Our temple trip was awesome. Half the mission went on Wednesday and the other half (my half) went on Friday. Its called a Temple Zone Conference. We went through and did the 9:00am session, had lunch, then had our zone conference meetings until about 5. The temple was awesome as always. We always take a big picture with all the missionaries in it at every Temple Zone Conference, but you'll have to wait til I get home to see those.
Then our zone conference afterwards was really good too. I learned a lot of things and I took a lot of notes. We also got to see a picture of our new mission president and his wife who will be coming on July 1st. They are named the Salen's, I think. If you get the MormonTimes there is a little paragraph or two written about each of the new mission presidents and they are in there. They are really young and they have 6 kids, their oldest is 14. They both served missions, Brother Salen to Argentina and I don't know where his wife went to.
After that we went and taught our stake presidents neighbor in our stake presidents home. Her name is Tien and she is from Vietnam. She is probably in her mid 50s and she was an English professor back in Vietnam. Surprisingly she still has a pretty thick accent, but I think she can understand it really well. The problem is that shes really hard of hearing so we have to yell when we talk to her. This was our 3rd time teaching her and we invited her to be baptized and she said yes! We are planning on doing the baptism April 11th. The Haitian family (the Dors) also said they want to be baptized and they are just praying for a specific date. David Majewski also said he wants to be baptized but he wants to finish reading the gospel principles book so he can be more comfortable with everything and at least have a decent grasp on the doctrines of the church. He's about 1/3 of the way through. The Dors, David Majewski, and Tien all came to church, so that was nice. We also had like 5-6 less active people come as well. So everything is going really well.
We are having a pretty difficult time finding new people to teach though. We've knocked for several hours this last week and found 0 people to teach. Only one lady let us in and that's because she felt sorry for us walking about in the blazing heat so she wanted to give us water. She was definitely not interested though. I know that if we keep working hard and doing everything were supposed to everything will all work out well.
Today for P-day we went to this place called the Alligator park. Its almost like an Arboretum but there's a lot of really big lakes with a bunch of alligators in them. There is no fence or anything keeping you away from the alligators so it was pretty neat. The only bad part is that you aren't allowed to throw rocks at the alligators, but that's your first instinct when they see an alligator sitting still. I held back most of the time. But one time I threw a rock and it landed right in front of the alligators mouth and it snapped at it, so that was pretty exciting.
Last P-day I got my haircut for $5 at some Vietnamese haircutting and they usually do a pretty good job. This lady didn't do the best job though. Apparently she thought my hair was too thick and decided to thin out my hair a lot with those weird thinning scissors. I guess that's what you get when you pay 5 dollars. Its not too bad though. It'll take all of 3 weeks to grow all the way back anyway.
Hmm...oh I have a funny story about last week at church. Last week we were asked to teach the Teachers Quorum, so we planned out our lesson and we were going to base it off a talk by Elder Wirthlin. Our lesson was on the divine role of mothers intertwined with motivating missionary stuff to make them want to go on a mission. Preparing this lesson also reminded me of something that will make Mom happy. I remember in Galveston on 2 separate occasions I got told that my mother did a good job raising me. A sister missionary told me then later a member did too. So good job Mom. Anyway... so we had our lesson all prepared but when it came time to give the lesson, we both looked at each other to get the talk out and our little paper we prepared. To this day neither of us know where that stuff went. So we had to wing our entire lesson. I just happened to have another talk with me in the car about missionary work, so we used that to kind of help us out. I guess its a good thing that all we do all day is teach. The lesson actually turned out pretty good and at the end of the lesson I asked all them all to raise their hands if they were planning on going on a mission. All 10-12 of them raised their hands, so that made me happy. Their normal teachers advisor guy told us that a lot of them were kind of hesitant and weren't sure if they were going to go, so we told a lot of good missionary stories and got them kind of excited.
Do you remember that one investigator I talked about back in Galveston? His name is William, he's a Hispanic guy from Nicaragua. He had a baptismal date for like a week after I left the area. I heard a week or so ago that everything went perfect and hes already becoming an awesome member, so that made me happy.
Another random piece of news: Grandma talked wrote me a couple months ago telling me that one of David's best friends sons is in my mission. His name is Elder Sharp. I met him a month or two ago. He's a zone leader. Hes a really awesome, humble guy. He's going home in a few months though.
Last P-day my companion and I also went and played racquetball with the zone leaders in their apartment complex. They have a racquetball court there and the zone leaders have racquetballs and rackets. It was really fun. We played about 4 games and I won 3 of them. The last game I lost because my partner wasn't that good so he got bored and pretty much just stopped trying. It was really fun the whole time for everyone else though and were planning on playing again.
By the way, did Brother Jensen ever show you the picture he took with me when he was here? I have all those pictures on this memory card, so you'll get to see all that when I send this memory card home.
Ok, well that's about all for this week. I love you all and I'll talk to you all (I almost typed yall!) later!
Love,
Chase
Monday, March 23, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Received Mon, March 16, 2009
Ahh...its nice to finally be able to e-mail again. I feel like I haven't e-mailed in forever. I'm glad you got that postcard thing...I hated not being able to at least say I'm alive and well on P-day, then I remembered on Tuesday that I had those post card things and it worked out perfect.
We didn't really have a lot of errands, it just took forever. We went to the mission office to get a Book of Mormon in Tagalog and Elder Taufa had to pay some fees for something. We got some new office missionaries (they're old people..like in their 70s) and they don't really know what they're doing so it took forever. Then we had to go get our oil changed and we had to wait at this place for over and hour. It was pretty frustrating. Then we had a zone activity that took forever, then we had a dinner appointment to get to.
This week has actually seemed pretty long. We had appointments with like 3-4 new people that we found and they all fell through. Almost nobody we tried to contact was home, we just had some bad luck. Luckily we did have some really good lessons with our good investigators. Almost all of them told us how Jehovah's Witnesses had stopped by and tried to give them anti-Mormon literature and all their pamphlets. Luckily our investigators are good and told them they didn't want it. One even told them that hes "practicing LDS." haha...that made me feel good. We're pretty sure all those new people we had appointments with got anti'd too. They all of the sudden decided they didn't want to hear the message that they use to be so excited to learn about. The same thing was happening in my last area too. I don't know if anti-mormon people just follow us all the time or if they just happen to live in the areas we have appointments.
I'll tell you about all our good investigators though. First there's the Dors. They are a family from Haiti consisting of a mother, 2 daughters, and a son. I don't remember if I told you but the chapel in our area is brand new. It just got dedicated last week and it got finished a couple weeks before I got here. So when it got finished the Dors just decided to try it out and as it turns out they love it. Several other families just randomly showed up that week too...there were like 16 investigators at church. We've taught them like 3-4 times and they are awesome. The mother read the entire gospel principles book in like a week. The kids all go to mutual/webelos and even help out with the fundraiser stuff. Were are probably going to give them baptismal dates this week.
Next is David Majewski. His wife is a member but he is not. His wife has been inactive since she was a teenager and they just had their first kid and decided to start coming back. Right before I got here Elder Taufa went over to meet him for the first time, but he was really sick, so they gave him a blessing and the next day he was healed. He's one of the most genuine investigators I've met. He really wants to know if this is a good church to raise his family in. He's progressing really well and gaining a strong testimony. Last week he had his baby blessed. He went up there to hold the microphone, then to show the baby to the audience after the blessing so he got to be a part of it. I loved seeing that.
Then there's Tom Fitchett. He just had a bad heart attack and his heart actually stopped like 4-5 times. His sister in law is a member so she sent the missionaries to give him a blessing. Now hes recuperating well and he knows he was kept alive for a reason. Right before he had the heart attack they actually just bought a new house and were about to move, so me and my companion along with a couple other members helped pack up everything and move it all. That really touched his and his wife's hearts. He's been around members of the church for his whole life and already knows a lot about it. He told us hes already 90% sure the church is true. We taught him a really good Restoration lesson and this family named the Otis' (they helped with the move) come with us to teach him and they are doing an awesome job fellowshipping. So those are our 6 people! They're all awesome, but there's always room for more.
The hard thing about this area is that everyone works all the time. Most people work 6 days a week so we can only visit them once a week. Pretty much nobody is home during the day time either, so its kind of slow during the day, then were packed at night. We're doing pretty well though.
Oh yeah...I don't think I ever talked about when I left from Galveston. The day before I left me and my companion went all around Galveston, visiting our investigators and saying good-bye to members. We also rode around and went off all my favorite jumps on the island. The hurricane cracked a lot of sidewalks and made some almost perfect jumps, so that was really fun. Then at about 4pm we were riding to a members home and we came up to this street to cross it and saw all these parade floats riding past. We looked down the road and saw an endless line of them. Apparently one of the parades for Mardi Gras was about to start. As we stood there for like a minute figuring out what to do all the people on the floats started throwing Mardi Gras beads to us. One guy yelled out, "HEY ELDER BOYS!!! GO JOSEPH SMITH!! I LOVE MORMONS!!" It was pretty funny. Later that night we visited some members and they just barely got back from another parade and they gave us tons of Mardi Gras beads. I went around and took pictures with a lot of people, so I'll have to send those home soon.
About that...I think the best way to send pictures home would be to get another memory card and just send it back and forth. So Mom maybe you could get one and send it in the next package you send. You could also send more stamps. I have like 5-6 left so I'll be fine for a little while, but you might as well just throw it in a package you send.
Hmm...I wrote down some other things to write about, but I left the paper at home. Oh yeah...I just remembered some of them. Well first, yes we get a lot of dinner appointments here. Every single day we have an appointment. The food is almost always good. If you're going to gain weight on your mission this is the area you'd do it in. I haven't gained any weight yet though. Me and Elder Taufa go and work out in a nearby gym every morning too, so if its possible for me to gain weight, this is where it will be.
Right before I left Elder Pedersen got word from his dad that Bronco Mendenhall just contacted him and he has preferred walk-on status on the BYU football team. That means he's going to be on the team for sure, but he wont have a scholarship at least for his first year, so that will be cool to see.
A week after I left Galveston, our Spanish investigator William, got baptized!! Hes the one who said he wanted to go on exchanges and help us find more Hispanics. I was happy to hear that his baptism went smoothly and hes still doing good.
Hmm...thats about all I can think of! This is a pretty monstrous e-mail, so I hope it makes up for having no e-mail last week. I love you all!! Everything is going awesome here. OH yeah...we get to go to the temple this Friday! So that will be fun. Have a good week!!
Love,
Chase
We didn't really have a lot of errands, it just took forever. We went to the mission office to get a Book of Mormon in Tagalog and Elder Taufa had to pay some fees for something. We got some new office missionaries (they're old people..like in their 70s) and they don't really know what they're doing so it took forever. Then we had to go get our oil changed and we had to wait at this place for over and hour. It was pretty frustrating. Then we had a zone activity that took forever, then we had a dinner appointment to get to.
This week has actually seemed pretty long. We had appointments with like 3-4 new people that we found and they all fell through. Almost nobody we tried to contact was home, we just had some bad luck. Luckily we did have some really good lessons with our good investigators. Almost all of them told us how Jehovah's Witnesses had stopped by and tried to give them anti-Mormon literature and all their pamphlets. Luckily our investigators are good and told them they didn't want it. One even told them that hes "practicing LDS." haha...that made me feel good. We're pretty sure all those new people we had appointments with got anti'd too. They all of the sudden decided they didn't want to hear the message that they use to be so excited to learn about. The same thing was happening in my last area too. I don't know if anti-mormon people just follow us all the time or if they just happen to live in the areas we have appointments.
I'll tell you about all our good investigators though. First there's the Dors. They are a family from Haiti consisting of a mother, 2 daughters, and a son. I don't remember if I told you but the chapel in our area is brand new. It just got dedicated last week and it got finished a couple weeks before I got here. So when it got finished the Dors just decided to try it out and as it turns out they love it. Several other families just randomly showed up that week too...there were like 16 investigators at church. We've taught them like 3-4 times and they are awesome. The mother read the entire gospel principles book in like a week. The kids all go to mutual/webelos and even help out with the fundraiser stuff. Were are probably going to give them baptismal dates this week.
Next is David Majewski. His wife is a member but he is not. His wife has been inactive since she was a teenager and they just had their first kid and decided to start coming back. Right before I got here Elder Taufa went over to meet him for the first time, but he was really sick, so they gave him a blessing and the next day he was healed. He's one of the most genuine investigators I've met. He really wants to know if this is a good church to raise his family in. He's progressing really well and gaining a strong testimony. Last week he had his baby blessed. He went up there to hold the microphone, then to show the baby to the audience after the blessing so he got to be a part of it. I loved seeing that.
Then there's Tom Fitchett. He just had a bad heart attack and his heart actually stopped like 4-5 times. His sister in law is a member so she sent the missionaries to give him a blessing. Now hes recuperating well and he knows he was kept alive for a reason. Right before he had the heart attack they actually just bought a new house and were about to move, so me and my companion along with a couple other members helped pack up everything and move it all. That really touched his and his wife's hearts. He's been around members of the church for his whole life and already knows a lot about it. He told us hes already 90% sure the church is true. We taught him a really good Restoration lesson and this family named the Otis' (they helped with the move) come with us to teach him and they are doing an awesome job fellowshipping. So those are our 6 people! They're all awesome, but there's always room for more.
The hard thing about this area is that everyone works all the time. Most people work 6 days a week so we can only visit them once a week. Pretty much nobody is home during the day time either, so its kind of slow during the day, then were packed at night. We're doing pretty well though.
Oh yeah...I don't think I ever talked about when I left from Galveston. The day before I left me and my companion went all around Galveston, visiting our investigators and saying good-bye to members. We also rode around and went off all my favorite jumps on the island. The hurricane cracked a lot of sidewalks and made some almost perfect jumps, so that was really fun. Then at about 4pm we were riding to a members home and we came up to this street to cross it and saw all these parade floats riding past. We looked down the road and saw an endless line of them. Apparently one of the parades for Mardi Gras was about to start. As we stood there for like a minute figuring out what to do all the people on the floats started throwing Mardi Gras beads to us. One guy yelled out, "HEY ELDER BOYS!!! GO JOSEPH SMITH!! I LOVE MORMONS!!" It was pretty funny. Later that night we visited some members and they just barely got back from another parade and they gave us tons of Mardi Gras beads. I went around and took pictures with a lot of people, so I'll have to send those home soon.
About that...I think the best way to send pictures home would be to get another memory card and just send it back and forth. So Mom maybe you could get one and send it in the next package you send. You could also send more stamps. I have like 5-6 left so I'll be fine for a little while, but you might as well just throw it in a package you send.
Hmm...I wrote down some other things to write about, but I left the paper at home. Oh yeah...I just remembered some of them. Well first, yes we get a lot of dinner appointments here. Every single day we have an appointment. The food is almost always good. If you're going to gain weight on your mission this is the area you'd do it in. I haven't gained any weight yet though. Me and Elder Taufa go and work out in a nearby gym every morning too, so if its possible for me to gain weight, this is where it will be.
Right before I left Elder Pedersen got word from his dad that Bronco Mendenhall just contacted him and he has preferred walk-on status on the BYU football team. That means he's going to be on the team for sure, but he wont have a scholarship at least for his first year, so that will be cool to see.
A week after I left Galveston, our Spanish investigator William, got baptized!! Hes the one who said he wanted to go on exchanges and help us find more Hispanics. I was happy to hear that his baptism went smoothly and hes still doing good.
Hmm...thats about all I can think of! This is a pretty monstrous e-mail, so I hope it makes up for having no e-mail last week. I love you all!! Everything is going awesome here. OH yeah...we get to go to the temple this Friday! So that will be fun. Have a good week!!
Love,
Chase
Friday, March 13, 2009
Received Fri, March 13, 2009
We got this postcard from Chase this afternoon:
Dear Family,
Sorry I couldn’t e-mail this week. We had a couple extra errands we had to run this week and it all took forever. Normally we would just grab some fast food and e-mail during lunch the next day, but we were kind of far away from any e-mail place so we have to wait until next week.
I just didn’t want anyone to worry. I’m doing really good still and me and Elder Taufa are having fun. We’ve had some awesome lessons. Ok, well I’ll be sure to e-mail this week. I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Dear Family,
Sorry I couldn’t e-mail this week. We had a couple extra errands we had to run this week and it all took forever. Normally we would just grab some fast food and e-mail during lunch the next day, but we were kind of far away from any e-mail place so we have to wait until next week.
I just didn’t want anyone to worry. I’m doing really good still and me and Elder Taufa are having fun. We’ve had some awesome lessons. Ok, well I’ll be sure to e-mail this week. I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Pictures - Lots!
Chase sent us 109 pictures at the end of January.
I REALLY wanted to share them with you, but didn't quite know how to do it without sitting in front of the comptuer forever uploading photos. I figured it out!Hopefully, if you following link below, you will see all his pictures, with captions!
Try it!
Oh, and there are videos he took there also.
Received Mon March 2, 2009
I have some pretty surprising news this week.
I don't remember if I said this but every week in my president's letter I tell him that I'm working on my Spanish, but I want to get submerged in it so I can really get it down well. I told him that in my interviews as well. So I assumed I'd be going to ghetto part of Houston full of nothing but Spanish speakers. I got exactly the opposite!
My new area is Richmond. It is a really rich, ENGLISH area. When he announced where I was going I was actually really sad because an English area was the last area I wanted to go to. A lot of Spanish missionaries have to serve in an English area at least once in their missions, but I really didn't think it would happen to me so soon. This story has a good end to it though. I think I'm really going to like this area. This ward is amazing. The members here are pumped to do missionary work and they've already given us a bunch of referrals. The building here in Richmond is brand new (they finished it like a month ago) and there aren't many churches around here, so when it finally finished a bunch of random people came to check it out.
The day after I got here we went to go teach them. They are a family from Haiti named the Dors. The mom read the entire Gospel Principles book in 3 weeks. Then there are 2 daughters and a son. I'm not really sure where the husband is, but its a really cool family.
My companion is Elder Taufa. He is from Tonga. Me and Elder Taufa are already getting along really well. The last missionary here (the one whose spot I replaced) was a missionary who is really difficult to get along with. He hates talking to people and he refuses to do anything he doesn't feel like doing. He served in this area for about 8 months, but still not very members know who he is. One of my main goals is to build really good relationships with all the members in the ward and to start using them to their full potential. This area could be exploding right now. When we went to teach the Dors that day after I got here, that was me and elder taufa's first lesson together. After we walked out he was like...wow that's the first lesson in the past 6 weeks that I've actually taught with my companion (because his last companion would refuse to talk). I think we're going to be able to work really well and do a lot of good things here.
Elder Taufa has been out about 20 months. He has some crazy stories. He's like 6' tall but he's like 220 lbs. He played a lot of rugby back in Tonga and he also boxed for like 9 years. He also played volleyball and ping pong. He told me about how when he first got into the mission there was an older missionary that always picked on the new missionaries. So he started harassing Elder Taufa and saying how he's small for a Tongan blah blah blah. Luckily Elder Taufa is pretty calm, so he just ignored it. Then that missionary slapped him like 3-4 times and finally Elder Taufa picked him up and threw him against a wall then jumped on him, put him in a headlock, and forced him to promise that he would stay away from him for the rest of his mission. Haha...Elder Taufa is a really nice guy, until he gets angry.
Yesterday we visited a less active family and they had this HUGE bull dog. It would jump up and be just as tall as us and try to lick our faces and the members just stared at us like it wasn't happening. Then the members walked out of the room for a sec to get us some water and when the dog jumped up to lick Elder Taufa he shoved it in mid air and it went flying across the room and hit a wall. It was probably one of the funniest things I've seen. He told me about how last time a huge stray dog was running after him he turned around and punched it on its head and knocked it out. Haha...he has some crazy stories. The funniest part is that he doesn't really think they are that crazy.
We have a pretty nice living setup. We live with these members named the Randall's. Like every one else in this area, they are loaded and have a huge house. Everything in the house is brand new, like the refrigerator, microwave, washer, dryer, etc. They are really really nice people. Sister Randall is a temple worker.
I got that package with return address labels and the pictures. Our area borders Sugar Land, so we actually stopped by the mission office today and got all our mail and a couple copies of the Book of Mormon that we ordered.
All in all, this area is an awesome area and everything is good. I'm excited to meet more members and teach more of our investigators this week. I think this transfer will be a fun one. Oh yeah, we also have a car, so that's nice.
I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
I don't remember if I said this but every week in my president's letter I tell him that I'm working on my Spanish, but I want to get submerged in it so I can really get it down well. I told him that in my interviews as well. So I assumed I'd be going to ghetto part of Houston full of nothing but Spanish speakers. I got exactly the opposite!
My new area is Richmond. It is a really rich, ENGLISH area. When he announced where I was going I was actually really sad because an English area was the last area I wanted to go to. A lot of Spanish missionaries have to serve in an English area at least once in their missions, but I really didn't think it would happen to me so soon. This story has a good end to it though. I think I'm really going to like this area. This ward is amazing. The members here are pumped to do missionary work and they've already given us a bunch of referrals. The building here in Richmond is brand new (they finished it like a month ago) and there aren't many churches around here, so when it finally finished a bunch of random people came to check it out.
The day after I got here we went to go teach them. They are a family from Haiti named the Dors. The mom read the entire Gospel Principles book in 3 weeks. Then there are 2 daughters and a son. I'm not really sure where the husband is, but its a really cool family.
My companion is Elder Taufa. He is from Tonga. Me and Elder Taufa are already getting along really well. The last missionary here (the one whose spot I replaced) was a missionary who is really difficult to get along with. He hates talking to people and he refuses to do anything he doesn't feel like doing. He served in this area for about 8 months, but still not very members know who he is. One of my main goals is to build really good relationships with all the members in the ward and to start using them to their full potential. This area could be exploding right now. When we went to teach the Dors that day after I got here, that was me and elder taufa's first lesson together. After we walked out he was like...wow that's the first lesson in the past 6 weeks that I've actually taught with my companion (because his last companion would refuse to talk). I think we're going to be able to work really well and do a lot of good things here.
Elder Taufa has been out about 20 months. He has some crazy stories. He's like 6' tall but he's like 220 lbs. He played a lot of rugby back in Tonga and he also boxed for like 9 years. He also played volleyball and ping pong. He told me about how when he first got into the mission there was an older missionary that always picked on the new missionaries. So he started harassing Elder Taufa and saying how he's small for a Tongan blah blah blah. Luckily Elder Taufa is pretty calm, so he just ignored it. Then that missionary slapped him like 3-4 times and finally Elder Taufa picked him up and threw him against a wall then jumped on him, put him in a headlock, and forced him to promise that he would stay away from him for the rest of his mission. Haha...Elder Taufa is a really nice guy, until he gets angry.
Yesterday we visited a less active family and they had this HUGE bull dog. It would jump up and be just as tall as us and try to lick our faces and the members just stared at us like it wasn't happening. Then the members walked out of the room for a sec to get us some water and when the dog jumped up to lick Elder Taufa he shoved it in mid air and it went flying across the room and hit a wall. It was probably one of the funniest things I've seen. He told me about how last time a huge stray dog was running after him he turned around and punched it on its head and knocked it out. Haha...he has some crazy stories. The funniest part is that he doesn't really think they are that crazy.
We have a pretty nice living setup. We live with these members named the Randall's. Like every one else in this area, they are loaded and have a huge house. Everything in the house is brand new, like the refrigerator, microwave, washer, dryer, etc. They are really really nice people. Sister Randall is a temple worker.
I got that package with return address labels and the pictures. Our area borders Sugar Land, so we actually stopped by the mission office today and got all our mail and a couple copies of the Book of Mormon that we ordered.
All in all, this area is an awesome area and everything is good. I'm excited to meet more members and teach more of our investigators this week. I think this transfer will be a fun one. Oh yeah, we also have a car, so that's nice.
I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
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