Received Mon Nov 16, 2009

Dear Family,

I do not have a whole bunch to report on this week, so I will start by responding to Mom's e-mail.

Are the Colt's Steven's favorite team? They are definitely an awesome team. Isn't Austin Collie playing for them? I like the Colts, but I'd have to say the Saints are my back-up team.

Wow...I that is crazy that Christopher was in my area last week. Where all those hospitals are at is the very east side of my area, we only go out there when we have to give blessings to people in the hospital. We are always over in the other side of the area in the ghetto.

Good job Zak and dominating the ACT test. One of the good things about that test is that (I believe) it is graded compared to everyone else, like a curve. So if the test is hard, everyone else does bad, and you just have to do better than them and you'll get a high score. 28 is definitely good though...I think I got 27. I think the average score for incoming freshman is either 28 or 29.
I definitely want to do intramural soccer when I get back. Everyone here watches soccer, so it makes me want to play. I have a FC Barcelona jersey and I claimed that team to be my favorite, but then I found out Ronaldino is not on that team anymore, so I don't like it as much, so my backup team is Chivas. I don't know anything about them, but everyone talks about them and they have cool jerseys...I will have to get one before the end of my mission.

I don't ever remember singing In Our Lovely Deseret. That could be useful though because well sing a hymn a lot at the start of our lessons and we always teach about the Word of Wisdom. Its pretty much impossible to find someone who doesn't have a problem with the word of wisdom. Same thing with the law of chastity too. Most people here don't get married, they just start living together, so before they can get baptized they have to either separate or get married.

We have 2 people who are going to get baptized on December 6th, and 1 of them is going to get married and the other one is still deciding what to do. They are awesome investigators. I think I may have explained a few weeks ago how this member named Samuel Aquino was inactive, but then the missionaries found him and reactivated him, then he went on a mission, now hes back and hes bringing his 2 brothers, his sister, and their boyfriend/girlfriends to church. His siblings are members but have been inactive until now and the boyfriend/girlfriends are not members. 2 of them have baptismal dates right now and they are awesome. They've committed to live the Word of Wisdom as well as the law of chastity (that's why they are getting married), which are 2 of the biggest commandments and they have been coming to church for over a month now.

Our other best investigator named Victor, who is from Nicaragua, was supposed to get baptized yesterday, but about a week and a half ago he just disappeared. Its sad, but unfortunately that happens here. People don't have enough money for rent, so they just leave and they don't have phones or any way of contacting us. We just have to pray some other missionaries find them.

Then we have Maritza. She is the one who got sent to jail with her husband after they got drunk throwing a party, celebrating that they came to church. Her husband is not deported and back in Mexico and I'm not sure what his plans are. He doesn't have papers, hence the deportation, and it costs a lot of money to cross the border illegally. Basically the more money you pay, the safer the method you can take to cross the border. It costs several thousand dollars though and that is a ridiculous amount for most people trying to come here. Maritza doesn't want to go back because her kids will have much better lives here, plus it is very dangerous back where they lived. They both had several family members killed by the drug cartels and they were getting hunted down by them when they were back in Mexico. But anyway, Maritza came to church yesterday and she loves it. She was very active in another church until she realized all her tithing just went to the pastor and she realized the church was false, so she stopped going. But she loves our church, so that is good. If she ends up being able to stay here she will definitely get baptized.

Here is my story for the week. So in the mission when you want a haircut you obviously go to the cheapest place you can find. And there are tons of those 5 dollar haircut places in Houston. Well, unfortunately the haircuters there aren't always the best. I actually haven't had a problem until my last haircut. About 5 weeks ago I got a haircut at the place across the street and when I came back and showered I noticed that my hair looked kind of lopsided. She totally didn't cut the front right part of my hair. It was funny, but I wasn't willing to leave it like that so I got some scissors and cut it myself. It actually turned out OK. So last week I stupidly went back to the same place, hoping that the same lady wouldn't be there. Of course she is and this time she did an even worse job. When I came back and showered I went to check my haircut and it was wavy. There were like 3 rows of hair that was longer than everything else so it looked like I had 3 waves going through my hair. I was not willing to try to re-cut everything because I would make it worse, so the next morning I went back and told her to fix it. She barely speaks English (almost all the haircut people are from Vietnam), but she understood well enough and she did fix a lot of it. But there was still one part that was a little longer and I tried to fix it myself...not so much luck this time. I cut it shorter than everything else. It is funny, but its not too bad. Luckily my hair grows fast. Mom will have a lot of repairing to do to my hair when I get back.

Ok, well that's about all for this week. We have our zone conference this Thursday which is always good. After that my companion and I have a correlation meeting with the stake presidency and all the bishops and ward mission leaders, which is usually boring.

Ok, have a good week...I love you all!!!

Love,
Chase