Received Mon, Nov 30, 2009

Dear Family,

Last week I decided I wanted to set a goal to gain some weight. When I came out on my mission I weighed 150 lbs, and I’ve been fluctuating between 145-150. Whenever I get sick I always lose 5+ lbs and it takes forever to get back up to 150. My goal is to hit 160. Well, I learned that you had better be careful what you ask for. On Thursday we had an appointment at about 12, where we went taught a lesson, then they said they had food ready for us. I was happy, because I was hungry of course, and I stuffed myself. I had 5 tostadas and it was delicious. Then at 6 we had our normal dinner appointment. I was honestly still not that hungry because I ate so much at lunch, but I stuffed myself again and ate as much as I possibly could. We had chicken and mashed potatos and salad and some other stuff. Most Hispanic people here have never eaten a turkey and have no idea how to cook one. I don’t think turkey is that great anyway, so no big loss. Well after that we had another appointment. We show up with our lesson prepared and everything and we sit down on the couch waiting for everyone to come in, then we see them bring out a huuuge turkey and drop it on their dinner table. Then they start bringing out all the rest of the food. I guess they decided they wanted to eat with us instead of do a lesson. I thought I was going to die, but we definitely could not reject it. They went out a bought a huge turkey for us and they barely have enough money to pay rent. Then they got some recipe and just tried to cook it the best they could. I think the funniest part was after we said the prayer they were all trying to decide how to serve it, then One of them just stabbed the huge turkey and started forking out random pieces of meat. It was a lot of chaos. We managed to stuff down a little more food. I’ve become a master at making it look like I have more food on my plate than I really do…these little surprise dinners happen all the time. I could hardly walk back to the car that night, but the most disappointing part is that I weighed myself a few days after and I didn’t gain any weight. Oh well, I will have to keep trying. I’ve started to buy whole milk instead of 2% milk too, but that isn’t doing anything either.

This Saturday we are going to have 2 weddings and then on Tuesday 2 baptisms. This is that family who I talked about where, Samuel Aquino just got off his mission and how hes reactivating his 2 brothers and sister and were teaching their boyfriend/girlfriends. Luis Miguel is going to get married to Catalina (who is the member…Samuel’s sister) and Julio (Samuel’s brother) is getting married to Bessi. Luis and Caty have been living together for like 4 years and they have a 2 year old daughter, so they are happy to finally just get married, and Julio and Bessi have been living together for about a year. Then on Tuesday Luis and Bessi are getting baptized. So that is exciting. They are both very happy. Bessi especially was really prepared and she’s going to be a strong member. At our thanksgiving dinner with them we went around and talked about what our goals for the next year were and she said she wanted to keep learning about the gospel and get a strong testimony to endure to the end. What an awesome answer.

I think I have talked about this black Honduran family named the Mejilla’s before. Unfortunately they are probably not going to get baptized. They have this problem where Lucia Mejilla, the wife, is married to some other guy in Honduras, so in order for her to get married to Fernando, the guy she is living with right now, she would have to get a divorce first. It costs tons of money to get a divorce and they literally don’t have enough money to pay for rent. They’ve gotten their power turned off several times. Unfortunately there are a looot of people stuck in this situation. In our ward right now there are like 5-6 people who are active, but not baptized because they don’t have enough money to get their divorce first. That is one of the biggest struggles that we have and there isn’t really any good solution.

Ok, here are 2 more little random observations that I’ve made about this area, so that you can imagine the area. Most of our area is pretty much like a Spanish speaking country. Nearly everyone is Hispanic…most of the signs are written in Spanish and everything. There are these guys who have these little cart things with wheels and they sell “elote” which is corn on the cob. So they push their little carts around yelling ELOOOOOOTE!!! And kids with run out with money to buy some elote. They usually eat their elote with a ton of mayonnaise on it, and some chili powder. I’ve had it before and its pretty gross. They’ll put ketchup and all sorts of other weird stuff on it too.

My next observation is that there is this ghetto restaurant here with the funniest name…its called “Finger Lickin’ Good.” I think it’s a fried chicken place or something…they have tons of fried chicken places around here. It makes me laugh every time we drive past it.

Another thing I’ve noticed here is that everyone starts putting up their Christmas lights and decorations so early. People started putting up their Christmas lights and Christmas trees about a week ago. Most people live in apartments here, so they’ll just put lights all over their windows and stairwells. We don’t have Christmas lights but we do have a little Christmas tree that we put up today. It will be interesting to see what we do for Christmas this year in the mission.

I’ve also thought of 2 more things to add to my Christmas list. First…I mentioned the classical music thing last week…I remember bumpa has a pretty sweet classical music tape or something that he always listens to when he works out…I think you know what I’m talking about. Well I would love to work out to that in the morning as well. I started to do pushups and sit ups in the mornings again, but mormon tabernacle choir just doesn’t really pump you up that much when its early and you're trying to force yourself to exercise. I don’t know if its possible to copy that or anything about it, but that’s just a thought that came to mind.

The other thing is that it is always nice to get new ties. It is easy to get sick of all your ties. Oh yeah, and last week I mentioned I could use a few pairs of black socks, well this morning I had to throw away 2 pairs of my blue socks. I’m getting to that time where a lot of my socks are so used that you can see right through them, then big holes start to form. So it wouldn’t hurt to throw in 1-2 pairs of blue socks too.

Oh yeah…one more question. How is Dad’s work going? The last that I heard was on Mother’s Day when it was going slow like everywhere else. I have heard that the economy is starting to get a little better, but obviously I have no idea, plus I haven’t heard anything about the real estate market.

Well that is all I have for this week. Thank you for all the updates and stories, it was all entertaining and interesting. Its nice to see that some things never change, ie…DotA tournaments, turkey bowl, and random game competitions. And fantasy football. And the delicious Thanksgiving meals (I haven’t seen any better thanksgiving dinners out here than the ones we have at our house). I love you all…have a good week!!

Love,
Chase