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