Dear Family,
It has been a great week this week. One of the few things I remember President Saylin told us in our trainer's meeting is that the new missionaries always have really high expectations and dreams. He said that we can help them learn little by little to be realistic, but don't crush their dreams. I know I've mentioned before that we have a goal in the mission for each missionary to talk to 70 people a week (10 a day). Well Elder Bunch said that he heard a quote by Elder L Tom Perry and he said that if we double the number of people we talk to, we double our baptisms. He said he thought we should shoot for 140 people a week. So I said ok. We talked to people every second we had open, and we miraculously hit our goal. Ive never heard of anyone getting anywhere close to 140 OYMs. We found a lot of new people to teach and we taught a lot of lessons.
Here is the highlight of the week. We have been teaching this family, called the Mendez family. I've probably talked about them before. The husband was baptized in Mexico 8 years ago, but his wife wasn't. We randomly OYM'd them in their driveway last transfer, and at first Jesus, the husband, was almost upset to see us, but we got him to let us come back, and we've been teaching him, his wife, and his 2 kids. On Sunday our lesson was on baptism and I talked to them about how the mom and the 3 kids could all get baptized together. It just so happened that there was another family getting baptized that night, so we invited them to that. They had a really good experience at church, then at the baptismal service, and we extended baptismal dates to them and they accepted! Their youngest son is 7, but he turns 8 on July 5th, so the Saturday after that, the 10th, they will all get baptized together. They are very excited about it and so am I.
Training has been a good experience. There are a lot of different challenges that I didn't expect. I've started to see how much missionaries learn from being on a mission for 2 years. My companion is just starting that process. I not only need to teach him good missionary skills, but also good social skills, etc. Like, don't leave your shopping cart blocking the entire aisle. Or, you need to wash your hands with soap, not just water after you go to the bathroom. Or, don't just rinse off our dishes in water, use soap to clean them (we don't have a dishwasher). And the list goes on. It has been a good experience though. I'm glad hes still excited.
Here's my next story. We talking to random people in the street one day as we waited for a member to show up to an appointment we had with investigators and this lady leaned out of her car and yelled something to us, so we came over to talk to her. She said her family was going through some really tough times and shes been praying to God to help her, and she recognized us as servants of God who could help her. Well, it turns out her son killed somebody a few days ago. We don't know all the details because obviously its a sensitive situation and we didn't want to pry, but apparently he was in his apartment and this other guy was in there and was threatening him, so he went into his room and came out with a gun and shot the guy. The son is completely falling apart right now. He's caught up in a lot of other things too. You could just see how apparent it is that sin never leads to happiness and how Satan really does just try to drag people down and he will if you let him. So he is a big work in progress. The mom is awesome though. They are from Colombia. They are really wealthy too. They live right in downtown Houston in the Galleria (huge famous shopping center) area. They actually live across the street from the Williams tower, which I'm like 90% sure that's the tower CJ was talking about that is the tallest tower in Houston. They live right across from that thing in these high rise apartments in the penthouse/top floor. We taught the Mom 1 time, she read in the book of Mormon, prayed, got an answer, and accepted a baptismal date. We are really excited about her. She is pretty stressed out about her son though.
I have heard alll about the World Cup. A lot of people here take work off for a lot of the World Cup so they can watch every game. Its pretty much their life right now. So I've heard most of the results of the games. Keep me updated anyway though.
I am glad that everyone is getting involved in active things this summer. There is a young family here where the dad loooves to play video games whenever he can. They have a 6 year old daughter and I asked them what they were going to do with her during summer to keep her occupied, thinking along the lines of swimming lessons, sports, etc. The dad goes, "Well I'm not sure yet, I cant decide. I'm trying to decide between getting her the Wii or the Nintendo DS." He didn't even think for a second about anything outside of video games! I thought it was pretty funny, but sad at the same time.
Today we are going to have a zone activity. We are going to go to a big park and play sports and eat ice cream. It should be fun. Last week we played basketball at the church, and I ran around a lot. It still definitely feels like my left lung is a lot weaker than my right lung. My right lung feels 100% normal, but my left lung still gets irritated when I run a lot or breathe hard. I guess the doctors down in California just did a better job than those ones in Utah. I'm not sure, but at least I can still run around an have fun.
Here's my last gross story for you. One night this week I was sleeping good and in my sleep I went to scratch my neck, and when I went to scratch it, I grabbed a big bug that was crawling across me. I threw it as hard as I could at the wall across the room and hopefully killed it. I'm not sure what it was, but it felt like a cockroach. There are tons of cockroaches around here. Thankfully when I wake up I'm always really drowsy and I fall back to sleep easy. For the next couple minutes I slapped at everything that felt like a bug, but eventually I fell back to sleep.
Last news update: Sadly the chickens didn't hatch! (Remember Lars bought an incubator and 4 chicken eggs). They were supposed to hatch on Saturday, but they didn't. Lars is going to buy some new ones. It takes usually takes 21 days for them to hatch, so hopefully I get to see them. He is also planning on eventually buying some rabbits and he's going to start raising those too. He would get a cow, but its illegal in Houston and cows are too hard to hide.
Alright, well that's about all for this week. Happy Fathers Day on Sunday Dad!! I love you all and hope you have a good week!
Love,
Chase
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