Dear Family,
This is kind of a weird e-mailing session knowing it will be my last and by next week I'll by flying on an airplane at this time on my way home. I of course have mixed feelings...it is weird to stop doing what you've been doing for 2 years, but I am of course excited to be back home. I bet by the time I am on my way home my mixed feelings will all just be happy feelings. We are going to have a good week this week still though.
No, we did not sing any patriotic songs in sacrament meeting. I thought it was weird. We did have a combined activity with the English ward yesterday to celebrate the fourth of July. Since it was on Monday, our P-day, we actually got to go. We had a pancake breakfast, then we played soccer for like 2-3 hours on a nearby field. It was awesome. It was a good P-day. I did get a little bit of a sunburn. I've got myself a pretty good collar tan on my neck, and since I was wearing a t-shirt, all that white skin was exposed to the sun and it got scorched. Its not that bad though. It is pretty funny to see like a 3 inch line around my neck of sunburn and nowhere else. It was a good P-day. It was my last one too. Next P-day I'll just be going to the mission home and we'll have an interview, testimony meeting and a dinner. Then the next day I'm not sure whats happening other than going to the airport. I got my flight plans in the mail...I think I'm arriving in the afternoon sometime? I'm not sure...I'm assuming you got a copy of that too. If not, just call the mission office to get all that information because I didn't think to bring it.
This weekend the Mendez family will be getting baptized. I am pretty excited about that. The best thing about them is that they've had a full social conversion as well as a spiritual conversion. They go to all the activities, Jesus, the father, has volunteered to go help out with service when they needed it. We did an FHE with another family nearby. They will be a new strong family to help out the ward.
Sunday was a good day in church. We had several different less actives who are in the process of reactivating come and bring their kids. There were a lot of good testimonies, including one other family who just got baptized last week. They all got up, even the 6 year old, to bear their testimonies. It was awesome. They are a good example to the Mendez family. One family who is reactivating also came and had their baby get blessed. They are from the Dominican Republic and they are definitely one of my favorite families in the ward. He is a chauffeur. He has a really nice Lincoln that he drives around and picks up rich people and drives them around the city. Anyway, their parents just moved in with them and they are really active. The dad who just moved in blessed the baby and I got to stand in the circle with the bishop and him. It was a good experience. It was a good Sunday.
Good things are happening, good things will keep happening and that's pretty much the story of this area. I really hope something clicks in my companion's head and he can start remembering where stuff is, because he's got to take over the area next week. That will be one of our focuses this week.
It sounds like everyone at home is doing well. Thank you Mom for the full update. Happy anniversary Mom and Dad! That day is my 24 month mark and I will be going to the temple here in Houston one last time on that day. That is a good way to celebrate it. I love you all and I will see you next week!!!
Love,
Chase
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Received Mon, June 28, 2010
Dear Family,
I am going to start this week by answering all of Mom's questions to make sure I don't forget any. I realized last week after we left that I forgot to say what I was planning to do with my bike. My bike is pretty thrashed and I think I am just going to leave it here. It costs like over $100 to take it home, so I don't think its worth it especially because I have my own bike at home still.
The rain: We had a HUGE thunderstorm come through here this week. You probably remember from my e-mails that the thunderstorms here are pretty crazy. The thunder is so strong it sets off car alarms all over the place. Well one of those storms rolled through here on Wednesday last week and we were trying our best to stay dry, but after a while we got so soaked that we just stopped caring and pretended like it was perfect weather. We walked through this one complex that was completely flooded, and we walked through water that was up to our knees. We also walked up and down the streets trying to talk to people who were standing outside of stores too afraid to go to their cars. It was a good way to start a conversation. Hopefully people didn't think that we were just crazy.
The temperature: It has also been really hot all week. Its been in the upper 90s, including the days that it rains. We are always wet from either the rain or sweat, or both.
Watch Tan: Its almost gone now because for some reason I started to get that itchy rash thing that metal sometimes causes for me, so I took my watch off for 5-6 days. Now its pretty hard to see. I definitely still have a pretty hardcore collar tan on my neck and a farmers tan and a white legs tan/lack-of-tan.
I think those are all the questions! On to my week. Things are still going really well. The Mendez's are still planning on getting baptized on July 10th and were still hoping to get at least one more person on that weekend. There are a couple potential people...we'll see what happens.
I've heard all about the world cup too. That's the reason why so few people showed up to church. And that's the reason why so many people decided to drink the night away on Sunday night.
This week we've been running into tons of people from Colombia. Most of the people in our area are from Guatemala...I think I've written about the part of our area we call Guatville which is just packed full of thousands and thousands of Guatemalans. But whenever we're out of guatville we run into people from everywhere. This week we've found like 6 new Colombian investigators. I love teaching people from South America, because since its so far away, only some people make it all the way up here, and generally they are a lot easier to work with. My companion is pretty funny. Whenever he talks to people he always tries to copy their accents, but we talk to people from all over the place so hes constantly talking in random different accents, but hes barely starting to learn Spanish so he has a pretty thick gringo accent, then when he tries to mimic other accents it turns out to be some pretty creative Spanish. It is pretty funny.
It has been a weird past couple of weeks knowing that these are my last weeks here. I usually don't think about it very much. I think my companion thinks about what I'm going to do after the mission more than I do. It definitely makes things pretty stressful knowing that this big change is going to happen soon and its constantly coming closer and closer and closer. I am of course excited, but hopefully I'll have some really good last couple weeks here.
That is all I can think of to write about. Last P-day we had an awesome P-day. We played volleyball and soccer against the English district, which was awesome. I scored a double hat trick when we played soccer, so I obviously enjoyed that a lot too. I like played pretty much every sport, except for basketball. It was a good P-day. Next Monday we are going to go to an activity with our ward, combined with the English ward, where we will have a 5th of July breakfast, then play baseball and soccer. I am excited for that one.
It sounds like everyone is doing really well. I love you all and hope you have a great week!!!
Love,
Chase
I am going to start this week by answering all of Mom's questions to make sure I don't forget any. I realized last week after we left that I forgot to say what I was planning to do with my bike. My bike is pretty thrashed and I think I am just going to leave it here. It costs like over $100 to take it home, so I don't think its worth it especially because I have my own bike at home still.
The rain: We had a HUGE thunderstorm come through here this week. You probably remember from my e-mails that the thunderstorms here are pretty crazy. The thunder is so strong it sets off car alarms all over the place. Well one of those storms rolled through here on Wednesday last week and we were trying our best to stay dry, but after a while we got so soaked that we just stopped caring and pretended like it was perfect weather. We walked through this one complex that was completely flooded, and we walked through water that was up to our knees. We also walked up and down the streets trying to talk to people who were standing outside of stores too afraid to go to their cars. It was a good way to start a conversation. Hopefully people didn't think that we were just crazy.
The temperature: It has also been really hot all week. Its been in the upper 90s, including the days that it rains. We are always wet from either the rain or sweat, or both.
Watch Tan: Its almost gone now because for some reason I started to get that itchy rash thing that metal sometimes causes for me, so I took my watch off for 5-6 days. Now its pretty hard to see. I definitely still have a pretty hardcore collar tan on my neck and a farmers tan and a white legs tan/lack-of-tan.
I think those are all the questions! On to my week. Things are still going really well. The Mendez's are still planning on getting baptized on July 10th and were still hoping to get at least one more person on that weekend. There are a couple potential people...we'll see what happens.
I've heard all about the world cup too. That's the reason why so few people showed up to church. And that's the reason why so many people decided to drink the night away on Sunday night.
This week we've been running into tons of people from Colombia. Most of the people in our area are from Guatemala...I think I've written about the part of our area we call Guatville which is just packed full of thousands and thousands of Guatemalans. But whenever we're out of guatville we run into people from everywhere. This week we've found like 6 new Colombian investigators. I love teaching people from South America, because since its so far away, only some people make it all the way up here, and generally they are a lot easier to work with. My companion is pretty funny. Whenever he talks to people he always tries to copy their accents, but we talk to people from all over the place so hes constantly talking in random different accents, but hes barely starting to learn Spanish so he has a pretty thick gringo accent, then when he tries to mimic other accents it turns out to be some pretty creative Spanish. It is pretty funny.
It has been a weird past couple of weeks knowing that these are my last weeks here. I usually don't think about it very much. I think my companion thinks about what I'm going to do after the mission more than I do. It definitely makes things pretty stressful knowing that this big change is going to happen soon and its constantly coming closer and closer and closer. I am of course excited, but hopefully I'll have some really good last couple weeks here.
That is all I can think of to write about. Last P-day we had an awesome P-day. We played volleyball and soccer against the English district, which was awesome. I scored a double hat trick when we played soccer, so I obviously enjoyed that a lot too. I like played pretty much every sport, except for basketball. It was a good P-day. Next Monday we are going to go to an activity with our ward, combined with the English ward, where we will have a 5th of July breakfast, then play baseball and soccer. I am excited for that one.
It sounds like everyone is doing really well. I love you all and hope you have a great week!!!
Love,
Chase
Monday, June 21, 2010
Recieved Monday, June 21, 2010
Dear Family,
My first story for this week will start with what is going on right now. There is a crazy guy sitting a couple computers away and every couple of minutes he turns around and says something that makes no sense like "I'm a level 3 italian, the michael angelo theory is the only true theory. So what about them JEhova witnesses?" He is absolutely crazy. It is some good entertainment as I write my e-mail.
Its been another good week as normal. Our people are progressing, the Mendez family is still progressing well to their baptismal date of July 10th. We've got 2-3 other really good people as well. Oh and a guy who hasn't been to church for 12 years showed up last fast Sunday and got up and bore his testimony and said he's ready to come back and be an active member again. We only visited him once or twice, and I guess that little push was all that he needed to help him make that step to come back. That was good to see.
I'm looking through my planner to see if anything else particularly newsworthy happened this week. There is one lesson that sticks out in my mind. We got out of the car one day in this parking lot and I started talking to this guy, and this emo kid with his hood up and his hair across his face walked past as he was listening to his ipod. When I finished talked to the guy I turned around to see if the emo kid was too far away to talk to, and he turned around and just stared at me, so I went up and started talking to him. When I talked to him he just stared at me in silence for a good 15 seconds, then he began to make deliver a speech to me on a bunch of 100% random topics. But the funniest part was that he was trying to talk all biblical. After his random speech I asked him if he would be open to having missionaries come over and share a message. He said he could listen right then, so we sat down on the curb and said a prayer and started teaching him. He was like 18 years old and he had dropped out of high school and he was basically just wandering around in life. I think he was trying to be a philosopher or something and that's why he talks strange and constantly tries to say profound things. It was a pretty funny lesson, I wish I could remember some of his sayings he said. Unfortunately it didn't really go anywhere, so we just ended it and left. Hopefully we left a good impression on him and he listens to missionaries when he gets past this emo philosophical phase.
Training has been going good. I've definitely been learning a lot. It takes a LOT of patience. Its definitely built up a lot of stress too. My companion is very excited, which is good, but were still working on the importance of planning, instead of just wandering around the streets aimlessly. I'm also still trying to convince my companion that it IS necessary to wash your hands after you go to the bathroom. I think its gross, but apparently its just an urban myth.
That is a funny story about Zak fainting after giving blood. I don't think I've ever fainted before. One time playing miniature golf I started seeing spots and I almost passed out, but I sat down and drank water. Then there was the time I was going to get lung surgery the first time and they put the IV in and it squirted blood all over me, I almost passed out that time too. Definitely not a good feeling. That is good it all went well though.
Well, I cant really think about anything else to write about for this week. Things are still going good. Its been reeeeally hot recently. We drink tons of water every day. I am glad things are going well at home. I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Love,
Chase
My first story for this week will start with what is going on right now. There is a crazy guy sitting a couple computers away and every couple of minutes he turns around and says something that makes no sense like "I'm a level 3 italian, the michael angelo theory is the only true theory. So what about them JEhova witnesses?" He is absolutely crazy. It is some good entertainment as I write my e-mail.
Its been another good week as normal. Our people are progressing, the Mendez family is still progressing well to their baptismal date of July 10th. We've got 2-3 other really good people as well. Oh and a guy who hasn't been to church for 12 years showed up last fast Sunday and got up and bore his testimony and said he's ready to come back and be an active member again. We only visited him once or twice, and I guess that little push was all that he needed to help him make that step to come back. That was good to see.
I'm looking through my planner to see if anything else particularly newsworthy happened this week. There is one lesson that sticks out in my mind. We got out of the car one day in this parking lot and I started talking to this guy, and this emo kid with his hood up and his hair across his face walked past as he was listening to his ipod. When I finished talked to the guy I turned around to see if the emo kid was too far away to talk to, and he turned around and just stared at me, so I went up and started talking to him. When I talked to him he just stared at me in silence for a good 15 seconds, then he began to make deliver a speech to me on a bunch of 100% random topics. But the funniest part was that he was trying to talk all biblical. After his random speech I asked him if he would be open to having missionaries come over and share a message. He said he could listen right then, so we sat down on the curb and said a prayer and started teaching him. He was like 18 years old and he had dropped out of high school and he was basically just wandering around in life. I think he was trying to be a philosopher or something and that's why he talks strange and constantly tries to say profound things. It was a pretty funny lesson, I wish I could remember some of his sayings he said. Unfortunately it didn't really go anywhere, so we just ended it and left. Hopefully we left a good impression on him and he listens to missionaries when he gets past this emo philosophical phase.
Training has been going good. I've definitely been learning a lot. It takes a LOT of patience. Its definitely built up a lot of stress too. My companion is very excited, which is good, but were still working on the importance of planning, instead of just wandering around the streets aimlessly. I'm also still trying to convince my companion that it IS necessary to wash your hands after you go to the bathroom. I think its gross, but apparently its just an urban myth.
That is a funny story about Zak fainting after giving blood. I don't think I've ever fainted before. One time playing miniature golf I started seeing spots and I almost passed out, but I sat down and drank water. Then there was the time I was going to get lung surgery the first time and they put the IV in and it squirted blood all over me, I almost passed out that time too. Definitely not a good feeling. That is good it all went well though.
Well, I cant really think about anything else to write about for this week. Things are still going good. Its been reeeeally hot recently. We drink tons of water every day. I am glad things are going well at home. I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Love,
Chase
Monday, June 14, 2010
Received Mon June 14, 2010
Dear Family,
It has been a great week this week. One of the few things I remember President Saylin told us in our trainer's meeting is that the new missionaries always have really high expectations and dreams. He said that we can help them learn little by little to be realistic, but don't crush their dreams. I know I've mentioned before that we have a goal in the mission for each missionary to talk to 70 people a week (10 a day). Well Elder Bunch said that he heard a quote by Elder L Tom Perry and he said that if we double the number of people we talk to, we double our baptisms. He said he thought we should shoot for 140 people a week. So I said ok. We talked to people every second we had open, and we miraculously hit our goal. Ive never heard of anyone getting anywhere close to 140 OYMs. We found a lot of new people to teach and we taught a lot of lessons.
Here is the highlight of the week. We have been teaching this family, called the Mendez family. I've probably talked about them before. The husband was baptized in Mexico 8 years ago, but his wife wasn't. We randomly OYM'd them in their driveway last transfer, and at first Jesus, the husband, was almost upset to see us, but we got him to let us come back, and we've been teaching him, his wife, and his 2 kids. On Sunday our lesson was on baptism and I talked to them about how the mom and the 3 kids could all get baptized together. It just so happened that there was another family getting baptized that night, so we invited them to that. They had a really good experience at church, then at the baptismal service, and we extended baptismal dates to them and they accepted! Their youngest son is 7, but he turns 8 on July 5th, so the Saturday after that, the 10th, they will all get baptized together. They are very excited about it and so am I.
Training has been a good experience. There are a lot of different challenges that I didn't expect. I've started to see how much missionaries learn from being on a mission for 2 years. My companion is just starting that process. I not only need to teach him good missionary skills, but also good social skills, etc. Like, don't leave your shopping cart blocking the entire aisle. Or, you need to wash your hands with soap, not just water after you go to the bathroom. Or, don't just rinse off our dishes in water, use soap to clean them (we don't have a dishwasher). And the list goes on. It has been a good experience though. I'm glad hes still excited.
Here's my next story. We talking to random people in the street one day as we waited for a member to show up to an appointment we had with investigators and this lady leaned out of her car and yelled something to us, so we came over to talk to her. She said her family was going through some really tough times and shes been praying to God to help her, and she recognized us as servants of God who could help her. Well, it turns out her son killed somebody a few days ago. We don't know all the details because obviously its a sensitive situation and we didn't want to pry, but apparently he was in his apartment and this other guy was in there and was threatening him, so he went into his room and came out with a gun and shot the guy. The son is completely falling apart right now. He's caught up in a lot of other things too. You could just see how apparent it is that sin never leads to happiness and how Satan really does just try to drag people down and he will if you let him. So he is a big work in progress. The mom is awesome though. They are from Colombia. They are really wealthy too. They live right in downtown Houston in the Galleria (huge famous shopping center) area. They actually live across the street from the Williams tower, which I'm like 90% sure that's the tower CJ was talking about that is the tallest tower in Houston. They live right across from that thing in these high rise apartments in the penthouse/top floor. We taught the Mom 1 time, she read in the book of Mormon, prayed, got an answer, and accepted a baptismal date. We are really excited about her. She is pretty stressed out about her son though.
I have heard alll about the World Cup. A lot of people here take work off for a lot of the World Cup so they can watch every game. Its pretty much their life right now. So I've heard most of the results of the games. Keep me updated anyway though.
I am glad that everyone is getting involved in active things this summer. There is a young family here where the dad loooves to play video games whenever he can. They have a 6 year old daughter and I asked them what they were going to do with her during summer to keep her occupied, thinking along the lines of swimming lessons, sports, etc. The dad goes, "Well I'm not sure yet, I cant decide. I'm trying to decide between getting her the Wii or the Nintendo DS." He didn't even think for a second about anything outside of video games! I thought it was pretty funny, but sad at the same time.
Today we are going to have a zone activity. We are going to go to a big park and play sports and eat ice cream. It should be fun. Last week we played basketball at the church, and I ran around a lot. It still definitely feels like my left lung is a lot weaker than my right lung. My right lung feels 100% normal, but my left lung still gets irritated when I run a lot or breathe hard. I guess the doctors down in California just did a better job than those ones in Utah. I'm not sure, but at least I can still run around an have fun.
Here's my last gross story for you. One night this week I was sleeping good and in my sleep I went to scratch my neck, and when I went to scratch it, I grabbed a big bug that was crawling across me. I threw it as hard as I could at the wall across the room and hopefully killed it. I'm not sure what it was, but it felt like a cockroach. There are tons of cockroaches around here. Thankfully when I wake up I'm always really drowsy and I fall back to sleep easy. For the next couple minutes I slapped at everything that felt like a bug, but eventually I fell back to sleep.
Last news update: Sadly the chickens didn't hatch! (Remember Lars bought an incubator and 4 chicken eggs). They were supposed to hatch on Saturday, but they didn't. Lars is going to buy some new ones. It takes usually takes 21 days for them to hatch, so hopefully I get to see them. He is also planning on eventually buying some rabbits and he's going to start raising those too. He would get a cow, but its illegal in Houston and cows are too hard to hide.
Alright, well that's about all for this week. Happy Fathers Day on Sunday Dad!! I love you all and hope you have a good week!
Love,
Chase
It has been a great week this week. One of the few things I remember President Saylin told us in our trainer's meeting is that the new missionaries always have really high expectations and dreams. He said that we can help them learn little by little to be realistic, but don't crush their dreams. I know I've mentioned before that we have a goal in the mission for each missionary to talk to 70 people a week (10 a day). Well Elder Bunch said that he heard a quote by Elder L Tom Perry and he said that if we double the number of people we talk to, we double our baptisms. He said he thought we should shoot for 140 people a week. So I said ok. We talked to people every second we had open, and we miraculously hit our goal. Ive never heard of anyone getting anywhere close to 140 OYMs. We found a lot of new people to teach and we taught a lot of lessons.
Here is the highlight of the week. We have been teaching this family, called the Mendez family. I've probably talked about them before. The husband was baptized in Mexico 8 years ago, but his wife wasn't. We randomly OYM'd them in their driveway last transfer, and at first Jesus, the husband, was almost upset to see us, but we got him to let us come back, and we've been teaching him, his wife, and his 2 kids. On Sunday our lesson was on baptism and I talked to them about how the mom and the 3 kids could all get baptized together. It just so happened that there was another family getting baptized that night, so we invited them to that. They had a really good experience at church, then at the baptismal service, and we extended baptismal dates to them and they accepted! Their youngest son is 7, but he turns 8 on July 5th, so the Saturday after that, the 10th, they will all get baptized together. They are very excited about it and so am I.
Training has been a good experience. There are a lot of different challenges that I didn't expect. I've started to see how much missionaries learn from being on a mission for 2 years. My companion is just starting that process. I not only need to teach him good missionary skills, but also good social skills, etc. Like, don't leave your shopping cart blocking the entire aisle. Or, you need to wash your hands with soap, not just water after you go to the bathroom. Or, don't just rinse off our dishes in water, use soap to clean them (we don't have a dishwasher). And the list goes on. It has been a good experience though. I'm glad hes still excited.
Here's my next story. We talking to random people in the street one day as we waited for a member to show up to an appointment we had with investigators and this lady leaned out of her car and yelled something to us, so we came over to talk to her. She said her family was going through some really tough times and shes been praying to God to help her, and she recognized us as servants of God who could help her. Well, it turns out her son killed somebody a few days ago. We don't know all the details because obviously its a sensitive situation and we didn't want to pry, but apparently he was in his apartment and this other guy was in there and was threatening him, so he went into his room and came out with a gun and shot the guy. The son is completely falling apart right now. He's caught up in a lot of other things too. You could just see how apparent it is that sin never leads to happiness and how Satan really does just try to drag people down and he will if you let him. So he is a big work in progress. The mom is awesome though. They are from Colombia. They are really wealthy too. They live right in downtown Houston in the Galleria (huge famous shopping center) area. They actually live across the street from the Williams tower, which I'm like 90% sure that's the tower CJ was talking about that is the tallest tower in Houston. They live right across from that thing in these high rise apartments in the penthouse/top floor. We taught the Mom 1 time, she read in the book of Mormon, prayed, got an answer, and accepted a baptismal date. We are really excited about her. She is pretty stressed out about her son though.
I have heard alll about the World Cup. A lot of people here take work off for a lot of the World Cup so they can watch every game. Its pretty much their life right now. So I've heard most of the results of the games. Keep me updated anyway though.
I am glad that everyone is getting involved in active things this summer. There is a young family here where the dad loooves to play video games whenever he can. They have a 6 year old daughter and I asked them what they were going to do with her during summer to keep her occupied, thinking along the lines of swimming lessons, sports, etc. The dad goes, "Well I'm not sure yet, I cant decide. I'm trying to decide between getting her the Wii or the Nintendo DS." He didn't even think for a second about anything outside of video games! I thought it was pretty funny, but sad at the same time.
Today we are going to have a zone activity. We are going to go to a big park and play sports and eat ice cream. It should be fun. Last week we played basketball at the church, and I ran around a lot. It still definitely feels like my left lung is a lot weaker than my right lung. My right lung feels 100% normal, but my left lung still gets irritated when I run a lot or breathe hard. I guess the doctors down in California just did a better job than those ones in Utah. I'm not sure, but at least I can still run around an have fun.
Here's my last gross story for you. One night this week I was sleeping good and in my sleep I went to scratch my neck, and when I went to scratch it, I grabbed a big bug that was crawling across me. I threw it as hard as I could at the wall across the room and hopefully killed it. I'm not sure what it was, but it felt like a cockroach. There are tons of cockroaches around here. Thankfully when I wake up I'm always really drowsy and I fall back to sleep easy. For the next couple minutes I slapped at everything that felt like a bug, but eventually I fell back to sleep.
Last news update: Sadly the chickens didn't hatch! (Remember Lars bought an incubator and 4 chicken eggs). They were supposed to hatch on Saturday, but they didn't. Lars is going to buy some new ones. It takes usually takes 21 days for them to hatch, so hopefully I get to see them. He is also planning on eventually buying some rabbits and he's going to start raising those too. He would get a cow, but its illegal in Houston and cows are too hard to hide.
Alright, well that's about all for this week. Happy Fathers Day on Sunday Dad!! I love you all and hope you have a good week!
Love,
Chase
Monday, June 7, 2010
Received Mon June 7, 2010
Dear Family,
It sounds like you had quite the Sunday yesterday. Believe it or not, I actually got sick this week too and it was pretty bad, and it was bad timing. On Wednesday morning (our transfer day) I woke up and it felt like someone was wringing out my intestines, then I started to get nauseated and I think I threw up 7 times by the end of the day. I still managed to get to transfer meeting though. I just brought a bag with me in the car, which I used. Then I went into our trainers meeting where President Saylin trains all the trainers. I had to leave twice to throw up in that 40 min meeting. After a while I just went to go lay down on the couch. I'm not sure what I had, but it wasn't good. The next couple days I started feeling better, but my stomach still hurt and about 15 minutes after I ate I would always have to run to the bathroom (not to throw up). I feel pretty good today, but I'm not sure if its totally gone.
My new companion is Elder Bunch. He is from northern California. He is a very very very excited missionary. It is pretty funny. He is pretty much exactly what you imagine when you imagine a greenie. Except he has absolutely NO fear, unlike most new missionaries. He loves to belt out hymns as we walk down the street and his absolute favorite thing to do is to talk to people in the streets. He literally runs after people yelling "HERMANO HERMANO! TENEMOS UN MENSAJE PARA USTED!!" It is hilarious. One day in the morning we opened up the front door and it was raining pretty good, and Elder Bunch paused for a second, then he ran outside singing some song about rain drops or something. The best thing about him is that he speaks Spanish almost 100% of the time, so he is picking it up pretty fast. He knew 0 (zero) Spanish before the mission, so he doesn't have a whole lot of background, but he's learning quick because we talk to each other in Spanish pretty much all the time. He is going to be a great missionary.
Ok, time to answer Mom's random questions:
Yes I have heard of the P90X workout. That is what all the guys in the movie 300 used to get ripped. It sounds pretty intense.
People yell stuff at us every single day, usually several times. They are usually all pretty funny. People try to think of creative things to try to offend us, but it just turns out sounding ridiculous. We had someone this last week stick his head out the window and yell out "GET A JOB!" that's one I never heard before...I thought it was pretty funny. We get a lot of fan honks too though. The nice people usually don't yell at us, they'll just honk and wave, which I think is the best. Sometimes people will pull over and talk to us, but that just uses a bunch of time and we always end up being late to wherever were going.
We are allowed to teach pretty much anyone. Muslims are the only ones that I know of that are that extreme and I've taught a couple different Muslims in my mission. Basically the rule is to just be careful. I ate dinner at a members home before and they grew up in Iran, where most people are Muslims. Even though they've tried to keep it a secret that they joined the LDS church, they are sure someone found out and they are probably black listed. They said if they tried to go home to Iran, as soon as they got off the plane, some government CIA type guys would go take them to a car, and they would drive off in the car and they would never be heard from again. It is pretty crazy.
I have a couple last questions for you now. I was wondering what the possibilities of finding some place to give me a scholarship for school. I might have to look for myself when I get back, but I hear people all the time talking about how they go and apply to all sorts of different scholarships and sometimes they'll get accepted. That would be awesome. I wonder if CJ or ST know anything about that.
And yes, I did get my contacts and my memory card. Thank you very much.
One last questions for you. I don't know if its possible, or even worth it, but I was wondering if there would be an easy way to burn the EFY 2010 CD so I could enjoy that for the last couple weeks here. Like I said, I don't know if it would even be worth it, but if there is an easy way, I figure you might as well.
And last but not least, Happy Birthday Mom!! I always forget that I only e-mail once a week so I have to say all my happy birthdays the Monday before. I've got Mom's birthday written on my calendar and I knew it was coming up, and I hope you have a fabulous birthday Mom, and I hope you enjoy the P90X DVDs.
I love you all and hope you have a great week!!!
Love,
Chase
It sounds like you had quite the Sunday yesterday. Believe it or not, I actually got sick this week too and it was pretty bad, and it was bad timing. On Wednesday morning (our transfer day) I woke up and it felt like someone was wringing out my intestines, then I started to get nauseated and I think I threw up 7 times by the end of the day. I still managed to get to transfer meeting though. I just brought a bag with me in the car, which I used. Then I went into our trainers meeting where President Saylin trains all the trainers. I had to leave twice to throw up in that 40 min meeting. After a while I just went to go lay down on the couch. I'm not sure what I had, but it wasn't good. The next couple days I started feeling better, but my stomach still hurt and about 15 minutes after I ate I would always have to run to the bathroom (not to throw up). I feel pretty good today, but I'm not sure if its totally gone.
My new companion is Elder Bunch. He is from northern California. He is a very very very excited missionary. It is pretty funny. He is pretty much exactly what you imagine when you imagine a greenie. Except he has absolutely NO fear, unlike most new missionaries. He loves to belt out hymns as we walk down the street and his absolute favorite thing to do is to talk to people in the streets. He literally runs after people yelling "HERMANO HERMANO! TENEMOS UN MENSAJE PARA USTED!!" It is hilarious. One day in the morning we opened up the front door and it was raining pretty good, and Elder Bunch paused for a second, then he ran outside singing some song about rain drops or something. The best thing about him is that he speaks Spanish almost 100% of the time, so he is picking it up pretty fast. He knew 0 (zero) Spanish before the mission, so he doesn't have a whole lot of background, but he's learning quick because we talk to each other in Spanish pretty much all the time. He is going to be a great missionary.
Ok, time to answer Mom's random questions:
Yes I have heard of the P90X workout. That is what all the guys in the movie 300 used to get ripped. It sounds pretty intense.
People yell stuff at us every single day, usually several times. They are usually all pretty funny. People try to think of creative things to try to offend us, but it just turns out sounding ridiculous. We had someone this last week stick his head out the window and yell out "GET A JOB!" that's one I never heard before...I thought it was pretty funny. We get a lot of fan honks too though. The nice people usually don't yell at us, they'll just honk and wave, which I think is the best. Sometimes people will pull over and talk to us, but that just uses a bunch of time and we always end up being late to wherever were going.
We are allowed to teach pretty much anyone. Muslims are the only ones that I know of that are that extreme and I've taught a couple different Muslims in my mission. Basically the rule is to just be careful. I ate dinner at a members home before and they grew up in Iran, where most people are Muslims. Even though they've tried to keep it a secret that they joined the LDS church, they are sure someone found out and they are probably black listed. They said if they tried to go home to Iran, as soon as they got off the plane, some government CIA type guys would go take them to a car, and they would drive off in the car and they would never be heard from again. It is pretty crazy.
I have a couple last questions for you now. I was wondering what the possibilities of finding some place to give me a scholarship for school. I might have to look for myself when I get back, but I hear people all the time talking about how they go and apply to all sorts of different scholarships and sometimes they'll get accepted. That would be awesome. I wonder if CJ or ST know anything about that.
And yes, I did get my contacts and my memory card. Thank you very much.
One last questions for you. I don't know if its possible, or even worth it, but I was wondering if there would be an easy way to burn the EFY 2010 CD so I could enjoy that for the last couple weeks here. Like I said, I don't know if it would even be worth it, but if there is an easy way, I figure you might as well.
And last but not least, Happy Birthday Mom!! I always forget that I only e-mail once a week so I have to say all my happy birthdays the Monday before. I've got Mom's birthday written on my calendar and I knew it was coming up, and I hope you have a fabulous birthday Mom, and I hope you enjoy the P90X DVDs.
I love you all and hope you have a great week!!!
Love,
Chase
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Received Tue June 1, 2010
Dear Family,
Here is the transfer news! Elder Johnson is getting transferred and I will be training a new missionary. I am sad to see Elder Johnson go, but I am also pretty excited to train. Elder Johnson and I will hang out after the mission since he only lives a couple minutes away and were going to the same college. All the transfer changes will happen tomorrow, so I'll let you know who I've got next week.
It is a weird feeling knowing that this is my very last transfer. I don't really think about it very much, and I probably wont until it actually happens. I tell all the members and everyone that I've been out around a year and a half. The last thing I want is to have people bothering me about that. I'm hoping to have a really good transfer this transfer though.
This week was pretty good. We hit all out sit-down lesson goals and our OYM goals again. Elder Johnson and I went an entire transfer without getting less than 20 sit downs and an average of 10 oyms a day. We were pretty excited about that. Hopefully we can do the same this next transfer.
We have got several people who are right on the verge of baptism right now. There is this one lady in particular named Rosy Vasquez who knows she needs to be baptized, her husband is a member and is supporting her, but she is afraid that she is going to fall after her baptism. We have 1 or 2 other people who have that same fear. We have had a lot of good lessons on replacing fear with faith and the Holy Ghost and other things like that. They are very close.
I got news from the missionaries in League City that one of the people I taught back there got baptized on Sunday. That was awesome news. It was Bri Wells. I'm sure I wrote about them before. They were the ones where the husband is a member, but less active and doesn't ever want to go to church. They came from Washington and over there the missionaries played video games and wasted time with them. We started off really slow with this family and it was a big accomplishment to just get inside, then we slowly started teaching, then we got her to commit to coming to church, now shes getting baptized. That was some awesome news.
I've tried to really think through my week and think of good things to write about and I thought up of a few funny stories.
Here's the first one. In our room our beds are up on stilts high up in the air, like the top bunk of a bunk bed. Our desks are underneath. I'm not quite sure why they have it set up like that, because all the hot air rises and it is always waaay too hot at night, but that's how it is. The beds are around 5 1/2 feet up in their air...they are pretty high. There is a ladder at the end of the beds we can use to climb up, but I always just put my chair by the end of the bed, then just jump up. In the morning I slowly slide off the bed onto the chair below. Well one morning I was really tired and the alarm went off and I woke up, but I started falling back to sleep right away. Well I caught myself and jumped up really quickly and started to roll over to get off the bed, but apparently I was a lot closer to the edge than I thought and I came tumbling down. There was a lot of stuff, like cabinets and other random stuff I could have landed up and smacked my head up, but I somehow landed sitting down in my chair. It was pretty crazy. The wooden armrests left a mark across my back, but that is probably the best way I could have landed. I was so tired I didn't really realize what happened and I started to laugh and said my morning prayer and carried on with my day.
Next story. Have you guys ever heard of the fruit called Papaya? Back in Richmond, that Haitian family made my companion and I a papaya smoothie and it was waaay good, and I've told other missionaries about it and every single missionary who has tried papaya before has told me that it is one of the most disgusting foods they've tried. I don't know what that family did to make that smoothie good, but nobody else seems to have tasted a good papaya. Well on Sundays here we eat with the same member every Sunday and he always makes way good food because he worked in a restaurant. Last Sunday he had a papaya sitting there on the table and I made the mistake of asking what fruit that was, then he told us it was a papaya and he went on to cut it up so we could try some. I was pretty worried because of what all the other missionaries said. Plus this was after Elder Johnson and I stuffed our faces, so we were full. He brought us both out plates full of papaya. I sniffed it first because I was a little apprehensive and it smelled aaaawful. It smelled like something rotten. Luckily he had put a bunch of sugar on it, so I got a piece and loaded it up with as much sugar as I could and took a bite and it tasted just as bad as it smelled. And there was no hiding it. My companion laughed as he watched me eat it, and he asked me how it was. I told him it was not good, but he had to try it anyway and he had the same reaction. I thought it might have been a rotten one, but they were all eating it and they all said it was good. I guess our gringo taste buds are not use to that kind of stuff. We have a good relationship with the member, so he wasn't offended or anything and he just thought it was funny, but that was honestly probably one of the grossest things I've eaten before.
Weather: It has been pretty hot here. Its been in the 90s all week and it also rained a little bit a few times this week, which means it was really humid too. Everyone always gives us bottles of water, so we stay hydrated...its not too bad. A lot of Hispanics here start up little businesses in their apartments where they'll sell drinks, chips, snacks, phone cards, etc. A couple members have these little businesses, so they'll give us Gatorades whenever they see us. There are also these guys with cards that walk around all day selling paletas, and ice cream and stuff, so elder Johnson and I keep a few dollars in our backpacks to buy some when its hot.
Alright well that's about all I can think of for this week. Happy birthday to Heather! Have a good week!! I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
People at bus stops: We talk to crazy people all day long every day. You meet allll sorts of people wandering up and down westheimer. Some of them are literally crazy.
Here is the transfer news! Elder Johnson is getting transferred and I will be training a new missionary. I am sad to see Elder Johnson go, but I am also pretty excited to train. Elder Johnson and I will hang out after the mission since he only lives a couple minutes away and were going to the same college. All the transfer changes will happen tomorrow, so I'll let you know who I've got next week.
It is a weird feeling knowing that this is my very last transfer. I don't really think about it very much, and I probably wont until it actually happens. I tell all the members and everyone that I've been out around a year and a half. The last thing I want is to have people bothering me about that. I'm hoping to have a really good transfer this transfer though.
This week was pretty good. We hit all out sit-down lesson goals and our OYM goals again. Elder Johnson and I went an entire transfer without getting less than 20 sit downs and an average of 10 oyms a day. We were pretty excited about that. Hopefully we can do the same this next transfer.
We have got several people who are right on the verge of baptism right now. There is this one lady in particular named Rosy Vasquez who knows she needs to be baptized, her husband is a member and is supporting her, but she is afraid that she is going to fall after her baptism. We have 1 or 2 other people who have that same fear. We have had a lot of good lessons on replacing fear with faith and the Holy Ghost and other things like that. They are very close.
I got news from the missionaries in League City that one of the people I taught back there got baptized on Sunday. That was awesome news. It was Bri Wells. I'm sure I wrote about them before. They were the ones where the husband is a member, but less active and doesn't ever want to go to church. They came from Washington and over there the missionaries played video games and wasted time with them. We started off really slow with this family and it was a big accomplishment to just get inside, then we slowly started teaching, then we got her to commit to coming to church, now shes getting baptized. That was some awesome news.
I've tried to really think through my week and think of good things to write about and I thought up of a few funny stories.
Here's the first one. In our room our beds are up on stilts high up in the air, like the top bunk of a bunk bed. Our desks are underneath. I'm not quite sure why they have it set up like that, because all the hot air rises and it is always waaay too hot at night, but that's how it is. The beds are around 5 1/2 feet up in their air...they are pretty high. There is a ladder at the end of the beds we can use to climb up, but I always just put my chair by the end of the bed, then just jump up. In the morning I slowly slide off the bed onto the chair below. Well one morning I was really tired and the alarm went off and I woke up, but I started falling back to sleep right away. Well I caught myself and jumped up really quickly and started to roll over to get off the bed, but apparently I was a lot closer to the edge than I thought and I came tumbling down. There was a lot of stuff, like cabinets and other random stuff I could have landed up and smacked my head up, but I somehow landed sitting down in my chair. It was pretty crazy. The wooden armrests left a mark across my back, but that is probably the best way I could have landed. I was so tired I didn't really realize what happened and I started to laugh and said my morning prayer and carried on with my day.
Next story. Have you guys ever heard of the fruit called Papaya? Back in Richmond, that Haitian family made my companion and I a papaya smoothie and it was waaay good, and I've told other missionaries about it and every single missionary who has tried papaya before has told me that it is one of the most disgusting foods they've tried. I don't know what that family did to make that smoothie good, but nobody else seems to have tasted a good papaya. Well on Sundays here we eat with the same member every Sunday and he always makes way good food because he worked in a restaurant. Last Sunday he had a papaya sitting there on the table and I made the mistake of asking what fruit that was, then he told us it was a papaya and he went on to cut it up so we could try some. I was pretty worried because of what all the other missionaries said. Plus this was after Elder Johnson and I stuffed our faces, so we were full. He brought us both out plates full of papaya. I sniffed it first because I was a little apprehensive and it smelled aaaawful. It smelled like something rotten. Luckily he had put a bunch of sugar on it, so I got a piece and loaded it up with as much sugar as I could and took a bite and it tasted just as bad as it smelled. And there was no hiding it. My companion laughed as he watched me eat it, and he asked me how it was. I told him it was not good, but he had to try it anyway and he had the same reaction. I thought it might have been a rotten one, but they were all eating it and they all said it was good. I guess our gringo taste buds are not use to that kind of stuff. We have a good relationship with the member, so he wasn't offended or anything and he just thought it was funny, but that was honestly probably one of the grossest things I've eaten before.
Weather: It has been pretty hot here. Its been in the 90s all week and it also rained a little bit a few times this week, which means it was really humid too. Everyone always gives us bottles of water, so we stay hydrated...its not too bad. A lot of Hispanics here start up little businesses in their apartments where they'll sell drinks, chips, snacks, phone cards, etc. A couple members have these little businesses, so they'll give us Gatorades whenever they see us. There are also these guys with cards that walk around all day selling paletas, and ice cream and stuff, so elder Johnson and I keep a few dollars in our backpacks to buy some when its hot.
Alright well that's about all I can think of for this week. Happy birthday to Heather! Have a good week!! I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
People at bus stops: We talk to crazy people all day long every day. You meet allll sorts of people wandering up and down westheimer. Some of them are literally crazy.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Received Mon, May 24, 2010
Dear Family,
BYU Living arrangements: To be honest, I don't know anything about any places to live at BYU. Wherever CJ and ST think will be good, I'm good with because I don't know anything about any place.
Congrats to CJ on getting the new job. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
My week here has been a pretty good, normal week. We still have a whole bunch of people to teach, but were trying to help them make that next step of coming to church, so they can really progress. Everyone is always so busy, or something comes up last minute that prevents them from coming to church. I am glad that we do have a pretty good sized teaching pool now though. We are still having a lot of success with less active families. So many people stop coming to church because they got offended by someone or something. We always talk about the reasons why we go to church, which is basically to renew covenants with God which are necessary for salvation. And by letting themselves be offended they are missing out on blessings which makes life harder, and they will not be able to have salvation. It usually works pretty well...it gets people thinking. We got 2 new families to come this week and they were really excited to be there. Once people come back, they always feel good and always want to come back the next week.
We found a new guy to teach this week who has a lot of potential. His name is Victor Raul...hes from Peru. The missionaries used to teach this guy all the time and he came to church several times, but he started to get really busy with work, so he slowly lost contact with the missionaries. Well, now he has some sort of health condition...thyroids or something, and he has to sit at home and just rest and recuperate for a couple months. So now he has all the time in the world to listen to us and come to church. Unfortunately he didn't come this Sunday because he was out playing soccer, so we'll have to talk about that, but were pretty excited to be teaching him again.
I don't really know what to write about this week! Here is one story I can think of. There is this family in our ward who just got sealed in the temple. They are the familia Madora...they are awesome. When I met them the first time they both said they were from Mexico. We've visited them several times since then, and I've always noticed that hermano Madora has an accent, and he looks just like an Argentino. Well, this last week we were visiting him, and he had all these different Argentinian foods and then I saw a mate cup in his kitchen. So I asked him why he likes Argentinian stuff so much and he told me that its because hes Argentinian. I was like whatt?? That's what I thought the whole time, but you told me you were from Mexico. I don't know why, but he said he just tells people he's from Mexico because his wife really is from Mexico. I told him how Christopher and Dad served their missions there, and he told us allll about Argentina. He gave us some alfajores and they were goood. He said its the best brand you can find...it was the Havana brand. He is an awesome guy.
Well...that's all I can think of for this week. By the way...I sent a memory card with pictures home a week or two ago, did you ever get that? Hopefully it didn't get lost in the mail.
Next week I'll have transfer news! Elder Johnson is probably getting transferred, but we'll see.
Ok I love you all!! Have a good week!
Love,
Chase
BYU Living arrangements: To be honest, I don't know anything about any places to live at BYU. Wherever CJ and ST think will be good, I'm good with because I don't know anything about any place.
Congrats to CJ on getting the new job. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
My week here has been a pretty good, normal week. We still have a whole bunch of people to teach, but were trying to help them make that next step of coming to church, so they can really progress. Everyone is always so busy, or something comes up last minute that prevents them from coming to church. I am glad that we do have a pretty good sized teaching pool now though. We are still having a lot of success with less active families. So many people stop coming to church because they got offended by someone or something. We always talk about the reasons why we go to church, which is basically to renew covenants with God which are necessary for salvation. And by letting themselves be offended they are missing out on blessings which makes life harder, and they will not be able to have salvation. It usually works pretty well...it gets people thinking. We got 2 new families to come this week and they were really excited to be there. Once people come back, they always feel good and always want to come back the next week.
We found a new guy to teach this week who has a lot of potential. His name is Victor Raul...hes from Peru. The missionaries used to teach this guy all the time and he came to church several times, but he started to get really busy with work, so he slowly lost contact with the missionaries. Well, now he has some sort of health condition...thyroids or something, and he has to sit at home and just rest and recuperate for a couple months. So now he has all the time in the world to listen to us and come to church. Unfortunately he didn't come this Sunday because he was out playing soccer, so we'll have to talk about that, but were pretty excited to be teaching him again.
I don't really know what to write about this week! Here is one story I can think of. There is this family in our ward who just got sealed in the temple. They are the familia Madora...they are awesome. When I met them the first time they both said they were from Mexico. We've visited them several times since then, and I've always noticed that hermano Madora has an accent, and he looks just like an Argentino. Well, this last week we were visiting him, and he had all these different Argentinian foods and then I saw a mate cup in his kitchen. So I asked him why he likes Argentinian stuff so much and he told me that its because hes Argentinian. I was like whatt?? That's what I thought the whole time, but you told me you were from Mexico. I don't know why, but he said he just tells people he's from Mexico because his wife really is from Mexico. I told him how Christopher and Dad served their missions there, and he told us allll about Argentina. He gave us some alfajores and they were goood. He said its the best brand you can find...it was the Havana brand. He is an awesome guy.
Well...that's all I can think of for this week. By the way...I sent a memory card with pictures home a week or two ago, did you ever get that? Hopefully it didn't get lost in the mail.
Next week I'll have transfer news! Elder Johnson is probably getting transferred, but we'll see.
Ok I love you all!! Have a good week!
Love,
Chase
Monday, May 17, 2010
Received Mon, May 17, 2010
Dear Family,
Happy Birthday on Wednesday Kylie!!! It sounds like you're going to have a pretty good party. I love ice cream cake. And molten lava cakes. I hope you have a good party.
The weeks have definitely been flying by here too. We are already about to start week 5 of the transfer. We've had a lot of good things happen this week though. We taught the Mendez family again, which is the family I wrote about last week where the husband was pretty mad at first to see us again. This time the wife was awake so we got him to go invite her. He said she would never come and listen, but we told him to go try any way, and he did and she came and joined us. We taught him, his wife, and his brother. It was a pretty good lesson. We left them with Books of Mormon and gave them part of King Benjamin's speech to read. We're going back tomorrow.
We found a lot of other new people to teach this week too. I think we got 6 new investigators. We have been trying something where instead of just trying to set up return appointments, we ask people if we can teach them right then. Surprisingly a couple people of week say yes and that is how we've been finding a lot of new people. Here are two cool stories. The first one is that last Monday at the end of our P-day, we were riding our bikes down Westheimer, which is the big, very busy, main street that runs through our area, and I saw this Hispanic guy riding his bike across the street with some groceries. I started talking to him, then I asked him if he lived in the apartments that were down the street a little bit, he said yes. So I asked him if we could come back to him apartment with him and share an important message with him. He surprisingly said yes. My companion couldn't hear much of what was going on because of all the traffic and everything and when he saw me get off my bike, he was like, what are we doing? I told him we were going back to this guy's apartment to teach him, so we did. His two roommates were drunk, so he didn't want us to go in, so we taught him on some benches in the courtyard of the apartment complex. It was a really good lesson, and my companion extended his first Spanish baptismal date, and he accepted. It was pretty awesome.
The second story is that we were riding our bikes down Westheimer again and we stopped to talk to a couple of people at the bus stop. As soon as I started to talk to this guy I saw the bus coming down the road, so I gave him a card and told him we have a really important message we need to share with him, and to call the number so missionaries can come by and share it to him. He asked if I could just tell it to him there. I told him its not a message you can just share in a couple of seconds, and that his bus was there and we didn't want him to miss his bus. He said..."Nah its cool man, I can just catch another bus. I want to hear your message." So we sat down on the grass on the corner of this busy road and taught this guy. He was really really open to it and we extended a baptismal date to him too. We gave him as a referral to this English Elders, so they are teaching him now. It was a pretty cool experience.
So those were some of our good experience of the week. On a funnier note, we talk to Lars (the guy we live with) most nights when we get home and as you can imagine, he is a pretty interesting guy. Being single at the age of 40, you have a lot of free time on your hands. He is waaay into studying about the end of the world and dissecting the book of Revelation in the Bible. He is pretty sure he's got in all figured out. The second coming will be in 2037, and all the big signs you read about in Revelation will start coming to pass after the year 2017. He is really serious about this stuff, so he has been preparing with food storage and all sorts of crazy things. Some of the things hes got are 500 lbs of wheat, 50 lbs of baking soda, he is building a massive water storage holder (like thousands of gallons), he's building an electromagnetic generator to produce electricity, and his newest project which I just learned about this week is that he wants to start raising chickens. The only problem is that it is against some city code to have chickens, so he is going to do it upstairs in his attic. He bought 3 fertilized chicken eggs, which should be arriving any time, and he's got this chicken egg incubator, which probably came off the internet too. When he was describing this whole thing, I kept thinking of that scene in Napoleon Dynamite where they try to buy a time machine off the internet and they've got these crystals and everything. I told him that's what it reminded me of and he just laughed. We'll see what happens with that. It is all good entertainment, that is for sure.
That is exciting that Zak is getting his Eagle project done. Has he gotten all the merit badges he needs? I remember I had to go to camp trask to finish off a couple. Does that old man who lives up the street still do all the eagle scout interviews? That would blow my mind if that guy is still alive. He used to always ask the same questions. It was about like...hypoxia?/altitude sickness, hypothermia, and something else.
Today for our morning exercise, Elder Johnson and I decided to run to McDonalds which is around the corner and eat some breakfast. It was good. Running is not that easy when you haven't run for 2 years though. It wasn't too bad though...I think the bikes have helped out with that.
Before I forget, I've got one last thing. I've got only 2 pairs of contacts left, so if I keep both of them in for a month each, I will barely make it, but I'll be pushing it. Is there any way I can get 1 more pair sent to me? I'm pretty sure my prescription is for -1.75 in both eyes, which is probably going to need to be readjusted when I get back. I've got the nigh & day brand.
Ok, I think that's about all for this week. I love you all and hope you have a good week!!!
Love,
Chase
Happy Birthday on Wednesday Kylie!!! It sounds like you're going to have a pretty good party. I love ice cream cake. And molten lava cakes. I hope you have a good party.
The weeks have definitely been flying by here too. We are already about to start week 5 of the transfer. We've had a lot of good things happen this week though. We taught the Mendez family again, which is the family I wrote about last week where the husband was pretty mad at first to see us again. This time the wife was awake so we got him to go invite her. He said she would never come and listen, but we told him to go try any way, and he did and she came and joined us. We taught him, his wife, and his brother. It was a pretty good lesson. We left them with Books of Mormon and gave them part of King Benjamin's speech to read. We're going back tomorrow.
We found a lot of other new people to teach this week too. I think we got 6 new investigators. We have been trying something where instead of just trying to set up return appointments, we ask people if we can teach them right then. Surprisingly a couple people of week say yes and that is how we've been finding a lot of new people. Here are two cool stories. The first one is that last Monday at the end of our P-day, we were riding our bikes down Westheimer, which is the big, very busy, main street that runs through our area, and I saw this Hispanic guy riding his bike across the street with some groceries. I started talking to him, then I asked him if he lived in the apartments that were down the street a little bit, he said yes. So I asked him if we could come back to him apartment with him and share an important message with him. He surprisingly said yes. My companion couldn't hear much of what was going on because of all the traffic and everything and when he saw me get off my bike, he was like, what are we doing? I told him we were going back to this guy's apartment to teach him, so we did. His two roommates were drunk, so he didn't want us to go in, so we taught him on some benches in the courtyard of the apartment complex. It was a really good lesson, and my companion extended his first Spanish baptismal date, and he accepted. It was pretty awesome.
The second story is that we were riding our bikes down Westheimer again and we stopped to talk to a couple of people at the bus stop. As soon as I started to talk to this guy I saw the bus coming down the road, so I gave him a card and told him we have a really important message we need to share with him, and to call the number so missionaries can come by and share it to him. He asked if I could just tell it to him there. I told him its not a message you can just share in a couple of seconds, and that his bus was there and we didn't want him to miss his bus. He said..."Nah its cool man, I can just catch another bus. I want to hear your message." So we sat down on the grass on the corner of this busy road and taught this guy. He was really really open to it and we extended a baptismal date to him too. We gave him as a referral to this English Elders, so they are teaching him now. It was a pretty cool experience.
So those were some of our good experience of the week. On a funnier note, we talk to Lars (the guy we live with) most nights when we get home and as you can imagine, he is a pretty interesting guy. Being single at the age of 40, you have a lot of free time on your hands. He is waaay into studying about the end of the world and dissecting the book of Revelation in the Bible. He is pretty sure he's got in all figured out. The second coming will be in 2037, and all the big signs you read about in Revelation will start coming to pass after the year 2017. He is really serious about this stuff, so he has been preparing with food storage and all sorts of crazy things. Some of the things hes got are 500 lbs of wheat, 50 lbs of baking soda, he is building a massive water storage holder (like thousands of gallons), he's building an electromagnetic generator to produce electricity, and his newest project which I just learned about this week is that he wants to start raising chickens. The only problem is that it is against some city code to have chickens, so he is going to do it upstairs in his attic. He bought 3 fertilized chicken eggs, which should be arriving any time, and he's got this chicken egg incubator, which probably came off the internet too. When he was describing this whole thing, I kept thinking of that scene in Napoleon Dynamite where they try to buy a time machine off the internet and they've got these crystals and everything. I told him that's what it reminded me of and he just laughed. We'll see what happens with that. It is all good entertainment, that is for sure.
That is exciting that Zak is getting his Eagle project done. Has he gotten all the merit badges he needs? I remember I had to go to camp trask to finish off a couple. Does that old man who lives up the street still do all the eagle scout interviews? That would blow my mind if that guy is still alive. He used to always ask the same questions. It was about like...hypoxia?/altitude sickness, hypothermia, and something else.
Today for our morning exercise, Elder Johnson and I decided to run to McDonalds which is around the corner and eat some breakfast. It was good. Running is not that easy when you haven't run for 2 years though. It wasn't too bad though...I think the bikes have helped out with that.
Before I forget, I've got one last thing. I've got only 2 pairs of contacts left, so if I keep both of them in for a month each, I will barely make it, but I'll be pushing it. Is there any way I can get 1 more pair sent to me? I'm pretty sure my prescription is for -1.75 in both eyes, which is probably going to need to be readjusted when I get back. I've got the nigh & day brand.
Ok, I think that's about all for this week. I love you all and hope you have a good week!!!
Love,
Chase
Monday, May 10, 2010
Received Mon May 10, 2010
Dear Family,
Well I think were all pretty much up to date from our conversation last night. The only thing I can think of to report on is yesterday at church, we had an awesome Sunday. We finally had a lot of people come. Only one of them was an investigator, but we got 4 other good sized less active families to finally come back to church. We counted up 14 people who we invited who finally came. That really makes a huge difference in a small ward like the one we have. It made for a good Sunday. I think it got the bishop and everyone else excited too. Most of them left after the first hour, but it was still a huge step to see them in sacrament meeting. Hopefully we'll see them keep coming.
Our area is doing a lot better now too. We have found some pretty good people this week that were going to be able to go back and teach this week. The best part about it is that they live in houses as opposed to apartment complexes where literally every single other Hispanic person we've met live. So hopefully they are a little bit more stable and wont disappear one day and maybe they'll even have cars to be able to get themselves to church. One of those families is actually a part member family. We talked to the wife in the driveway 5-6 days ago and she told us how her husband actually got baptized in Mexico. We were all excited and went back one day to meet him and we were met by a man (her husband) who was not very happy and said nobody in that home has faith in God. We asked him some questions and got him thinking about everything and a lot about how he felt when he was getting taught by the missionaries and by the end of the conversation he liked us and he let us make a return appointment for the next day. So we taught him yesterday and it went pretty well. The mom was asleep though, so next time were going to try to teach them all.
Ok, about housing at BYU. I think the best choice is probably going to be to have Christopher and Steven just choose a place for me to live and I can always change it sometime later if I feel like it. How does it all work? Do you have to sign a lease for a certain amount of time or what? If I got signed up for a place this month, but found a different place to live when I got back, would I be able to change it? If not, would I be able to change it at the end of the semester? I really have no plans at all right now, so either way the best thing to do is probably to have CJ and ST find a place for me to live and sign me up for classes.
That's too bad Christopher has got such a bad sunburn. I've never felt the aloe vera thing before. I think I have put it on though..I don't remember very well what happened. I haven't gotten a sunburn for a looong long time. Lets just say I have a pretty bad farmer's tan. And a watch tan. And a collar tan on my neck. I am going to try not to get the bike helmet strap tan lines.
Ok that is all I can think of for this week. We are starting week 4 of the transfer...it is flying by fast. I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!
Love,
Chase
PS. Its true that the obedience stuff has helped a lot, but I was talking about the # of baptismal DATES we have not baptisms. Right now we are baptizing around 40 a month which is still about double what we use to be doing.
Well I think were all pretty much up to date from our conversation last night. The only thing I can think of to report on is yesterday at church, we had an awesome Sunday. We finally had a lot of people come. Only one of them was an investigator, but we got 4 other good sized less active families to finally come back to church. We counted up 14 people who we invited who finally came. That really makes a huge difference in a small ward like the one we have. It made for a good Sunday. I think it got the bishop and everyone else excited too. Most of them left after the first hour, but it was still a huge step to see them in sacrament meeting. Hopefully we'll see them keep coming.
Our area is doing a lot better now too. We have found some pretty good people this week that were going to be able to go back and teach this week. The best part about it is that they live in houses as opposed to apartment complexes where literally every single other Hispanic person we've met live. So hopefully they are a little bit more stable and wont disappear one day and maybe they'll even have cars to be able to get themselves to church. One of those families is actually a part member family. We talked to the wife in the driveway 5-6 days ago and she told us how her husband actually got baptized in Mexico. We were all excited and went back one day to meet him and we were met by a man (her husband) who was not very happy and said nobody in that home has faith in God. We asked him some questions and got him thinking about everything and a lot about how he felt when he was getting taught by the missionaries and by the end of the conversation he liked us and he let us make a return appointment for the next day. So we taught him yesterday and it went pretty well. The mom was asleep though, so next time were going to try to teach them all.
Ok, about housing at BYU. I think the best choice is probably going to be to have Christopher and Steven just choose a place for me to live and I can always change it sometime later if I feel like it. How does it all work? Do you have to sign a lease for a certain amount of time or what? If I got signed up for a place this month, but found a different place to live when I got back, would I be able to change it? If not, would I be able to change it at the end of the semester? I really have no plans at all right now, so either way the best thing to do is probably to have CJ and ST find a place for me to live and sign me up for classes.
That's too bad Christopher has got such a bad sunburn. I've never felt the aloe vera thing before. I think I have put it on though..I don't remember very well what happened. I haven't gotten a sunburn for a looong long time. Lets just say I have a pretty bad farmer's tan. And a watch tan. And a collar tan on my neck. I am going to try not to get the bike helmet strap tan lines.
Ok that is all I can think of for this week. We are starting week 4 of the transfer...it is flying by fast. I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!
Love,
Chase
PS. Its true that the obedience stuff has helped a lot, but I was talking about the # of baptismal DATES we have not baptisms. Right now we are baptizing around 40 a month which is still about double what we use to be doing.
Received Mon May 3, 2010
Dear Family,
Dad's two comments about me in high school are pretty accurate. I went to sleep at around 9 or 9:30 my freshman and sophomore year, then my last 2 years I would usually go to bed around 10 or 10:30. And for at least my first two years in high school Dad would read to me at night. That's how I heard like 5 of the Harry Potter books.
BYU Stuff: I think it would be good if Steven could register me for some classes. I can always try to change it afterwards, but I think it would be smart to try to get some good classes early on. I'm probably going to need to take Statistics and some computer class to finish my prerequisites for the business school. I've thought it might be fun to take a soccer class too. Either that or a racquetball class.
Mother's Day Call: We found a member who will let us use their phone. We are planning at calling around 7:30 our time, so that's 5:30 your time I'm pretty sure. Hopefully that will work out.
This has been another good week in Houston 1. This is probably the hardest Elder Johnson and I have both worked in our missions. President Saylin got back from a meeting in Arizona where they met with some other general authorities, and one of the things they talked about was how in South America there are no cars, but in the US there are tons of cars and missionaries miss out on a lot of opportunities to talk to people. They gave promises to the mission presidents there that if the missionaries would park the cars and use bikes and rely on members to help them, we will always have people to teach. So he extended a challenge to all of us, that if we want we can accept, to park our cars for the month and not use them at all. So we've been doing it this week. It has been a HOT and reeeally humid week too. We rode our bikes to church and everything. Were definitely starting to run into some complications with dinner appointments all the way on the other side of the area from where we have all our other appointments throughout that day. And our area is huuge, so it is a challenge. We'll see what happens. I don't think I've ever sweat so much in my life. But we have found a lot of people to teach.
Here is a cool story. When we were riding home from church yesterday, we were talking to people along the way. I pulled over on my bike to talk to these two Hispanic guys walking down the rode and as I turned to talk to them, I realized I recognized one of them. It was Victor Hernandez, an awesome guy from Nicaragua that I taught while I was in Houston 2. He came to church several times, he was living all the commandments, and he had a baptismal date, then he disappeared because they all got evicted from their apartment. He had just gotten jumped too so he didn't have any phone. He was really happy to see us again yesterday. He said he's recently been thinking a lot about us and he wanted us to start coming by again, but every time he saw the missionaries they were always far away, so he was never able to flag them down. That would be cool if he was living in our area, but hes not. He's still back in Houston 2. So I passed on the referral to them. It made my day though.
We also saw another crazy thing happen. We were getting a ride home from our last appointment last night and as we were driving down one of the main streets in our area, these 2 cars zoomed passed us. One was an older Cadillac and the other one was a new Lincoln. They kept cutting each other off and they kept slamming on the brakes trying and they were trying to run each other off the road. They would actually bump into each other too...it was crazy. At one point the Lincoln actually pushed the Cadillac off the road onto the center median thing. Then when they passed through this intersection the Lincoln managed to pin the Cadillac between the median and his car, then they both jumped out of the car. We thought we were about to see someone get shot. Luckily neither of them had guns, and the one Cadillac guy jumped back into his car and back out into the intersection, into oncoming traffic and flew down the road. It was pretty crazy. I think it was probably just a bad case of road rage.
Everything has been going well. Elder Johnson and I are good friends. Spanish is going really well too. It has been awesome being back in a full Spanish area.
Oh yeah...Blue Bell Ice Cream. That's like the pride and joy of Texas. Its probably one of the first things I heard about when I got here. Its a brand of ice cream that I think they only sell in Texas. They have alll sorts of different flavors. It is all pretty good, but in my opinion (I would probably be hanged if I said this out loud here), I think its a little overrated and definitely over priced. Its like $5.75 - $6.50 for a gallon. It is pretty good though.
Ok well that's about all for this week! Have fun on your cruise Mom and Dad! Have a good week everyone...I love you!
Love,
Chase
Dad's two comments about me in high school are pretty accurate. I went to sleep at around 9 or 9:30 my freshman and sophomore year, then my last 2 years I would usually go to bed around 10 or 10:30. And for at least my first two years in high school Dad would read to me at night. That's how I heard like 5 of the Harry Potter books.
BYU Stuff: I think it would be good if Steven could register me for some classes. I can always try to change it afterwards, but I think it would be smart to try to get some good classes early on. I'm probably going to need to take Statistics and some computer class to finish my prerequisites for the business school. I've thought it might be fun to take a soccer class too. Either that or a racquetball class.
Mother's Day Call: We found a member who will let us use their phone. We are planning at calling around 7:30 our time, so that's 5:30 your time I'm pretty sure. Hopefully that will work out.
This has been another good week in Houston 1. This is probably the hardest Elder Johnson and I have both worked in our missions. President Saylin got back from a meeting in Arizona where they met with some other general authorities, and one of the things they talked about was how in South America there are no cars, but in the US there are tons of cars and missionaries miss out on a lot of opportunities to talk to people. They gave promises to the mission presidents there that if the missionaries would park the cars and use bikes and rely on members to help them, we will always have people to teach. So he extended a challenge to all of us, that if we want we can accept, to park our cars for the month and not use them at all. So we've been doing it this week. It has been a HOT and reeeally humid week too. We rode our bikes to church and everything. Were definitely starting to run into some complications with dinner appointments all the way on the other side of the area from where we have all our other appointments throughout that day. And our area is huuge, so it is a challenge. We'll see what happens. I don't think I've ever sweat so much in my life. But we have found a lot of people to teach.
Here is a cool story. When we were riding home from church yesterday, we were talking to people along the way. I pulled over on my bike to talk to these two Hispanic guys walking down the rode and as I turned to talk to them, I realized I recognized one of them. It was Victor Hernandez, an awesome guy from Nicaragua that I taught while I was in Houston 2. He came to church several times, he was living all the commandments, and he had a baptismal date, then he disappeared because they all got evicted from their apartment. He had just gotten jumped too so he didn't have any phone. He was really happy to see us again yesterday. He said he's recently been thinking a lot about us and he wanted us to start coming by again, but every time he saw the missionaries they were always far away, so he was never able to flag them down. That would be cool if he was living in our area, but hes not. He's still back in Houston 2. So I passed on the referral to them. It made my day though.
We also saw another crazy thing happen. We were getting a ride home from our last appointment last night and as we were driving down one of the main streets in our area, these 2 cars zoomed passed us. One was an older Cadillac and the other one was a new Lincoln. They kept cutting each other off and they kept slamming on the brakes trying and they were trying to run each other off the road. They would actually bump into each other too...it was crazy. At one point the Lincoln actually pushed the Cadillac off the road onto the center median thing. Then when they passed through this intersection the Lincoln managed to pin the Cadillac between the median and his car, then they both jumped out of the car. We thought we were about to see someone get shot. Luckily neither of them had guns, and the one Cadillac guy jumped back into his car and back out into the intersection, into oncoming traffic and flew down the road. It was pretty crazy. I think it was probably just a bad case of road rage.
Everything has been going well. Elder Johnson and I are good friends. Spanish is going really well too. It has been awesome being back in a full Spanish area.
Oh yeah...Blue Bell Ice Cream. That's like the pride and joy of Texas. Its probably one of the first things I heard about when I got here. Its a brand of ice cream that I think they only sell in Texas. They have alll sorts of different flavors. It is all pretty good, but in my opinion (I would probably be hanged if I said this out loud here), I think its a little overrated and definitely over priced. Its like $5.75 - $6.50 for a gallon. It is pretty good though.
Ok well that's about all for this week! Have fun on your cruise Mom and Dad! Have a good week everyone...I love you!
Love,
Chase
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Received Mon April 26, 2010
Dear Family,
It sounds like you all had an eventful week! I have as well. I got transferred!!! It is all really good news. If I could have picked for myself what I wanted to have happen and who I wanted to be with, this is what I would have picked. I am now in an area called Houston 1 (named after the ward we cover). It is in downtown Houston. And by downtown Houston, I mean it is really downtown, where a lot of the skyscrapers and stuff are. One of the best parts about it is that this place is chalk FULL of Hispanics. So yes, I am now back to Spanish. In our area we have the Pulga (it means flea is Spanish), which is the Hispanic flea market. Every weekend thousands of Hispanics go there to sell random stuff or just to shop and look around. So the place is crawling with people on the weekends.
My companion is Elder Johnson. He's been out for about 8-9 months now. He was in Galveston when I got to League City, so I met him there. We only really talked a few times there whenever we had meetings, but we already became friends. He is actually from La Canada. We are both in the Arcadia, CA mission, and that is actually where I did my missionary for a day thing. He is tall like most of my companions...he's about 6'5. We are pretty excited to serve together though.
Oh, and now I am serving as a district leader, which I am excited about to. It still the same amount of work as I would be doing as a zone leader, but now its all focused in a smaller area. I have a really good district too. There are 3 companionships and all of them are pretty strong. We got a call from the assistants this week and they said that President Saylin just got back from a training meeting in Arizona with a couple general authorities and he said that one of the idea that got brought up is what they are doing in the Arcadia mission with the whole inviting investigators to be taught in the church thing. He gave our district the special assignment to do that and test it out and see how it works. How it works is after we teach them the first time, we'll invite them to be taught the second lesson at the chapel. There we will show them the baptismal font and the chapel and talk about how our Sunday meetings go and say everything that will happen, so they wont be afraid to come. A lot of people are afraid to come because it is all so new, hopefully this will help with that. We've already got 2 return appointments set up in the church for this next week.
We live with a single guy named Lars. He's probably in his late 30s and he's never been married. He is exactly how you would imagine a single guy to be. He's got random unfinished projects all over the house, random stuff drawn on the walls, he eats cookie dough and cereal for dinner, etc. He is a pretty funny guy. He is in the Army Reserve.
Mother's Day phone call: So, I am hoping we can use Lars' phone, but all he has is a cell phone and I'm not sure if we has free minutes. We will have to call around and see if we can use a member's phone around here and I'll let you know next week. I'm guessing we'll call at night around 7:30 or 8, so you should be home.
Our area is in the condition pretty much every area is when I get there. We are in the re-building stage. They had several baptisms last transfer, but those were pretty much the only people they were working with, now we don't really have anyone! That's ok, there are tons of people around, so it shouldn't be too hard. I will be good. Hopefully I'll have good things to report back about next week.
Ok, that is about all for this week! I got Dad's letter this week finally, so I can write back now. I will do that right now. I'm sure I will have some good stories for next week. Congrats to Steven Heather and Christopher. I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
It sounds like you all had an eventful week! I have as well. I got transferred!!! It is all really good news. If I could have picked for myself what I wanted to have happen and who I wanted to be with, this is what I would have picked. I am now in an area called Houston 1 (named after the ward we cover). It is in downtown Houston. And by downtown Houston, I mean it is really downtown, where a lot of the skyscrapers and stuff are. One of the best parts about it is that this place is chalk FULL of Hispanics. So yes, I am now back to Spanish. In our area we have the Pulga (it means flea is Spanish), which is the Hispanic flea market. Every weekend thousands of Hispanics go there to sell random stuff or just to shop and look around. So the place is crawling with people on the weekends.
My companion is Elder Johnson. He's been out for about 8-9 months now. He was in Galveston when I got to League City, so I met him there. We only really talked a few times there whenever we had meetings, but we already became friends. He is actually from La Canada. We are both in the Arcadia, CA mission, and that is actually where I did my missionary for a day thing. He is tall like most of my companions...he's about 6'5. We are pretty excited to serve together though.
Oh, and now I am serving as a district leader, which I am excited about to. It still the same amount of work as I would be doing as a zone leader, but now its all focused in a smaller area. I have a really good district too. There are 3 companionships and all of them are pretty strong. We got a call from the assistants this week and they said that President Saylin just got back from a training meeting in Arizona with a couple general authorities and he said that one of the idea that got brought up is what they are doing in the Arcadia mission with the whole inviting investigators to be taught in the church thing. He gave our district the special assignment to do that and test it out and see how it works. How it works is after we teach them the first time, we'll invite them to be taught the second lesson at the chapel. There we will show them the baptismal font and the chapel and talk about how our Sunday meetings go and say everything that will happen, so they wont be afraid to come. A lot of people are afraid to come because it is all so new, hopefully this will help with that. We've already got 2 return appointments set up in the church for this next week.
We live with a single guy named Lars. He's probably in his late 30s and he's never been married. He is exactly how you would imagine a single guy to be. He's got random unfinished projects all over the house, random stuff drawn on the walls, he eats cookie dough and cereal for dinner, etc. He is a pretty funny guy. He is in the Army Reserve.
Mother's Day phone call: So, I am hoping we can use Lars' phone, but all he has is a cell phone and I'm not sure if we has free minutes. We will have to call around and see if we can use a member's phone around here and I'll let you know next week. I'm guessing we'll call at night around 7:30 or 8, so you should be home.
Our area is in the condition pretty much every area is when I get there. We are in the re-building stage. They had several baptisms last transfer, but those were pretty much the only people they were working with, now we don't really have anyone! That's ok, there are tons of people around, so it shouldn't be too hard. I will be good. Hopefully I'll have good things to report back about next week.
Ok, that is about all for this week! I got Dad's letter this week finally, so I can write back now. I will do that right now. I'm sure I will have some good stories for next week. Congrats to Steven Heather and Christopher. I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
Monday, April 19, 2010
Received Mon April 19, 2010
Dear Family,
Here is the big transfer news!! We get a fax on Monday morning with all the transfer news, so yes I do have it. I am getting transferred!! This means I am probably going back to a Spanish area for my last 2 transfers and I probably will just be a normal missionary or maybe a district leader. You never know what will happen, but that is the most likely. I am really excited about it though. I will find out where I'm going on Wednesday at our transfer meeting.
Dodgeball last week was awesome. All 26 missionaries in our zone came and everyone loved it. We played dodgeball for 2-3 hours. We played a several different versions of dodgeball. We started off by playing pivot tag, which is a game we played earlier on in my mission. It is basically free for all dodgeball. There are 3-4 balls and when you pick one up, you have to plant one foot and you cant move until you throw it. If someone hits you, you have to sit down and you have to stay down until the person who hit you gets out. So it keeps on going until one person has gotten everyone out. It was really fun but reeally tiring when there were so many people. The next day I was the sorest I have ever been in my life. It was pretty funny. When we were driving down the road that next day we saw an old man taking out his trash, so we pulled over to help him, and when we were struggling to get out of the car because of our soreness, I could only imagine what the old man thought. He was probably more capable of taking out the trash than we were. It was pretty funny. Every missionary I talked to said they were sore...I'm glad it wasn't just me. I am definitely pretty out of shape right now though. Zak is a brave man. I dint think I would race against Mom right now because I would probably lose and that would be embarrassing to get beat by my mom. Maybe I'll get transferred to a bike area. But yeah, it was a pretty awesome p-day.
That is exciting that Christopher is interviewing with Google. In my mind I have always seen Christopher working there. I bet it will go well. I remember years ago Christopher was telling me about the work place for google and how their office is and how well they treat the employees there. Plus its in California, so what more could you ask for.
This week has gone pretty well. We've found some more people to teach, which is always really good for this area. We also got 3 people to church. One of them is a mom of 7 children. Her husband is a doctor and a lawyer and hes constantly traveling around the world doing surgeries and crazy stuff like that. It goes without saying, but they are loaded. I originally talked to her in the Wal-mart parking lot when she was sitting in her car eating a hamburger. I didn't know it at the time, but when I talked about it at church, one of the members said they they are good family friends with them. This lady has had a lot of exposure to the church. Her husband too works with a lot of Mormons. It is pretty exciting.
There are so many people here in this area right now that have testimonies of the church and some that even want to get baptized, but they just have one or two obstacles in their path they are trying to overcome. If things fall into place, there could be a lot of baptisms in the near future.
I don't remember if I've talked to you about the Muslim family from Bangladesh we are teaching. Their last name is Rahman. The father's name is Anisuir, and the two kids are Yahmin and Molmehr. We've been teaching them for about a month. They now believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior and they want to get baptized. They absolutely love us and they love it when we come over and teach. It is fun. Most of their family will probably disown them when they join the church, but they said they will follow God no matter what the sacrifice. They are awesome.
We have also done really well working with the members this week. What we've started to do is after a dinner appointment or for whatever visit it may be, we ask if we can come back in the next week to share another short message. Of course they accept. Then we tell them we have a challenge for them and we challenge them to pray about and invite someone to come to our appointment with them. So the commitment is just to make an invitation, it doesn't matter if they accept or not. This morning we had a lady call us and tell us about how she went out and started talking to her neighbor and she told her all about the book of mormon and now she wants a copy. She was pretty excited...she is usually a pretty shy lady. Good things are happening. Our ward mission leader and our bishop are also going to be speaking at our stake conference this weekend and talk about how we have the Ward Mission Process running so well, which is something Elder L Tom Perry introduced where the Ward council is supposed to invite people to be taught by the missionaries in order to help them reach 20 sit downs each week. It is going really well in our ward. We have an awesome ward.
It is weird to think I am starting my second to last transfer. After you have a pretty big chunk of time in the mission behind you, you just kind of stop thinking about it and the months and transfers just fly by. It seems like every time you get use to a ward and an area, you get transferred. That is half of the reason why I knew I was going to get transferred. I am pretty excited for this Wednesday to see where I am going to end up.
Congratulations to Christopher, Steven, and Heather on graduating. That is awesome that it hasn't been too hard for them to find jobs. Hopefully by the time I finish school the economy will be back up and the job market will be good. I'm not even sure what I'm going to end up going into. We'll see.
Ok well that's about all for this week. I am going to be getting mail on Wednesday and transfer meeting, so hopefully Dad's letter will be in there. I probably could have just printed it out and read it that way...that would have been really easy. Have a good week, I love you all!! I will let you know next week where I end up!
Love,
Chase
Here is the big transfer news!! We get a fax on Monday morning with all the transfer news, so yes I do have it. I am getting transferred!! This means I am probably going back to a Spanish area for my last 2 transfers and I probably will just be a normal missionary or maybe a district leader. You never know what will happen, but that is the most likely. I am really excited about it though. I will find out where I'm going on Wednesday at our transfer meeting.
Dodgeball last week was awesome. All 26 missionaries in our zone came and everyone loved it. We played dodgeball for 2-3 hours. We played a several different versions of dodgeball. We started off by playing pivot tag, which is a game we played earlier on in my mission. It is basically free for all dodgeball. There are 3-4 balls and when you pick one up, you have to plant one foot and you cant move until you throw it. If someone hits you, you have to sit down and you have to stay down until the person who hit you gets out. So it keeps on going until one person has gotten everyone out. It was really fun but reeally tiring when there were so many people. The next day I was the sorest I have ever been in my life. It was pretty funny. When we were driving down the road that next day we saw an old man taking out his trash, so we pulled over to help him, and when we were struggling to get out of the car because of our soreness, I could only imagine what the old man thought. He was probably more capable of taking out the trash than we were. It was pretty funny. Every missionary I talked to said they were sore...I'm glad it wasn't just me. I am definitely pretty out of shape right now though. Zak is a brave man. I dint think I would race against Mom right now because I would probably lose and that would be embarrassing to get beat by my mom. Maybe I'll get transferred to a bike area. But yeah, it was a pretty awesome p-day.
That is exciting that Christopher is interviewing with Google. In my mind I have always seen Christopher working there. I bet it will go well. I remember years ago Christopher was telling me about the work place for google and how their office is and how well they treat the employees there. Plus its in California, so what more could you ask for.
This week has gone pretty well. We've found some more people to teach, which is always really good for this area. We also got 3 people to church. One of them is a mom of 7 children. Her husband is a doctor and a lawyer and hes constantly traveling around the world doing surgeries and crazy stuff like that. It goes without saying, but they are loaded. I originally talked to her in the Wal-mart parking lot when she was sitting in her car eating a hamburger. I didn't know it at the time, but when I talked about it at church, one of the members said they they are good family friends with them. This lady has had a lot of exposure to the church. Her husband too works with a lot of Mormons. It is pretty exciting.
There are so many people here in this area right now that have testimonies of the church and some that even want to get baptized, but they just have one or two obstacles in their path they are trying to overcome. If things fall into place, there could be a lot of baptisms in the near future.
I don't remember if I've talked to you about the Muslim family from Bangladesh we are teaching. Their last name is Rahman. The father's name is Anisuir, and the two kids are Yahmin and Molmehr. We've been teaching them for about a month. They now believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior and they want to get baptized. They absolutely love us and they love it when we come over and teach. It is fun. Most of their family will probably disown them when they join the church, but they said they will follow God no matter what the sacrifice. They are awesome.
We have also done really well working with the members this week. What we've started to do is after a dinner appointment or for whatever visit it may be, we ask if we can come back in the next week to share another short message. Of course they accept. Then we tell them we have a challenge for them and we challenge them to pray about and invite someone to come to our appointment with them. So the commitment is just to make an invitation, it doesn't matter if they accept or not. This morning we had a lady call us and tell us about how she went out and started talking to her neighbor and she told her all about the book of mormon and now she wants a copy. She was pretty excited...she is usually a pretty shy lady. Good things are happening. Our ward mission leader and our bishop are also going to be speaking at our stake conference this weekend and talk about how we have the Ward Mission Process running so well, which is something Elder L Tom Perry introduced where the Ward council is supposed to invite people to be taught by the missionaries in order to help them reach 20 sit downs each week. It is going really well in our ward. We have an awesome ward.
It is weird to think I am starting my second to last transfer. After you have a pretty big chunk of time in the mission behind you, you just kind of stop thinking about it and the months and transfers just fly by. It seems like every time you get use to a ward and an area, you get transferred. That is half of the reason why I knew I was going to get transferred. I am pretty excited for this Wednesday to see where I am going to end up.
Congratulations to Christopher, Steven, and Heather on graduating. That is awesome that it hasn't been too hard for them to find jobs. Hopefully by the time I finish school the economy will be back up and the job market will be good. I'm not even sure what I'm going to end up going into. We'll see.
Ok well that's about all for this week. I am going to be getting mail on Wednesday and transfer meeting, so hopefully Dad's letter will be in there. I probably could have just printed it out and read it that way...that would have been really easy. Have a good week, I love you all!! I will let you know next week where I end up!
Love,
Chase
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Received Mon April 12, 2010
Dear Family,
Mom's letter was full of questions this week, so I'll start off by answering some of those questions. Yes I did get my Spanish Bible, which I was very excited about. I also did eat all the cookies and they did come whole and they were all delicious.
The Family's name who we live with is Seeley. We do laundry every P-day in their house. I do wash my sheets about every 3-4 weeks. I got cake and ice cream for my birthday and they got me cookie dough ice cream, which was a good choice. I actually got all that stuff on Sunday, the day before my birthday because they were going to be at work all day on Monday. The funny thing is that the Saylin's called on Sunday also to sing happy birthday. Somewhere in the mission information my birthday got put in as April 4th and I got that corrected at the beginning of my mission, but I guess the Saylin's got old information and thought my birthday was the 4th, so they called me and sang to me that day. I couldn't make myself tell them it was the wrong day, but it did give my companion and I a good laugh. It was nice of the Saylin's to do.
And Steven was right on...I always do put reese's peanut butter cups in my ice cream. That just made me crave some home made ice cream with reese peanut butter cups. That is good stuff.
That is also good to hear that everyone is reading with their free time. That is a good hobby to have and it is actually productive. I would definitely recommend Ender's Game as well. It is a really good book.
As far as my week, it has been good. We taught 21 lessons, and got our 10 OYM a day average, and we found several new people to teach. We extended 2 baptismal invitations. One of those people we extended a baptismal invitation to is named Morris Doolittle. This was our second time teaching him. He is an awesome guy. He is a rocket scientist for NASA and he is one of the top engineers in the nation, but he's very humble. It is nice to teach someone who can pick up and understand so quickly the things were teaching. I love teaching really educated people for the reason, because the gospel makes sense logically, then you can pray about it to confirm your answer, but it is so much easier when you can understand it all. His date is for May 8th.
Our teaching pool is pretty big right now, but we need to help some of these people take that step and progress to baptism. We have a couple different people that are really close, but it seems like whenever they are almost there (like a week or 2 away), something happens in their life and we lose contact with them for a while. Who knows, if everything falls into place at once we could have a bunch of baptisms all the sudden.
Next week we get the transfer call and I find out where I'm going to be (probably) for the rest of my mission. It is a weird feeling. I'm happy to go wherever. I could really end up pretty much anywhere. It is exciting.
I just sat here for a couple minutes and that's all I can think of to write about! In an e-mail to Steven a few weeks ago I asked him for some ideas of what to do on P-days, and of course one of the things he suggested was dodgeball. So, today we are having a zone activity and everyone is coming here to League City to play some dodgeball. It will be fun. The rest of the week is going to be really busy. We are going to go on like 3 exchanges and we have to do our Investigator Fireside this Sunday too. Being busy is definitely a good sign.
Oh, yeah and I still haven't gotten Dad's letter. We get mail out here in League City only once every couple of weeks, but we are going to get mail this week...tomorrow I think, so hopefully I'll get it tomorrow. Then I can read it and respond to it.
Ok, well I hope everyone has a good week! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Mom's letter was full of questions this week, so I'll start off by answering some of those questions. Yes I did get my Spanish Bible, which I was very excited about. I also did eat all the cookies and they did come whole and they were all delicious.
The Family's name who we live with is Seeley. We do laundry every P-day in their house. I do wash my sheets about every 3-4 weeks. I got cake and ice cream for my birthday and they got me cookie dough ice cream, which was a good choice. I actually got all that stuff on Sunday, the day before my birthday because they were going to be at work all day on Monday. The funny thing is that the Saylin's called on Sunday also to sing happy birthday. Somewhere in the mission information my birthday got put in as April 4th and I got that corrected at the beginning of my mission, but I guess the Saylin's got old information and thought my birthday was the 4th, so they called me and sang to me that day. I couldn't make myself tell them it was the wrong day, but it did give my companion and I a good laugh. It was nice of the Saylin's to do.
And Steven was right on...I always do put reese's peanut butter cups in my ice cream. That just made me crave some home made ice cream with reese peanut butter cups. That is good stuff.
That is also good to hear that everyone is reading with their free time. That is a good hobby to have and it is actually productive. I would definitely recommend Ender's Game as well. It is a really good book.
As far as my week, it has been good. We taught 21 lessons, and got our 10 OYM a day average, and we found several new people to teach. We extended 2 baptismal invitations. One of those people we extended a baptismal invitation to is named Morris Doolittle. This was our second time teaching him. He is an awesome guy. He is a rocket scientist for NASA and he is one of the top engineers in the nation, but he's very humble. It is nice to teach someone who can pick up and understand so quickly the things were teaching. I love teaching really educated people for the reason, because the gospel makes sense logically, then you can pray about it to confirm your answer, but it is so much easier when you can understand it all. His date is for May 8th.
Our teaching pool is pretty big right now, but we need to help some of these people take that step and progress to baptism. We have a couple different people that are really close, but it seems like whenever they are almost there (like a week or 2 away), something happens in their life and we lose contact with them for a while. Who knows, if everything falls into place at once we could have a bunch of baptisms all the sudden.
Next week we get the transfer call and I find out where I'm going to be (probably) for the rest of my mission. It is a weird feeling. I'm happy to go wherever. I could really end up pretty much anywhere. It is exciting.
I just sat here for a couple minutes and that's all I can think of to write about! In an e-mail to Steven a few weeks ago I asked him for some ideas of what to do on P-days, and of course one of the things he suggested was dodgeball. So, today we are having a zone activity and everyone is coming here to League City to play some dodgeball. It will be fun. The rest of the week is going to be really busy. We are going to go on like 3 exchanges and we have to do our Investigator Fireside this Sunday too. Being busy is definitely a good sign.
Oh, yeah and I still haven't gotten Dad's letter. We get mail out here in League City only once every couple of weeks, but we are going to get mail this week...tomorrow I think, so hopefully I'll get it tomorrow. Then I can read it and respond to it.
Ok, well I hope everyone has a good week! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Received Mon April 5, 2010 (Chase's Birthday!!)
Dear Family,
Wow...I got a lot of e-mails today...that was nice. Yes I got the cookies and the package and I did open them. I was surprised at how good the box-o-plenty was! I haven't had anything at all in my mind that I wanted, but all the little things in the box-o-plenty were great. The new socks and pens were great. Unfortunately I am not allowed to wear any of the socks Mom sent me at Christmas time. That was one of the many rules that has been clarified within the past few months. Our socks have to be dark, and conservative, meaning they have to be a solid color. That just means I'll have plenty of socks for when I get home.
As always, it has been a pretty crazy week. Our mission is now moving over to a monthly schedule, rather than a transfer schedule. In other words were doing everything by months now instead of 6-week periods. We have monthly zone conferences and zone meetings and zone leader councils. So this week we had zone conference again, so we were in Sugar Land all day Wednesday, then Thursday we went back to Sugar Land all day for zone leader council, then Saturday and Sunday we of course had general conference. So that is pretty much 4 days taken out of our week, but we still had to hit all our goals and have a good week. It was a good one though. When you are doing absolutely everything you can, but you just don't have enough time, God provides you with miracles. I've learned to pretty much expect it, and we saw that happen this week. A lot of things came together and worked out. It still amazes me how our area has grown so much in the past couple transfers. We are never wondering what we should do next, because we always have so many people to see. We have 4 people with baptismal dates right now, but we home to get 3 more this next week.
I cant believe we are already in week 5 of the transfer! In 2 weeks we'll get transfer calls and I'll find out where I'll be for the last 2 transfers of my mission. Its either going to be here, or in a Spanish area somewhere in the mission. In the mission, when you have been out for 20 months or so, the mission office sends you out these papers that have been deemed the "trunky papers." Dad and Christopher and Steven I'm sure are all familiar with the term trunky. Anyway, these trunky papers are basically a letter from President Saylin encouraging you to work your hardest for this last part of your mission, and there is also a paper you have to turn in asking for your plans on transportation home. My release date is July 13. I just checked return home on the airplane like normal. It was a weird feeling to get the infamous trunky papers.
One goal that Elder Mulitalo and I have made this transfer is to focus on helping several of the areas in our zone that are weak and having problems seeing any success. What we've been doing is that we will wake up and go buy donuts (my idea of course), then show up at their apartment without notice at 8:00 when their studies should be starting. Now normally this might scare or offend or make some missionaries not like you, but that is the purpose of the donuts, so it all works out. Plus we tell them we are going around to everyone to study with them and get their input on things we could do better in the zone. Basically we make a real smooth visit so they don't realize whats happening. Sometimes it is a nerve-wracking because if you do things the wrong way you're just going to make the missionaries not like you. Luckily they have all been very successful and everyone has seen it as an act of love and us trying to help and get their input as well. I still think the key is the donuts.
But as a result of having to drive all the way to sugar land for zone conference and ZLC, then making some of these visits to missionaries in the morning, we have had some early mornings. The worst was on Thursday when the seminary teacher asked us to teach her class. We had to wake up at 5:00am. Not fun. I think for the first time in my mission today I was excited to be able to wake up at 6:30, because it feels like sleeping in compared to our other days this week.
Here's and interesting piece of information. You may not have noticed during conference that one of the new area authorities they announced was S. Gifford Nielson, which is the BYU quarterback Gifford Nielson, who is also the stake president in the Houston South Stake here in our mission. When they announced his name my companion and I looked at each other wondering if we heard that right. We did. He retired from being a sports caster a couple months ago and people were wondering why he decided to retire so young. Now we know! The rest of conference was of course awesome. General Conference for missionaries is like the same thing for a kid that is about to go to Disney Land. It is a very exciting time. I think my 3 favorite speakers are President Uchtdorf, Elder Bednar, and Elder Holland. They are always awesome.
Well that's about all for this week. We'll probably go play some tennis today and throw a football around. I need to go out and do something physical before I go crazy. We'll see. Alright, thank you everyone for the e-mails and enjoy your spring break. I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Wow...I got a lot of e-mails today...that was nice. Yes I got the cookies and the package and I did open them. I was surprised at how good the box-o-plenty was! I haven't had anything at all in my mind that I wanted, but all the little things in the box-o-plenty were great. The new socks and pens were great. Unfortunately I am not allowed to wear any of the socks Mom sent me at Christmas time. That was one of the many rules that has been clarified within the past few months. Our socks have to be dark, and conservative, meaning they have to be a solid color. That just means I'll have plenty of socks for when I get home.
As always, it has been a pretty crazy week. Our mission is now moving over to a monthly schedule, rather than a transfer schedule. In other words were doing everything by months now instead of 6-week periods. We have monthly zone conferences and zone meetings and zone leader councils. So this week we had zone conference again, so we were in Sugar Land all day Wednesday, then Thursday we went back to Sugar Land all day for zone leader council, then Saturday and Sunday we of course had general conference. So that is pretty much 4 days taken out of our week, but we still had to hit all our goals and have a good week. It was a good one though. When you are doing absolutely everything you can, but you just don't have enough time, God provides you with miracles. I've learned to pretty much expect it, and we saw that happen this week. A lot of things came together and worked out. It still amazes me how our area has grown so much in the past couple transfers. We are never wondering what we should do next, because we always have so many people to see. We have 4 people with baptismal dates right now, but we home to get 3 more this next week.
I cant believe we are already in week 5 of the transfer! In 2 weeks we'll get transfer calls and I'll find out where I'll be for the last 2 transfers of my mission. Its either going to be here, or in a Spanish area somewhere in the mission. In the mission, when you have been out for 20 months or so, the mission office sends you out these papers that have been deemed the "trunky papers." Dad and Christopher and Steven I'm sure are all familiar with the term trunky. Anyway, these trunky papers are basically a letter from President Saylin encouraging you to work your hardest for this last part of your mission, and there is also a paper you have to turn in asking for your plans on transportation home. My release date is July 13. I just checked return home on the airplane like normal. It was a weird feeling to get the infamous trunky papers.
One goal that Elder Mulitalo and I have made this transfer is to focus on helping several of the areas in our zone that are weak and having problems seeing any success. What we've been doing is that we will wake up and go buy donuts (my idea of course), then show up at their apartment without notice at 8:00 when their studies should be starting. Now normally this might scare or offend or make some missionaries not like you, but that is the purpose of the donuts, so it all works out. Plus we tell them we are going around to everyone to study with them and get their input on things we could do better in the zone. Basically we make a real smooth visit so they don't realize whats happening. Sometimes it is a nerve-wracking because if you do things the wrong way you're just going to make the missionaries not like you. Luckily they have all been very successful and everyone has seen it as an act of love and us trying to help and get their input as well. I still think the key is the donuts.
But as a result of having to drive all the way to sugar land for zone conference and ZLC, then making some of these visits to missionaries in the morning, we have had some early mornings. The worst was on Thursday when the seminary teacher asked us to teach her class. We had to wake up at 5:00am. Not fun. I think for the first time in my mission today I was excited to be able to wake up at 6:30, because it feels like sleeping in compared to our other days this week.
Here's and interesting piece of information. You may not have noticed during conference that one of the new area authorities they announced was S. Gifford Nielson, which is the BYU quarterback Gifford Nielson, who is also the stake president in the Houston South Stake here in our mission. When they announced his name my companion and I looked at each other wondering if we heard that right. We did. He retired from being a sports caster a couple months ago and people were wondering why he decided to retire so young. Now we know! The rest of conference was of course awesome. General Conference for missionaries is like the same thing for a kid that is about to go to Disney Land. It is a very exciting time. I think my 3 favorite speakers are President Uchtdorf, Elder Bednar, and Elder Holland. They are always awesome.
Well that's about all for this week. We'll probably go play some tennis today and throw a football around. I need to go out and do something physical before I go crazy. We'll see. Alright, thank you everyone for the e-mails and enjoy your spring break. I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Received Mon March 29, 2010
Dear Family,
Wow...what an unlucky week. Luckily that is all over and its in the past. Sometimes missionaries go through a rough week or 2, then after that it seems like all they ever see are the bad things that happen every day. There is a missionary in our zone who is like that. Luckily I am one of the veeery few leaders he actually likes. And that is mostly because we served in the same district while I was in Richmond. Its pretty amazing to see how much of an effect attitude can have on someones mission.
Thankfully, we had a pretty good week this week. The best part was probably that we got to go to the temple on Friday. Usually we have a zone conference directly after we get out of the temple, but this time we just drove up to the temple, which is about 1 hr 20 min away, then we drove back to our areas and we will have a zone conference this week. It seems like our temple trips always come just in time. They are always so relieving and calming.
We also had our interviews with the president this week. I asked him if he thought I would get moved down to be a normal missionary for my last 2 transfers. Actually he's the one who brought it up first and he said he's still not sure whats going to happen. He asked me if I have had any impressions about what is supposed to happen. I said, "I don't think I've had any impressions, but I do have a desire as to what I would like to do." He just laughed and said, "I know what your desire is, I was asking if you've had any impressions." President definitely knows that I would love to go back Spanish for my last 2 transfers, but as always he's going to just pray about it and see where the Lord wants me to be. Wherever I go, I'll be happy. I did tell him that I am making sure my companion will be ready to take over the area and I am doing effective Spanish studies every day so that I'll be ready to go if it does happen. We just ended week 3, so in 3 more weeks we'll find out where I'll be for the last 2 transfers of my mission.
I have definitely enjoyed my time so far in League City though. This area has totally transformed. We have a big teaching pool, the ward is doing awesome and doing missionary work, and we've got several people who have pretty high potentials to be baptized. Plus like I said a few weeks ago, our zone had one of the best transfers President Saylin has seen since he got into the mission. Last transfer in interviews the possibility of me going back to Spanish for my last 2 transfers came up of course and he said to "make League City a fortress and we'll see what happens." Of course there is still a lot of work left to do, but I think I can safely say that this a pretty solid area now.
Here is my little story of the week. There is a family named the Thomason family that the missionaries have been working with foreeeever. They haven't been to church in like 7 or 8 years...I think I may have mentioned something about them before. Well as I was studying one morning, I was reading that talk by President Uchtdorf, called The Love of God. I thought that that would be the perfect talk for Brother Thomason. Brother Thomason is the key to getting this whole family, so I had been thinking a lot about what we could do to get him back on track. This was an answer. I also felt like we needed to get this talk on a CD and actually watch it with them because it would be a lot more powerful coming from President Uchtdorf than just having us paraphrase the talk. Sister Thomason said the other day that she has never seen a talk taylored so perfectly for someone as the Love of God talk was for her husband. But anyway, a couple days after we watched that talk and had that lesson, we stopped by and Brother Thomason was waxing his car. We talked to him for a bit and we offered to help with anything as we always do, and he jokingly said to wax his 2 cars. So we walked back to our car, dropped off our scriptures, and came back to wax his cars. He was surprised and said he was just joking, but we told him we were serious and we wanted to help, plus we wanted to learn how to wax a car. So we did. I think that little act softened this man's heart. All this happened about 3 weeks ago. Ever since then he has been to church each week. His non-member daughter has gone with him too. One of my favorite scriptures is the one in Alma 37 that talks about how by small and simple things are great things brought to pass. This is just another of the many examples. AND I got to learn how to wax a car, so that was fun.
Here is my one other comment. I don't know if I've ever said it specifically, but pretty much every single one of my companions has reminded me of some sort of cartoon character or someone like that. This last week I finally realized who my current companion is. I don't remember his name, but he is definitely the super smart ape guy from X-men. Hopefully you know who I'm talking about, but he is just like my companion. It dawned on my when my companion tried on my glasses that were sitting out on my desk. When I saw that I pictured a scene from the x-men movie when this ape guy was wearing glasses sitting at a desk doing some sort of business thing...I don't really remember. But anyway, my companion is huge like that guy, but also really smart. He reads a lot of books, uses 100% proper English, and the glasses just topped it off. But anyway, that's who Elder Mulitalo reminds me of.
Alright well I think that's about all for this week. We've got zone conference coming up this week, which should be good. Its amazing how fast these transfers fly by. Bumpa will definitely be in my prayers. Keep me updated on that. I love you all!! Have a good week!
Love,
Chase
Wow...what an unlucky week. Luckily that is all over and its in the past. Sometimes missionaries go through a rough week or 2, then after that it seems like all they ever see are the bad things that happen every day. There is a missionary in our zone who is like that. Luckily I am one of the veeery few leaders he actually likes. And that is mostly because we served in the same district while I was in Richmond. Its pretty amazing to see how much of an effect attitude can have on someones mission.
Thankfully, we had a pretty good week this week. The best part was probably that we got to go to the temple on Friday. Usually we have a zone conference directly after we get out of the temple, but this time we just drove up to the temple, which is about 1 hr 20 min away, then we drove back to our areas and we will have a zone conference this week. It seems like our temple trips always come just in time. They are always so relieving and calming.
We also had our interviews with the president this week. I asked him if he thought I would get moved down to be a normal missionary for my last 2 transfers. Actually he's the one who brought it up first and he said he's still not sure whats going to happen. He asked me if I have had any impressions about what is supposed to happen. I said, "I don't think I've had any impressions, but I do have a desire as to what I would like to do." He just laughed and said, "I know what your desire is, I was asking if you've had any impressions." President definitely knows that I would love to go back Spanish for my last 2 transfers, but as always he's going to just pray about it and see where the Lord wants me to be. Wherever I go, I'll be happy. I did tell him that I am making sure my companion will be ready to take over the area and I am doing effective Spanish studies every day so that I'll be ready to go if it does happen. We just ended week 3, so in 3 more weeks we'll find out where I'll be for the last 2 transfers of my mission.
I have definitely enjoyed my time so far in League City though. This area has totally transformed. We have a big teaching pool, the ward is doing awesome and doing missionary work, and we've got several people who have pretty high potentials to be baptized. Plus like I said a few weeks ago, our zone had one of the best transfers President Saylin has seen since he got into the mission. Last transfer in interviews the possibility of me going back to Spanish for my last 2 transfers came up of course and he said to "make League City a fortress and we'll see what happens." Of course there is still a lot of work left to do, but I think I can safely say that this a pretty solid area now.
Here is my little story of the week. There is a family named the Thomason family that the missionaries have been working with foreeeever. They haven't been to church in like 7 or 8 years...I think I may have mentioned something about them before. Well as I was studying one morning, I was reading that talk by President Uchtdorf, called The Love of God. I thought that that would be the perfect talk for Brother Thomason. Brother Thomason is the key to getting this whole family, so I had been thinking a lot about what we could do to get him back on track. This was an answer. I also felt like we needed to get this talk on a CD and actually watch it with them because it would be a lot more powerful coming from President Uchtdorf than just having us paraphrase the talk. Sister Thomason said the other day that she has never seen a talk taylored so perfectly for someone as the Love of God talk was for her husband. But anyway, a couple days after we watched that talk and had that lesson, we stopped by and Brother Thomason was waxing his car. We talked to him for a bit and we offered to help with anything as we always do, and he jokingly said to wax his 2 cars. So we walked back to our car, dropped off our scriptures, and came back to wax his cars. He was surprised and said he was just joking, but we told him we were serious and we wanted to help, plus we wanted to learn how to wax a car. So we did. I think that little act softened this man's heart. All this happened about 3 weeks ago. Ever since then he has been to church each week. His non-member daughter has gone with him too. One of my favorite scriptures is the one in Alma 37 that talks about how by small and simple things are great things brought to pass. This is just another of the many examples. AND I got to learn how to wax a car, so that was fun.
Here is my one other comment. I don't know if I've ever said it specifically, but pretty much every single one of my companions has reminded me of some sort of cartoon character or someone like that. This last week I finally realized who my current companion is. I don't remember his name, but he is definitely the super smart ape guy from X-men. Hopefully you know who I'm talking about, but he is just like my companion. It dawned on my when my companion tried on my glasses that were sitting out on my desk. When I saw that I pictured a scene from the x-men movie when this ape guy was wearing glasses sitting at a desk doing some sort of business thing...I don't really remember. But anyway, my companion is huge like that guy, but also really smart. He reads a lot of books, uses 100% proper English, and the glasses just topped it off. But anyway, that's who Elder Mulitalo reminds me of.
Alright well I think that's about all for this week. We've got zone conference coming up this week, which should be good. Its amazing how fast these transfers fly by. Bumpa will definitely be in my prayers. Keep me updated on that. I love you all!! Have a good week!
Love,
Chase
Received Mon March 22, 2010
Dear Family,
Everyone has told me all week about the 4.4 earthquake is Los Angeles. I guessed that only half our family would half even felt it...it sounds like I was right. The earthquakes usually just create a massage effect which makes you relax even more and fall into a deeper sleep.
The Mormonism 101 meeting thing sounds like it is a pretty good idea. We had our Investigator fireside again yesterday, where people who have recently been baptized bear their testimonies, but this time it turned out to be a disaster. Luckily we weren't the ones in charge of it though. Right at 7 when the meeting was supposed to start, we got a phone call that at the last minute none of the speakers were able to come. What a disaster...I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that one.
It has been spring break around here so a lot of our investigators and people have been out of town. One of our investigators, Keith Greear, the one who has almost died a million times and has a messed up back, actually tore his ACL. What a sad story...so he is down trying to recover from that. So basically we only taught lessons to 2-3 different investigators this week. Then we had to make up the rest to hit our 20 lessons per week by visiting less active and active members. We did hit our goal. This was the first time in a long time that my companion has hit the 20 sit down lesson goal. He came from a pretty rough area. So that was good. But even better, those 2 investigators came to church. One of them is a part member family and their 8 year old daughter actually just got baptized last night. It was a really good baptismal service and after the meeting Chrissy, the mom who is not a member said, "I want that...I am next." She is struggling to get over smoking. It also had a big effect on her husband who is less active and smokes as well. It seems like he might actually have a desire to support his wife trying to prepare for baptism and he might want to come to church on his own free will. I hope so.
Our other investigator is named Jason. He is 27 years old (I may have talked to you about him before) and he questions everything, which I love. His main problem with religion has been how it all seems fake and even when he does live the commandments he feels like he's gotten nothing out of it. He's got the whole nice guys finish last mentality. He has had some really good experience and some little miracles that were answers to his prayers and he finally decided to come to church and he had a great experience. Our ward mission leader is amazing. When we sat down with Jason, our ward mission leader sent everyone over to meet him and to say hi. I haven't talked very much about our ward mission leader but he is probably the best ward mission leader I've ever seen. He actually served his mission here in this mission like 8 years ago and he even served here in the League City ward. Jason is deciding if he should get baptized too.
We also had another lesson with a part member family that moved in where the husband is 100% unmotivated to come back to church right now, but he wants his wife to start going to church so that when he's "ready" to come back, they can come together. We made some good progress with them and it seems like they might actually make some good progress.
Then we ran into another lady a week or 2 ago who has 7 kids and she's had a past with learning from the missionaries and she has a lot of Mormon friends. Hopefully that one works out too. But that's what we've got goin on right now. There is a lot of potential, but we need to turn it into real success.
Last week I forgot to write about our P-day. We got to do a VIP tour of NASA. A member here works at NASA and he took us and the 4 Spanish missionaries here on a VIP tour. He had to submit our names and go through some security clearance or something, but we got these purple tags we had to wear to show that we had access to all the areas in NASA. The tram tour that I took before, we could see everything through glass, but in this tour we actually went down on the floor around where all the astronauts get trained. It was pretty awesome. I took about a million useless pictures, but that just made it more fun. I got some good pictures in the mission control room too where they successfully directed the first flight to the moon. It was all pretty interesting.
And lastly, I got the valentines day package! When I opened the thing full of chocolates they were all completely smashed and smeared around. I thought it was kind of funny. Then I started to eat them and they were all delicious. I think I got every morsel out of that thing. Thank you for the package.
I also got a letter from Bumpa for the 2nd time in 2 weeks...that was nice.
Alright well that's about it for this week. This Friday we get to go to the temple, so we are pretty excited about that. Ok, I love you all!! Have a good week!
Love,
Chase
Everyone has told me all week about the 4.4 earthquake is Los Angeles. I guessed that only half our family would half even felt it...it sounds like I was right. The earthquakes usually just create a massage effect which makes you relax even more and fall into a deeper sleep.
The Mormonism 101 meeting thing sounds like it is a pretty good idea. We had our Investigator fireside again yesterday, where people who have recently been baptized bear their testimonies, but this time it turned out to be a disaster. Luckily we weren't the ones in charge of it though. Right at 7 when the meeting was supposed to start, we got a phone call that at the last minute none of the speakers were able to come. What a disaster...I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that one.
It has been spring break around here so a lot of our investigators and people have been out of town. One of our investigators, Keith Greear, the one who has almost died a million times and has a messed up back, actually tore his ACL. What a sad story...so he is down trying to recover from that. So basically we only taught lessons to 2-3 different investigators this week. Then we had to make up the rest to hit our 20 lessons per week by visiting less active and active members. We did hit our goal. This was the first time in a long time that my companion has hit the 20 sit down lesson goal. He came from a pretty rough area. So that was good. But even better, those 2 investigators came to church. One of them is a part member family and their 8 year old daughter actually just got baptized last night. It was a really good baptismal service and after the meeting Chrissy, the mom who is not a member said, "I want that...I am next." She is struggling to get over smoking. It also had a big effect on her husband who is less active and smokes as well. It seems like he might actually have a desire to support his wife trying to prepare for baptism and he might want to come to church on his own free will. I hope so.
Our other investigator is named Jason. He is 27 years old (I may have talked to you about him before) and he questions everything, which I love. His main problem with religion has been how it all seems fake and even when he does live the commandments he feels like he's gotten nothing out of it. He's got the whole nice guys finish last mentality. He has had some really good experience and some little miracles that were answers to his prayers and he finally decided to come to church and he had a great experience. Our ward mission leader is amazing. When we sat down with Jason, our ward mission leader sent everyone over to meet him and to say hi. I haven't talked very much about our ward mission leader but he is probably the best ward mission leader I've ever seen. He actually served his mission here in this mission like 8 years ago and he even served here in the League City ward. Jason is deciding if he should get baptized too.
We also had another lesson with a part member family that moved in where the husband is 100% unmotivated to come back to church right now, but he wants his wife to start going to church so that when he's "ready" to come back, they can come together. We made some good progress with them and it seems like they might actually make some good progress.
Then we ran into another lady a week or 2 ago who has 7 kids and she's had a past with learning from the missionaries and she has a lot of Mormon friends. Hopefully that one works out too. But that's what we've got goin on right now. There is a lot of potential, but we need to turn it into real success.
Last week I forgot to write about our P-day. We got to do a VIP tour of NASA. A member here works at NASA and he took us and the 4 Spanish missionaries here on a VIP tour. He had to submit our names and go through some security clearance or something, but we got these purple tags we had to wear to show that we had access to all the areas in NASA. The tram tour that I took before, we could see everything through glass, but in this tour we actually went down on the floor around where all the astronauts get trained. It was pretty awesome. I took about a million useless pictures, but that just made it more fun. I got some good pictures in the mission control room too where they successfully directed the first flight to the moon. It was all pretty interesting.
And lastly, I got the valentines day package! When I opened the thing full of chocolates they were all completely smashed and smeared around. I thought it was kind of funny. Then I started to eat them and they were all delicious. I think I got every morsel out of that thing. Thank you for the package.
I also got a letter from Bumpa for the 2nd time in 2 weeks...that was nice.
Alright well that's about it for this week. This Friday we get to go to the temple, so we are pretty excited about that. Ok, I love you all!! Have a good week!
Love,
Chase
Monday, March 15, 2010
Received Mon March 15, 2010
Dear Family,
I'll start with transfer news first. My new companion is Elder Mulitalo. He was born in Compton California, but grew up his whole life in West Valley Utah. He is Samoan. Hes been out about 14 months and he is a brand new Zone Leader, so I am training him on how to be a Zone Leader (not really very much involved with that). He is a good missionary...hes very humble. Hes like a gentle giant. He's about my height, about 6', but weighs 100 more pounds than I do. He's fluctuated from 250-295 lbs on his mission, but hes been on a bike the past year, so hes stayed down at 250. Polynesians are just built to be huge. He's probably going to go back and play BYU football where his brother is playing at right now. I am excited to work with him though...we have a goal to double our baptismal dates in the next two weeks.
We had all sorts of meetings and things to do this week. Tuesday we went into Houston to run the new missionaries. That was fun. They do a little training meeting about OYMing (Open Your Mouth aka talking to people in the streets) and how to do it and the missionary I was with basically said all that practicing was boring and that we should just go do it already. Haha...well we drove to a nearby apartment complex that was full of people and I think that it kind of scared him because he realized it was real now. I helped him a lot though. If he didnt know what they were saying (because we were doing it in Spanish) I would translate it for him and help him to say things. I think he felt good after the first couple ones. When he first got to the church for the training thing he asked me why we call it "running." I told him because when we go outside we run from person to person talking to them. So we did. We didnt run up to everyone because that would probably scare them, but there were times where nobody was around and we saw somebody all the way across the complex behind a fence or something and we ran over to them. It was fun.
So that was Tuesday. It took like an hour to drive there, and hour back and we had to do some other stuff while we were there, so we got back by like 4:30 or 5. Wednesday was transfer meeting, so we were at that for most of the day...until about 5. About half the missionaries in our zone changed and a lot of our best ones left, but we got replaced by a lot of really good missionaries. I'm pretty excited about it. One of them is Elder Schwarz, who was the assistant, but hes going to be a District Leader for his last 2 transfers and probably train.
I don't know if I mentioned it, but last transfer we had an amazing transfer in the zone...we baptized 21 people as a zone. President Saylin mentioned that this was the best transfer for a zone he has seen since he's been here. It was mostly because we had a zone full of amazing missionaries and we have another zone that is just as good, so hopefully we see another transfer just as good.
On Thursday we had our Zone Leader Council down in Sugar Land, and that always takes all day. So that is 3 days in a row that we were gone for most of the day. Friday we had District meeting, then Saturday we had to do our weekly planning session which usually takes 2-3 hours. On Sunday we had our Stake Correlation meeting, which meant that throughout our busy week we had to be filling out Stake Correlation reports for each of the 9 wards in our stake and each one takes like 35+ minutes to complete. What a week! On top of all that we had to make sure we got our 10 OYMs/day average and got our 20 sit down lessons for the week. We got our OYMs, but we ended up with 17 sit down lessons which is pretty good considering the crazy week. It had to have been a pretty crazy time for my companion to get into the area and have all this dumped on him. We got all the biggest stuff out of the way early in the transfer though, so the rest of the transfer will be good. We do have our Zone Meeting this Friday though as well as our Investigator Fireside on Sunday, which we are also in charge of. If there is one thing I have learned on my mission, it is diligence. You always think the work is going to slow down and youll be able to relax, but it never really does. You just get use to it.
Here is my one story of the week. This week a Cambodian family in the ward invited us over for dinner. We showed up to their apartment and all the lights were off and they proceeded to tell us their electricity got cut and it would be off the next several days. So they had some candles lit and we ate with them in the dark in their apartment. What generous people...they obviously dont have very much, but they are still willing to invite us over and feed us despite the difficult circumstances. The funny part of the story is that I am still not sure what we ate. It was some sort of Cambodian soup, but because it was dark I couldnt see very well what was inside. There was some carrots and I think potatoes, but then there was some slimy stuff floating around and some other weird textured meat. I just tried not to think about what it could be. Luckily it didnt taste too bad, but it was pretty different. The other cool part was that they invited a couple of their friends from Cambodia over, so we taught them a lesson after the dinner. They didnt speak much English, so the members translated for us. They were awesome...they had no fear in bearing their testimonies and telling them what they believed. It was a good visit.
Ok, that's all for my report for the week, so here are my responses to the e-mail.
Mom: I have had several dreams before of being at home, but I'm almost always in my normal clothes, but I am deathly afraid to see the TV or go around the computer or break any of the mission rules. There have been a lot of funny dreams.
That is pretty amazing running 11 miles. I dont think I have ran more than 50 yards at once for the past year and a half. It's gonna take me a while to get muscle back in my legs and be able to run again.
Beebachu: Congratulations on the home run! And have fun at Astro Camp. That was one of my favorite field trips that I ever went on in school.
Bub: I have never heard of that guy with the crazy last name. [I (me, the mother) wrote to Chase about this football player Ndamukong Suh]. You will have to keep me updated on what happens to good ol Michael Vick. I am surprised that he is still so good. If he does end up on the Rams, that will take the team from the stankest of the stank, to not quite as stank, so pray that it happens. <-- perfect time to use the chuckling asian smiley face. I just discovered these e-motion thing...this will make my letters so much more exciting. Tell me if you can see them.
**editor's note: the e-motion things showed up in my letter, but apparently, they do not live through a copy and paste onto a blog.
The G-Man: Wow that sounds like a lot of fun! Maybe we should just put Kitty Con Carne up in the attic until he eats all of the rats for us!
Ok thats about all for this week. Tell me how the dinner with the missionaries on Friday goes. I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
I'll start with transfer news first. My new companion is Elder Mulitalo. He was born in Compton California, but grew up his whole life in West Valley Utah. He is Samoan. Hes been out about 14 months and he is a brand new Zone Leader, so I am training him on how to be a Zone Leader (not really very much involved with that). He is a good missionary...hes very humble. Hes like a gentle giant. He's about my height, about 6', but weighs 100 more pounds than I do. He's fluctuated from 250-295 lbs on his mission, but hes been on a bike the past year, so hes stayed down at 250. Polynesians are just built to be huge. He's probably going to go back and play BYU football where his brother is playing at right now. I am excited to work with him though...we have a goal to double our baptismal dates in the next two weeks.
We had all sorts of meetings and things to do this week. Tuesday we went into Houston to run the new missionaries. That was fun. They do a little training meeting about OYMing (Open Your Mouth aka talking to people in the streets) and how to do it and the missionary I was with basically said all that practicing was boring and that we should just go do it already. Haha...well we drove to a nearby apartment complex that was full of people and I think that it kind of scared him because he realized it was real now. I helped him a lot though. If he didnt know what they were saying (because we were doing it in Spanish) I would translate it for him and help him to say things. I think he felt good after the first couple ones. When he first got to the church for the training thing he asked me why we call it "running." I told him because when we go outside we run from person to person talking to them. So we did. We didnt run up to everyone because that would probably scare them, but there were times where nobody was around and we saw somebody all the way across the complex behind a fence or something and we ran over to them. It was fun.
So that was Tuesday. It took like an hour to drive there, and hour back and we had to do some other stuff while we were there, so we got back by like 4:30 or 5. Wednesday was transfer meeting, so we were at that for most of the day...until about 5. About half the missionaries in our zone changed and a lot of our best ones left, but we got replaced by a lot of really good missionaries. I'm pretty excited about it. One of them is Elder Schwarz, who was the assistant, but hes going to be a District Leader for his last 2 transfers and probably train.
I don't know if I mentioned it, but last transfer we had an amazing transfer in the zone...we baptized 21 people as a zone. President Saylin mentioned that this was the best transfer for a zone he has seen since he's been here. It was mostly because we had a zone full of amazing missionaries and we have another zone that is just as good, so hopefully we see another transfer just as good.
On Thursday we had our Zone Leader Council down in Sugar Land, and that always takes all day. So that is 3 days in a row that we were gone for most of the day. Friday we had District meeting, then Saturday we had to do our weekly planning session which usually takes 2-3 hours. On Sunday we had our Stake Correlation meeting, which meant that throughout our busy week we had to be filling out Stake Correlation reports for each of the 9 wards in our stake and each one takes like 35+ minutes to complete. What a week! On top of all that we had to make sure we got our 10 OYMs/day average and got our 20 sit down lessons for the week. We got our OYMs, but we ended up with 17 sit down lessons which is pretty good considering the crazy week. It had to have been a pretty crazy time for my companion to get into the area and have all this dumped on him. We got all the biggest stuff out of the way early in the transfer though, so the rest of the transfer will be good. We do have our Zone Meeting this Friday though as well as our Investigator Fireside on Sunday, which we are also in charge of. If there is one thing I have learned on my mission, it is diligence. You always think the work is going to slow down and youll be able to relax, but it never really does. You just get use to it.
Here is my one story of the week. This week a Cambodian family in the ward invited us over for dinner. We showed up to their apartment and all the lights were off and they proceeded to tell us their electricity got cut and it would be off the next several days. So they had some candles lit and we ate with them in the dark in their apartment. What generous people...they obviously dont have very much, but they are still willing to invite us over and feed us despite the difficult circumstances. The funny part of the story is that I am still not sure what we ate. It was some sort of Cambodian soup, but because it was dark I couldnt see very well what was inside. There was some carrots and I think potatoes, but then there was some slimy stuff floating around and some other weird textured meat. I just tried not to think about what it could be. Luckily it didnt taste too bad, but it was pretty different. The other cool part was that they invited a couple of their friends from Cambodia over, so we taught them a lesson after the dinner. They didnt speak much English, so the members translated for us. They were awesome...they had no fear in bearing their testimonies and telling them what they believed. It was a good visit.
Ok, that's all for my report for the week, so here are my responses to the e-mail.
Mom: I have had several dreams before of being at home, but I'm almost always in my normal clothes, but I am deathly afraid to see the TV or go around the computer or break any of the mission rules. There have been a lot of funny dreams.
That is pretty amazing running 11 miles. I dont think I have ran more than 50 yards at once for the past year and a half. It's gonna take me a while to get muscle back in my legs and be able to run again.
Beebachu: Congratulations on the home run! And have fun at Astro Camp. That was one of my favorite field trips that I ever went on in school.
Bub: I have never heard of that guy with the crazy last name. [I (me, the mother) wrote to Chase about this football player Ndamukong Suh]. You will have to keep me updated on what happens to good ol Michael Vick. I am surprised that he is still so good. If he does end up on the Rams, that will take the team from the stankest of the stank, to not quite as stank, so pray that it happens. <-- perfect time to use the chuckling asian smiley face. I just discovered these e-motion thing...this will make my letters so much more exciting. Tell me if you can see them.
**editor's note: the e-motion things showed up in my letter, but apparently, they do not live through a copy and paste onto a blog.
The G-Man: Wow that sounds like a lot of fun! Maybe we should just put Kitty Con Carne up in the attic until he eats all of the rats for us!
Ok thats about all for this week. Tell me how the dinner with the missionaries on Friday goes. I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
Monday, March 8, 2010
Received Mon, March 8, 2010
Dear Family,
I cant believe another transfer has come and gone. They just seem to fly by. Here is the transfer news: Elder McFadyen is getting transferred and he is going back to the Chinese district to train a new Chinese missionary coming in. We were expecting this, but it is still sad to see him go. It is always fun to get a new companion though, so it will be good. This next transfer could be my last transfer as a zone leader, or maybe President will just keep me as a zone leader until the end of my mission, we'll see. I'm happy to do whatever is going to happen.
But anyway, I wrote down a couple things throughout the week to write about. The first one is about Anthony Castellanos, the 10 year old boy who got baptized. I mentioned how sometimes we'll help him with his homework and we've promised him that if he reads his Book of Mormon out loud then he will get better at reading. We'll this last week when we stopped by he told us that his teacher wanted our address or phone number or something because she wanted to send us a thank you card. She said that she has seen a big change in Anthony and he is doing so much better in school, with math and reading and just his behavior and when she asked how he has been doing so well, Anthony told her about us stopping by. That was cool to see. It has been fun to watch him learn and watch him realize he really can learn and have a desire to suck everything in.
The next thing is on a little bit of a lighter note. The other day when I was talking to the Galveston Elders, they let me know that they have carried on my tradition of naming all the hobos on the island. I thought that was hilarious...its been over a year since I left. They named one hobo the Riddler because he always tries to talk in rhymes, but the funny part about it is that all his rhymes are horrible. He usually just rhymes "to" and "do" or "them" and "then." It is pretty hilarious. Then there is Killer Bill. Killer Bill found out one of the Elder's names is Elder Moline, so now he thinks him and Elder Moline are best friends. (Apparently these two guys are always in the library so they always try to talk to them on Mondays when they e-mail). Killer Bill talks about how him and Moline go out and "steal kill and rob" and create riots and stuff. That's pretty much all he saays over and over. He is crazy. Good ol' Galveston...
We worked hard this week of course, but this was one of those weeks where it seemed like eeeverything kept on falling through. We didn't hit our 20 sit down lesson goal for the week..we got about 15, but we had 8-9 appointments fall through. We did of course hit our talk to 10 people a day goal though. We did all that we could, so I consider that a good week. We had this big long list of people that we got to commit to coming to church, and only 1 of them showed up. That was depressing, but we did all we could. We have another chance this week to help them come.
Since this Wednesday is Transfer Day, that means that all the new missionaries come in on Tuesday. We got a phone call this last week and the Assistants let Elder McFadyen and I know that we were going to get to drive into Houston to take the new missionaries "running." I put running in parenthesis because we don't literally go running with them. Right when they land, they drive them from the airport to a church building in Houston, where selected missionaries take them out to go contacting for an hour. Were going to be meeting back at my old church building in Houston 2 (the Spanish ward I served in). The missionary I'm taking running is going to be a Spanish Elder...it will be very fun.
This week we met a family from Bangladesh. They are Muslim. They let us come in and teach them because they want to know more about Christianity. They know hardly anything about Christianity. We have taught them twice so far. It has been a really fun experience...it is a challenge. I've never had to explain how Jesus Christ is our Savior, or how a man could possibly suffer for other peoples sins, or explain what the Holy Ghost or the Godhead is, let alone trying to explain the Plan of Salvation. We have focused so far on just teaching about Jesus Christ and God. We explained in the simplest terms possible what the purpose of baptism is and invited them all to be baptized on April 17and they all accepted. We have a looong way to go, but at least they're commited.
Other than that we've been teaching a lot of people we've found in the past few weeks and we've had some powerful lessons. We just have to get these people to church! I'll come next week once again with all the usual info on my new companion. I haven't called around to the other zone leaders to see who could be possibly coming here, so I haven't made my guesses yet, but I'll do that after I get done e-mailing. We are losing 3 of 5 of our district leaders in our zone and 1 zone leader, so were getting a lot of new people. Every companionship but 1 is changing. A lot of change has been the trend in the mission lately. Our zone did awesome this transfer though. We set a goal to have 13 baptisms in the zone this transfer and we hit 21. This is the highest I've ever seen in a long time. We broke almost all the records in the zone for pretty much about every number. It has been good...hopefully we can keep it going. And hopefully our own area will get up and running and be strong.
Ahh...I just saw the date and realized tomorrow is another month anniversary for me in the mission. I think I am at 20 now...that is a lot. It dosen't seem like anything to me though...this is just like normal life for me now. I feel like it will go on forever. I will probably have an anxiety attack or something when the day comes where I'll have to realize my time is about over. Until then...I'm not worrying about it!
Ok, well I hope you all have a great week. I love you all!!
Chase
I cant believe another transfer has come and gone. They just seem to fly by. Here is the transfer news: Elder McFadyen is getting transferred and he is going back to the Chinese district to train a new Chinese missionary coming in. We were expecting this, but it is still sad to see him go. It is always fun to get a new companion though, so it will be good. This next transfer could be my last transfer as a zone leader, or maybe President will just keep me as a zone leader until the end of my mission, we'll see. I'm happy to do whatever is going to happen.
But anyway, I wrote down a couple things throughout the week to write about. The first one is about Anthony Castellanos, the 10 year old boy who got baptized. I mentioned how sometimes we'll help him with his homework and we've promised him that if he reads his Book of Mormon out loud then he will get better at reading. We'll this last week when we stopped by he told us that his teacher wanted our address or phone number or something because she wanted to send us a thank you card. She said that she has seen a big change in Anthony and he is doing so much better in school, with math and reading and just his behavior and when she asked how he has been doing so well, Anthony told her about us stopping by. That was cool to see. It has been fun to watch him learn and watch him realize he really can learn and have a desire to suck everything in.
The next thing is on a little bit of a lighter note. The other day when I was talking to the Galveston Elders, they let me know that they have carried on my tradition of naming all the hobos on the island. I thought that was hilarious...its been over a year since I left. They named one hobo the Riddler because he always tries to talk in rhymes, but the funny part about it is that all his rhymes are horrible. He usually just rhymes "to" and "do" or "them" and "then." It is pretty hilarious. Then there is Killer Bill. Killer Bill found out one of the Elder's names is Elder Moline, so now he thinks him and Elder Moline are best friends. (Apparently these two guys are always in the library so they always try to talk to them on Mondays when they e-mail). Killer Bill talks about how him and Moline go out and "steal kill and rob" and create riots and stuff. That's pretty much all he saays over and over. He is crazy. Good ol' Galveston...
We worked hard this week of course, but this was one of those weeks where it seemed like eeeverything kept on falling through. We didn't hit our 20 sit down lesson goal for the week..we got about 15, but we had 8-9 appointments fall through. We did of course hit our talk to 10 people a day goal though. We did all that we could, so I consider that a good week. We had this big long list of people that we got to commit to coming to church, and only 1 of them showed up. That was depressing, but we did all we could. We have another chance this week to help them come.
Since this Wednesday is Transfer Day, that means that all the new missionaries come in on Tuesday. We got a phone call this last week and the Assistants let Elder McFadyen and I know that we were going to get to drive into Houston to take the new missionaries "running." I put running in parenthesis because we don't literally go running with them. Right when they land, they drive them from the airport to a church building in Houston, where selected missionaries take them out to go contacting for an hour. Were going to be meeting back at my old church building in Houston 2 (the Spanish ward I served in). The missionary I'm taking running is going to be a Spanish Elder...it will be very fun.
This week we met a family from Bangladesh. They are Muslim. They let us come in and teach them because they want to know more about Christianity. They know hardly anything about Christianity. We have taught them twice so far. It has been a really fun experience...it is a challenge. I've never had to explain how Jesus Christ is our Savior, or how a man could possibly suffer for other peoples sins, or explain what the Holy Ghost or the Godhead is, let alone trying to explain the Plan of Salvation. We have focused so far on just teaching about Jesus Christ and God. We explained in the simplest terms possible what the purpose of baptism is and invited them all to be baptized on April 17and they all accepted. We have a looong way to go, but at least they're commited.
Other than that we've been teaching a lot of people we've found in the past few weeks and we've had some powerful lessons. We just have to get these people to church! I'll come next week once again with all the usual info on my new companion. I haven't called around to the other zone leaders to see who could be possibly coming here, so I haven't made my guesses yet, but I'll do that after I get done e-mailing. We are losing 3 of 5 of our district leaders in our zone and 1 zone leader, so were getting a lot of new people. Every companionship but 1 is changing. A lot of change has been the trend in the mission lately. Our zone did awesome this transfer though. We set a goal to have 13 baptisms in the zone this transfer and we hit 21. This is the highest I've ever seen in a long time. We broke almost all the records in the zone for pretty much about every number. It has been good...hopefully we can keep it going. And hopefully our own area will get up and running and be strong.
Ahh...I just saw the date and realized tomorrow is another month anniversary for me in the mission. I think I am at 20 now...that is a lot. It dosen't seem like anything to me though...this is just like normal life for me now. I feel like it will go on forever. I will probably have an anxiety attack or something when the day comes where I'll have to realize my time is about over. Until then...I'm not worrying about it!
Ok, well I hope you all have a great week. I love you all!!
Chase
Received, Mon March 1, 2010
Dear Family,
We did hear about the Chilean tsunami & earthquake. We get kept pretty up to date living with members. I thought the Griffin trying to find Vinny's house story was hilarious. I probably go and knock on the wrong door about once a week on my mission. People will give us fake addresses all the time. This last Wednesday that happened when I was on an exchange with a member and he thought it was funny how when I found out we had gotten a bad address I just started talking to them about what we do and got ourselves a return appointment. It doesn't really phase much anymore. Missionary life is so weird...we go around knocking on random doors just talking to every random person throughout the day.
We have had a pretty crazy week, as usual. I'll tell you about Thursday first, which was our Zone Conference day when Elder Zwick came. We woke up at like 5:30am, got ready, drove to Sugar Land and made it there by about 8:00am. President Saylin went over the program with me before hand to make sure I had everything down (since I had to conduct it), but he basically told me that this meeting was Elder Zwick's and he could change anything at any time, so I just had to ask him what he wanted me to do and follow his lead. I was pretty nervous. Elder Zwick asked to sit right next to me so that he could give me instructions as we went through the meeting. Well it all turned out alright of course. When I started I had only been standing up there for about 10 seconds before I got up and wanted to add something. When I saw him stand up I was like, ohh great what did I mess up on already. He just wanted to point out how his son-in-law, named John Eyring, is President Eyring's son. So I guess I wasn't expected to know to announce that. As we went through the whole meeting he changed a lot of things around, but I just did what he said, so it all went well.
He started out by talking about Christlike Attributes, like Chapter 6 in PMG, and he asked people to stand up and say a good attribute about Sister Saylin, then he went and did it for President Saylin too. They each got like 15-20 different attributes fired off pretty quickly. It made them cry. That was nice for them...they really devote every second to missionary work.
Then he had 4 different companionships come up in front of everyone and teach a principle out of PMG. That had to be nerve wracking for them. They all did good though. Anyway, then we had lunch, then we had our meeting for another couple of hours. Throughout the meeting Elder Zwick would lean over and whisper random quotes about whatever the speaker who was up there was talking about. He would say like "President Packer always says...." or "Elder Bednar once said...." It was pretty funny. Lots of people asked me what he was always whispering to me about.
So to fast forward, after the meeting everyone left, except for all the zone leaders and we set up for dinner. The dinner was delicious. We had some fat steaks, sausage, some good salad, and a bunch of other side dish. The rolls were delicious too. Then after that he gave us another little lesson and invited to stay and sing at a meeting where he invited all the ward councils from the 7 stakes in our mission. That was another good meeting...he got everyone pumped up to do missionary work. Singing was actually a really good experience too. We stood up at the front and sang the first verse of Called to Serve, then the congregation stood and joined us for the second verse. You can imagine how loud that was to have a stake center filled with people to join you for the second verse. I thought it was cool how symbolic it was. How we started the song by ourselves and it sounded pretty good, but then the hundreds of members in the room joined in on the second verse and it blew everything out of the water. And that is the whole purpose of member missionary work. It is much more effective to work with the members rather than just trying to do everything yourself.
That meeting was also cool because when I walked into the room I saw all 7 stake presidents up on the stand and I realized that I have worked with 5 of those 7 stake presidents and as I looked around the room I realized how many of those people I have met before. I probably knew about 100 people in there. It was fun to see them all again. By the time the meeting ended and we finally got home, it was about 10:00pm. What a looong day. But it was a full, good one.
The Zwick's both told some pretty cool stories. One of the ones I loved hearing about was how they were invited to go to a temple dedication with President Hinckley. They had to wake up reeeally early in the morning and they met up with President Hinckley and everyone at the jet they were taking to the temple dedication. Everyone was exhausted of course, as when the plane took off everyone put their heads back to try to get some sleep before their long day. Well, as soon as the plane leveled off in the air and the seatbelt sign turned off, President Hinckley threw his seat belt off, stood up, and said, "Well, its time to do some exercise!" And he pulled out one of those elastic band things and walked up and down the plane using that thing to stretch and to work out. I thought that was hilarious...I could totally see him doing that. Then after doing 4 sessions of the temple dedication, they were all exhausted again and were getting ready to head back, but President Hinckley told them they could go back to the plane and wait for him, but he was going to go shake some hands with the people outside of the temple. Well 4 hours and 2000 hands later, President Hinckley had shaken hands with all the people out there and then he was finally ready to leave. Pretty amazing. It was Sister Zwick telling this story (shes a good speaker by the way), then she said, "So every time you feel too cold, too hot, or too tired, just think of President Hinckley."
It was a long day, but a very good day too. I also went on exchanges with Galveston earlier in the week. I always love going back there. This time though, a cold front came in and it was FREEZING cold, and of course I didn't expect that so I didn't bring anything that warm. I had a little rain coat to keep my dry, but that's about it. It was pretty cold and we were on bikes. It was raining half the day too. Despite all that we were still able to talk to a lot of good people. We got to eat dinner with one of the members who I use to always eat dinner with when I was on Galveston. While I was there I kept thinking about how one day I would love to go back there and go visit all the less active, investigators and anyone I worked with and try to get them all to come to church with me. That would be fun.
One of the quotes that the Zwick's used a couple times that I liked a lot was something along the lines of, "Don't limit yourself by what you believe your capacities are, allow the Lord to expand your capacities to what he knows they can be. And he will." We saw that happen this week. After not being able to go out on Thursday and having a slower week to start out with, we did not think we were going to reach the 20 lesson a week goal, nor our talk to 10 person a day average. Somehow we made it happen. That was a miracle.
I can't believe we are in week 6 already! We will find out about transfers next Monday. There is a pretty good chance Elder McFadyen is getting moved because there are 2 new Chinese speaking missionaries coming in and Elder McFadyen will need to train one of them. There are other Chinese speaking missionaries, but theyre having some problems, so Elder McFadyen is pretty much the only other choice. We'll see what happens.
I have still be able to talk to Spanish people about once every day or so, so I am happy about that. I just have to pray for the gift of tongues every day so that even though I'm in an English area I can still keep improving my Spanish. It has been pretty good.
Ok, well that's about all this week. Have a safe ride home Mom and Dad! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
We did hear about the Chilean tsunami & earthquake. We get kept pretty up to date living with members. I thought the Griffin trying to find Vinny's house story was hilarious. I probably go and knock on the wrong door about once a week on my mission. People will give us fake addresses all the time. This last Wednesday that happened when I was on an exchange with a member and he thought it was funny how when I found out we had gotten a bad address I just started talking to them about what we do and got ourselves a return appointment. It doesn't really phase much anymore. Missionary life is so weird...we go around knocking on random doors just talking to every random person throughout the day.
We have had a pretty crazy week, as usual. I'll tell you about Thursday first, which was our Zone Conference day when Elder Zwick came. We woke up at like 5:30am, got ready, drove to Sugar Land and made it there by about 8:00am. President Saylin went over the program with me before hand to make sure I had everything down (since I had to conduct it), but he basically told me that this meeting was Elder Zwick's and he could change anything at any time, so I just had to ask him what he wanted me to do and follow his lead. I was pretty nervous. Elder Zwick asked to sit right next to me so that he could give me instructions as we went through the meeting. Well it all turned out alright of course. When I started I had only been standing up there for about 10 seconds before I got up and wanted to add something. When I saw him stand up I was like, ohh great what did I mess up on already. He just wanted to point out how his son-in-law, named John Eyring, is President Eyring's son. So I guess I wasn't expected to know to announce that. As we went through the whole meeting he changed a lot of things around, but I just did what he said, so it all went well.
He started out by talking about Christlike Attributes, like Chapter 6 in PMG, and he asked people to stand up and say a good attribute about Sister Saylin, then he went and did it for President Saylin too. They each got like 15-20 different attributes fired off pretty quickly. It made them cry. That was nice for them...they really devote every second to missionary work.
Then he had 4 different companionships come up in front of everyone and teach a principle out of PMG. That had to be nerve wracking for them. They all did good though. Anyway, then we had lunch, then we had our meeting for another couple of hours. Throughout the meeting Elder Zwick would lean over and whisper random quotes about whatever the speaker who was up there was talking about. He would say like "President Packer always says...." or "Elder Bednar once said...." It was pretty funny. Lots of people asked me what he was always whispering to me about.
So to fast forward, after the meeting everyone left, except for all the zone leaders and we set up for dinner. The dinner was delicious. We had some fat steaks, sausage, some good salad, and a bunch of other side dish. The rolls were delicious too. Then after that he gave us another little lesson and invited to stay and sing at a meeting where he invited all the ward councils from the 7 stakes in our mission. That was another good meeting...he got everyone pumped up to do missionary work. Singing was actually a really good experience too. We stood up at the front and sang the first verse of Called to Serve, then the congregation stood and joined us for the second verse. You can imagine how loud that was to have a stake center filled with people to join you for the second verse. I thought it was cool how symbolic it was. How we started the song by ourselves and it sounded pretty good, but then the hundreds of members in the room joined in on the second verse and it blew everything out of the water. And that is the whole purpose of member missionary work. It is much more effective to work with the members rather than just trying to do everything yourself.
That meeting was also cool because when I walked into the room I saw all 7 stake presidents up on the stand and I realized that I have worked with 5 of those 7 stake presidents and as I looked around the room I realized how many of those people I have met before. I probably knew about 100 people in there. It was fun to see them all again. By the time the meeting ended and we finally got home, it was about 10:00pm. What a looong day. But it was a full, good one.
The Zwick's both told some pretty cool stories. One of the ones I loved hearing about was how they were invited to go to a temple dedication with President Hinckley. They had to wake up reeeally early in the morning and they met up with President Hinckley and everyone at the jet they were taking to the temple dedication. Everyone was exhausted of course, as when the plane took off everyone put their heads back to try to get some sleep before their long day. Well, as soon as the plane leveled off in the air and the seatbelt sign turned off, President Hinckley threw his seat belt off, stood up, and said, "Well, its time to do some exercise!" And he pulled out one of those elastic band things and walked up and down the plane using that thing to stretch and to work out. I thought that was hilarious...I could totally see him doing that. Then after doing 4 sessions of the temple dedication, they were all exhausted again and were getting ready to head back, but President Hinckley told them they could go back to the plane and wait for him, but he was going to go shake some hands with the people outside of the temple. Well 4 hours and 2000 hands later, President Hinckley had shaken hands with all the people out there and then he was finally ready to leave. Pretty amazing. It was Sister Zwick telling this story (shes a good speaker by the way), then she said, "So every time you feel too cold, too hot, or too tired, just think of President Hinckley."
It was a long day, but a very good day too. I also went on exchanges with Galveston earlier in the week. I always love going back there. This time though, a cold front came in and it was FREEZING cold, and of course I didn't expect that so I didn't bring anything that warm. I had a little rain coat to keep my dry, but that's about it. It was pretty cold and we were on bikes. It was raining half the day too. Despite all that we were still able to talk to a lot of good people. We got to eat dinner with one of the members who I use to always eat dinner with when I was on Galveston. While I was there I kept thinking about how one day I would love to go back there and go visit all the less active, investigators and anyone I worked with and try to get them all to come to church with me. That would be fun.
One of the quotes that the Zwick's used a couple times that I liked a lot was something along the lines of, "Don't limit yourself by what you believe your capacities are, allow the Lord to expand your capacities to what he knows they can be. And he will." We saw that happen this week. After not being able to go out on Thursday and having a slower week to start out with, we did not think we were going to reach the 20 lesson a week goal, nor our talk to 10 person a day average. Somehow we made it happen. That was a miracle.
I can't believe we are in week 6 already! We will find out about transfers next Monday. There is a pretty good chance Elder McFadyen is getting moved because there are 2 new Chinese speaking missionaries coming in and Elder McFadyen will need to train one of them. There are other Chinese speaking missionaries, but theyre having some problems, so Elder McFadyen is pretty much the only other choice. We'll see what happens.
I have still be able to talk to Spanish people about once every day or so, so I am happy about that. I just have to pray for the gift of tongues every day so that even though I'm in an English area I can still keep improving my Spanish. It has been pretty good.
Ok, well that's about all this week. Have a safe ride home Mom and Dad! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
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