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
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
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
Monday, March 15, 2010
Received Mon March 15, 2010
Dear Family,
I'll start with transfer news first. My new companion is Elder Mulitalo. He was born in Compton California, but grew up his whole life in West Valley Utah. He is Samoan. Hes been out about 14 months and he is a brand new Zone Leader, so I am training him on how to be a Zone Leader (not really very much involved with that). He is a good missionary...hes very humble. Hes like a gentle giant. He's about my height, about 6', but weighs 100 more pounds than I do. He's fluctuated from 250-295 lbs on his mission, but hes been on a bike the past year, so hes stayed down at 250. Polynesians are just built to be huge. He's probably going to go back and play BYU football where his brother is playing at right now. I am excited to work with him though...we have a goal to double our baptismal dates in the next two weeks.
We had all sorts of meetings and things to do this week. Tuesday we went into Houston to run the new missionaries. That was fun. They do a little training meeting about OYMing (Open Your Mouth aka talking to people in the streets) and how to do it and the missionary I was with basically said all that practicing was boring and that we should just go do it already. Haha...well we drove to a nearby apartment complex that was full of people and I think that it kind of scared him because he realized it was real now. I helped him a lot though. If he didnt know what they were saying (because we were doing it in Spanish) I would translate it for him and help him to say things. I think he felt good after the first couple ones. When he first got to the church for the training thing he asked me why we call it "running." I told him because when we go outside we run from person to person talking to them. So we did. We didnt run up to everyone because that would probably scare them, but there were times where nobody was around and we saw somebody all the way across the complex behind a fence or something and we ran over to them. It was fun.
So that was Tuesday. It took like an hour to drive there, and hour back and we had to do some other stuff while we were there, so we got back by like 4:30 or 5. Wednesday was transfer meeting, so we were at that for most of the day...until about 5. About half the missionaries in our zone changed and a lot of our best ones left, but we got replaced by a lot of really good missionaries. I'm pretty excited about it. One of them is Elder Schwarz, who was the assistant, but hes going to be a District Leader for his last 2 transfers and probably train.
I don't know if I mentioned it, but last transfer we had an amazing transfer in the zone...we baptized 21 people as a zone. President Saylin mentioned that this was the best transfer for a zone he has seen since he's been here. It was mostly because we had a zone full of amazing missionaries and we have another zone that is just as good, so hopefully we see another transfer just as good.
On Thursday we had our Zone Leader Council down in Sugar Land, and that always takes all day. So that is 3 days in a row that we were gone for most of the day. Friday we had District meeting, then Saturday we had to do our weekly planning session which usually takes 2-3 hours. On Sunday we had our Stake Correlation meeting, which meant that throughout our busy week we had to be filling out Stake Correlation reports for each of the 9 wards in our stake and each one takes like 35+ minutes to complete. What a week! On top of all that we had to make sure we got our 10 OYMs/day average and got our 20 sit down lessons for the week. We got our OYMs, but we ended up with 17 sit down lessons which is pretty good considering the crazy week. It had to have been a pretty crazy time for my companion to get into the area and have all this dumped on him. We got all the biggest stuff out of the way early in the transfer though, so the rest of the transfer will be good. We do have our Zone Meeting this Friday though as well as our Investigator Fireside on Sunday, which we are also in charge of. If there is one thing I have learned on my mission, it is diligence. You always think the work is going to slow down and youll be able to relax, but it never really does. You just get use to it.
Here is my one story of the week. This week a Cambodian family in the ward invited us over for dinner. We showed up to their apartment and all the lights were off and they proceeded to tell us their electricity got cut and it would be off the next several days. So they had some candles lit and we ate with them in the dark in their apartment. What generous people...they obviously dont have very much, but they are still willing to invite us over and feed us despite the difficult circumstances. The funny part of the story is that I am still not sure what we ate. It was some sort of Cambodian soup, but because it was dark I couldnt see very well what was inside. There was some carrots and I think potatoes, but then there was some slimy stuff floating around and some other weird textured meat. I just tried not to think about what it could be. Luckily it didnt taste too bad, but it was pretty different. The other cool part was that they invited a couple of their friends from Cambodia over, so we taught them a lesson after the dinner. They didnt speak much English, so the members translated for us. They were awesome...they had no fear in bearing their testimonies and telling them what they believed. It was a good visit.
Ok, that's all for my report for the week, so here are my responses to the e-mail.
Mom: I have had several dreams before of being at home, but I'm almost always in my normal clothes, but I am deathly afraid to see the TV or go around the computer or break any of the mission rules. There have been a lot of funny dreams.
That is pretty amazing running 11 miles. I dont think I have ran more than 50 yards at once for the past year and a half. It's gonna take me a while to get muscle back in my legs and be able to run again.
Beebachu: Congratulations on the home run! And have fun at Astro Camp. That was one of my favorite field trips that I ever went on in school.
Bub: I have never heard of that guy with the crazy last name. [I (me, the mother) wrote to Chase about this football player Ndamukong Suh]. You will have to keep me updated on what happens to good ol Michael Vick. I am surprised that he is still so good. If he does end up on the Rams, that will take the team from the stankest of the stank, to not quite as stank, so pray that it happens. <-- perfect time to use the chuckling asian smiley face. I just discovered these e-motion thing...this will make my letters so much more exciting. Tell me if you can see them.
**editor's note: the e-motion things showed up in my letter, but apparently, they do not live through a copy and paste onto a blog.
The G-Man: Wow that sounds like a lot of fun! Maybe we should just put Kitty Con Carne up in the attic until he eats all of the rats for us!
Ok thats about all for this week. Tell me how the dinner with the missionaries on Friday goes. I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
I'll start with transfer news first. My new companion is Elder Mulitalo. He was born in Compton California, but grew up his whole life in West Valley Utah. He is Samoan. Hes been out about 14 months and he is a brand new Zone Leader, so I am training him on how to be a Zone Leader (not really very much involved with that). He is a good missionary...hes very humble. Hes like a gentle giant. He's about my height, about 6', but weighs 100 more pounds than I do. He's fluctuated from 250-295 lbs on his mission, but hes been on a bike the past year, so hes stayed down at 250. Polynesians are just built to be huge. He's probably going to go back and play BYU football where his brother is playing at right now. I am excited to work with him though...we have a goal to double our baptismal dates in the next two weeks.
We had all sorts of meetings and things to do this week. Tuesday we went into Houston to run the new missionaries. That was fun. They do a little training meeting about OYMing (Open Your Mouth aka talking to people in the streets) and how to do it and the missionary I was with basically said all that practicing was boring and that we should just go do it already. Haha...well we drove to a nearby apartment complex that was full of people and I think that it kind of scared him because he realized it was real now. I helped him a lot though. If he didnt know what they were saying (because we were doing it in Spanish) I would translate it for him and help him to say things. I think he felt good after the first couple ones. When he first got to the church for the training thing he asked me why we call it "running." I told him because when we go outside we run from person to person talking to them. So we did. We didnt run up to everyone because that would probably scare them, but there were times where nobody was around and we saw somebody all the way across the complex behind a fence or something and we ran over to them. It was fun.
So that was Tuesday. It took like an hour to drive there, and hour back and we had to do some other stuff while we were there, so we got back by like 4:30 or 5. Wednesday was transfer meeting, so we were at that for most of the day...until about 5. About half the missionaries in our zone changed and a lot of our best ones left, but we got replaced by a lot of really good missionaries. I'm pretty excited about it. One of them is Elder Schwarz, who was the assistant, but hes going to be a District Leader for his last 2 transfers and probably train.
I don't know if I mentioned it, but last transfer we had an amazing transfer in the zone...we baptized 21 people as a zone. President Saylin mentioned that this was the best transfer for a zone he has seen since he's been here. It was mostly because we had a zone full of amazing missionaries and we have another zone that is just as good, so hopefully we see another transfer just as good.
On Thursday we had our Zone Leader Council down in Sugar Land, and that always takes all day. So that is 3 days in a row that we were gone for most of the day. Friday we had District meeting, then Saturday we had to do our weekly planning session which usually takes 2-3 hours. On Sunday we had our Stake Correlation meeting, which meant that throughout our busy week we had to be filling out Stake Correlation reports for each of the 9 wards in our stake and each one takes like 35+ minutes to complete. What a week! On top of all that we had to make sure we got our 10 OYMs/day average and got our 20 sit down lessons for the week. We got our OYMs, but we ended up with 17 sit down lessons which is pretty good considering the crazy week. It had to have been a pretty crazy time for my companion to get into the area and have all this dumped on him. We got all the biggest stuff out of the way early in the transfer though, so the rest of the transfer will be good. We do have our Zone Meeting this Friday though as well as our Investigator Fireside on Sunday, which we are also in charge of. If there is one thing I have learned on my mission, it is diligence. You always think the work is going to slow down and youll be able to relax, but it never really does. You just get use to it.
Here is my one story of the week. This week a Cambodian family in the ward invited us over for dinner. We showed up to their apartment and all the lights were off and they proceeded to tell us their electricity got cut and it would be off the next several days. So they had some candles lit and we ate with them in the dark in their apartment. What generous people...they obviously dont have very much, but they are still willing to invite us over and feed us despite the difficult circumstances. The funny part of the story is that I am still not sure what we ate. It was some sort of Cambodian soup, but because it was dark I couldnt see very well what was inside. There was some carrots and I think potatoes, but then there was some slimy stuff floating around and some other weird textured meat. I just tried not to think about what it could be. Luckily it didnt taste too bad, but it was pretty different. The other cool part was that they invited a couple of their friends from Cambodia over, so we taught them a lesson after the dinner. They didnt speak much English, so the members translated for us. They were awesome...they had no fear in bearing their testimonies and telling them what they believed. It was a good visit.
Ok, that's all for my report for the week, so here are my responses to the e-mail.
Mom: I have had several dreams before of being at home, but I'm almost always in my normal clothes, but I am deathly afraid to see the TV or go around the computer or break any of the mission rules. There have been a lot of funny dreams.
That is pretty amazing running 11 miles. I dont think I have ran more than 50 yards at once for the past year and a half. It's gonna take me a while to get muscle back in my legs and be able to run again.
Beebachu: Congratulations on the home run! And have fun at Astro Camp. That was one of my favorite field trips that I ever went on in school.
Bub: I have never heard of that guy with the crazy last name. [I (me, the mother) wrote to Chase about this football player Ndamukong Suh]. You will have to keep me updated on what happens to good ol Michael Vick. I am surprised that he is still so good. If he does end up on the Rams, that will take the team from the stankest of the stank, to not quite as stank, so pray that it happens. <-- perfect time to use the chuckling asian smiley face. I just discovered these e-motion thing...this will make my letters so much more exciting. Tell me if you can see them.
**editor's note: the e-motion things showed up in my letter, but apparently, they do not live through a copy and paste onto a blog.
The G-Man: Wow that sounds like a lot of fun! Maybe we should just put Kitty Con Carne up in the attic until he eats all of the rats for us!
Ok thats about all for this week. Tell me how the dinner with the missionaries on Friday goes. I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
Monday, March 8, 2010
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
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
Received, Mon March 1, 2010
Dear Family,
We did hear about the Chilean tsunami & earthquake. We get kept pretty up to date living with members. I thought the Griffin trying to find Vinny's house story was hilarious. I probably go and knock on the wrong door about once a week on my mission. People will give us fake addresses all the time. This last Wednesday that happened when I was on an exchange with a member and he thought it was funny how when I found out we had gotten a bad address I just started talking to them about what we do and got ourselves a return appointment. It doesn't really phase much anymore. Missionary life is so weird...we go around knocking on random doors just talking to every random person throughout the day.
We have had a pretty crazy week, as usual. I'll tell you about Thursday first, which was our Zone Conference day when Elder Zwick came. We woke up at like 5:30am, got ready, drove to Sugar Land and made it there by about 8:00am. President Saylin went over the program with me before hand to make sure I had everything down (since I had to conduct it), but he basically told me that this meeting was Elder Zwick's and he could change anything at any time, so I just had to ask him what he wanted me to do and follow his lead. I was pretty nervous. Elder Zwick asked to sit right next to me so that he could give me instructions as we went through the meeting. Well it all turned out alright of course. When I started I had only been standing up there for about 10 seconds before I got up and wanted to add something. When I saw him stand up I was like, ohh great what did I mess up on already. He just wanted to point out how his son-in-law, named John Eyring, is President Eyring's son. So I guess I wasn't expected to know to announce that. As we went through the whole meeting he changed a lot of things around, but I just did what he said, so it all went well.
He started out by talking about Christlike Attributes, like Chapter 6 in PMG, and he asked people to stand up and say a good attribute about Sister Saylin, then he went and did it for President Saylin too. They each got like 15-20 different attributes fired off pretty quickly. It made them cry. That was nice for them...they really devote every second to missionary work.
Then he had 4 different companionships come up in front of everyone and teach a principle out of PMG. That had to be nerve wracking for them. They all did good though. Anyway, then we had lunch, then we had our meeting for another couple of hours. Throughout the meeting Elder Zwick would lean over and whisper random quotes about whatever the speaker who was up there was talking about. He would say like "President Packer always says...." or "Elder Bednar once said...." It was pretty funny. Lots of people asked me what he was always whispering to me about.
So to fast forward, after the meeting everyone left, except for all the zone leaders and we set up for dinner. The dinner was delicious. We had some fat steaks, sausage, some good salad, and a bunch of other side dish. The rolls were delicious too. Then after that he gave us another little lesson and invited to stay and sing at a meeting where he invited all the ward councils from the 7 stakes in our mission. That was another good meeting...he got everyone pumped up to do missionary work. Singing was actually a really good experience too. We stood up at the front and sang the first verse of Called to Serve, then the congregation stood and joined us for the second verse. You can imagine how loud that was to have a stake center filled with people to join you for the second verse. I thought it was cool how symbolic it was. How we started the song by ourselves and it sounded pretty good, but then the hundreds of members in the room joined in on the second verse and it blew everything out of the water. And that is the whole purpose of member missionary work. It is much more effective to work with the members rather than just trying to do everything yourself.
That meeting was also cool because when I walked into the room I saw all 7 stake presidents up on the stand and I realized that I have worked with 5 of those 7 stake presidents and as I looked around the room I realized how many of those people I have met before. I probably knew about 100 people in there. It was fun to see them all again. By the time the meeting ended and we finally got home, it was about 10:00pm. What a looong day. But it was a full, good one.
The Zwick's both told some pretty cool stories. One of the ones I loved hearing about was how they were invited to go to a temple dedication with President Hinckley. They had to wake up reeeally early in the morning and they met up with President Hinckley and everyone at the jet they were taking to the temple dedication. Everyone was exhausted of course, as when the plane took off everyone put their heads back to try to get some sleep before their long day. Well, as soon as the plane leveled off in the air and the seatbelt sign turned off, President Hinckley threw his seat belt off, stood up, and said, "Well, its time to do some exercise!" And he pulled out one of those elastic band things and walked up and down the plane using that thing to stretch and to work out. I thought that was hilarious...I could totally see him doing that. Then after doing 4 sessions of the temple dedication, they were all exhausted again and were getting ready to head back, but President Hinckley told them they could go back to the plane and wait for him, but he was going to go shake some hands with the people outside of the temple. Well 4 hours and 2000 hands later, President Hinckley had shaken hands with all the people out there and then he was finally ready to leave. Pretty amazing. It was Sister Zwick telling this story (shes a good speaker by the way), then she said, "So every time you feel too cold, too hot, or too tired, just think of President Hinckley."
It was a long day, but a very good day too. I also went on exchanges with Galveston earlier in the week. I always love going back there. This time though, a cold front came in and it was FREEZING cold, and of course I didn't expect that so I didn't bring anything that warm. I had a little rain coat to keep my dry, but that's about it. It was pretty cold and we were on bikes. It was raining half the day too. Despite all that we were still able to talk to a lot of good people. We got to eat dinner with one of the members who I use to always eat dinner with when I was on Galveston. While I was there I kept thinking about how one day I would love to go back there and go visit all the less active, investigators and anyone I worked with and try to get them all to come to church with me. That would be fun.
One of the quotes that the Zwick's used a couple times that I liked a lot was something along the lines of, "Don't limit yourself by what you believe your capacities are, allow the Lord to expand your capacities to what he knows they can be. And he will." We saw that happen this week. After not being able to go out on Thursday and having a slower week to start out with, we did not think we were going to reach the 20 lesson a week goal, nor our talk to 10 person a day average. Somehow we made it happen. That was a miracle.
I can't believe we are in week 6 already! We will find out about transfers next Monday. There is a pretty good chance Elder McFadyen is getting moved because there are 2 new Chinese speaking missionaries coming in and Elder McFadyen will need to train one of them. There are other Chinese speaking missionaries, but theyre having some problems, so Elder McFadyen is pretty much the only other choice. We'll see what happens.
I have still be able to talk to Spanish people about once every day or so, so I am happy about that. I just have to pray for the gift of tongues every day so that even though I'm in an English area I can still keep improving my Spanish. It has been pretty good.
Ok, well that's about all this week. Have a safe ride home Mom and Dad! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
We did hear about the Chilean tsunami & earthquake. We get kept pretty up to date living with members. I thought the Griffin trying to find Vinny's house story was hilarious. I probably go and knock on the wrong door about once a week on my mission. People will give us fake addresses all the time. This last Wednesday that happened when I was on an exchange with a member and he thought it was funny how when I found out we had gotten a bad address I just started talking to them about what we do and got ourselves a return appointment. It doesn't really phase much anymore. Missionary life is so weird...we go around knocking on random doors just talking to every random person throughout the day.
We have had a pretty crazy week, as usual. I'll tell you about Thursday first, which was our Zone Conference day when Elder Zwick came. We woke up at like 5:30am, got ready, drove to Sugar Land and made it there by about 8:00am. President Saylin went over the program with me before hand to make sure I had everything down (since I had to conduct it), but he basically told me that this meeting was Elder Zwick's and he could change anything at any time, so I just had to ask him what he wanted me to do and follow his lead. I was pretty nervous. Elder Zwick asked to sit right next to me so that he could give me instructions as we went through the meeting. Well it all turned out alright of course. When I started I had only been standing up there for about 10 seconds before I got up and wanted to add something. When I saw him stand up I was like, ohh great what did I mess up on already. He just wanted to point out how his son-in-law, named John Eyring, is President Eyring's son. So I guess I wasn't expected to know to announce that. As we went through the whole meeting he changed a lot of things around, but I just did what he said, so it all went well.
He started out by talking about Christlike Attributes, like Chapter 6 in PMG, and he asked people to stand up and say a good attribute about Sister Saylin, then he went and did it for President Saylin too. They each got like 15-20 different attributes fired off pretty quickly. It made them cry. That was nice for them...they really devote every second to missionary work.
Then he had 4 different companionships come up in front of everyone and teach a principle out of PMG. That had to be nerve wracking for them. They all did good though. Anyway, then we had lunch, then we had our meeting for another couple of hours. Throughout the meeting Elder Zwick would lean over and whisper random quotes about whatever the speaker who was up there was talking about. He would say like "President Packer always says...." or "Elder Bednar once said...." It was pretty funny. Lots of people asked me what he was always whispering to me about.
So to fast forward, after the meeting everyone left, except for all the zone leaders and we set up for dinner. The dinner was delicious. We had some fat steaks, sausage, some good salad, and a bunch of other side dish. The rolls were delicious too. Then after that he gave us another little lesson and invited to stay and sing at a meeting where he invited all the ward councils from the 7 stakes in our mission. That was another good meeting...he got everyone pumped up to do missionary work. Singing was actually a really good experience too. We stood up at the front and sang the first verse of Called to Serve, then the congregation stood and joined us for the second verse. You can imagine how loud that was to have a stake center filled with people to join you for the second verse. I thought it was cool how symbolic it was. How we started the song by ourselves and it sounded pretty good, but then the hundreds of members in the room joined in on the second verse and it blew everything out of the water. And that is the whole purpose of member missionary work. It is much more effective to work with the members rather than just trying to do everything yourself.
That meeting was also cool because when I walked into the room I saw all 7 stake presidents up on the stand and I realized that I have worked with 5 of those 7 stake presidents and as I looked around the room I realized how many of those people I have met before. I probably knew about 100 people in there. It was fun to see them all again. By the time the meeting ended and we finally got home, it was about 10:00pm. What a looong day. But it was a full, good one.
The Zwick's both told some pretty cool stories. One of the ones I loved hearing about was how they were invited to go to a temple dedication with President Hinckley. They had to wake up reeeally early in the morning and they met up with President Hinckley and everyone at the jet they were taking to the temple dedication. Everyone was exhausted of course, as when the plane took off everyone put their heads back to try to get some sleep before their long day. Well, as soon as the plane leveled off in the air and the seatbelt sign turned off, President Hinckley threw his seat belt off, stood up, and said, "Well, its time to do some exercise!" And he pulled out one of those elastic band things and walked up and down the plane using that thing to stretch and to work out. I thought that was hilarious...I could totally see him doing that. Then after doing 4 sessions of the temple dedication, they were all exhausted again and were getting ready to head back, but President Hinckley told them they could go back to the plane and wait for him, but he was going to go shake some hands with the people outside of the temple. Well 4 hours and 2000 hands later, President Hinckley had shaken hands with all the people out there and then he was finally ready to leave. Pretty amazing. It was Sister Zwick telling this story (shes a good speaker by the way), then she said, "So every time you feel too cold, too hot, or too tired, just think of President Hinckley."
It was a long day, but a very good day too. I also went on exchanges with Galveston earlier in the week. I always love going back there. This time though, a cold front came in and it was FREEZING cold, and of course I didn't expect that so I didn't bring anything that warm. I had a little rain coat to keep my dry, but that's about it. It was pretty cold and we were on bikes. It was raining half the day too. Despite all that we were still able to talk to a lot of good people. We got to eat dinner with one of the members who I use to always eat dinner with when I was on Galveston. While I was there I kept thinking about how one day I would love to go back there and go visit all the less active, investigators and anyone I worked with and try to get them all to come to church with me. That would be fun.
One of the quotes that the Zwick's used a couple times that I liked a lot was something along the lines of, "Don't limit yourself by what you believe your capacities are, allow the Lord to expand your capacities to what he knows they can be. And he will." We saw that happen this week. After not being able to go out on Thursday and having a slower week to start out with, we did not think we were going to reach the 20 lesson a week goal, nor our talk to 10 person a day average. Somehow we made it happen. That was a miracle.
I can't believe we are in week 6 already! We will find out about transfers next Monday. There is a pretty good chance Elder McFadyen is getting moved because there are 2 new Chinese speaking missionaries coming in and Elder McFadyen will need to train one of them. There are other Chinese speaking missionaries, but theyre having some problems, so Elder McFadyen is pretty much the only other choice. We'll see what happens.
I have still be able to talk to Spanish people about once every day or so, so I am happy about that. I just have to pray for the gift of tongues every day so that even though I'm in an English area I can still keep improving my Spanish. It has been pretty good.
Ok, well that's about all this week. Have a safe ride home Mom and Dad! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Received Mon Feb 22, 2010
Dear Family,
We did have the baptism for Anthony this weekend! It was awesome. The sad part was that his family didn't show up. They always do that. All week they say they'll come to church or whatever and they claim they've taken work off, then they don't show up. They say they were sick every single morning. It is really sad. Despite the sad fact that his family was so unmotivated to come to their own child's baptism, it still turned out good. Anthony loved answering people's questions while they were giving talks and being involved in their object lessons. I think it makes him so happy to see that he is learning things and he is able to answer questions and participate. After the baptism everyone came up and hugged him and congratulated him. That was good to see. That is probably the most love he has felt for a long time.
The next day in Sacrament meeting Anthony asked me to be the one to confirm him, so of course I did. He was beaming all day since his baptism. I am happy for him. I'm happy for my companion too.
Unfortunately Keith Greear, the man who almost died a bunch of times and has the messed up back, didn't come to church. He's involved in some band that plays music for other churches and he had to do something for that. We had some really good lessons with him this week. We always go with a member named Brother Keichler. The missionaries used to live in the Keichlers home and they really miss them. Anyway, we always go over to the Keichler's home and practice our lesson and role play with Brother Keichler, then we go and do it and it always turns out good. One cool experience is that we decided we were going to review the restoration and try to help him have a better understanding of why this is the one true church and we were going to watch the restoration movie. Well Keith always studies stuff online throughout the week (hes a big computer guy) and when we showed up that day, he not only read the chapter that we left him, but he also went online and read the entire Joseph Smith History. He's probably the only investigator I've had ask me about Oliver Cowdery and about how the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood were restored. We just need to get this man to church.
We have found a couple other people this last week too, which is really good. It is tooough to find people to teach here. But we have some pretty high potential people, so thats good.
I have heard about the Olympics this week...literally. Whenever we come home at night the Seeley's have the olympics on, so we can always hear it. They usually turn it off though or just turn it down so we can hear it while were upstairs. They are very considerate about all that. It has to be such a big hassle for them to go out of their way to do all this stuff. They are good people.
I got all the pictures in the mail this week!! That was probably one of the most exciting pieces of mail to open. I was pretty amazed looking at all the pictures and seeing how much our cousins have changed over the last year and a half. And how tall is Zak? He hasn't passed me up yet has he? Mom did a good photography job. Thank you for sending all those pictures, it was fun to look at.
This week Elder Zwick from the first quorum of the seventy is going to come tour our mission. We're going to have 2 zone conferences where half our mission will go to each. We go on Thursday. Everyone has been pretty excited about it. I got a phone call a few days ago from the assistants and they said that instead of having the assistants conduct the zone conferences this time around, the zone leaders are going to do it and that I am going to be the one in charge of conducting the one on Thursday. That's about enough to give me a heart attack. Not only am I going to have to conduct a meeting in front of half our mission, but I'll be standing 5 feet away from a general authority while I do it. I know there's not really any reason to be nervous because nothing bad could possibly happen, but I am still pretty nervous. I'll be happy when I get that over with. We also got some news that Elder Zwick wants to have a dinner with all of the zone leaders, so after zone conference on Thursday we're going to have a big dinner with Elder Zwick. This rich member in Sugar Land who is a steak fanatic is going to be in charge of the food. He gets his steaks cut specially for him and he gets them cut extra thick. He does these big dinners for all sorts of people. That will be exciting. I'm going to have to go fasting.
Ok well that's about all for this week. It has been a good week though. We've hit almost all our goals and our whole zone is doing really well. We've baptized 13 people in the zone so far this transfer, which is really high. We'll see how the transfer ends. I cant believe were starting week 5! Ok well have a good week everyone!! Have a good time in Hawaii Mom and Dad! I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
We did have the baptism for Anthony this weekend! It was awesome. The sad part was that his family didn't show up. They always do that. All week they say they'll come to church or whatever and they claim they've taken work off, then they don't show up. They say they were sick every single morning. It is really sad. Despite the sad fact that his family was so unmotivated to come to their own child's baptism, it still turned out good. Anthony loved answering people's questions while they were giving talks and being involved in their object lessons. I think it makes him so happy to see that he is learning things and he is able to answer questions and participate. After the baptism everyone came up and hugged him and congratulated him. That was good to see. That is probably the most love he has felt for a long time.
The next day in Sacrament meeting Anthony asked me to be the one to confirm him, so of course I did. He was beaming all day since his baptism. I am happy for him. I'm happy for my companion too.
Unfortunately Keith Greear, the man who almost died a bunch of times and has the messed up back, didn't come to church. He's involved in some band that plays music for other churches and he had to do something for that. We had some really good lessons with him this week. We always go with a member named Brother Keichler. The missionaries used to live in the Keichlers home and they really miss them. Anyway, we always go over to the Keichler's home and practice our lesson and role play with Brother Keichler, then we go and do it and it always turns out good. One cool experience is that we decided we were going to review the restoration and try to help him have a better understanding of why this is the one true church and we were going to watch the restoration movie. Well Keith always studies stuff online throughout the week (hes a big computer guy) and when we showed up that day, he not only read the chapter that we left him, but he also went online and read the entire Joseph Smith History. He's probably the only investigator I've had ask me about Oliver Cowdery and about how the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood were restored. We just need to get this man to church.
We have found a couple other people this last week too, which is really good. It is tooough to find people to teach here. But we have some pretty high potential people, so thats good.
I have heard about the Olympics this week...literally. Whenever we come home at night the Seeley's have the olympics on, so we can always hear it. They usually turn it off though or just turn it down so we can hear it while were upstairs. They are very considerate about all that. It has to be such a big hassle for them to go out of their way to do all this stuff. They are good people.
I got all the pictures in the mail this week!! That was probably one of the most exciting pieces of mail to open. I was pretty amazed looking at all the pictures and seeing how much our cousins have changed over the last year and a half. And how tall is Zak? He hasn't passed me up yet has he? Mom did a good photography job. Thank you for sending all those pictures, it was fun to look at.
This week Elder Zwick from the first quorum of the seventy is going to come tour our mission. We're going to have 2 zone conferences where half our mission will go to each. We go on Thursday. Everyone has been pretty excited about it. I got a phone call a few days ago from the assistants and they said that instead of having the assistants conduct the zone conferences this time around, the zone leaders are going to do it and that I am going to be the one in charge of conducting the one on Thursday. That's about enough to give me a heart attack. Not only am I going to have to conduct a meeting in front of half our mission, but I'll be standing 5 feet away from a general authority while I do it. I know there's not really any reason to be nervous because nothing bad could possibly happen, but I am still pretty nervous. I'll be happy when I get that over with. We also got some news that Elder Zwick wants to have a dinner with all of the zone leaders, so after zone conference on Thursday we're going to have a big dinner with Elder Zwick. This rich member in Sugar Land who is a steak fanatic is going to be in charge of the food. He gets his steaks cut specially for him and he gets them cut extra thick. He does these big dinners for all sorts of people. That will be exciting. I'm going to have to go fasting.
Ok well that's about all for this week. It has been a good week though. We've hit almost all our goals and our whole zone is doing really well. We've baptized 13 people in the zone so far this transfer, which is really high. We'll see how the transfer ends. I cant believe were starting week 5! Ok well have a good week everyone!! Have a good time in Hawaii Mom and Dad! I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
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