Received Mon Aug 3, 2009

Dear Family,

I do know an Elder Taylor. We were in the same zone when he first got into the mission. I was pretty good friends with his trainer. He is also a Spanish missionary and I think hes somewhere in the city. I'm sure I'll serve near him again before the end of my mission. What is the new family's name? (**So you won't be confused, here is what I wrote to Chase and what he is responding to: Elder Taylor: he is in your mission. Started his mission in October, so I guess he got there sometime in December. There is a new family in our ward, that dad tapped me on the shoulder today and told me that his son’s friend was in your mission….Elder Taylor. Do you know him?)

I have been wondering what was happening with Michael Vick. I saw him on a TV in a restaurant when we were eating dinner with some members one night. So I figured something happened, but I had no idea what. I don't have any sort of guess as to where he would go because I don't know which teams would be looking for a QB. That will be interesting to see what happens. (**I also wrote to Chase about Michael Vick.)

Last week for P-day we went and toured a Hindu temple. It was very interesting. We were able to take pictures out side of the temple (which they call a Mandir), but not inside. The mandir didn't have any closed walls and it was made completely out of stone. There are pillars all around to hold it up, but no wall is completely closed off. The guy giving us a tour gave out all sorts of facts throughout the whole thing and I learned a little about their religion. One interesting thing is that they constructed the whole mandir without using any sort of steel..no wires or screws or anything. They just carve the stones and attach all the segments together like a puzzle. He probably mentioned this 5-6 times. He also mentioned they estimated the mandir has a building life of 1000 years. Another slightly comical statistic is that (you know Hindu's believe in reincarnation) they said that it takes 8.4 million reincarnations to reach the human form. There were all sorts of crazy statistics like that. It was all REALLY confusing, but interesting nonetheless.

One of the most interesting things that I have observed on my mission is how each church deals with their lack of knowledge of the fullness of the gospel. Each church has some part of the truth, but only one has all of it. After visiting the Hindu temple, it was pretty clear the Hindu's deal with it by over complicating everything. There are hundreds of gods, and the members don't know very much about their own religion. I've run into some churches that deal with the lack of knowledge by bashing and trying to disprove other religions. Others just completely ignore huge aspects of the gospel and say if you do just a few things that they do understand, then you will be saved. Its been really interesting to me to see all of this and its showed me how grateful I am to know of the restored gospel. The true, complete, gospel answers all these questions simply and directly and the holy ghosts testifies to you that it is true once you fully understand it. That way, we can all be confident in what we believe in and we don't have to take anyone elses word for it, each individual can know for themself.

In other exciting news, we have 2 baptismal dates now! The first is named David Haven. He has a lot of extended family that are members of the church and are even mission presidents and professors at BYU-Idaho. His wife is very very against the church though. Well about a year ago David started to gain a testimony and was getting taught by the missionaries. Well, something happened and the wife got really upset and their family was not going to stay together if David kept pursuing the church. A few weeks ago David showed up to church and we've been meeting with him and working with him as to what to do about his wife situation and he is going to get baptized on August 19th. We have been meeting with a member of our bishopric and we've worked out a lot of things. David talked to his wife and she is at least not angry about David's decision to get baptized.

Next, we extended a baptismal invitation to Niyeem. He opened up to us and told us about a drinking problem that he has and he mentioned he has a couple other small things he wants to work on before he gets baptized. He chose October 3rd as his baptismal date. He wants to make sure he can keep the covenants he makes when he is baptized. That date will get moved forward or back depending on how he is doing, so that is exciting too.

Next Monday we get our transfer calls. I am pretty nervous about it...I think I am probably going to get moved out. We had interviews with our mission president this week and he hinted that I would be getting moved and he's been giving a lot of strong hints that he is going to put me into leadership...I don't know how soon. I'm probably most worried about going back into a full Spanish area. I really want to go to a Spanish area, but I know it will be pretty rough for the first couple weeks. Since I haven't been able to speak Spanish very much at all in the past 6 months, my Spanish is not where I would like it to be. I know once I get submerged in it and I get on a good study schedule it will help a lot. It is really hard to study Spanish here, then never use it because I cant even remember something like that unless I put it into action. So there's a couple things that are just looming there in the future, but I'm just going to keep working and try not to worry about it.

I got the Griffin poster last week! I taped it up on my closet door. It will probably stay there until I get transferred, then I don't know where it will go.

Ok, that's about all for this week!! I love you all...have a good week!!

Love,
Chase