Dear Family,
I think I will start this week’s letter by responding to Mom’s letter. First question: What is everyone’s record for fantasy football? Next comment…I thought that missionaries could always e-mail in the MTC. I e-mailed the whole time I was there. We either had 30 or 45 minutes to e-mail…I think it was 30. Out in the field we get 45 minutes. I remember when I tried out for the soccer team the first year it was when there were a whole bunch of fires and the air quality was really bad, so that was not a very fun time either. The coaches are pretty stupid…I don’t think they gave us many water breaks either.
That is awesome that Zak got to do the Missionary for a day thing. I did that as well and I had a good time. I thought it was all interesting. I went to La Canada where everyone was rich.
Ok…this has been a good week. Yesterday we had 7 people at church and they all had really good experiences. We also had a baptism yesterday. The baptism went well for the most part, but Abev, the kid getting baptized, was really nervous. He didn’t really know how to act being the center of attention. He kept hiding before the baptismal service, then he had to get a drink, then he got really hungry and needed a snack. It all went well though. I did have one funny/embarrassing experience. Before the baptismal service the mom of the kid getting baptized was carrying in a big cake with a bunch of cupcakes and it was all decorated and it looked good. So I said…wow…how beautiful! (in Spanish of course). Then she turned around with a big smile and was like…really?? Thank you elder!!! Then I said it yeah…it looks good. Then she was like, Me?? Then I realized she thought I was talking about her the whole time. So I said…Oh NO, no, no, I was talking about the cake. Haha….it was embarrassing, but hilarious at the same time. I’ve learned to never be embarrassed on my mission and just laugh at stuff like that.
Lets see…last week I mentioned we have a bunch of people with baptismal dates. I think I talked about a few of them, but I’ll tell a little more. One of them is named Victor; he is awesome. He is from Nicaragua and he has been here for only about 3 months. He’s like 46 years old and he has a family back in Nicaragua who he sends all his money to. He’s probably one of the most humble and genuinely nicest guys I’ve ever met. Well, about the second time we stopped by, when he opened the door we noticed he had a shirt of something wrapped around his elbow and when he sat down he was obviously in a lot of pain. When we asked what happened he was pretty distressed. He works at night, so the night before he was returning home from work at like 1 or 2 in the morning and when he was crossing the street to his apartment complex these 3 guys jumped out of a car and jumped him. They hit him in the arm with a baseball bat or something and stole everything he had. He managed to stumble away and run back to his apartment. But now he has no form of identification at all or anything. He cant go to the hospital either. He started to cry when he told us all of this stuff. These situations are always hard to know what to do. We said a prayer with him with helped a lot then we made a sling out of an old shirt he had. Then we started talking about the gospel to get his mind off everything and it turns out he is an amazing person and he is very prepared for the gospel. So that’s when we extended a baptismal invitation for November 15 and he accepted. He came to church yesterday and had a great time. I love him because he’s one of the most real people I’ve met here. It seems like everyone hides behind a big act or a mask or something. One of the most important steps for an investigator to take when were teaching them is to get them to take off that mask they hide behind and really open up and be real. After that is when everything takes off and they really start to progress and their lives change. We have 4-5 investigators who are at that point, and we love teaching them. I will tell you about some more of them next week.
We had our zone conference this week too. My companion and I were asked to do a role play in front of everyone to show them how they should teach this new principle that we learned. (Role playing is when 2 missionaries act like they are investigators and 2 other missionaries teach them). That was pretty nerve wracking. We were in front of half the mission, so we had to make sure it was pretty much perfect. Fortunately it went really well and we had an excellent zone conference. President Saylin has done some pretty remarkable things in the mission. Everyone is so much more obedient, even though we were already a pretty obedient mission. When he got here we had like 80 investigators with a baptismal date in the mission, now we have over 150. It has been cool to watch all of this stuff happen.
Ok, I haven’t shared any food stories recently. One of my new favorite things is Banana Milk. A member in our ward taught us how to make it. All you do is throw a banana in a blender, put in some milk and some sugar, then blend it up. I don’t really like bananas very much, but when its in the form of banana milk it is delicious. I usually make some banana milk to drink with my lunch. For lunch I have a new favorite thing. I’ve discovered at our walmart here a bag of chopped up chicken…fajita chicken or something. Its already cooked and seasoned so all you have to do it heat it up. With that I’ve been making chicken quesadillas, which I love. My secret ingredient is masterpiece bbq sauce. It is delicious.
The other new thing that I’ve found that I like are plums. The purple ones. I bought red ones last week and they were disgusting. I’ve bought apples a couple times in my mission, but I never like them that much. So one day I bought a couple plums and I loved them. Plums are just like apples, but they are juicier and they taste better.
Oh yeah...and I forgot to write up that little summary about how my mission is going (for that Christmas present for my BYU bishop)..I need to make sure I do that next week, then you can e-mail all that stuff to Mrs. Burton.
Well…everything is still going great. We have tons of people to teach. On Saturday we had more to do than we had time. We were late to everything and in a rush from the morning all the way until we went to sleep at night. If I had to choose a problem to have, I’d definitely take having too much to do over having nothing to do. Ok, I love you all!! Have a good week!!
Love,
Chase
PS. Mom thank you for buying that book…I’ve wondered since the start of my mission if there was a book out there like that and now I finally found it. I am excited.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Received Mon Oct 12, 2009
Dear Family,
This week all the computers in our library were full except for the computers in the kids section, so me and my companion are here sitting on little tiny chairs and my legs can barely fit under the table…it is probably a funny sight.
That was an exciting e-mail! Congratulations to Steven…I thought that was a creative/cool engagement story. My question is, how did you do it? Did you somehow figure out how to edit a movie, and insert a little movie of yourself, and just time it perfectly so that it would all work out? And how did you choose the Mount Timpanogus temple?
The Griffin story made me laugh as usual. When I was in primary I wondered why my name was part of the 13th article of faith too.
Fantasy Football: I think it is funny how random all our fantasy football seasons have been…you never know who is going to have the best team. So what is everyone’s record right now?
I am excited for Christopher that he gets to come to Houston for an interview. I’m sure he wont get to see much of the city, but I bet it will still be fun. I don’t think I could ever live in a big city. It seems like there's cars whizzing by all around you and there are freeways going everywhere and the people drive crazy here. We hear/see car accidents all the time and people jaywalk all over the place and they get hit pretty frequently too…it is pretty crazy here. This is definitely my favorite place to be when it comes to being a missionary though.
Ok, now on to my list of things to write about. First, I got a letter from someone in my BYU ward…well their parents (the Burtons) actually and they are putting together a Christmas gift for our bishop there. They want all the missionaries to send them 2 pictures from their mission. 1 unique picture that shows something unique about their mission, and 1 picture that depicts missionary work. Well unfortunately I accidentally washed my flash drive, so I don’t have any pictures on there to look at, but (hopefully) all of my pictures are on Mom’s computer. I was thinking that for the 1 unique picture, I could send that one picture of me and Elder Pedersen standing on the seawall with the ocean in the background. Then for the other picture I could send a picture of me with the Dors (the black family from Haiti) when they were all dressed in white right before their baptism. Those are the only 2 pictures I can think of. I forgot to bring the Burton’s e-mail address, so I will try to bring it next week, but Mom if you could e-mail those pictures next week, that would be great. You can also look through my pictures and see if you can find any better ones to share. The Burtons also said they will send whatever they are making to all the parents too if you ask for it. I assume you do want one, so when you e-mail it you can just ask for it. I think I also have to write up a little summary of my mission too or something…I’ll figure that out later. Maybe I’ll just mail that home and you can type it up.
Ok…I have a couple more things written down. I went on 2 exchanges this last week. 1 of the exchanges I went to an area called Fresno, which covers part of Sugar Land and all that surrounding area. It is pretty difficult to find Hispanics there, but they have this one random part of their area that is away from everything else and it looks like the country side and there are a lot of Hispanics there. So we spent a lot of time there. It is pretty ghetto there though. Apparently there are problems with a lot of gangs there. There was graffiti all over EVERYthing. I guess the night before they went on a little rampage and graffitied all the road signs, walls, and some trailer homes (most people there live in trailers). The craziest part was when we were talking to one of their investigators and his older brother walked by and the investigator told us he was going to go fight someone down the street or something. He went to this one house where some pretty hardcore gangsters live. After talking to the investigator for a couple minutes we road back down the street and when we past the house with the hardcore gangsters we saw a couple of them outside getting ready to go to the fight or something and one of them was walking around with this big rifle and I didn’t stare over there long enough to see what other weapons they had, but it was pretty crazy. That is the first time I’ve actually seen a gun on my mission. I’ve heard several gunshots but I’ve never seen people holding guns. So that was my adventure there.
Then I went on exchanges with Elder Pedersen in another part of Houston. It was a good exchange. It definitely felt weird at first because the last time we were together he was pretty much training me. But we had a good exchange. He only has like 3 months on his mission now. I was happy to see that he had changed a couple things for the better and he is doing amazing things in the area hes at.
We are going to be having a baptism this Sunday! There is this one family who has been coming to church for a long time, but the parents cant get baptized because they are not married and they are living together. The husband still is technically married to someone down in Mexico, so they have to save up enough money to pay for the divorce, then get married to the lady he’s living with now. Unfortunately a lot of people are caught in this situation…they just don’t have enough money to pay for it all. There are 4 kids and 2 of them are old enough to get baptized. The younger of the 2 got baptized like 2 months ago, and the older one has been resisting it for whatever reason. Well it turns out he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to “pass” the baptismal interview and he thought it was a test. We explained about that and we actually gave him all the baptismal interview questions. We had some good lessons with him, then after general conference he came up to me and said, hey I think I’m finally ready to get baptized, can I do it on Sunday? Haha…that’s what every missionary wants to hear. So he is going to be baptized on this upcoming Sunday.
We have been having a ton of success lately. We currently have 8 people with baptismal dates. We have seen a lot of miracles…it is exciting. We have several more who we are going to be extending dates too as well. At the start of this transfer, we had 11 baptismal dates in the zone. Our zone has 10 companionships. Now we have something like 36 baptismal dates in the zone. It’s been awesome to watch happen. Whenever a companionship gets a baptismal date they call us and tell us about it, so that we can hear the stories and also write it on a whiteboard and keep track of it. Its always fun to hear those stories. Missionaries have been putting the trainings into action and obviously have been seeing a lot of success.
Ok well I’m almost out of time, so I have to wrap it up. Next week I’ll have to write about how we extended a couple of our baptismal dates. I do have 1 other request though. There is a book called 1001 Pitfall in Spanish and one of the missionaries had it when I was on exchanges, so I studied out of it one day and it is a good book. It talks about all the really frequent mistakes people make when speaking Spanish. Most missionaries make tons of these little mistakes and I always notice the little things and I always wonder what the correct way to say things is. On the back of the book it said it was like 11 bucks or something, so I was wondering if I could get an early Christmas present and get this book. It is called Barron’s 1001 Pitfalls in Spanish. The one I was looking at said 3rd edition, but I don’t know if that makes a difference. I only want the book if it is cheap though. So if you can find it somewhere for cheap, I would absolutely love to have this book. It will answer the little questions about Spanish I’ve had over my whole mission.
Ok that is all for this week. This is a pretty long one. I hope you have a great week! I love you all!!!
Love,
Chase
This week all the computers in our library were full except for the computers in the kids section, so me and my companion are here sitting on little tiny chairs and my legs can barely fit under the table…it is probably a funny sight.
That was an exciting e-mail! Congratulations to Steven…I thought that was a creative/cool engagement story. My question is, how did you do it? Did you somehow figure out how to edit a movie, and insert a little movie of yourself, and just time it perfectly so that it would all work out? And how did you choose the Mount Timpanogus temple?
The Griffin story made me laugh as usual. When I was in primary I wondered why my name was part of the 13th article of faith too.
Fantasy Football: I think it is funny how random all our fantasy football seasons have been…you never know who is going to have the best team. So what is everyone’s record right now?
I am excited for Christopher that he gets to come to Houston for an interview. I’m sure he wont get to see much of the city, but I bet it will still be fun. I don’t think I could ever live in a big city. It seems like there's cars whizzing by all around you and there are freeways going everywhere and the people drive crazy here. We hear/see car accidents all the time and people jaywalk all over the place and they get hit pretty frequently too…it is pretty crazy here. This is definitely my favorite place to be when it comes to being a missionary though.
Ok, now on to my list of things to write about. First, I got a letter from someone in my BYU ward…well their parents (the Burtons) actually and they are putting together a Christmas gift for our bishop there. They want all the missionaries to send them 2 pictures from their mission. 1 unique picture that shows something unique about their mission, and 1 picture that depicts missionary work. Well unfortunately I accidentally washed my flash drive, so I don’t have any pictures on there to look at, but (hopefully) all of my pictures are on Mom’s computer. I was thinking that for the 1 unique picture, I could send that one picture of me and Elder Pedersen standing on the seawall with the ocean in the background. Then for the other picture I could send a picture of me with the Dors (the black family from Haiti) when they were all dressed in white right before their baptism. Those are the only 2 pictures I can think of. I forgot to bring the Burton’s e-mail address, so I will try to bring it next week, but Mom if you could e-mail those pictures next week, that would be great. You can also look through my pictures and see if you can find any better ones to share. The Burtons also said they will send whatever they are making to all the parents too if you ask for it. I assume you do want one, so when you e-mail it you can just ask for it. I think I also have to write up a little summary of my mission too or something…I’ll figure that out later. Maybe I’ll just mail that home and you can type it up.
Ok…I have a couple more things written down. I went on 2 exchanges this last week. 1 of the exchanges I went to an area called Fresno, which covers part of Sugar Land and all that surrounding area. It is pretty difficult to find Hispanics there, but they have this one random part of their area that is away from everything else and it looks like the country side and there are a lot of Hispanics there. So we spent a lot of time there. It is pretty ghetto there though. Apparently there are problems with a lot of gangs there. There was graffiti all over EVERYthing. I guess the night before they went on a little rampage and graffitied all the road signs, walls, and some trailer homes (most people there live in trailers). The craziest part was when we were talking to one of their investigators and his older brother walked by and the investigator told us he was going to go fight someone down the street or something. He went to this one house where some pretty hardcore gangsters live. After talking to the investigator for a couple minutes we road back down the street and when we past the house with the hardcore gangsters we saw a couple of them outside getting ready to go to the fight or something and one of them was walking around with this big rifle and I didn’t stare over there long enough to see what other weapons they had, but it was pretty crazy. That is the first time I’ve actually seen a gun on my mission. I’ve heard several gunshots but I’ve never seen people holding guns. So that was my adventure there.
Then I went on exchanges with Elder Pedersen in another part of Houston. It was a good exchange. It definitely felt weird at first because the last time we were together he was pretty much training me. But we had a good exchange. He only has like 3 months on his mission now. I was happy to see that he had changed a couple things for the better and he is doing amazing things in the area hes at.
We are going to be having a baptism this Sunday! There is this one family who has been coming to church for a long time, but the parents cant get baptized because they are not married and they are living together. The husband still is technically married to someone down in Mexico, so they have to save up enough money to pay for the divorce, then get married to the lady he’s living with now. Unfortunately a lot of people are caught in this situation…they just don’t have enough money to pay for it all. There are 4 kids and 2 of them are old enough to get baptized. The younger of the 2 got baptized like 2 months ago, and the older one has been resisting it for whatever reason. Well it turns out he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to “pass” the baptismal interview and he thought it was a test. We explained about that and we actually gave him all the baptismal interview questions. We had some good lessons with him, then after general conference he came up to me and said, hey I think I’m finally ready to get baptized, can I do it on Sunday? Haha…that’s what every missionary wants to hear. So he is going to be baptized on this upcoming Sunday.
We have been having a ton of success lately. We currently have 8 people with baptismal dates. We have seen a lot of miracles…it is exciting. We have several more who we are going to be extending dates too as well. At the start of this transfer, we had 11 baptismal dates in the zone. Our zone has 10 companionships. Now we have something like 36 baptismal dates in the zone. It’s been awesome to watch happen. Whenever a companionship gets a baptismal date they call us and tell us about it, so that we can hear the stories and also write it on a whiteboard and keep track of it. Its always fun to hear those stories. Missionaries have been putting the trainings into action and obviously have been seeing a lot of success.
Ok well I’m almost out of time, so I have to wrap it up. Next week I’ll have to write about how we extended a couple of our baptismal dates. I do have 1 other request though. There is a book called 1001 Pitfall in Spanish and one of the missionaries had it when I was on exchanges, so I studied out of it one day and it is a good book. It talks about all the really frequent mistakes people make when speaking Spanish. Most missionaries make tons of these little mistakes and I always notice the little things and I always wonder what the correct way to say things is. On the back of the book it said it was like 11 bucks or something, so I was wondering if I could get an early Christmas present and get this book. It is called Barron’s 1001 Pitfalls in Spanish. The one I was looking at said 3rd edition, but I don’t know if that makes a difference. I only want the book if it is cheap though. So if you can find it somewhere for cheap, I would absolutely love to have this book. It will answer the little questions about Spanish I’ve had over my whole mission.
Ok that is all for this week. This is a pretty long one. I hope you have a great week! I love you all!!!
Love,
Chase
Monday, October 5, 2009
Received Mon Oct 5, 2009
Dear Family,
Yes Mom, I did get the cookies, they did not melt, and they were delicious. They were all gone in 2-3 days. Thank you for sending them...I loved them. My companion also thought they were amazing.
Congratulations Christopher! I bet that is a relief to have all that under your belt now. I think that would be awesome if Christopher came to Houston for an interview, just to see how everything is. It would definitely be an experience. As much as I love Houston, I don’t think I would ever live here by my own free will. At least not in actual Houston. As a missionary I absolutely love it though.
Unfortunately I got sick this week…I’m not sure what it was, but I think it’s allergies. At the beginning of the week I got a really bad headache and I started to get a sore throat and an upset stomach. Then I didn’t get any sleep at all the next night and was just exhausted the next couple days. On Friday I finally talked to our missionary doctor guy and he told me to buy Zyrtec, so I did and it has helped a looot. I still have a cough and a stuffy nose sometimes, but at least I don’t feel exhausted all the time. I also apparently got poison oak all over my arms when I chopped down that forest last week and its been spreading all over my arms. I usually just tell people I have leprosy. I think finally it stopped spreading and its slowly starting to heal and go away. It is not fun though. It itches like crazy and it spreads like wildfire.
I thought all of conference was good. I always like to try to figure out what the overall theme of conference is going to be. Since being on my mission I’ve noticed that each conference has some overlying theme. This conference it seemed to me that the theme was love. That was a good topic because there is less and less love in the world. People don’t really know what real love feels like. Being on a mission and getting to know so many people has really shown me how lucky I am to have a solid family where we actually love each other. There are sooo many broken families here and I’d say at least 60% of the couples living together here are not married. There are so many children being born in unestablished families. If you have a strong family, life is soooo much easier and people are forgetting that. I loved President Uchtdorf’s talk, and when he said “Let us be known has a people who love God, and who love our neighbors as ourselves.” I get the feeling that the world around us is going to keep degenerating, but that is no excuse for us to lower our standards or change our way of living. I think that is why so many of the talks have been based off simple, but important principles.
Just being on a mission here has really helped me see how big of a blessing the gospel is. All these little things like, going to college, being able to speak English, having a decent place to live, are all blessings I didn’t realize were that big or that uncommon.
Despite being sick, we actually had a really good week. We have 4 people with baptismal dates now. We had a really cool experience with a recent convert too, his name is Anibal. He agreed to come out teaching with us one night, so we picked him up and went to go to our appointment. We had the apartment number, but apparently there were 4 different buildings/sections, A B C D, so we ran to every single building, knocking on every apartment number 218 and stopped and talked to people quickly between apartments. Of course they were in the very last one we checked, so we got there kind of late, but so did the people we had the appointment with, so it all worked out well. We didn’t have much time, so we talked to them about the Book of Mormon and I’m not even sure what else, but Anibal bore his testimony about how all of this has blessed his life and the people we were teaching loved it. Afterwards when we got into the car to go back, Anibal told us that he loved going out and teaching people about the gospel and that it made him feel so good. That little experience changed him totally. It was a good night.
We also found these 2 other people named Jocelyn and Alejandra Rodriguez. Alejandra is 9 and she is Jocelyn’s daughter. Jocelyn is in her mid 20’s and they all live in an apartment with Jocelyn’s boyfriend named Mario. We found them because we had an appointment with their neighbors, but they weren't home, and the door to the Rodriguez’s apartment was open so we stuck our heads in and asked if we could share our message with them. We had a good lesson and Jocelyn and Alejandra both accepted the invitation to prepare themselves to get baptized. Last night we had another lesson with them..it was a really memorable one. When we came to the door they were on their way out to go wash clothes at a nearby Laundromat, so we asked if we could drive to the Laundromat and just teach them there. They said OK, so we went and had a lesson sitting on the curb outside the Laundromat. We had a really good lesson and they opened up and told us everything…all their concerns and their whole stories and everything. I’ll spare the details, but like most people we’ve talked to here, they have had tough lives and they are not in a good situation right now. They know that the gospel is the way to fix everything and they are excited to get baptized. The cool part about the whole lesson was that we had this good experience in a huge parking lot in the middle of a huge busy city.
Ok, well that’s about it for this week….I cant think of any other good stories to write about for this week. I am finally almost done unpacking…I just have a couple more things to put away. Ok, have a good week!! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Yes Mom, I did get the cookies, they did not melt, and they were delicious. They were all gone in 2-3 days. Thank you for sending them...I loved them. My companion also thought they were amazing.
Congratulations Christopher! I bet that is a relief to have all that under your belt now. I think that would be awesome if Christopher came to Houston for an interview, just to see how everything is. It would definitely be an experience. As much as I love Houston, I don’t think I would ever live here by my own free will. At least not in actual Houston. As a missionary I absolutely love it though.
Unfortunately I got sick this week…I’m not sure what it was, but I think it’s allergies. At the beginning of the week I got a really bad headache and I started to get a sore throat and an upset stomach. Then I didn’t get any sleep at all the next night and was just exhausted the next couple days. On Friday I finally talked to our missionary doctor guy and he told me to buy Zyrtec, so I did and it has helped a looot. I still have a cough and a stuffy nose sometimes, but at least I don’t feel exhausted all the time. I also apparently got poison oak all over my arms when I chopped down that forest last week and its been spreading all over my arms. I usually just tell people I have leprosy. I think finally it stopped spreading and its slowly starting to heal and go away. It is not fun though. It itches like crazy and it spreads like wildfire.
I thought all of conference was good. I always like to try to figure out what the overall theme of conference is going to be. Since being on my mission I’ve noticed that each conference has some overlying theme. This conference it seemed to me that the theme was love. That was a good topic because there is less and less love in the world. People don’t really know what real love feels like. Being on a mission and getting to know so many people has really shown me how lucky I am to have a solid family where we actually love each other. There are sooo many broken families here and I’d say at least 60% of the couples living together here are not married. There are so many children being born in unestablished families. If you have a strong family, life is soooo much easier and people are forgetting that. I loved President Uchtdorf’s talk, and when he said “Let us be known has a people who love God, and who love our neighbors as ourselves.” I get the feeling that the world around us is going to keep degenerating, but that is no excuse for us to lower our standards or change our way of living. I think that is why so many of the talks have been based off simple, but important principles.
Just being on a mission here has really helped me see how big of a blessing the gospel is. All these little things like, going to college, being able to speak English, having a decent place to live, are all blessings I didn’t realize were that big or that uncommon.
Despite being sick, we actually had a really good week. We have 4 people with baptismal dates now. We had a really cool experience with a recent convert too, his name is Anibal. He agreed to come out teaching with us one night, so we picked him up and went to go to our appointment. We had the apartment number, but apparently there were 4 different buildings/sections, A B C D, so we ran to every single building, knocking on every apartment number 218 and stopped and talked to people quickly between apartments. Of course they were in the very last one we checked, so we got there kind of late, but so did the people we had the appointment with, so it all worked out well. We didn’t have much time, so we talked to them about the Book of Mormon and I’m not even sure what else, but Anibal bore his testimony about how all of this has blessed his life and the people we were teaching loved it. Afterwards when we got into the car to go back, Anibal told us that he loved going out and teaching people about the gospel and that it made him feel so good. That little experience changed him totally. It was a good night.
We also found these 2 other people named Jocelyn and Alejandra Rodriguez. Alejandra is 9 and she is Jocelyn’s daughter. Jocelyn is in her mid 20’s and they all live in an apartment with Jocelyn’s boyfriend named Mario. We found them because we had an appointment with their neighbors, but they weren't home, and the door to the Rodriguez’s apartment was open so we stuck our heads in and asked if we could share our message with them. We had a good lesson and Jocelyn and Alejandra both accepted the invitation to prepare themselves to get baptized. Last night we had another lesson with them..it was a really memorable one. When we came to the door they were on their way out to go wash clothes at a nearby Laundromat, so we asked if we could drive to the Laundromat and just teach them there. They said OK, so we went and had a lesson sitting on the curb outside the Laundromat. We had a really good lesson and they opened up and told us everything…all their concerns and their whole stories and everything. I’ll spare the details, but like most people we’ve talked to here, they have had tough lives and they are not in a good situation right now. They know that the gospel is the way to fix everything and they are excited to get baptized. The cool part about the whole lesson was that we had this good experience in a huge parking lot in the middle of a huge busy city.
Ok, well that’s about it for this week….I cant think of any other good stories to write about for this week. I am finally almost done unpacking…I just have a couple more things to put away. Ok, have a good week!! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Friday, October 2, 2009
Received Mon Sept 28, 2009
Dear Family,
Ok….where do I start. My new area is called Houston 2, named after the Spanish ward we are serving in. It is located in inner-city Houston..Yessss…exactly what I was hoping for. There is a highway called Beltloop 8 or something that makes a big circle/square around Houston. We are inside that circle just south west of the very center of the city. In our area we have Rice University and also the Reliant Stadium (where the Texans play). I love this area already. There are tons and tons of people walking out on the streets and at least half of them are Hispanic. It is so much fun to have Hispanics all around you all the time to talk to. Sometimes we take 30-45 minutes walking from our car in a parking lot into an apartment complex because we talk to so many people. There are TONS and TONS of apartment complexes all over the place, which means there are tons of people. A lot of the apartment complexes in Houston are kind of naturally segregated, where certain complexes are full of Hispanics and others are full of African American people. So we obviously go to the Hispanic ones and just talk to everyone.
Our ward (notice it is a ward, not a branch) is called Houston 2, or Barrio Dos. This is my first time I’ve ever gone to a Spanish ward, rather than a branch. I loved it. Everything is still exactly the same (the singing, starting late, ect), but there is just a lot more people. Our sacrament attendance is usually around 130. We also have 3 sets of missionaries in our ward. In our zone we have 4 different wards, each have 2-3 companionships in them, and we have 4 districts, each assigned to a ward.
My companion is Elder Cameron. He is from Utah somewhere, I forgot where. He’s been out about 21 months, and he has 3 transfers left, so I will probably kill him off, as we say in the mission (I’ll be his last companion in the mission). He is an awesome missionary and I was excited when I found out I was going to be with him. I’ve already learned a ton. We are going to have a good time together.
These last few days have probably been the busiest of my whole mission. I got here on Wednesday after transfer meeting and I haven’t had a chance to unpack yet. On Wednesday we had appointments until night time and I was exhausted when we got back so I didn’t unpack. On Thursday we literally had meetings all day long. We had a Zone Leader Council starting at 9am and it didn’t end til 4:30. In that meeting all the zone leaders in the mission (there are 12 of us) have a meeting in Sugar Land and we have a big meeting with President Saylin and the assistants and we talk about the direction of our mission and what things we need to do to improve and what we need to teach to our zones. President Saylin had a meeting in Dallas 2 weeks ago with Elder M. Russell Ballard and Elder Claudio R.M. Costa, so we talked about a lot of things he learned there. It was a pretty intense meeting. We had it in the high council room in the stake center in Sugar Land. When we got out of that meeting we rushed as fast as we could to dinner (Sugar Land is about 30 min from our area), then we ate, then we got picked up to go to a stake correlation meeting. The stake president, high counselor over missionary work, all the bishops in the stake and all the ward mission leaders in the stake go to this meeting and they give reports on how the missionary work is going in each of their wards. Me and my companion are there to answer any questions they have about the investigators and also to represent the missionaries and relay any information over to our zone. Our mission president usually comes with us to that too. That meeting was pretty intense too. That meeting went until almost 9, then we went back to our apartment and that was the end of our day.
The next day we had a district meeting, then I went on exchanges with an elder in an area called Missouri City. It was pretty fun. We did service that day for a member. They have a big back yard and half of it is overgrown by these big huge weeds and bamboo looking trees. So we all got machete’s and just started hacking down the huge forest. It was so much fun. They were pretty good, sharp machetes, so if I swung as hard as I could, I could chop down like 4 trees as the same time. It was so cool. We did that for like 3 ½ hours. Now my arms are all sore and my forearms are hurting just typing, but it was worth it. The Elder I was with was also have some problems with his companion and it was almost the same thing that was going on with my last companion, so I knew exactly how to help him. He felt way better by the end of our transfer…so I felt really good about that. I think that’s one of my favorite parts about missionary work…just helping other people and seeing how big of an impact you can make in someone’s life. A day or 2 ago we found out that a brand new Elder who just got here on Wednesday was having a really difficult time. Their area is also pretty ghetto and he was freaked out by everything. It was a huge culture shock for him. He was pretty miserable, just fearing for his life from morning til night. President Saylin talked to him, then asked us to give him a visit as well. We did and it helped him a lot. President Saylin also got them a car, because their area was a bike area. You could just tell by his countenance that he felt 100% better after President had that talk with him and he helped reassure him, so he feels much better now.
Hmm…what else have I missed. We are speaking Spanish a lot because there are Hispanics everywhere. My companion and I speak Spanish to each other pretty frequently too. Elder Cameron’s Spanish is really good.
I have met everyone in my district and in my zone. On Friday’s for our district meetings almost our whole zone meets together in the same building for the first part of district meeting, then we split off into our districts for the last part, so I get to see everyone pretty much every week. 4 wards also meet in the building where we have church, so I see missionaries there too. We have a pretty cool zone and I’m happy to be here, but the only part that’s kind of weird for me is that all of our district leaders have way more time than me in the mission. One of our district leaders is actually Elder Pedersen, who pretty much trained me. Pretty much everyone in the zone are good missionaries though, so it will be good.
Oh yeah, we have an awesome apartment. Its huge and everything in it is really nice. We have surround sound speakers in our apartment with a sweet sound system. We each have huge closets and nice beds and the bathroom is huge too. We even have a little type writer in there that we can use if we want to write letters. I bet its more of a hassle to use that thing, but its still cool. I’m definitely happy with our apartment. Our car is also really nice…it’s a new 2009 Chevy Malibu. I have to admit that I am happy to be in a car area. It is cooling down a lot, but you would still be drenched in sweat every day if you had to bike everywhere. I only need to shower once a day now, so that’s nice.
Ok I think I covered everything. Have a good rest of the trip and enjoy playing Mom’s DS, because I will have to shatter those records upon my return. Have a good week, I love you all!!!
Love,
Chase
Ok….where do I start. My new area is called Houston 2, named after the Spanish ward we are serving in. It is located in inner-city Houston..Yessss…exactly what I was hoping for. There is a highway called Beltloop 8 or something that makes a big circle/square around Houston. We are inside that circle just south west of the very center of the city. In our area we have Rice University and also the Reliant Stadium (where the Texans play). I love this area already. There are tons and tons of people walking out on the streets and at least half of them are Hispanic. It is so much fun to have Hispanics all around you all the time to talk to. Sometimes we take 30-45 minutes walking from our car in a parking lot into an apartment complex because we talk to so many people. There are TONS and TONS of apartment complexes all over the place, which means there are tons of people. A lot of the apartment complexes in Houston are kind of naturally segregated, where certain complexes are full of Hispanics and others are full of African American people. So we obviously go to the Hispanic ones and just talk to everyone.
Our ward (notice it is a ward, not a branch) is called Houston 2, or Barrio Dos. This is my first time I’ve ever gone to a Spanish ward, rather than a branch. I loved it. Everything is still exactly the same (the singing, starting late, ect), but there is just a lot more people. Our sacrament attendance is usually around 130. We also have 3 sets of missionaries in our ward. In our zone we have 4 different wards, each have 2-3 companionships in them, and we have 4 districts, each assigned to a ward.
My companion is Elder Cameron. He is from Utah somewhere, I forgot where. He’s been out about 21 months, and he has 3 transfers left, so I will probably kill him off, as we say in the mission (I’ll be his last companion in the mission). He is an awesome missionary and I was excited when I found out I was going to be with him. I’ve already learned a ton. We are going to have a good time together.
These last few days have probably been the busiest of my whole mission. I got here on Wednesday after transfer meeting and I haven’t had a chance to unpack yet. On Wednesday we had appointments until night time and I was exhausted when we got back so I didn’t unpack. On Thursday we literally had meetings all day long. We had a Zone Leader Council starting at 9am and it didn’t end til 4:30. In that meeting all the zone leaders in the mission (there are 12 of us) have a meeting in Sugar Land and we have a big meeting with President Saylin and the assistants and we talk about the direction of our mission and what things we need to do to improve and what we need to teach to our zones. President Saylin had a meeting in Dallas 2 weeks ago with Elder M. Russell Ballard and Elder Claudio R.M. Costa, so we talked about a lot of things he learned there. It was a pretty intense meeting. We had it in the high council room in the stake center in Sugar Land. When we got out of that meeting we rushed as fast as we could to dinner (Sugar Land is about 30 min from our area), then we ate, then we got picked up to go to a stake correlation meeting. The stake president, high counselor over missionary work, all the bishops in the stake and all the ward mission leaders in the stake go to this meeting and they give reports on how the missionary work is going in each of their wards. Me and my companion are there to answer any questions they have about the investigators and also to represent the missionaries and relay any information over to our zone. Our mission president usually comes with us to that too. That meeting was pretty intense too. That meeting went until almost 9, then we went back to our apartment and that was the end of our day.
The next day we had a district meeting, then I went on exchanges with an elder in an area called Missouri City. It was pretty fun. We did service that day for a member. They have a big back yard and half of it is overgrown by these big huge weeds and bamboo looking trees. So we all got machete’s and just started hacking down the huge forest. It was so much fun. They were pretty good, sharp machetes, so if I swung as hard as I could, I could chop down like 4 trees as the same time. It was so cool. We did that for like 3 ½ hours. Now my arms are all sore and my forearms are hurting just typing, but it was worth it. The Elder I was with was also have some problems with his companion and it was almost the same thing that was going on with my last companion, so I knew exactly how to help him. He felt way better by the end of our transfer…so I felt really good about that. I think that’s one of my favorite parts about missionary work…just helping other people and seeing how big of an impact you can make in someone’s life. A day or 2 ago we found out that a brand new Elder who just got here on Wednesday was having a really difficult time. Their area is also pretty ghetto and he was freaked out by everything. It was a huge culture shock for him. He was pretty miserable, just fearing for his life from morning til night. President Saylin talked to him, then asked us to give him a visit as well. We did and it helped him a lot. President Saylin also got them a car, because their area was a bike area. You could just tell by his countenance that he felt 100% better after President had that talk with him and he helped reassure him, so he feels much better now.
Hmm…what else have I missed. We are speaking Spanish a lot because there are Hispanics everywhere. My companion and I speak Spanish to each other pretty frequently too. Elder Cameron’s Spanish is really good.
I have met everyone in my district and in my zone. On Friday’s for our district meetings almost our whole zone meets together in the same building for the first part of district meeting, then we split off into our districts for the last part, so I get to see everyone pretty much every week. 4 wards also meet in the building where we have church, so I see missionaries there too. We have a pretty cool zone and I’m happy to be here, but the only part that’s kind of weird for me is that all of our district leaders have way more time than me in the mission. One of our district leaders is actually Elder Pedersen, who pretty much trained me. Pretty much everyone in the zone are good missionaries though, so it will be good.
Oh yeah, we have an awesome apartment. Its huge and everything in it is really nice. We have surround sound speakers in our apartment with a sweet sound system. We each have huge closets and nice beds and the bathroom is huge too. We even have a little type writer in there that we can use if we want to write letters. I bet its more of a hassle to use that thing, but its still cool. I’m definitely happy with our apartment. Our car is also really nice…it’s a new 2009 Chevy Malibu. I have to admit that I am happy to be in a car area. It is cooling down a lot, but you would still be drenched in sweat every day if you had to bike everywhere. I only need to shower once a day now, so that’s nice.
Ok I think I covered everything. Have a good rest of the trip and enjoy playing Mom’s DS, because I will have to shatter those records upon my return. Have a good week, I love you all!!!
Love,
Chase
Received Sept 21, 2009
Dear Family,
This has been a pretty interesting week for me.
I’ll start off with a story. On Wednesday afternoon we got a call from the mission office. One of the office ladies told us that President Saylin wanted to see us in his office the next day at 11:00am for an interview. That’s all that we knew. We didn’t know if he was going to interview just one of us, both of us, or what. I was trying to figure out in my mind why he would want to have an interview. The only thing that I could think of was that in my last president’s letter I mentioned that this has been probably the hardest portion of my mission (especially with the companion, the area, other stuff like that). But I also mentioned how I had that good exchange with Elder Geinger and that helped a lot. I was thinking maybe he was going to interview us both at the same time and try to figure out how to help us or something. That is definitely not what I was hoping would happen. Well, when we arrived at the mission office the next day it turns out President Saylin just wanted to interview me. He started by asking the normal questions, like asking how I was doing and all that. I told him good. Then he said that he had been praying about transfers all week and last night, well morning, at 1:30am he finally got confirmation on everything he was supposed to do. He said he was planning on keeping me in my area to help the branch and to get everything rolling there, but upon praying he found that the Lord wanted me to be a zone leader. I was not expecting that. But of course I accepted. He told me how the responsibilities of zone leaders are going to be increased and a bunch of other stuff that all translated into it is going to be stressful and a lot of work. I am a little nervous, but not too bad. I’ll just do the best that I can do and that’s all that I can do, so I’ll be happy with that. One of my good friends in the mission is also a zone leader right now, so hopefully I’ll be with him, but we’ll see. Transfer meeting is this Wednesday, so next week I’ll fill you in on everything.
Next piece of news. Elder Claudio R.M. Costa from the presidency of the Seventy came and spoke to the 3 Houston missions on Saturday morning. He is from Brazil and he joined the church when he was 28. He has a pretty amazing conversion story, which he shared with us. He was also a mission president twice and he has some incredible missionary stories, which are always fun to hear. He is an awesome speaker. After that meeting he automatically became one of my favorite general authorities. He was really funny and entertaining and interesting for the entire 2 hours he spoke. He had no notes or anything, but it all flowed together and he taught a lot of interesting things. He taught all about what exactly the Seventy is, how many quorums there are, how long they are called for, etc. Then he talked about mission presidents and their responsibilities, then he talked about the calling of a missionary and missionary experiences for the rest of the time. He told some amazing stories. He was the mission president over the whole amazon jungle in Brazil. He told stories about how missionaries would baptize every single week of their entire missions, and he told us how they did it. The thing I loved about him is that he still does missionary work every day. He told us how people had told him that missionary work was hard in America. He said he wanted to see for himself, so for these past 2 years, he has been sharing the gospel with everyone. He told about a lot of experiences and one he just had when he was in the airport coming from Provo to Houston just hours before. Then he said, “See, its easy!!” It was a good talk. Very motivating too.
After that we had some great lessons and we extended 4 more baptismal dates. I think I mentioned how we’ve been taught that we need to start extending baptismal dates earlier and more effectively. So that’s what we’ve been doing. We finally have some fairly solid investigators, so I feel pretty good about that. One of my goals in my mission is to always leave and area better than I found it. So I feel pretty good about leaving this area…I think we have made a lot of progress.
Other stories…I got some good compliments on my Spanish again this week. We were visiting this one older member and she asked me where I learned Spanish because I don’t have the same accent that most of the other missionaries do. She said I sounded like I was from somewhere in Central America. I told her I just learned in the MTC then from talking to everyone out here. That made me feel good though. I actually have bumped up my Spanish studies a notch this past week or so. Anytime I’m just relaxing after eating a meal, or in the mornings or evenings, I have a dictionary, then this little red Spanish book we get in the MTC and I just read out of there and study vocab all the time. It has not only helped me increase my vocab, but it also gets my mind in Spanish mode 24/7. The only problem is whenever we knock on someone’s door and they are English speaking, I stumble over a lot of my word and have trouble speaking because Spanish words keep coming out instead of English.
I also got another good compliment this week. Well, I consider it a compliment at least. We were teaching this one investigator who has been taught by missionaries a lot in the past. This was just my second time having a conversation with him, then part way through the lesson he was like, wait I have 1 question…it doesn’t really have to do with what were talking about right now, but I was just wondering when you joined the church. I was kind of puzzled and told him I got baptized when I was 8. He was like, oh wow…I was thinking you didn’t grow up in the church because you use a lot of scriptures from the bible and most missionaries I’ve talked to just use the Book of Mormon. He went on the explain he knows the Book of Mormon is good, but its just new to him and its more comforting to know that all this stuff is also in the Bible.
Ok, that’s most of my updates for this week, but now I will give my reactions/comments in response to Mom’s e-mail.
Have fun on the trip to Utah/Idaho and good luck to Christopher. That sounds like something really exciting. I would have loved to come and watch that…I think it would be really interesting. But on second thought, its probably not quite and bad as mission a trip to Hawaii.
Griffin’s sacrament story made me laugh out loud.
I am very excited for the cookies. Its also funny because I was thinking this morning about how one of my latest craves has been cookies. As of right now my favorite snack before I go to bed has been dipping oreos in milk. I bought Chips Ahoy last week, but they just aren’t as good. Hopefully I will get it soon. If it gets here before Wednesday I will get it at transfer meeting, if not, well since I have no idea where I’ll be, I have no idea when I’ll get it, but hopefully I’ll get it on Friday at our district meeting.
And lastly, Mom don't worry about the start/finish of your e-mails (I don't you probably aren't too worried about it, but just in case). The best way to start is to just start typing about whatever you want, and the best way to finish is to write Love, Mom. It doesn't matter to me if it is all random.
Ok, that’s all for this week! Have a great week and have fun in Utah/Idaho!! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
This has been a pretty interesting week for me.
I’ll start off with a story. On Wednesday afternoon we got a call from the mission office. One of the office ladies told us that President Saylin wanted to see us in his office the next day at 11:00am for an interview. That’s all that we knew. We didn’t know if he was going to interview just one of us, both of us, or what. I was trying to figure out in my mind why he would want to have an interview. The only thing that I could think of was that in my last president’s letter I mentioned that this has been probably the hardest portion of my mission (especially with the companion, the area, other stuff like that). But I also mentioned how I had that good exchange with Elder Geinger and that helped a lot. I was thinking maybe he was going to interview us both at the same time and try to figure out how to help us or something. That is definitely not what I was hoping would happen. Well, when we arrived at the mission office the next day it turns out President Saylin just wanted to interview me. He started by asking the normal questions, like asking how I was doing and all that. I told him good. Then he said that he had been praying about transfers all week and last night, well morning, at 1:30am he finally got confirmation on everything he was supposed to do. He said he was planning on keeping me in my area to help the branch and to get everything rolling there, but upon praying he found that the Lord wanted me to be a zone leader. I was not expecting that. But of course I accepted. He told me how the responsibilities of zone leaders are going to be increased and a bunch of other stuff that all translated into it is going to be stressful and a lot of work. I am a little nervous, but not too bad. I’ll just do the best that I can do and that’s all that I can do, so I’ll be happy with that. One of my good friends in the mission is also a zone leader right now, so hopefully I’ll be with him, but we’ll see. Transfer meeting is this Wednesday, so next week I’ll fill you in on everything.
Next piece of news. Elder Claudio R.M. Costa from the presidency of the Seventy came and spoke to the 3 Houston missions on Saturday morning. He is from Brazil and he joined the church when he was 28. He has a pretty amazing conversion story, which he shared with us. He was also a mission president twice and he has some incredible missionary stories, which are always fun to hear. He is an awesome speaker. After that meeting he automatically became one of my favorite general authorities. He was really funny and entertaining and interesting for the entire 2 hours he spoke. He had no notes or anything, but it all flowed together and he taught a lot of interesting things. He taught all about what exactly the Seventy is, how many quorums there are, how long they are called for, etc. Then he talked about mission presidents and their responsibilities, then he talked about the calling of a missionary and missionary experiences for the rest of the time. He told some amazing stories. He was the mission president over the whole amazon jungle in Brazil. He told stories about how missionaries would baptize every single week of their entire missions, and he told us how they did it. The thing I loved about him is that he still does missionary work every day. He told us how people had told him that missionary work was hard in America. He said he wanted to see for himself, so for these past 2 years, he has been sharing the gospel with everyone. He told about a lot of experiences and one he just had when he was in the airport coming from Provo to Houston just hours before. Then he said, “See, its easy!!” It was a good talk. Very motivating too.
After that we had some great lessons and we extended 4 more baptismal dates. I think I mentioned how we’ve been taught that we need to start extending baptismal dates earlier and more effectively. So that’s what we’ve been doing. We finally have some fairly solid investigators, so I feel pretty good about that. One of my goals in my mission is to always leave and area better than I found it. So I feel pretty good about leaving this area…I think we have made a lot of progress.
Other stories…I got some good compliments on my Spanish again this week. We were visiting this one older member and she asked me where I learned Spanish because I don’t have the same accent that most of the other missionaries do. She said I sounded like I was from somewhere in Central America. I told her I just learned in the MTC then from talking to everyone out here. That made me feel good though. I actually have bumped up my Spanish studies a notch this past week or so. Anytime I’m just relaxing after eating a meal, or in the mornings or evenings, I have a dictionary, then this little red Spanish book we get in the MTC and I just read out of there and study vocab all the time. It has not only helped me increase my vocab, but it also gets my mind in Spanish mode 24/7. The only problem is whenever we knock on someone’s door and they are English speaking, I stumble over a lot of my word and have trouble speaking because Spanish words keep coming out instead of English.
I also got another good compliment this week. Well, I consider it a compliment at least. We were teaching this one investigator who has been taught by missionaries a lot in the past. This was just my second time having a conversation with him, then part way through the lesson he was like, wait I have 1 question…it doesn’t really have to do with what were talking about right now, but I was just wondering when you joined the church. I was kind of puzzled and told him I got baptized when I was 8. He was like, oh wow…I was thinking you didn’t grow up in the church because you use a lot of scriptures from the bible and most missionaries I’ve talked to just use the Book of Mormon. He went on the explain he knows the Book of Mormon is good, but its just new to him and its more comforting to know that all this stuff is also in the Bible.
Ok, that’s most of my updates for this week, but now I will give my reactions/comments in response to Mom’s e-mail.
Have fun on the trip to Utah/Idaho and good luck to Christopher. That sounds like something really exciting. I would have loved to come and watch that…I think it would be really interesting. But on second thought, its probably not quite and bad as mission a trip to Hawaii.
Griffin’s sacrament story made me laugh out loud.
I am very excited for the cookies. Its also funny because I was thinking this morning about how one of my latest craves has been cookies. As of right now my favorite snack before I go to bed has been dipping oreos in milk. I bought Chips Ahoy last week, but they just aren’t as good. Hopefully I will get it soon. If it gets here before Wednesday I will get it at transfer meeting, if not, well since I have no idea where I’ll be, I have no idea when I’ll get it, but hopefully I’ll get it on Friday at our district meeting.
And lastly, Mom don't worry about the start/finish of your e-mails (I don't you probably aren't too worried about it, but just in case). The best way to start is to just start typing about whatever you want, and the best way to finish is to write Love, Mom. It doesn't matter to me if it is all random.
Ok, that’s all for this week! Have a great week and have fun in Utah/Idaho!! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
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