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