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