were set in their ways. It was really fun though. I got to try out all different kinds of door approaches and find out what works. It was also kind of fun to be the senior companion for the day. I really learned a lot from having to being the senior comp. That took pretty much the whole day and by the time we got back to our apartment it was too late to go out and work in our own area.
Then Friday morning morning we woke up, studied, and went to get our bikes to go out but I saw my tire was totally flat and had a huge nail sticking in it along with like 4 thorns. We used all of our patches to fix it. So we go back out again to get ready to go and I see my front tire is totally flat too. We had no more patches and the only Walmart is like 65 blocks away. We were pretty much stranded. We had a district meeting to go to, and luckily the sisters picked us up in our car and took us there.
President Allred was there to do interviews and he heard about our problems and he just gave me some money and told one of the assistants to take me to wal-mart to buy more patches and a new intertube. So to fast forward things, we did that patched it all up and it was dark so we couldn't go out for a 3rd day in a row. We had a bunch more things happen and more flat tire problems, but its all long and boring stories that wont be very interesting to tell, but our bikes are all fine now.
I've got one more bike story. So finally that next day we got to go out again and I was determined to talk to a ton of people and make up for our missing 3 days. We got on our bikes and started riding along Seawall to contact a referral that was 38 blocks away. I was riding as hard as I possibly could, but I felt like my bike was made out of lead weights. I wasn't going nearly as fast as I should have been. I just kept riding harder and harder until we finally got there. I was sweating hard and this was the first time I was actually really tired from riding my bike in Texas. I got off my bike and noticed something weird about my back tire. I tried to spin it and it barely moved. When I had put on my back tire, somehow my brakes got tightened and they were squeezing against my tire the whole time. So I rode 38 blocks with my brakes on! My thighs were so tired I could barely walk up the stairs to the house. My bike felt really nice for the rest of the day though...pedaling is much easier when you aren't riding around with your brakes on.
Aside from those 3 off days we did amazing this week. We've been praying hard to find people because we have almost nobody to teach and we have been working hard. Because of that we have been so blessed. We have literally had people yell out to us and call us over and tell us that they use to get taught by the missionaries, then lost contact and they had been wanting to get involved with the church again. That happened with like 3-4 people. We were just always in the right place at the right time. We found tons of people every day. By the end of the week we had found 15 new investigators. When we called in to report our numbers they told us we found the most investigators in the whole mission! We didn't even get to work for 3 of those days. It has been really awesome. I'm really excited for these next couple weeks to follow up with these people and teach the people who are really sincere about learning more. I don't know if I told you but only 2 people have been baptized in our area in this past year. We really want to change that. So that's pretty much how my week went!
It sounds like everything's going well at home. I definitely miss having that In N Out truck for Halloween parties. We came in early on Halloween for obvious reasons. Strangely, there were barely any trick-or-treaters around here this year. I guess its because so many houses were destroyed that people assumed it wouldn't work out too well. Its also not exactly the best place to be letting your kids walk around at night time. The crime is pretty bad in Galveston...its a pretty shady place, especially now with looters around.
No I did not remember the time change. Our stupid cell phones didn't automatically change the time. We have Sprint phones...they're stupid. We did remember before we left the apartment though. We just went back to sleep for an hour. There were 3-4 people who showed up at church an hour early though, that was pretty funny.
Moms Questions:Things are going great with my companion. We both want to bring success to this area and were working hard. Were also having a lot of fun, which I've found is really important if you want to be a good, happy missionary.
We don't regularly do service anymore, but it seems like about once a week they tell us they need us to do service for the day. We don't see very many yellow shirters anymore. Pres Allred is only sending 4 missionaries a day now. We've helped over 600 houses though and I figured that I've personally helped out 50-60 houses. We definitely got pretty good exposure.
We rarely get dinner appointments. MAYBE one a week. Since eating that nasty Indian food that made me throw up 5 times we have had 2 dinner appointments. And the senior missionaries never make food for us. I think they're kind of poor so I never ask them for anything. Plus they eat old people food filled with fiber and all kinds of other nasty stuff, so I'm kind of glad they don't make us anything.
No we haven't tracted in our own apartment complex. We have been visiting people who we have done service for. This is one of our most useful finding tools. Its pretty hard to reject us when our church spent a day doing service for them. By the way...we heard that tree chopping companies are charging like $1000 dollars to take out a good sized tree from yards and they're charging several thousand to gut out houses. We do that stuff all day long.
We don't really have plans for P-day this week. Last week we went bowling. I am planning on sending home some pictures today though. I just put all the pictures on a CD this time...it was the easiest and probably cheapest thing to do. I still have all those pictures on my camera so if you have questions about the pictures just ask me and I'll let you know. In the future I want to put the pictures on the flash drive with the Brown's laptop and I can actually write in captions to the pictures on the computer. I couldn't this time because the CD is not a re-writable CD, its a CD-R not a CD-RW, so you cant change anything on it once its been made. That seemed like a really good idea to me.
Church was good. We have only been having sacrament meeting for the English ward and the Spanish branch. The rest of the church is filled with supplies and stuff so they cant have class. Next week we'll have normal church. I'll tell you our crazy Sunday schedule for church next week.
I'm going to be excited to get that stuff you sent Mom...that's all exactly what I've been needing. And yeah it takes a week and sometimes a little more to get mail here. It gets sent to the mission office then they send it out here with whoever happens to be coming out here within the next week. Sometimes nobody comes out for a while though, so it takes a while. I do love the things you send though. Elder Pedersen saw our fantasy football stuff and he said he wants to do that when he gets back from his mission. He's heard of it before but nobody has ever explained to him what it is.
Jake got his mission call...that's awesome!! I'm glad to hear Jeff is doing well still too. Ive been pretty worried about that situation.Ok, this was a pretty packed e-mail...next week I'll have to include some more stories and random things that have happened to us during the week.
I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Hmm...where should I start. Lets see...we have been having a really hard time with our bikes. There are nails and thorns all over Galveston right now, so we have been getting flat tires all the time. Tuesday Elder Pedersen had two holes in his tires so we patched that up.
Then on Tuesday evening we planning an awesome day with backup plans and everything. We were pretty excited about it. Then at like 10:32, Elder Brown (the senior missionary were living with) knocked on our door and told us that we needed to do service tomorrow at the church and help clean out this shed to store all the tools or something. We were already in bed and everything, but we had to throw out our plans and just do it. He said it was probably a two hour job. Nope, we didn't finish until like 4pm. Then we had to go to a member's house and help them replace a huge hole in their ceiling. So we didn't get to go out that day.
Then the next day Elder Pedersen had a leadership meeting out in Sugar Land. The zone leaders came and picked us up and drove to their apartment in a place called Friendswood. There all the district leaders carpooled to Sugar Land for the meeting. The zone leaders gave me the key to their apartment and said I was going to work their area with a brand new missionary who had just come in like a week before. I knew about these plans like a day or two in advance so it wasn't a huge surprise. So we did our studies there and I took the new missionary out and we knocked doors. This was a tough area...everyone was either rich and thought they had everything already or they were old and said they were set in their ways. It was really fun though. I got to try out all different kinds of door approaches and find out what works. It was also kind of fun to be the senior companion for the day. I really learned a lot from having to being the senior comp. That took pretty much the whole day and by the time we got back to our apartment it was too late to go out and work in our own area.
Then Friday morning morning we woke up, studied, and went to get our bikes to go out but I saw my tire was totally flat and had a huge nail sticking in it along with like 4 thorns. We used all of our patches to fix it. So we go back out again to get ready to go and I see my front tire is totally flat too. We had no more patches and the only Walmart is like 65 blocks away. We were pretty much stranded. We had a district meeting to go to, and luckily the sisters picked us up in our car and took us there.
President Allred was there to do interviews and he heard about our problems and he just gave me some money and told one of the assistants to take me to wal-mart to buy more patches and a new intertube. So to fast forward things, we did that patched it all up and it was dark so we couldn't go out for a 3rd day in a row. We had a bunch more things happen and more flat tire problems, but its all long and boring stories that wont be very interesting to tell, but our bikes are all fine now.
I've got one more bike story. So finally that next day we got to go out again and I was determined to talk to a ton of people and make up for our missing 3 days. We got on our bikes and started riding along Seawall to contact a referral that was 38 blocks away. I was riding as hard as I possibly could, but I felt like my bike was made out of lead weights. I wasn't going nearly as fast as I should have been. I just kept riding harder and harder until we finally got there. I was sweating hard and this was the first time I was actually really tired from riding my bike in Texas. I got off my bike and noticed something weird about my back tire. I tried to spin it and it barely moved. When I had put on my back tire, somehow my brakes got tightened and they were squeezing against my tire the whole time. So I rode 38 blocks with my brakes on! My thighs were so tired I could barely walk up the stairs to the house. My bike felt really nice for the rest of the day though...pedaling is much easier when you aren't riding around with your brakes on.
Aside from those 3 off days we did amazing this week. We've been praying hard to find people because we have almost nobody to teach and we have been working hard. Because of that we have been so blessed. We have literally had people yell out to us and call us over and tell us that they use to get taught by the missionaries, then lost contact and they had been wanting to get involved with the church again. That happened with like 3-4 people. We were just always in the right place at the right time. We found tons of people every day. By the end of the week we had found 15 new investigators. When we called in to report our numbers they told us we found the most investigators in the whole mission! We didn't even get to work for 3 of those days. It has been really awesome. I'm really excited for these next couple weeks to follow up with these people and teach the people who are really sincere about learning more. I don't know if I told you but only 2 people have been baptized in our area in this past year. We really want to change that. So that's pretty much how my week went!
It sounds like everything's going well at home. I definitely miss having that In N Out truck for Halloween parties. We came in early on Halloween for obvious reasons. Strangely, there were barely any trick-or-treaters around here this year. I guess its because so many houses were destroyed that people assumed it wouldn't work out too well. Its also not exactly the best place to be letting your kids walk around at night time. The crime is pretty bad in Galveston...its a pretty shady place, especially now with looters around.
No I did not remember the time change. Our stupid cell phones didn't automatically change the time. We have Sprint phones...they're stupid. We did remember before we left the apartment though. We just went back to sleep for an hour. There were 3-4 people who showed up at church an hour early though, that was pretty funny.
Moms Questions:Things are going great with my companion. We both want to bring success to this area and were working hard. Were also having a lot of fun, which I've found is really important if you want to be a good, happy missionary.
We don't regularly do service anymore, but it seems like about once a week they tell us they need us to do service for the day. We don't see very many yellow shirters anymore. Pres Allred is only sending 4 missionaries a day now. We've helped over 600 houses though and I figured that I've personally helped out 50-60 houses. We definitely got pretty good exposure.
We rarely get dinner appointments. MAYBE one a week. Since eating that nasty Indian food that made me throw up 5 times we have had 2 dinner appointments. And the senior missionaries never make food for us. I think they're kind of poor so I never ask them for anything. Plus they eat old people food filled with fiber and all kinds of other nasty stuff, so I'm kind of glad they don't make us anything.
No we haven't tracted in our own apartment complex. We have been visiting people who we have done service for. This is one of our most useful finding tools. Its pretty hard to reject us when our church spent a day doing service for them. By the way...we heard that tree chopping companies are charging like $1000 dollars to take out a good sized tree from yards and they're charging several thousand to gut out houses. We do that stuff all day long.
We don't really have plans for P-day this week. Last week we went bowling. I am planning on sending home some pictures today though. I just put all the pictures on a CD this time...it was the easiest and probably cheapest thing to do. I still have all those pictures on my camera so if you have questions about the pictures just ask me and I'll let you know. In the future I want to put the pictures on the flash drive with the Brown's laptop and I can actually write in captions to the pictures on the computer. I couldn't this time because the CD is not a re-writable CD, its a CD-R not a CD-RW, so you cant change anything on it once its been made. That seemed like a really good idea to me.
Church was good. We have only been having sacrament meeting for the English ward and the Spanish branch. The rest of the church is filled with supplies and stuff so they cant have class. Next week we'll have normal church. I'll tell you our crazy Sunday schedule for church next week.
I'm going to be excited to get that stuff you sent Mom...that's all exactly what I've been needing. And yeah it takes a week and sometimes a little more to get mail here. It gets sent to the mission office then they send it out here with whoever happens to be coming out here within the next week. Sometimes nobody comes out for a while though, so it takes a while. I do love the things you send though. Elder Pedersen saw our fantasy football stuff and he said he wants to do that when he gets back from his mission. He's heard of it before but nobody has ever explained to him what it is.
Jake got his mission call...that's awesome!! I'm glad to hear Jeff is doing well still too. Ive been pretty worried about that situation.Ok, this was a pretty packed e-mail...next week I'll have to include some more stories and random things that have happened to us during the week.
I love you all!
Love,
Chase
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