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
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