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