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