Received July 5, 2009

Dear Family,

That was an awesome e-mail! I loved hearing from everyone. It was all good/interesting/made me laugh. Sounds like it has been a pretty eventful week at home.

It has been a pretty good week here as well. This was my first week with Elder Campbell. I have learned how hard it is to take over an area, especially when the area is hard to learn. I am still doing pretty much everything myself: planning, driving, deciding what to do, deciding what to teach, even teaching most of the lesson myself. It is exhausting! I think it is Elder Campbell’s personality to be a little more passive when it comes to missionary work. Every day has seemed like it has been 2 days, so I’m pretty drained mentally and physically at the end of every day, but that is ok. I love it much better than not being able to work. For the last 6 weeks our area has started to slide downhill a lot because of all the problems Elder Taufa was having. As a side note, his problems didn’t end. He had a layover in LA and there he had visa problems and they wouldn’t let him fly to New Zealand. So the mission president picked him up down there and Elder Taufa just hung out there for a few days, then they finally decided just to send him to Tonga, because Tonga would let him in, but not New Zealand. That whole thing probably didn’t make his family too happy. I’m sure he’s home in New Zealand now, but I’m not sure.

But anyway, we have been working really hard this week trying to get things rolling again. We’ve seen a lot of miracles happening. We’ve somehow gotten back in contact with a lot of people we lost contact with and we have met several inactive members who have pretty high potential to start coming back to church again. So I am really happy. I was disappointed yesterday when only 1 person we invited came to church. Well 1 non member came and 2 less actives came for the first time. Like 5-6 other investigators said they were planning on coming though, so that was kind of disappointing, but that’s the way it normally works. Hopefully they’ll come next week.

We met our new mission president and his family on Friday. They are an awesome family. Like I said before, they have 6 kids w/ ages ranging from 3 to 14. President and Sister Saylin are 40 or 41 years old. They all told the experience of when they got called to come to this mission. It was really interesting. They interviewed and met with 2 different apostles and with President Eyring as well. In the MTC they told about how all the mission president’s had a meeting in 1 room and sitting on the stand was the whole First Presidency, 11 of the 12 apostles, the presidency of the Seventy, and all the leaders from the Missionary Department. That had to have been an intense meeting. Elder Packer missed that meeting because he wasn’t feeling too well. I have a feeling he has not been in good health. Later that day Elder Packer did come and got helped up onto the stands and gave a really powerful talk. He told all the mission presidents that he promises them with the keys and authority he has as an apostle of the lord that they will never make a mistake unless first being told by the Holy Ghost. That is a pretty powerful promise to make. President Saylin also said a lot of things that made me put my full trust in him. He told us that just because he is the new mission president, that doesn’t void everything President Allred has taught us. He said he plans to “Stay the course.” Our mission has been on a huge incline the past several months and he wants to keep that going. President and Sister Saylin both said how much they enjoyed being able to spend an afternoon with the Allreds and they could tell they were great leaders and we should keep doing what we’ve been taught. Probably the most memorable thing President Saylin said was that he will take action unless he knows he is being prompted by the Spirit. That really made me trust all of the decisions he would make.

President and Sister Saylin both grew up in Southern California…in Palos Alto or whatever that place is. Somewhere around there. Then they moved to North Salt Lake and that’s where they came from. All the kids love sports and they like the Lakers, BYU, USC, and the Angels. That is a pretty good set of teams to like.

The only other interesting thing for this week that I can think of is that we ate at 3 hispanic members of the ward’s homes this week. 2 of them were Venezuelan and 1 was Bolivian. So we got to practice our Spanish a lot. (Did I tell you Elder Campbell is a Spanish missionary too?). One of the Venezuelan families fed us Arepas, which is kind of like their version of tortillas. Its basically like a scone. You cut it in half and put whatever you want in it. You can make it a breakfast arepa or a dinner arepa. I cant even remember what we put in it…it was some sort of meat, beans and rice. At the other Hispanics family we had empanadas. Those were delicious. That had some sort of meat in it too. They gave us the leftovers too so I ate that for lunch the next day.

On Saturday I also went and played our normal Saturday morning game of soccer. It was fun, but it got soooo hot. I could almost feel my skin boiling. All the heat just sits above the grass and the humidity is so thick that its like youre running through jello. At home I didn’t mind getting so hot like that because I would jump in the pool when I got home and it would feel soo good. Obviously that’s no longer an option. I will definitely never take a pool for granted again. Instead we always stop at a Sonic on the way home and I buy a powerade slush.

In other news…I’ve been taking a lot of videos. I recorded a good thunderstorm last week, I recorded us when we did the Haka at President Allred’s good bye party, I recorded us when we did the Haka for President Saylin’s welcome, I recorded a new Elder (VERY interesting guy) in our district showing off his bowstaff skills (it is impossible not to laugh when watching this video), and I recorded the Elder who just came into the mission who played for U of U’s bball team dunking over his trainer, who was sitting in a chair. I haven’t taken that many pictures but I’ve taken a few. Now here is my question. Is it safe to send home a memory card in a normal envelope? I heard from somewhere that they smash some of those envelopes when you send stuff and I wouldn’t want that memory card getting smashed. So I was wondering what the best way is to send home my camera memory card.

Alright thanks again for the great e-mail!! I loved hearing updates from everyone. That is the best 1 year mark present you can give me. And happy Anniversary Mom and Dad, and Happy Birthday to Steven. This is an eventful week! I love you all…have a good week!!!

Love,
Chase