The answer is no, I dont print out my e-mails, there is no printer here. So I'm just going to start with this e-mail and I might have to finish writing back next week. I'm not going to have a lot of time this week again to e-mail...we keep getting cheated out of e-mail time.
But anyway...this week was a pretty good week. The sisters had a baptism for something named Salvador. He's like 21, and he's your classic looking gangster. He's got tattoos, wears a bandana, wears gangster looking clothes, but he is the coolest guy. I got a picture with him, so you'll see what he looks like. Baptisms are always so much fun to go to.
Elder Craig C. Christiansen also came to tour our mission this week. He's in the quorum of the 70. He talked a lot about the atonement and said a couple interesting things. His wife is a little bit crazy though. She is waaaaaaaaay over the top. She's just overly excited about everything to the point of being really unnatural. She frantically took notes the whole time and when it was her turn to talk she announced she took 5 pages of notes. Haha....watching her provided some comic relief throughout the meeting, so I was grateful for that, because those meetings get sooo long.
Our spanish investigator with a baptismal date, William, is doing awesome still. He keeps telling us that after he gets baptized he wants to go out with us on bikes and help us find hispanics to bring into the church. He's going to be an amazing member.
Next week is the end of the transfer, so I'll find out if I'm getting transferred or not next week. I'm pretty sure I'm getting transferred, but we'll see.
Mom: Wow...starting up your own little business. That sounds really exciting. It also sounds like it will be a ton of work. I would love to see your website and a screen shot of what your purses look like.
Sister Brown plays the piano for the Spanish branch. She's a piano teacher so she gets really into it and makes sure she follows the conductor exactly. Unfortunately the conductors aren't really all the experienced and they usually just wave their arms around and follow the piano. Sister Brown refuses to start playing the next verse until the conductor starts moving her arms and it confuses the conductor every time. So there's always like 5 second gaps between verses and everyone starts singing early. Haha...singing with a spanish congregation is definitely a unique experience. Its something I will never forget. Our district has actually sung in sacrament meeting a couple times. I dont really get nervous at all..it doesn't really bother me unless there's only like 3 other people. We're going to sing Ye Elders of Israel next week.
Oh yeah...sister Cramer and the Hix's both sent me valentines day cards. Sister Cramer sent a 2 dollar bill and wrote "even more rare than a 2 dollar bill is a great missionary like you." I thought that was creative. The Hix's also sent some money to buy me a valentines treat...it was really nice of them.
Griffin: I like to do somersaults and roll around sometimes too. My favorite is doing backwards somersaults. I got a leonardo valentines day card and a sucker from 5 year old boy named CJ. Leonardo is my favorite ninja turtle. Maybe I'll be leonardo for halloween when I come back home. Maybe we can play Sonic Racers too!
Quinn: I havent done any pullups since I left the MTC. I think I stopped at 15 pullups. We dont have a pullup bar in our apartment so I cant really do them anywhere. I'm going to start exercising every morning though. I'm going to do pushups and situps. I think the most pushups I've ever done without stopping was 45. I did that when I was a junior in highschool I think. Next week I'll tell you how many I can do now...see if you can beat that. 8th grade was easy for me too. I took Library Aid for one of my classes and all I did was sit in the library and do my homework every day and sometimes take library slips to peoples classes. So every day I finished all of my homework in there and I never had to do homework at home. So I have a challenge for you Quinn. I challenge you to at least start your homework every day when you get home from school. My challenge will be to do exercises every morning. I've been getting really really tired every afternoon and I think its because I havent been doing any exercises to get my heart pumping. Ive already set a goal to do morning exercises like 5 times and I can never do it. So lets have a competition and see who can do better. You start your homework right when you get home every day and I'll do exercises every morning. Remind Mom to ask me how many mornings I exercised this week and you tell Mom how many times you started your homework right when you got home.
Ok, thats about all for this letter!! Mom, the pictures worked out good...I really liked it a lot. The only problem was that I couldn't see the captions, that's fine though. Unfortunately in the future we can't really do that cause I won't have a laptop in my apartment. Hmm...I might have to find a way to send pictures home too.
Ok well I love you all!! I'm glad everyone wrote me..I love hearing from everyone. Have a good week!!!
Love,
Chase
FROM JULIE (THE MOTHER) CHASE ALSO WROTE ANOTHER LETTER TO KERRY. HE TOLD SOME INTERESTING STORIES:
So is the L. Tom Perry plan going on in Arcadia too?? He must be busy traveling everywhere. Maybe Arcadia should think about doing the focus family thing like we have. The ward council chooses 5 families that might be recent converts, less actives, inactive, or just families that would need visits from missionaries, and the missionaries visit all 5 of them every week. We've developed some really good relationships with less actives that no other missionary or ward member has been able to for the past 5+ years. I've loved it. I love teaching members and visiting them just as much as I do investigators. I consider a reactivation to be just as good as a convert baptism. Our job is to strengthen the wards and branches and bringing back a whole family is a very effective way to do that. Me and Elder Pedersen have actually been able to help bring back a lot of people...that alone makes me feel like we've been so successful here.
We are starting to get fed really well. The branch presidents wife made a dinner calendar for us and passed it around in the ward and the branch. Every week we have at least 5-6 dinner appointments, but almost all of them are from the spanish branch. Hispanic people are so loving and humble. Everyone on the island got hit pretty hard by the hurricane and everyone is trying to recover. The hispanics probably got hit much harder than anyone else because they always live in the bottom floors and in pretty unstable houses. But they are the ones who went out of their way to serve us and feed us dinner. Ward members do call us from time to time and set up appointments with us every once in a while too. The ward and branch here are awesome. I have a really good relationship with almost all the members in both the ward and the branch. It will be hard to leave, but I know I'll always be exactly where the Lord needs me. I couldnt imagine trying to leave after being in an area for over a year...thats pretty much unheard of here.
I feel like I can speak Spanish at least alright right now. Its always kind of frustrating though. I was just starting to feel pretty confident and independent (meaning I felt comfortable talking to hispanics without always having my companion by my side) then I got sick for like 9 days. During that time I couldn't study and I didn't speak a word of spanish and that really hurt my progression. I really really treasure my 3 hours of study time every morning though and I feel like I do pretty effective studies. So it's always getting better and better. This area is a really tough one to learn spanish, but I feel pretty good with myself. Every sunday I go around and talk to every single spanish member and whenever I don't know how to say something, they help me out. They've been awesome at helping me learn spanish.
Elder Pedersen is not a BYU football player right now, but he hopes to be in the future. His dad is going to talk with Bronco sometime this month, so he'll find out if he can get a scholarship or if they can work something out. He's a wide receiver. He's pretty good too...his dad sent him his highlight film from high school. He's really big for a receiver too...hes like 6'4 200lbs and during the season he gets up to like 215 or 220 lbs. Yeah were still together though. We've been together for 3 transfers, which is a really long time, so at the end of the transfer its almost for sure that one of us will get moved. Its pretty unheard of to stay together for 4 transfers.
I'm glad grandma loves my letters. It seems like she likes to write too. She'll wakes up early in the morning and go out to the deck and write me a letter. She writes a lot about the animals that she sees and how cold it is and everything like that. They are pretty interesting letters sometimes..haha. I always love them though.
I really hope Nate contemplates going on a mission. I think the best thing he could possibly do is to sincerely pray about it and find out for himself if Heavenly Father wants him to be on a mission. I know that if he does he will get an answer.
I remember talking to Tony a lot about going on a mission. I wrote him a letter in the MTC and I told him that I'm not about to tell him he needs to fill out his papers write away and just leave on a mission. I told him that nobody has a right to do that. I said the best possible thing for him to do is to pray and find out if he needs to be on a mission. He's doing awesome right now too. He studies the scriptures every day and he's studying Preach My Gospel a ton too. He kind of dug himself into a hole with school and other things and hes going through one heck of a time to climb out of that hole. But he's doing it and hes determined to leave on a mission. That makes me happy.
That is cool to hear that our ward (well at least bishop) is fired up and excited about missionary work. Our ward here is pretty fired up too. We are working really well with our members and we're having a lot of success. It shouldn't be too hard to give the missionaries lessons to teach either. If nothing else works then they can go with home teachers to less active members homes. That'll boost home teaching numbers and give the missionaries more lessons to teach.
Ok Dad...thanks for the awesome letter! I loved hearing from you. Thanks so much for everything that you do. I absolutely love being out here and I love being a missionary. I love this area, the members, the people, even the drunks. I learned that the best missionary work you do is when youre happy and having fun and laughing. I've been having a blast out here and I have front row seats to real life miracles every day. I love you Dad!!
Love,
Chase
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