Received Mon, Aug 30, 2009

Dear Family,

That is exciting Quinn is starting high school. That is definitely where grades do start to count. Every grade you get will be a deciding factor in whether or not you get into a good college.

That was a smart idea too, to have Zak take the ACT. I remember I just took it my senior year…that was cutting it close. Plus then you can take it stress free and not really have to worry about doing perfect your first time.

Mrs. Gant was at Highland Oaks when I was there too. I don’t really know anything about her.

You will have to tell me how the BYU vs Oklahoma game goes. That will definitely be a challenge for them. I heard they’re going to be playing in the Superdome. Funny story about that…we are teaching this one girl and she said she’s going to be busy this weekend because shes going to the superbowl. We were like..what are you talking about…the superbowl isn’t until the end of the football season. We might not watch TV, but were not THAT out of it. Shes said, no…I’m going to the superbowl to watch my cousin play soccer for the first time. She thought we were so stupid for not knowing what she was talking about. Then when she mentioned that the “superbowl” was in Dallas, I realized she was talking about the Superdome.

Lets see…this week we went to the temple! We usually would go sometime next month, but the temple will be closed for cleaning. The temple was of course great. It is always nice to be able to go and just be inside the temple where there is nothing but peace and relaxation. It was definitely relieving after several long days of stressful work. Then afterwards we had our zone conference as usual, which was also very good. We got more trainings on some of the things the general authorities wanted us to get trained on. They were really helpful and it was all interesting, but of course, as always, loooong and tiring. We woke up at like 5:00am to get ready to leave and we got back at around 6:00pm. That night we did have a really good lesson with a new investigator, which made me really happy. We had a member come with us too, which was also a success in itself (We’re trying to work together more with the branch). We also found 1 other decent investigator as well, so it is nice to finally start having a little success. It is hard to do missionary work when you have 0 progressing investigators.

This week we actually found 14 investigators and last week we found 15. We had something like 23 or 24 set appointments this week, but probably all but 10 of those fell through. Most of the people here don’t know their work schedules and they just work whenever they can and for as long as they are told to, so they never know when they're home. That’s probably one of the biggest struggles in the area. We find tons of people, but they are never there for their return appointments.

I also did my first baptismal interview this week. It was a 9 year old girl. It went well. She was shy and a little nervous at start, but I asked her a lot of questions to get her talking and then she really opened up.

Oh yeah, and David Haven, the guy from my last area, got baptized on Wednesday. He’s the one who drove up to Idaho to spend time with this Mormon family members up there and he also wanted one of them to baptize him. That made me happy.

1 more story about my last area: First, there was this family named the Gomez family who moved down here from Utah about the same time I got to Richmond (around 6 months ago). We would stop by and visit them all the time and work with them to help them to stay active. Well, the last week I was in Richmond, their lives pretty much got turned upside down. It’s a long story, but I will try to condense it and have it make sense the best I can. They both have been studying all year to take the BAR exam to become certified lawyers or whatever. So they finally went to go take it and when they were about to take it, someone asked Brother Gomez to please come to the desk. He did and there was a US Marshall waiting there who then arrested him and told him that he was involved with the biggest visa fraud and immigration scams ever uncovered in the state of Utah. He had been working for some lawyer in Salt Lake City doing whatever he was told to do, and apparently his boss had him doing illegal things. So he got sent to jail and eventually was freed on $10,000 bond and we visited him the day after he got home and tried to help them and gave him a blessing. They found a lawyer who would take their case, but it was going to cost them $200,000. Well, I saw Elder Campbell at our temple zone conference and he told me that apparently the Gomez’s just disappeared. They must have flown back to Venezuela and went into hiding. Another big coincidence is that someone who just moved into the Richmond Ward is basically a US Marshall and apparently he was assigned to try to find Brother Gomez. This member went on exchanges with Elder Campbell and told him about his job and how he was actually supposed to be looking for someone who might be a member of the church and supposedly lives in Richmond area. Elder Campbell was like, uhh…is his name Carlos Gomez? That surprised the member and he told Elder Campbell that apparently the Gomez’s had gone into hiding or something. Pretty crazy story!

A couple of random thoughts/information about Rosenberg: People here are crazy about their cars. Lots of cars have neon lights underneath their cars, people get all sorts of paint jobs. They deck out their cars with all sorts of stuff. They usually aren’t very nice cars though, so all the add-ons/accessories probably end up costing more than the car does. Something new that I’ve never seen before is that people now have like speakers outside of their car or something. I’m not sure how it works but somehow their music gets played outside of their car. It might be coming from out of the hood of their car or something, but people drive by all the time with their music blaaasting. Half of the time its like those Mexican mariachi bands and music like that…it makes me laugh.

One last random thought. Coming and e-mailing in these libraries is like sitting on one of those metro’s or buses in the city…you meet and see all sorts of people. Today there is one guy in front of me and I’m pretty sure hes sending out those scam e-mails that asks for you to send him money, then he promises you will get re-paid millions or something. He’s been sending a bunch of those types of e-mails. Then this other guy next to him is probably the fastest 2 finger typer I’ve ever seen. He just uses his 2 index fingers to type, but he goes SO fast. If you hear it, it sounds like he’s using all his fingers, but when you watch, you see a flurry of index fingers going all across the keyboard. It is pretty funny.

Ok, well that’s about all for this week. We’re just working hard to find more good people to teach. Hopefully some of these people we’ve found will find time somehow to keep taking the lessons and be able to come to church on Sunday. I love you all!! Good luck in school!

Love,
Chase