Received Mon Feb 9, 2009

Good news: I'm pretty much totally healthy now. I've just got a little cough and I'm still coughing stuff up that I've got to constantly spit out. Its kind of gross, but its not affecting me too bad so I'm happy.

My companion is also fine, so we've been working this week. We've had a really good week this week.

Yesterday we taught 3 really good, powerful lessons all with members. We also gave out another baptismal date! His name is Francisco but his nickname is Pancho. He's from Mexico but he's grown up here since he was like 3, so he prefers English. He works at Arlan's Market with Abraham (a member). He's our age, so were actually really good friends with him. We've primarily just been his friend and kind of taught him and gave him advice on the side. We've taught his whole family like 2-3 times. He is really the only one that has a lot of interest though, so we've been focusing on him. We taught him yesterday at Abraham's house and he chose March 8th as his baptismal date. This is the same date as William, so we'll have 2 baptisms on march 8th. I'm pretty excited for it. We still have a lot of things to teach, hopefully it all goes well.

We also taught one of Abraham's daughter's (Kim's) friends named Ryan. He's gay, so its kind of weird teaching him, but we taught a good lesson to him about the plan of salvation. We'll see how serious he is as we keep teaching him.

Then last night we went over to a recent convert's house for dinner. His name is Bobby Reyna. He's a really cool guy...we always hear lots of funny stories when we eat with him. He feeds us every Sunday night. You never know if the food is going to be amazingly good or..not so good. A few weeks ago we ate some chicken that was definitely not cooked long enough. It was really pink. We were afraid we were going to get sick, but luckily we didn't. Anyway...this time he fed us fajita that he marinated for 3 days, so it was really good. His girlfriend from Mississippi came down and when we first met her at the beginning of the night she was pretty against the church. She thought Mormons were crazy people and all sorts of bad things. So she was very stand off-ish at the start. Religion came up a few times but conversation always died down quick. A little later on we asked a couple questions and it kind of sparked something in Deborah's (the girlfriend) head and our little lesson started. We resolved a lot of doubts and opened her eyes to a lot of things. We talked to her about how we aren't here to try to prove things and convince people that were right. We come and present information, teach a lesson, then we tell them to pray to God and ask if its true. Because if this really is Jesus Christ's church, then God will tell you. She was very impressed by that and she is going to pray about it. She is very sincere too. Now she has a lot of respect for our church and her opinions are 100% changed. It was neat to see the huge change she made in one night. So we'll see what will happen there.

We got a referral for a Hispanic family that we feel really good about too. They are the Trujillo family. The father is from Columbia and the mother is from Puerto Rico. They have two kids who live with them and two kids that are fully grown. They're just nice genuine people who want to find a good church. We're excited to start visiting them too.

Something that I've noticed out here is the huge diversity in the people that we teach...especially the Hispanics. We are currently teaching people from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Columbia, Puerto Rico, Peru, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras and other places that I cant think of right now. We're also teaching black people, white people, all sorts of mixes, gangster people, old people, rich people, poor people. We see pretty much everything.

Haha...another random thing that I've noticed is how a lot of Hispanic people ALWAYS have their phones on, so phones ring all the time in sacrament meeting. Last week one of the members was giving a talk when his phone went off, but the funniest part about it was that his ring tone was a Kelly Clarkson song. Some Hispanic people have the funniest ring tones. Yesterday in church someone's phone rang with the Titannic theme song as their ringtone. They always have the girl singers...its pretty funny.

Other than that...I got pretty much everything Mom sent to me. I didn't get the journal yet. I also got the painting that Dad made. That is one awesome painting...I've got it sitting on my desk. Everyone who has come into our room has seen it and complimented it. Thank you Dad. I also enjoyed getting all the letters and pictures. I must have gotten Mom's ESP because I did end up finding some Ibuprofen and taking it. It did help with the bad back pains. I'm just glad I'm over all that and I don't have to deal with that anymore.

Mom: Then next time you send something you could throw in a few stamps and also return address labels. I'm doing OK on stamps, but it wouldn't hurt to have more, but I'm totally out of return address labels. They were really useful.

Ok, that's about all for this week. We're starting Week 5 of the transfer, so all we have is this week and next, then I could get transferred! I'm pretty sure I am leaving because me and Elder Pedersen have been together for 3 transfers and that is a long time, so one of us is going to get transferred. I've been here longer, plus Elder Pedersen is the district leader here and the district leaders always stay here foreeever. Alright I love you guys!! Have a good week!

Love,
Chase