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
Monday, March 15, 2010
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
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Received Mon Feb 15, 2010
Dear Family,
It just never seems to slow down!! I've had some days in my mission that have been really really busy, but I've never had a period like this where every second of my time has been consumed for 3 weeks. I havent had any time to write in my journal or have a night time snack before bed. Being busy is always a good thing though. I've learned to just enjoy it, because if your life has to be consumed by work, this is the best kind of work to do it.
Anyway, last week on our P-day we were pretty excited for a day where we would finally be able to breathe for a few hours, then we get a phone call and a less active lady's daughter needs a blessing and she didnt know who else to call. Then a wrench was thrown into the mess because it was just the lady and her daughter at home and we cant enter the home unless another man is present. Anyway, it all worked out and we were able to bring somebody with us. Meanwhile our district went to the NASA space center again, since we have new people in our district who have never been. By the time we finished everything it was like 3 and we sped over to NASA and got there just in time to catch the last tram tour with our district. So we finally got to relax our minds for 3 hours until our P-day ended. It was pretty fun.
I'm not sure what we'll do today. I got my haircut, after this we'll go shop, and we'll probably just end up staying at home. I have a few letters to respond to that have been sitting on my desk for a few months. Tony and Jake both wrote me. They are both doing really well. Then a random girl from BYU decided to write me again. My mail flow has pretty much boiled down to an occasional letter from Tony or Jake, then every long once in a while a random person from BYU will write me. I was getting mail pretty frequently for a long time on my mission...so I havent done too bad. But, the letter with pictures and address labels will be grately appreciated. I am excited for that one.
This week we had the correlation meeting with our stake president and our mission president and a couple other stake leaders. That means we had to fill out reports for all the units in our stake (there are 9). That is what took up a lot of our time this week. I am happy that is all done and taken care of.
We went on exchanges this week with some missionaries in our zone...that went well. While I was there I got to do a baptismal interview for 2 hispanic people who got baptized this weekend. Our zone is doing pretty well so far. We have had 10 baptisms and 10 confirmations in this transfer so far (we just ended week 3). I am excited about that.
In other exciting news, were having a baptism this Saturday! Anthony, the 10 year old kid, is going to get baptized. I was really sad that his whole family didnt come to church with them this Sunday. Surprisingly one of the biggest obstacles that I have come across that is the hardest for people to overcome is pure laziness. This family really has desires to support their son and to come to church, but every Sunday morning they just feel tired and it is easier to stay in bed. It takes a 10 year old kid without any family support to be the strong one to get up and come to church. He is doing really well though. We got him to a family home evening last week with one of the kids family who he has made friends with at church. He loved it and begged us to let him go to another one of those. We also get him to cub scouts every Tuesday, then to church every Sunday. It is amazing how much cub scouts can do for a boy like this. Involving him in something like that and teaching him skills that his parents dont teach him, then giving him merit badges to show him he can accomplish things is just huge for him. I hope we can keep this fire he's got and help him stay a strong member. I am excited for this baptism though. For one, because I am happy to see Anthony make this huge choice in the right direction, and for 2, this will be my companion's first baptism. That was one of my hugest goals this transfer. A missionary as good as him who has been out as long as him needs to have a baptism, so I am excited to see that happen.
This next week should be a good one. We dont have any huge projects to get done or anything problems as of right now to work out. Hopefully it wont be as hectic as the past few weeks have been. You go through everything for a reason though. I've learned how to prioritize and how to work under pressure and how to stay calm and just work when you have a mountain of work ahead of you.
Ok, thats about all for this week. Happy Valentines day yesterday! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
It just never seems to slow down!! I've had some days in my mission that have been really really busy, but I've never had a period like this where every second of my time has been consumed for 3 weeks. I havent had any time to write in my journal or have a night time snack before bed. Being busy is always a good thing though. I've learned to just enjoy it, because if your life has to be consumed by work, this is the best kind of work to do it.
Anyway, last week on our P-day we were pretty excited for a day where we would finally be able to breathe for a few hours, then we get a phone call and a less active lady's daughter needs a blessing and she didnt know who else to call. Then a wrench was thrown into the mess because it was just the lady and her daughter at home and we cant enter the home unless another man is present. Anyway, it all worked out and we were able to bring somebody with us. Meanwhile our district went to the NASA space center again, since we have new people in our district who have never been. By the time we finished everything it was like 3 and we sped over to NASA and got there just in time to catch the last tram tour with our district. So we finally got to relax our minds for 3 hours until our P-day ended. It was pretty fun.
I'm not sure what we'll do today. I got my haircut, after this we'll go shop, and we'll probably just end up staying at home. I have a few letters to respond to that have been sitting on my desk for a few months. Tony and Jake both wrote me. They are both doing really well. Then a random girl from BYU decided to write me again. My mail flow has pretty much boiled down to an occasional letter from Tony or Jake, then every long once in a while a random person from BYU will write me. I was getting mail pretty frequently for a long time on my mission...so I havent done too bad. But, the letter with pictures and address labels will be grately appreciated. I am excited for that one.
This week we had the correlation meeting with our stake president and our mission president and a couple other stake leaders. That means we had to fill out reports for all the units in our stake (there are 9). That is what took up a lot of our time this week. I am happy that is all done and taken care of.
We went on exchanges this week with some missionaries in our zone...that went well. While I was there I got to do a baptismal interview for 2 hispanic people who got baptized this weekend. Our zone is doing pretty well so far. We have had 10 baptisms and 10 confirmations in this transfer so far (we just ended week 3). I am excited about that.
In other exciting news, were having a baptism this Saturday! Anthony, the 10 year old kid, is going to get baptized. I was really sad that his whole family didnt come to church with them this Sunday. Surprisingly one of the biggest obstacles that I have come across that is the hardest for people to overcome is pure laziness. This family really has desires to support their son and to come to church, but every Sunday morning they just feel tired and it is easier to stay in bed. It takes a 10 year old kid without any family support to be the strong one to get up and come to church. He is doing really well though. We got him to a family home evening last week with one of the kids family who he has made friends with at church. He loved it and begged us to let him go to another one of those. We also get him to cub scouts every Tuesday, then to church every Sunday. It is amazing how much cub scouts can do for a boy like this. Involving him in something like that and teaching him skills that his parents dont teach him, then giving him merit badges to show him he can accomplish things is just huge for him. I hope we can keep this fire he's got and help him stay a strong member. I am excited for this baptism though. For one, because I am happy to see Anthony make this huge choice in the right direction, and for 2, this will be my companion's first baptism. That was one of my hugest goals this transfer. A missionary as good as him who has been out as long as him needs to have a baptism, so I am excited to see that happen.
This next week should be a good one. We dont have any huge projects to get done or anything problems as of right now to work out. Hopefully it wont be as hectic as the past few weeks have been. You go through everything for a reason though. I've learned how to prioritize and how to work under pressure and how to stay calm and just work when you have a mountain of work ahead of you.
Ok, thats about all for this week. Happy Valentines day yesterday! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Received, Mon Feb 8, 2010
Dear Family,
This has been one hectic week. First, we kind of had a wasted P-day. My companion had to go and get a library card, then we had to wait forever for computers to open (we can only use the computers if we can sit side by side so sometimes it takes forever for 2 to open up side by side, then we had to go shopping and my companion had to get everything he needed since he just barely got here. By the time all was said and done it was like 3:30 and our p-day was pretty much over.
On Tuesday we went on exchanges with a companionship who is struggling a little bit. I was with Elder ---. He is a pretty weird guy. There's not really a nice way to say it, but he is a stereotypical geeky person. At home all he did was read sci-fi books and watch sci-fi movies, especially star trek. He just has sooo many weird quirks about him. I kind of like to go on exchanges with these missionaries though, just to get to know them and try to figure out where they are coming from. I definitely respect him a lot though. He has absolutely no social skills and he doesn’t know how to talk to people and it is very awkward every time, but he still has the courage to stay out here. I had made plans, back-up plans, and even back-up plans for our back-up plans, but they alllll fell through. I think God just wanted us to spend time outside talking to people to help Elder Kropp over come his fear of people. So that’s what we did for a lot of the time. Whenever we would walk up to people, he wouldn’t say anything, so I would end up talking to everyone. Well I wasn’t about ready to let us get through the day without him hitting our mission wide goal of talking to 10 people a day. So what we did was I would say hi and get the person to stop and start paying attention to us, then Elder --- would take over and ask if we could come share a message with him. It got him talking and he hit the 10 person goal! That’s probably one of the first times in his mission he’s hit that. We were pretty happy about that.
In the next couple days we had interviews with President Saylin, we had to do our zone meeting, where we train all the missionaries in our zone, and we had a bunch of other problems come up in the zone that we had to take care of. It turns out Mardi Gras is this weekend on Galveston, and it take a week sooner than we expected, so we had to figure out what to do with those missionaries. They all got shipped off the island to spend the weekend in struggling areas. That was probably fun for them.
We have had almost 0 open time this week from the time we wake up til the time we get into bed. I hope this week will be a little more relaxed.
Here is a funny story. One night Elder McFadyen and I were out talking to people in a grocery store parking lot to hit our talk to 10 person goal for the day. Usually when we do this, we split up but we always stay within sight and earshot of each other. While he was talking to one person, I started talking to this one woman. She seemed fairly interested and a lot of her high school friends were mormons, so I talked with her as she walked up to a liquor store which is next to the grocery store. We stopped outside the entrance as I gave her a pass along card (she turned out not to be interested) and as she walked away, the high priest group leader from our ward walked up behind me. He said that he pulled into the parking lot and saw me walking with a woman by myself towards a liquor store so he ran out to save me. It was pretty funny. That’s how rumors start though…from his point of view it looked just like that’s what I was doing. Luckily I was able to clear that up with him.
Now onto the worldly stuff…I am glad the Saints won the superbowl, they were the team I was going for. As I mentioned before, the Saints are my 2nd favorite team and the Colts are 3rd. I’m glad the Saints finally won a superbowl. Zak is smart to start worrying about the next fantasy football season, because I will be there this time to dominate it.
I just realized that tomorrow is my 19th month mark! That sounds so weird for me to say that. In my interview with president saylin I mentioned that I wanted to go back to Spanish for the last part of my mission. I don’t know if I mentioned, but President Saylin is taking a lot of the leaders in the mission and letting them be normal missionaries for the last 2 transfers and he’ll usually put them in dead areas or have them train. I’m hoping I get to do that and be in a Spanish area. He just kind of smiled and laughed when I said that, probably because I always mention that, and he told me to get this area up and running and make it a strong area and we’ll see what happens. So no promises, but I hope that’s what happens.
My companion has never baptized in his mission before, which is weird because he is a really good missionary and he's been out 15 months, so president really wants us to baptize this transfer. We should have a baptism next Saturday. It will probably be Anthony Castellanos, that 10 year old kid who lives in the dirty old motel. It has been awesome to see him change and to break that chain of poverty and just messed up thinking that has been going through his family. If he keeps it up, he’ll not only change his life forever, but a lot of over peoples lives too. His situation is just so fragile though, since he’s a 10 year old kid with no family support (they are all members though and they want him to go to church, but they are just way too lazy to get out of bed). Hopefully that goes through.
We have someone else with a baptismal date for March 14th, which is next transfer but we have high hopes for her too. Then we have Keith Greear, which is the guy that we just found who has the messed up back. He has a lot of potential too. He could potentially get baptized in 3 weeks, but he’d have to come to church every one of those weeks.
Ok, well that’s about it for this week. I hope everyone at home has a good week! I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
This has been one hectic week. First, we kind of had a wasted P-day. My companion had to go and get a library card, then we had to wait forever for computers to open (we can only use the computers if we can sit side by side so sometimes it takes forever for 2 to open up side by side, then we had to go shopping and my companion had to get everything he needed since he just barely got here. By the time all was said and done it was like 3:30 and our p-day was pretty much over.
On Tuesday we went on exchanges with a companionship who is struggling a little bit. I was with Elder ---. He is a pretty weird guy. There's not really a nice way to say it, but he is a stereotypical geeky person. At home all he did was read sci-fi books and watch sci-fi movies, especially star trek. He just has sooo many weird quirks about him. I kind of like to go on exchanges with these missionaries though, just to get to know them and try to figure out where they are coming from. I definitely respect him a lot though. He has absolutely no social skills and he doesn’t know how to talk to people and it is very awkward every time, but he still has the courage to stay out here. I had made plans, back-up plans, and even back-up plans for our back-up plans, but they alllll fell through. I think God just wanted us to spend time outside talking to people to help Elder Kropp over come his fear of people. So that’s what we did for a lot of the time. Whenever we would walk up to people, he wouldn’t say anything, so I would end up talking to everyone. Well I wasn’t about ready to let us get through the day without him hitting our mission wide goal of talking to 10 people a day. So what we did was I would say hi and get the person to stop and start paying attention to us, then Elder --- would take over and ask if we could come share a message with him. It got him talking and he hit the 10 person goal! That’s probably one of the first times in his mission he’s hit that. We were pretty happy about that.
In the next couple days we had interviews with President Saylin, we had to do our zone meeting, where we train all the missionaries in our zone, and we had a bunch of other problems come up in the zone that we had to take care of. It turns out Mardi Gras is this weekend on Galveston, and it take a week sooner than we expected, so we had to figure out what to do with those missionaries. They all got shipped off the island to spend the weekend in struggling areas. That was probably fun for them.
We have had almost 0 open time this week from the time we wake up til the time we get into bed. I hope this week will be a little more relaxed.
Here is a funny story. One night Elder McFadyen and I were out talking to people in a grocery store parking lot to hit our talk to 10 person goal for the day. Usually when we do this, we split up but we always stay within sight and earshot of each other. While he was talking to one person, I started talking to this one woman. She seemed fairly interested and a lot of her high school friends were mormons, so I talked with her as she walked up to a liquor store which is next to the grocery store. We stopped outside the entrance as I gave her a pass along card (she turned out not to be interested) and as she walked away, the high priest group leader from our ward walked up behind me. He said that he pulled into the parking lot and saw me walking with a woman by myself towards a liquor store so he ran out to save me. It was pretty funny. That’s how rumors start though…from his point of view it looked just like that’s what I was doing. Luckily I was able to clear that up with him.
Now onto the worldly stuff…I am glad the Saints won the superbowl, they were the team I was going for. As I mentioned before, the Saints are my 2nd favorite team and the Colts are 3rd. I’m glad the Saints finally won a superbowl. Zak is smart to start worrying about the next fantasy football season, because I will be there this time to dominate it.
I just realized that tomorrow is my 19th month mark! That sounds so weird for me to say that. In my interview with president saylin I mentioned that I wanted to go back to Spanish for the last part of my mission. I don’t know if I mentioned, but President Saylin is taking a lot of the leaders in the mission and letting them be normal missionaries for the last 2 transfers and he’ll usually put them in dead areas or have them train. I’m hoping I get to do that and be in a Spanish area. He just kind of smiled and laughed when I said that, probably because I always mention that, and he told me to get this area up and running and make it a strong area and we’ll see what happens. So no promises, but I hope that’s what happens.
My companion has never baptized in his mission before, which is weird because he is a really good missionary and he's been out 15 months, so president really wants us to baptize this transfer. We should have a baptism next Saturday. It will probably be Anthony Castellanos, that 10 year old kid who lives in the dirty old motel. It has been awesome to see him change and to break that chain of poverty and just messed up thinking that has been going through his family. If he keeps it up, he’ll not only change his life forever, but a lot of over peoples lives too. His situation is just so fragile though, since he’s a 10 year old kid with no family support (they are all members though and they want him to go to church, but they are just way too lazy to get out of bed). Hopefully that goes through.
We have someone else with a baptismal date for March 14th, which is next transfer but we have high hopes for her too. Then we have Keith Greear, which is the guy that we just found who has the messed up back. He has a lot of potential too. He could potentially get baptized in 3 weeks, but he’d have to come to church every one of those weeks.
Ok, well that’s about it for this week. I hope everyone at home has a good week! I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Received, Mon Feb 1, 2010
Dear Family,
This has been one crazy week. I feel like I’ve been on the phone from Wednesday til today. We haven’t had a chance to do full morning studies since Wednesday either. So, here is the news. My new companion is Elder McFadyen. He is from Roseville, California. Hes been out for about 15 months and he is actually a Chinese speaking missionary. He became a zone leader a transfer or 2 ago. I think he is definitely going to be one of my favorite companions. There are some people that you just seem to click with and you're always on the same page about missionaries and there are other missionaries where you wonder where the heck they are coming from. Elder McFadyen fits into the first category and as much as I liked Elder Roberts, he definitely had his own idea about how missionary work should be done. Elder McFadyen and I will hopefully be able to correct a lot of things that have gone on here in the past and get this area up and running.
In the few days that we’ve been together we have already seen some pretty amazing things happen. One of the coolest things is that we found a new investigator and gave him a baptismal date. Here is the story:
So a week or 2 ago the Spanish Elders gave us a referral for a guy named Keith Greear. Elder Roberts and I set up an appointment, but when we got there he wasn’t there because apparently his grandson fell down and broke his arm. So on Friday last week Elder McFadyen and I decided to stop by and see if we could at least set up another appointment. Well when we stopped by he miraculously let us in. He walks around with 2 canes because he has some back problems from when he broke his back in 8 places from falling out of a massive tree. Then some time after that he got hit by a car while he was riding on his motorcycle and messed it up again. He was also standing by a tank of napalm that exploded when he was on a boat and somehow managed to survive. So anyway, he has a pretty crazy story. We told him he was probably being kept alive for a reason. He strongly agreed with that and started talking about how ever since he has been bedridden he has had a hunger to learn about God, so he has read “all the bibles, even the Book of the Mormon.” He got his hands on all sorts of crazy religion books. Well we taught him about the restoration and he actually understood everything really well and definitely felt the spirit and accepted a baptismal date. We taught him for a 2nd time yesterday and taught him about the Book of Mormon, or Book of the Mormon as he calls it, and he thought that was fascinating. He just so happened to be studying all about the American Indians before we got there. He was pretty excited to research about these Lamanite people.
We have also found an unusually large amount of people who have been receptive to us this week. On Sunday our whole district also fasted so that we could all find more people to teach. This has been a pretty tough area for a long time, so hopefully this will help.
On Thursday, after our transfer meeting on Wednesday, we had our big long meeting down in Sugar Land, but this time it was a mission wide leadership meeting rather than a meeting just for the Zone Leaders. All the zone leaders did have to get there an hour early and stay a few hours after though. I think we got out of our meeting at like 6 and finally got back to our area at 7:45, and we left at like 7 in the morning. For a big part of the meeting President talked a lot about obedience and how after we had a big push for obedience when he first got here, people started to get a little lax and that we need to make another push. So a LOT of little rules were clarified and he strongly encouraged us to follow them. I am definitely not a fan of a whole bunch of little rules for everything, but unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who don’t have common sense and they think that if there's no specific rule against a specific action, it is ok. I prefer to just be a missionary and do what a could missionary would do and use common sense to know what we should be doing, but like I said, unfortunately we cant do that. So we are fixing a lot of little things that haven’t been done correctly here in League City. Oh that reminds me of a story. So one of the rules is that we are not supposed to have dinner appointments on P-days because we are supposed to be out and proselyting when our P-day ends at 6:00pm. Well there is this one lady in our ward. She is a very good person and does a lot of good for people. So, she has told the missionaries that the only possible day that she can have the missionaries over for dinner is on Mondays. We had to go try to tactfully correct this problem, so we went up to her and told her about this “new rule” and told her we cant do that anymore, but we said that we would be willing to end our P-day an hour early and go over to eat at 5 instead of 6. She started to get all emotional and said that there was no way her husband could get home in time and all this other stuff. We told her we would be willing to do breakfast lunch or dinner any day of the week, or come over after church or any time they were open, but she said that it would never work, then she stormed down the end of the hallway crying, then stormed back past us and we told her that we would try to see if we could work something out, but she just screamed, “NO, I don’t want to be the cause of your disobedience.” And stormed out of the church. I was half expecting something like that to happen just because that is kind of how this lady is, but my companion was totally blown away. That was his welcome to League City moment.
We also had a really good lesson with a lady named Chrissy Ross. Her husband is a member and they have an 8 year old daughter who they want to have be baptized on March 14, when the husband’s mother will be in town so she can see the baptism. Chrissy wants to be baptized too. We haven’t been able to get in contact with her for a long time, so we haven’t taught her much at all, but we finally got in and brought a member with us and taught her the Word of Wisdom, because she smokes. Shes been smoking for like 24 years. It was a pretty powerful lesson though and she is determined to stop so she can get baptized.
Oh yeah, I spoke in sacrament meeting yesterday. I don’t mind speaking in sacrament meeting, especially on my mission, but this time the topic was not the greatest. The theme for the sacrament meeting was the standard works, so the 2nd counselor called me and asked me to speak on “which of the standard works do the missionaries use when they teach.” Well the answer is all of them. There's not a whole lot to talk about that. So I answered that question at the beginning of the talk and kind of took my own route and talked about other things that were more interesting. It went pretty good, but I only had like 20 minutes to prepare it because we have had absolutely no free time.
Well that’s about all for this week. We still have a big huge To Do list, so its going to be another busy week. Busy is good though. I hope you all have a good week and good luck at the doctor’s office today. I love you all!
Love,
Chase
This has been one crazy week. I feel like I’ve been on the phone from Wednesday til today. We haven’t had a chance to do full morning studies since Wednesday either. So, here is the news. My new companion is Elder McFadyen. He is from Roseville, California. Hes been out for about 15 months and he is actually a Chinese speaking missionary. He became a zone leader a transfer or 2 ago. I think he is definitely going to be one of my favorite companions. There are some people that you just seem to click with and you're always on the same page about missionaries and there are other missionaries where you wonder where the heck they are coming from. Elder McFadyen fits into the first category and as much as I liked Elder Roberts, he definitely had his own idea about how missionary work should be done. Elder McFadyen and I will hopefully be able to correct a lot of things that have gone on here in the past and get this area up and running.
In the few days that we’ve been together we have already seen some pretty amazing things happen. One of the coolest things is that we found a new investigator and gave him a baptismal date. Here is the story:
So a week or 2 ago the Spanish Elders gave us a referral for a guy named Keith Greear. Elder Roberts and I set up an appointment, but when we got there he wasn’t there because apparently his grandson fell down and broke his arm. So on Friday last week Elder McFadyen and I decided to stop by and see if we could at least set up another appointment. Well when we stopped by he miraculously let us in. He walks around with 2 canes because he has some back problems from when he broke his back in 8 places from falling out of a massive tree. Then some time after that he got hit by a car while he was riding on his motorcycle and messed it up again. He was also standing by a tank of napalm that exploded when he was on a boat and somehow managed to survive. So anyway, he has a pretty crazy story. We told him he was probably being kept alive for a reason. He strongly agreed with that and started talking about how ever since he has been bedridden he has had a hunger to learn about God, so he has read “all the bibles, even the Book of the Mormon.” He got his hands on all sorts of crazy religion books. Well we taught him about the restoration and he actually understood everything really well and definitely felt the spirit and accepted a baptismal date. We taught him for a 2nd time yesterday and taught him about the Book of Mormon, or Book of the Mormon as he calls it, and he thought that was fascinating. He just so happened to be studying all about the American Indians before we got there. He was pretty excited to research about these Lamanite people.
We have also found an unusually large amount of people who have been receptive to us this week. On Sunday our whole district also fasted so that we could all find more people to teach. This has been a pretty tough area for a long time, so hopefully this will help.
On Thursday, after our transfer meeting on Wednesday, we had our big long meeting down in Sugar Land, but this time it was a mission wide leadership meeting rather than a meeting just for the Zone Leaders. All the zone leaders did have to get there an hour early and stay a few hours after though. I think we got out of our meeting at like 6 and finally got back to our area at 7:45, and we left at like 7 in the morning. For a big part of the meeting President talked a lot about obedience and how after we had a big push for obedience when he first got here, people started to get a little lax and that we need to make another push. So a LOT of little rules were clarified and he strongly encouraged us to follow them. I am definitely not a fan of a whole bunch of little rules for everything, but unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who don’t have common sense and they think that if there's no specific rule against a specific action, it is ok. I prefer to just be a missionary and do what a could missionary would do and use common sense to know what we should be doing, but like I said, unfortunately we cant do that. So we are fixing a lot of little things that haven’t been done correctly here in League City. Oh that reminds me of a story. So one of the rules is that we are not supposed to have dinner appointments on P-days because we are supposed to be out and proselyting when our P-day ends at 6:00pm. Well there is this one lady in our ward. She is a very good person and does a lot of good for people. So, she has told the missionaries that the only possible day that she can have the missionaries over for dinner is on Mondays. We had to go try to tactfully correct this problem, so we went up to her and told her about this “new rule” and told her we cant do that anymore, but we said that we would be willing to end our P-day an hour early and go over to eat at 5 instead of 6. She started to get all emotional and said that there was no way her husband could get home in time and all this other stuff. We told her we would be willing to do breakfast lunch or dinner any day of the week, or come over after church or any time they were open, but she said that it would never work, then she stormed down the end of the hallway crying, then stormed back past us and we told her that we would try to see if we could work something out, but she just screamed, “NO, I don’t want to be the cause of your disobedience.” And stormed out of the church. I was half expecting something like that to happen just because that is kind of how this lady is, but my companion was totally blown away. That was his welcome to League City moment.
We also had a really good lesson with a lady named Chrissy Ross. Her husband is a member and they have an 8 year old daughter who they want to have be baptized on March 14, when the husband’s mother will be in town so she can see the baptism. Chrissy wants to be baptized too. We haven’t been able to get in contact with her for a long time, so we haven’t taught her much at all, but we finally got in and brought a member with us and taught her the Word of Wisdom, because she smokes. Shes been smoking for like 24 years. It was a pretty powerful lesson though and she is determined to stop so she can get baptized.
Oh yeah, I spoke in sacrament meeting yesterday. I don’t mind speaking in sacrament meeting, especially on my mission, but this time the topic was not the greatest. The theme for the sacrament meeting was the standard works, so the 2nd counselor called me and asked me to speak on “which of the standard works do the missionaries use when they teach.” Well the answer is all of them. There's not a whole lot to talk about that. So I answered that question at the beginning of the talk and kind of took my own route and talked about other things that were more interesting. It went pretty good, but I only had like 20 minutes to prepare it because we have had absolutely no free time.
Well that’s about all for this week. We still have a big huge To Do list, so its going to be another busy week. Busy is good though. I hope you all have a good week and good luck at the doctor’s office today. I love you all!
Love,
Chase
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