Received Mon, May 5, 2009

That was a good letter this week. The griffin stories always make me laugh. Zak sent me a good update as well.

I figured the “”I got it” email was just saying that you had gotten my e-mail. I think you sent me an e-mail about the swine flu while I was checking my e-mail so I knew that you were online. I think there's a delay though because I didn’t get the “I got it” til the next week.

The brick idea is working well. It was actually our Ward Mission Leader who did it all. People are already building the house. Just about every day we go to one or two active members and remind them about bishops challenge to invite members into their homes, so we’re really trying to keep everyone’s desire to do missionary work up, and its been going well. No teaching opportunities have come out of it yet, but people are asking questions and slowly opening the door to the gospel. This has also helped us to gain the trust and respect of our bishop. A few months ago he was saying how this area needs more than one set of missionaries because it is so big and a lot to handle. This last week he changed that thought and he wants us to get more miles in our car so we can work our whole area. He really trusts us and he knows we can do everything he wants.

Our area is huge, I don’t know if I’ve ever said that. From one side of our area to the other its around 50 miles 1 way, so we don’t get to go out there very often. By the way, yes that was a typo, we don’t eat at our bishops house for breakfast every day, I meant every Saturday. Every Saturday morning before we go and play soccer we eat breakfast at the bishops house. Sometimes he buys donuts…those are the best breakfasts. I actually just went to buy some donuts. I spent like 3 bucks at McDonald's, then used a bag of change I have to get some donuts across the street. The lady there was a very talkative Vietnamese lady. We must have done a good job entertaining her because she gave us each an extra donut.

While were still on the subject of food, I have to tell you about the huge breakfast I had. Last week I ate all of my cereal so I couldn’t have cereal for breakfast for like 2-3 days. It was weird not to have breakfast for cereal. I obviously missed it because on Tuesday morning after I bought more I ate over half a big box of Apple Jacks and nearly drank a half gallon of milk. That was delicious. I calculated that to be about 1400 calories.

I had some more bike troubles this week. Its not really surprising to me anymore to go to get my bike and see that the tire is flat. The only problem was that I had a really difficult time trying to patch this hole. 2 patches popped off and I only had 1 left, so I put that last patch on, then got some electric tape and wound it around there several times. When I pumped it up, I saw that there was another little hole, so I wound some electric tape around that hole too. I’ve ridden on my bike 3-4 days now and my makeshift patches are still working. I’m pretty proud of myself for that. I do have to give credit to that Guatemalan guy named Angel in Galveston that fixed my inner tube using masking tape. He gave me the idea.

This week we had Zone Conference. It was really good. This is our mission presidents 2nd to last Zone Conference. But like all our other Zone Conferences it got reeeally long. We were at the building by 8:30am and didn’t leave til 5:00pm. They did feed us lunch, so that was good. It gets kind of hard to pay attention for that whole time, but I learned a lot of good things.

I have a kind of funny story. Somehow in our conversation a month or two ago I told Elder Taufa about how I got diarrhea really bad in Galveston. I came to find out that he had never had diarrhea in his life. So he asked me exactly what it was and I told him. (I’ll leave out my explanation of diarrhea). He said that he wished he could have it to experience it. Bad idea. Yep he got bad diarrhea this week. He thinks he got it from some old Mexican food that was in our fridge for a few days. He pooped constantly for almost 2 days. We could barely get out to work when he had to come back and use the bathroom. He couldn’t really use a members bathroom because it would stink up the whole house, so we always had to come back home. He thought it was pretty cool at first. Then he got tired of it. I couldn’t help but to laugh at the whole thing. I still remember when he had it the first time he walked out of the bathroom and was like “Woow…that was so cool. I think I got diarrhea!” He has a little accent that makes everything funnier too.

The Dors baptism is still scheduled for May 16th and they are doing awesome. We taught them the Law of Chastity last week and talked to them about watching good movies and having good language and everything like that. Michelle (the mom) was like, this is what I’ve been trying to teach my kids!! She’s never let her kids watch rated R movies or anything. The kids asked us if there are any movies made by the church that they could watch, so were bringing them The Other Side of Heaven.

Tien, the Vietnamese lady, is still going to get baptized, but shes had to go into Houston for the past few weeks so we were going to choose a baptismal date again for her this week.

That is funny that the JW's are stopping by. Its always funny when they knock on missionaries doors. If they are in their proselyting clothes, the JW's freak out and just walk away usually. Sometimes they'll give us one of their Watchtower pamphlets. They are afraid of missionaries though...every time they see us they turn around and walk the opposite direction. If you try to talk to them they will ignore you. I think just bearing your testimony to them was a good idea.

A preacher from the Pentecostal church came to our church yesterday. I sat by him during sacrament meeting and told him a few things, and showed him a picture of the prophet. I also gave him a Book of Mormon and told him all about it. After Sacrament meeting he took me into the foyer to ask me questions about our church. I think he was trying to scare me and he quoted a bunch of scriptures and things. I finished quoting a lot of the scriptures he was saying and answered all of his questions. He told me he was very impressed with our church services and he was very interested to see what was in the Book of Mormon. He told me he was very impressed with what us young missionaries do. It was a really neat experience.

Everything else is still going really well. We are in week 5 of the transfer now. That means in 2 weeks we’ll get our transfer call. I’m pretty sure I’ll stay here, but you never know.

I also just realized I’m going to hit my 10 month mark in 5 days. It does not feel like its been 10 months to me.

Alright, well I love you all!! Have a great week!

Love,
Chase

PS. I forgot the name of the guy in who was in the NFL draft. I only remember his first name was Jacob. I think he's on the Steelers now.

PPS. I carry a pocket sized hand sanitizer thing with me pretty much every day and I use it pretty often. I did hear there was a confirmed case of the swine flu in a nearby high school though.