Received Mon Oct 19, 2009

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.