Received Monday, July 13, 2009

Dear Family,

It has been a hot week here too!! A hot month actually. All last week we had record breaking temperatures. The Randall’s kids came in to visit this week from Arizona and they said it is much worse here than in Arizona. The temperature might get higher in Arizona, but the heat is different in Houston. It is not fun to ride a bike in. I don’t remember if I’ve written home about this, but it starts to get hot by about 10 and keeps getting hotter until about 5. 4 or 5 is the hottest part of the day. Then at nighttime it hardly cools down. August is the hottest month here also. This has been an usually hot July, record breaking like I said, so hopefully it wont get even hotter in August.

To answer Mom’s question, I just read the e-mail every week and respond. I’m usually not very pressed for time, so it all works out well.

I didn’t really do anything extra on my anniversary. We had appointments that filled the night, so theres not much more I could ask for. I was thinking about burning a shirt, but I didn’t want to give up any of my shirts. I need them all for those days I have to shower twice a day. Plus it would be more of a hassle than a celebration. At nighttime when we get home we immediately plan out the next day, then I get ready for bed and usually try to write in my journal, then sleep. I am not afraid to go to sleep early.

This transfer ends on August 9th, so we are just starting the 3rd week. We are not quite half way. This is probably been one of the longest transfers I’ve had and that’s probably because this is the hardest I’ve worked. Elder Campbell is starting to learn the area a little more so I don’t feel so alone in everything anymore. It still feels like every day is 2 days though.

At church this Sunday we got a new bishop. It was sad to see our old bishop go, because he is an awesome guy and we have been working really well with him. Eating breakfast at his house every Saturday morning was fun too. Our new bishop is Bishop McPherson. He was the 1st counselor. I should also mention that I predicted our entire bishopric. I’m excited to work with Bishop McPherson too. He’s a funny hardworking guy. We are going to meet with him on Wednesday and we are going to try to set up weekly visits with him too, so we can always be on the same page and make sure were doing everything he would like us to.

Unfortunately we heard some bad news this week. One of our best investigators, Niyeem, is moving. I don’t know if I’ve ever written about Niyeem before. I think I’ve written briefly about him, but I’ll refresh your memories. Niyeem is from Bangladesh and he use to be a devout Muslim. He would go to the mosque and pray 5 times a day and do all that. Well after a while some bad things happened and he became angry at God and eventually started to deny his existence. It just so happens that a member of the church works at the same company as him and Niyeem saw him praying on his food before he ate it. That discussion led to an invitation to learn more, and we started teaching Niyeem. We didn’t realize that Niyeem didn’t even believe in God, so we taught an entire lesson then at the end invited him to pray about it. That’s when he said, “That’s the problem, I don’t even believe in a God to pray to.” In these last 4 months he has come a long way. He now believes in God, believes God loves him, and he prays daily. He has told us about a lot of neat experiences he’s had praying. He has changed completely. Unfortunately because of his background, it puts him in a difficult situation with religion. In the Muslim religion, if you convert to another religion you can be killed and your whole family is at threat as well. He probably wont be able to ever return to Bangladesh, but he is not really too concerned about that. Last week he brought his cousin to the lesson and he was very interested as well. Sadly, he lives outside of our area also. Niyeem is moving to a city called Alief, and I think that’s where Sadad (the cousin) lives also. That is in our zone though, so if he gets baptized while I’m still here, I’ll be able to attend it.

Our other good investigator, Maria, is also going to move. She is moving to Nicaragua, where she originally came from. She moved here when she was 13 and has lived here ever since. She’s just had bad thing after bad thing happen to her for the past few years and she doesn’t have a job and cant pay for her house anymore. So her house is going into foreclosure and the only place she has to go is to Nicaragua, where her mother is living. Her daughter hasn’t made the smartest choices either. I probably shouldn’t laugh at this, but I cant help it. Her daughter (she joined the church a few years ago) went to BYU-Idaho. Well, she’s been there 2 semesters now and she’s taken only 2 classes, and they were like marriage prep or something like that. I’ve heard of people just going to college to get married, but this is probably the most extreme example. But the story goes on..she failed both those classes and she got kicked out. She also used all the $15,000 that her parents gave her to help her out with college. I don’t think I’ve ever even used that much money in my life. I guess sometimes you just need to learn things the hard way. So Maria is worrying about that situation too, its all kind of a mess. Hopefully her moving to Nicaragua will be good for her, with the whole change of scenery and starting a new life. She plans on getting baptized after she moves too. I am going to try to stay in contact with her also.

Hmm…oh yeah, here is my kitchen story for the week. Each day I’m in the kitchen is like an ongoing experiment. I had a pretty good one last week. I bought some hotdogs with cheese in them (I’ve learned that I like cheese a lot) and I wanted to eat them, but I thought that would be too boring. So I cooked 2 hotdogs, then I cooked up some bacon, then I put some butter on the hotdog buns and fried them so they were crispy. Then I wrapped the bacon around the hotdogs and put a dab of masterpiece bbq sauce on there and it was delicious. I also made donuts again as a snack for our weekly planning session. That was delicious. The frosting was way better this time than last time.

I also got the letter with all the pictures from the trek. It was a good one. Other than that I don’t think I have much else to report on. President Saylin sent me an e-mail today thanking me for the president’s letter I sent him last week (we are supposed to write to our mission president weekly). I thought that was very nice. Well, I’ll just copy/paste what he said: “Thanks for your letter of 6/29 and warm welcome! Even though we have only met twice, I feel like I already know you. I look forward to getting to know you better in our upcoming interview. With love, Pres. Saylin.”

Oh, I just got another E-mail from Mom. I’ll respond to that one in another e-mail. Have a good week this week. I love you all!! Don’t stay up too late, that is a tough habit to break!!

Love,
Chase