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