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
Thursday, April 29, 2010
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
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