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