This week has been another pretty good week.
We had 3 investigators at church again. Erica came again, and she brought her sister, Monique, her son, and Monique brought her two kids. The kids loved primary.
The thing that I've seen that most people like about our church is the families. Everyone always says that love seeing lots of children at church and they love it when they scream. At other churches they don't allow parents to bring their children and they don't care that much about family. Erica said she loved watching the families because when a kid would start screaming she would see the husband look at her wife and then roll his eyes and realize it was his turn to take the kid out to the foyer and he'd get up and do it. She loved how the husband and wife worked together and everything. I thought that was neat. The only problem with her is that she doesn't believe there is one true church. She believes that each person has a church that works for them and helps them be faithful to return to God again. She told us she wants to be a latter day saint and that she believes this is the church for her. We think that the reason why she has this belief is because she cares about her family a lot and her parents are pretty hardcore catholics and they're really good people. She can't accept the fact that her parents could be wrong. We're going to teach the Restoration lesson again and really focus on authority. We'll see how that goes.
We gave a baptismal date to Kim! She's the one who is the recent convert's daughter. Her scheduled baptismal date is November 29th. Hopefully everything goes smoothly until then. Most of her friends are pretty bad influences and shes trying to escape her old life. She used to be into drugs and all that stuff. She has her tongue and lip pierced...shes one of those punk rocker girls. She has changed a ton though. She went out to Sugar Land this weekend to visit her friend and her friends Mom and she brought Books of Mormon for them and she's excited to tell them about the church. We're still teaching Angie, who is the one who moved in with the another recent convert named Max. We have only taught her twice so far. Max is probably one of the biggest weirdo's I've ever met. He is definitely a little crazy. He use to be a drug dealer and he believes he saw a vision and saw a bunch of angels and stuff. He says he had almost the same experience as Joseph Smith. He had this experience while he was watching all 3 Lord of the Rings extended versions. He was clearly not sober and his mind was going crazy. He refers EVERYTHING we teach him to the Lord of the Rings or wrestling. He has all these crazy weird analogies. He says wrestling (like WWF wrestling you watch on TV) is all symbolic of Bible stories and stuff. Right now his plan is to become a favorite wrestler so he can share the gospel with everyone with his mask on, so nobody will know who he is. He's if he spreads the gospel to everyone without a mask then the people back in Houston will shoot him if they ever see him. We get all sorts of crazy stories when we go over there.
Oh yeah...so last week or whenever that was I didn't even realize the election was happening. I re-sent in my absentee ballot the day before the election thinking the election would be held in a few weeks. Apparently Obama is president now. Everyone here thinks the 2nd coming is near now. Everyone thinks he's a terrorist and an America hater. They're all angry that he didn't salute the flag or something. I'm a little skeptical just because he has hardly any experience. I don't think someone with so little experience is qualified to lead the nation. We'll see though. I'm not too afraid of him doing anything crazy because we aren't living in a monarchy or anything. That's why we have checks and balances. I'm not at all surprised he got elected though...this whole island pretty much voted for him. A lot of black people voted for the first time so they could have a black person be president, so I'm sure that happened all throughout the south. They're all pretty happy about it around here though. We're already starting to hear comments from black people like, "Obama is president, I can do whatever I want." It's kind of funny.
Me and Elder Pedersen have picked up a little hobby over the last couple of weeks. As we ride down the sea wall every night we ride past a lot of the same hobo's, so we decided to start naming them. We named the one who is always shoeless Shoeless Joe Jackson. He is always sitting on a bench meditating. We named the scruffiest, most hobo-like one Hobo Jones. The coolest one is named Dexter. Whenever we ride past him he always yells, I LOVE LATTER DAY SAINTS!! and stuff like that. We named him Dexter because he sounds like a really educated person when he speaks, but he's definitely a hobo. Then one day we actually saw him riding around on a segway. We have NO idea how he got a hold of one, but we haven't seen him since then. He must have escaped with it. I'm sure he'll be back.
I finished putting all the pictures on a flashdrive and put captions on them all, so I'm going to send that home today. You should be able to open it on mom's computer and open it with the Windows Picture viewer or whatever its called...I don't know. Its the picture viewing program that comes with vista...I wrote the captions on there, so if you open it with that you should be able to see them. You can figure it out.
This last week I thought that I should start taking pictures of some of the crazy painted houses here, because I know Mom would be fascinated by them. Almost nobody paints their house a normal color. The most common color is lime green. Some houses paint each window or each area a different random bright color, its pretty funny to see. I haven't taken any pictures yet, but I should before I leave.
I got those two packages with the pictures and stuff in it. I thought it was hilarious. I took that picture of CJ and STC and showed it to the Browns (the old people we live with) and just said, These are my two brothers! He (brother brown) didn't believe they were my brothers and he asked who these two weirdo's were. I thought it was hilarious. After messing around with him some more I finally told him it was just for Halloween.
I am shocked to hear Dad beat me this week on fantasy football. I'm also honestly surprised that I'm doing so good when the Chargers are doing so bad. Oh yeah, so this week is the BYU Utah game. Elder Pedersen asked president if we could watch the 4th quarter of the game if we go visit a less active member who is watching the game. President said no, it was worth a try. He'll be calling in 1-800-555-TELL though to get the scores I'm sure. But tell me how that one goes.
OK I'm sure I've already asked this question before, but if I need to buy something should I use my debit card or credit card??Alright well I've got to go now! There are only two weeks left in this transfer, its going by so fast! Alright well I'll talk to you all later!
Love,
Chase
P.S.
I just sent me e-mail and when it closed I saw mom's question about how I got to Texas City. The sister missionaries come and pick us up every day at about 11 and we drive to Texas city to e-mail, shop, and go bowling or do whatever we planned. Ok, great stories this week. The sandwich story made me laugh out loud. And I want to hear how CJ's MLS game went. I've always wondered if those would be fun. Ok bye!Love,Chase
Monday, November 17, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Received Mon, Nov 10, 2008
Happy Birthday Christopher! I hope you went to tucano's...thats what I would have done if it was my birthday. Laser eye surgery sounds like a pretty good present. I realized last week that I had left my contacts in for like 6 or 7 weeks, so I took them out and went a day or two without contacts. Not having to hassle with them would be pretty nice.
This week has actually been pretty tough. Two of our really good investigators told us they don't want us to visit them anymore. They were perfect investigators and were pretty sure the anti-mormons must have given them a couple visits. They definitely would have been baptized. That was tough. Then our other few investigators that were good also dropped us. We also found out a lot of the recent converts are having problems. Its pretty tough to know what to do sometimes. But we just keep working and things fall into place and we find more people. We had 3 investigators come to church with us yesterday, that was awesome. One of them is named Erica. She's the one who pulled up to us in her car on Halloween to give us a bag of candy and told us she loves latter day saints. She decided she wants to change her life for the better and she is seeking for the truth. We've been having really good visits with her and she had a really good experience at church. I'm excited to see how she progresses.
Another one is named Kim and she's a recent convert's daughter. She just moved back in with him and she's kind of in the same boat as Erica. She wants to change for the better. Her dad's name is Abraham and he is probably the most amazing recent convert I've ever seen. He shares the gospel with everyone and he absolutely loves the scriptures and the church. He was pentecostal before and his dad was a big time preacher in LA, so it was a huge change for him to join the church. He got pretty much disowned by his family. His daughter was raised pentecostal too and apparently they bring in people to talk specifically about Mormons and about all this anti stuff, so we're helping her resolve doubts.
The last one is named Angie, she is a recent convert's girlfriend. The problem is that they're living together. The recent convert, named Max, knows how important the church is and he took her to church with him. He's been talking to her about it and she likes it all so far. We're just being careful that she's not just trying to be baptized so she can be with Max. Max is kind of a weird guy though...he talks about how he saw angels before or something. Its some long story about how he was watching the extended versions of all the lord of the rings movies in a row and he started having visions or something. So those are the 3 that we had come to church. We're also teaching Germán, a Hispanic guy. He's been getting taught for a while and we had him read 2 Nephi 31 and talked about baptism. We invited him to pray to find out whether he needs to be baptized. He was like, the decision to be baptized isn't the hard part, enduring to the end is. He knows he needs to be baptized but he wants to keep reading the Book of Mormon and praying to find out if its true. He said he's about 70% sure its true right now. He used to be a missionary for his church in Guatemala so he's making a pretty big step to convert too. He's also living with his girlfriend, but I think he'll be willing to separate once he knows for sure the Book of Mormon is true.
One time during this week we had two reaaaally old men threaten me and Elder Pedersen. We were riding down the street and saw two old men on the street corner slowly making their way to the car, so we said hi to them. One of them turned slowly to us and started shaking his finger at us and said "We're going to beat the poop out of you" (censored of course). It was so random and it made us both laugh. I said, "Uh oh, we better get out of here!" It was almost as if a 6 year old boy was threatening us. Afterwards Elder Pedersen said he should have furiously thrown down his bike and said, "BRING IT OLD MAN!" That would have been pretty funny.
We also tried to contact this one referral, then some super old lady answered the door. I told her we were missionaries and we were here to give her the book she ordered. She said she couldn't hear so I said it louder. She said again shes hard of hearing and stepped closer, so then I just yelled it out. She could finally hear me but it was pretty hard to have a conversation when I was literally yelling at the lady. It was also hard not to laugh because it was so unnatural to be standing there yelling at some old lady. We could barely keep a straight face until she shut the door and we laughed for a good 10 minutes after that. I was kind of glad she didn't want us to teach her because I would have had a sore throat by the end of every lesson.
I got the package with the camera cord, pictures, stamps, ect. Thanks a lot. Yes that is my camera cord and I'm going to try to put all the pictures on it today. The Brown's have a laptop that I can use to put captions on the pictures. Hopefully it'll work the same way on the computers at home. The laptop has windows vista so if you look at the pictures on Mom's computer with the same program then it should work fine, I'm sure you can figure it out.
Alright I've got to go now before they try to kick me off the computers. They only guarantee 30 min on the computers here. We e-mail at a library in Texas City because the one in Galveston is flooded. I love hearing about everyone every week. I'll talk to everyone next week!!
Love,
Chase
This week has actually been pretty tough. Two of our really good investigators told us they don't want us to visit them anymore. They were perfect investigators and were pretty sure the anti-mormons must have given them a couple visits. They definitely would have been baptized. That was tough. Then our other few investigators that were good also dropped us. We also found out a lot of the recent converts are having problems. Its pretty tough to know what to do sometimes. But we just keep working and things fall into place and we find more people. We had 3 investigators come to church with us yesterday, that was awesome. One of them is named Erica. She's the one who pulled up to us in her car on Halloween to give us a bag of candy and told us she loves latter day saints. She decided she wants to change her life for the better and she is seeking for the truth. We've been having really good visits with her and she had a really good experience at church. I'm excited to see how she progresses.
Another one is named Kim and she's a recent convert's daughter. She just moved back in with him and she's kind of in the same boat as Erica. She wants to change for the better. Her dad's name is Abraham and he is probably the most amazing recent convert I've ever seen. He shares the gospel with everyone and he absolutely loves the scriptures and the church. He was pentecostal before and his dad was a big time preacher in LA, so it was a huge change for him to join the church. He got pretty much disowned by his family. His daughter was raised pentecostal too and apparently they bring in people to talk specifically about Mormons and about all this anti stuff, so we're helping her resolve doubts.
The last one is named Angie, she is a recent convert's girlfriend. The problem is that they're living together. The recent convert, named Max, knows how important the church is and he took her to church with him. He's been talking to her about it and she likes it all so far. We're just being careful that she's not just trying to be baptized so she can be with Max. Max is kind of a weird guy though...he talks about how he saw angels before or something. Its some long story about how he was watching the extended versions of all the lord of the rings movies in a row and he started having visions or something. So those are the 3 that we had come to church. We're also teaching Germán, a Hispanic guy. He's been getting taught for a while and we had him read 2 Nephi 31 and talked about baptism. We invited him to pray to find out whether he needs to be baptized. He was like, the decision to be baptized isn't the hard part, enduring to the end is. He knows he needs to be baptized but he wants to keep reading the Book of Mormon and praying to find out if its true. He said he's about 70% sure its true right now. He used to be a missionary for his church in Guatemala so he's making a pretty big step to convert too. He's also living with his girlfriend, but I think he'll be willing to separate once he knows for sure the Book of Mormon is true.
One time during this week we had two reaaaally old men threaten me and Elder Pedersen. We were riding down the street and saw two old men on the street corner slowly making their way to the car, so we said hi to them. One of them turned slowly to us and started shaking his finger at us and said "We're going to beat the poop out of you" (censored of course). It was so random and it made us both laugh. I said, "Uh oh, we better get out of here!" It was almost as if a 6 year old boy was threatening us. Afterwards Elder Pedersen said he should have furiously thrown down his bike and said, "BRING IT OLD MAN!" That would have been pretty funny.
We also tried to contact this one referral, then some super old lady answered the door. I told her we were missionaries and we were here to give her the book she ordered. She said she couldn't hear so I said it louder. She said again shes hard of hearing and stepped closer, so then I just yelled it out. She could finally hear me but it was pretty hard to have a conversation when I was literally yelling at the lady. It was also hard not to laugh because it was so unnatural to be standing there yelling at some old lady. We could barely keep a straight face until she shut the door and we laughed for a good 10 minutes after that. I was kind of glad she didn't want us to teach her because I would have had a sore throat by the end of every lesson.
I got the package with the camera cord, pictures, stamps, ect. Thanks a lot. Yes that is my camera cord and I'm going to try to put all the pictures on it today. The Brown's have a laptop that I can use to put captions on the pictures. Hopefully it'll work the same way on the computers at home. The laptop has windows vista so if you look at the pictures on Mom's computer with the same program then it should work fine, I'm sure you can figure it out.
Alright I've got to go now before they try to kick me off the computers. They only guarantee 30 min on the computers here. We e-mail at a library in Texas City because the one in Galveston is flooded. I love hearing about everyone every week. I'll talk to everyone next week!!
Love,
Chase
Monday, November 3, 2008
Received Mon Nov 3, 2008
This week as been a pretty crazy week. But I guess that's not really unusual for me.
Hmm...where should I start. Lets see...we have been having a really hard time with our bikes. There are nails and thorns all over Galveston right now, so we have been getting flat tires all the time. Tuesday Elder Pedersen had two holes in his tires so we patched that up.
Then on Tuesday evening we planning an awesome day with backup plans and everything. We were pretty excited about it. Then at like 10:32, Elder Brown (the senior missionary were living with) knocked on our door and told us that we needed to do service tomorrow at the church and help clean out this shed to store all the tools or something. We were already in bed and everything, but we had to throw out our plans and just do it. He said it was probably a two hour job. Nope, we didn't finish until like 4pm. Then we had to go to a member's house and help them replace a huge hole in their ceiling. So we didn't get to go out that day.
Then the next day Elder Pedersen had a leadership meeting out in Sugar Land. The zone leaders came and picked us up and drove to their apartment in a place called Friendswood. There all the district leaders carpooled to Sugar Land for the meeting. The zone leaders gave me the key to their apartment and said I was going to work their area with a brand new missionary who had just come in like a week before. I knew about these plans like a day or two in advance so it wasn't a huge surprise. So we did our studies there and I took the new missionary out and we knocked doors. This was a tough area...everyone was either rich and thought they had everything already or they were old and said they were set in their ways. It was really fun though. I got to try out all different kinds of door approaches and find out what works. It was also kind of fun to be the senior companion for the day. I really learned a lot from having to being the senior comp. That took pretty much the whole day and by the time we got back to our apartment it was too late to go out and work in our own area.
Then Friday morning morning we woke up, studied, and went to get our bikes to go out but I saw my tire was totally flat and had a huge nail sticking in it along with like 4 thorns. We used all of our patches to fix it. So we go back out again to get ready to go and I see my front tire is totally flat too. We had no more patches and the only Walmart is like 65 blocks away. We were pretty much stranded. We had a district meeting to go to, and luckily the sisters picked us up in our car and took us there.
President Allred was there to do interviews and he heard about our problems and he just gave me some money and told one of the assistants to take me to wal-mart to buy more patches and a new intertube. So to fast forward things, we did that patched it all up and it was dark so we couldn't go out for a 3rd day in a row. We had a bunch more things happen and more flat tire problems, but its all long and boring stories that wont be very interesting to tell, but our bikes are all fine now.
I've got one more bike story. So finally that next day we got to go out again and I was determined to talk to a ton of people and make up for our missing 3 days. We got on our bikes and started riding along Seawall to contact a referral that was 38 blocks away. I was riding as hard as I possibly could, but I felt like my bike was made out of lead weights. I wasn't going nearly as fast as I should have been. I just kept riding harder and harder until we finally got there. I was sweating hard and this was the first time I was actually really tired from riding my bike in Texas. I got off my bike and noticed something weird about my back tire. I tried to spin it and it barely moved. When I had put on my back tire, somehow my brakes got tightened and they were squeezing against my tire the whole time. So I rode 38 blocks with my brakes on! My thighs were so tired I could barely walk up the stairs to the house. My bike felt really nice for the rest of the day though...pedaling is much easier when you aren't riding around with your brakes on.
Aside from those 3 off days we did amazing this week. We've been praying hard to find people because we have almost nobody to teach and we have been working hard. Because of that we have been so blessed. We have literally had people yell out to us and call us over and tell us that they use to get taught by the missionaries, then lost contact and they had been wanting to get involved with the church again. That happened with like 3-4 people. We were just always in the right place at the right time. We found tons of people every day. By the end of the week we had found 15 new investigators. When we called in to report our numbers they told us we found the most investigators in the whole mission! We didn't even get to work for 3 of those days. It has been really awesome. I'm really excited for these next couple weeks to follow up with these people and teach the people who are really sincere about learning more. I don't know if I told you but only 2 people have been baptized in our area in this past year. We really want to change that. So that's pretty much how my week went!
It sounds like everything's going well at home. I definitely miss having that In N Out truck for Halloween parties. We came in early on Halloween for obvious reasons. Strangely, there were barely any trick-or-treaters around here this year. I guess its because so many houses were destroyed that people assumed it wouldn't work out too well. Its also not exactly the best place to be letting your kids walk around at night time. The crime is pretty bad in Galveston...its a pretty shady place, especially now with looters around.
No I did not remember the time change. Our stupid cell phones didn't automatically change the time. We have Sprint phones...they're stupid. We did remember before we left the apartment though. We just went back to sleep for an hour. There were 3-4 people who showed up at church an hour early though, that was pretty funny.
Moms Questions:Things are going great with my companion. We both want to bring success to this area and were working hard. Were also having a lot of fun, which I've found is really important if you want to be a good, happy missionary.
We don't regularly do service anymore, but it seems like about once a week they tell us they need us to do service for the day. We don't see very many yellow shirters anymore. Pres Allred is only sending 4 missionaries a day now. We've helped over 600 houses though and I figured that I've personally helped out 50-60 houses. We definitely got pretty good exposure.
We rarely get dinner appointments. MAYBE one a week. Since eating that nasty Indian food that made me throw up 5 times we have had 2 dinner appointments. And the senior missionaries never make food for us. I think they're kind of poor so I never ask them for anything. Plus they eat old people food filled with fiber and all kinds of other nasty stuff, so I'm kind of glad they don't make us anything.
No we haven't tracted in our own apartment complex. We have been visiting people who we have done service for. This is one of our most useful finding tools. Its pretty hard to reject us when our church spent a day doing service for them. By the way...we heard that tree chopping companies are charging like $1000 dollars to take out a good sized tree from yards and they're charging several thousand to gut out houses. We do that stuff all day long.
We don't really have plans for P-day this week. Last week we went bowling. I am planning on sending home some pictures today though. I just put all the pictures on a CD this time...it was the easiest and probably cheapest thing to do. I still have all those pictures on my camera so if you have questions about the pictures just ask me and I'll let you know. In the future I want to put the pictures on the flash drive with the Brown's laptop and I can actually write in captions to the pictures on the computer. I couldn't this time because the CD is not a re-writable CD, its a CD-R not a CD-RW, so you cant change anything on it once its been made. That seemed like a really good idea to me.
Church was good. We have only been having sacrament meeting for the English ward and the Spanish branch. The rest of the church is filled with supplies and stuff so they cant have class. Next week we'll have normal church. I'll tell you our crazy Sunday schedule for church next week.
I'm going to be excited to get that stuff you sent Mom...that's all exactly what I've been needing. And yeah it takes a week and sometimes a little more to get mail here. It gets sent to the mission office then they send it out here with whoever happens to be coming out here within the next week. Sometimes nobody comes out for a while though, so it takes a while. I do love the things you send though. Elder Pedersen saw our fantasy football stuff and he said he wants to do that when he gets back from his mission. He's heard of it before but nobody has ever explained to him what it is.
Jake got his mission call...that's awesome!! I'm glad to hear Jeff is doing well still too. Ive been pretty worried about that situation.Ok, this was a pretty packed e-mail...next week I'll have to include some more stories and random things that have happened to us during the week.
I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Hmm...where should I start. Lets see...we have been having a really hard time with our bikes. There are nails and thorns all over Galveston right now, so we have been getting flat tires all the time. Tuesday Elder Pedersen had two holes in his tires so we patched that up.
Then on Tuesday evening we planning an awesome day with backup plans and everything. We were pretty excited about it. Then at like 10:32, Elder Brown (the senior missionary were living with) knocked on our door and told us that we needed to do service tomorrow at the church and help clean out this shed to store all the tools or something. We were already in bed and everything, but we had to throw out our plans and just do it. He said it was probably a two hour job. Nope, we didn't finish until like 4pm. Then we had to go to a member's house and help them replace a huge hole in their ceiling. So we didn't get to go out that day.
Then the next day Elder Pedersen had a leadership meeting out in Sugar Land. The zone leaders came and picked us up and drove to their apartment in a place called Friendswood. There all the district leaders carpooled to Sugar Land for the meeting. The zone leaders gave me the key to their apartment and said I was going to work their area with a brand new missionary who had just come in like a week before. I knew about these plans like a day or two in advance so it wasn't a huge surprise. So we did our studies there and I took the new missionary out and we knocked doors. This was a tough area...everyone was either rich and thought they had everything already or they were old and said they were set in their ways. It was really fun though. I got to try out all different kinds of door approaches and find out what works. It was also kind of fun to be the senior companion for the day. I really learned a lot from having to being the senior comp. That took pretty much the whole day and by the time we got back to our apartment it was too late to go out and work in our own area.
Then Friday morning morning we woke up, studied, and went to get our bikes to go out but I saw my tire was totally flat and had a huge nail sticking in it along with like 4 thorns. We used all of our patches to fix it. So we go back out again to get ready to go and I see my front tire is totally flat too. We had no more patches and the only Walmart is like 65 blocks away. We were pretty much stranded. We had a district meeting to go to, and luckily the sisters picked us up in our car and took us there.
President Allred was there to do interviews and he heard about our problems and he just gave me some money and told one of the assistants to take me to wal-mart to buy more patches and a new intertube. So to fast forward things, we did that patched it all up and it was dark so we couldn't go out for a 3rd day in a row. We had a bunch more things happen and more flat tire problems, but its all long and boring stories that wont be very interesting to tell, but our bikes are all fine now.
I've got one more bike story. So finally that next day we got to go out again and I was determined to talk to a ton of people and make up for our missing 3 days. We got on our bikes and started riding along Seawall to contact a referral that was 38 blocks away. I was riding as hard as I possibly could, but I felt like my bike was made out of lead weights. I wasn't going nearly as fast as I should have been. I just kept riding harder and harder until we finally got there. I was sweating hard and this was the first time I was actually really tired from riding my bike in Texas. I got off my bike and noticed something weird about my back tire. I tried to spin it and it barely moved. When I had put on my back tire, somehow my brakes got tightened and they were squeezing against my tire the whole time. So I rode 38 blocks with my brakes on! My thighs were so tired I could barely walk up the stairs to the house. My bike felt really nice for the rest of the day though...pedaling is much easier when you aren't riding around with your brakes on.
Aside from those 3 off days we did amazing this week. We've been praying hard to find people because we have almost nobody to teach and we have been working hard. Because of that we have been so blessed. We have literally had people yell out to us and call us over and tell us that they use to get taught by the missionaries, then lost contact and they had been wanting to get involved with the church again. That happened with like 3-4 people. We were just always in the right place at the right time. We found tons of people every day. By the end of the week we had found 15 new investigators. When we called in to report our numbers they told us we found the most investigators in the whole mission! We didn't even get to work for 3 of those days. It has been really awesome. I'm really excited for these next couple weeks to follow up with these people and teach the people who are really sincere about learning more. I don't know if I told you but only 2 people have been baptized in our area in this past year. We really want to change that. So that's pretty much how my week went!
It sounds like everything's going well at home. I definitely miss having that In N Out truck for Halloween parties. We came in early on Halloween for obvious reasons. Strangely, there were barely any trick-or-treaters around here this year. I guess its because so many houses were destroyed that people assumed it wouldn't work out too well. Its also not exactly the best place to be letting your kids walk around at night time. The crime is pretty bad in Galveston...its a pretty shady place, especially now with looters around.
No I did not remember the time change. Our stupid cell phones didn't automatically change the time. We have Sprint phones...they're stupid. We did remember before we left the apartment though. We just went back to sleep for an hour. There were 3-4 people who showed up at church an hour early though, that was pretty funny.
Moms Questions:Things are going great with my companion. We both want to bring success to this area and were working hard. Were also having a lot of fun, which I've found is really important if you want to be a good, happy missionary.
We don't regularly do service anymore, but it seems like about once a week they tell us they need us to do service for the day. We don't see very many yellow shirters anymore. Pres Allred is only sending 4 missionaries a day now. We've helped over 600 houses though and I figured that I've personally helped out 50-60 houses. We definitely got pretty good exposure.
We rarely get dinner appointments. MAYBE one a week. Since eating that nasty Indian food that made me throw up 5 times we have had 2 dinner appointments. And the senior missionaries never make food for us. I think they're kind of poor so I never ask them for anything. Plus they eat old people food filled with fiber and all kinds of other nasty stuff, so I'm kind of glad they don't make us anything.
No we haven't tracted in our own apartment complex. We have been visiting people who we have done service for. This is one of our most useful finding tools. Its pretty hard to reject us when our church spent a day doing service for them. By the way...we heard that tree chopping companies are charging like $1000 dollars to take out a good sized tree from yards and they're charging several thousand to gut out houses. We do that stuff all day long.
We don't really have plans for P-day this week. Last week we went bowling. I am planning on sending home some pictures today though. I just put all the pictures on a CD this time...it was the easiest and probably cheapest thing to do. I still have all those pictures on my camera so if you have questions about the pictures just ask me and I'll let you know. In the future I want to put the pictures on the flash drive with the Brown's laptop and I can actually write in captions to the pictures on the computer. I couldn't this time because the CD is not a re-writable CD, its a CD-R not a CD-RW, so you cant change anything on it once its been made. That seemed like a really good idea to me.
Church was good. We have only been having sacrament meeting for the English ward and the Spanish branch. The rest of the church is filled with supplies and stuff so they cant have class. Next week we'll have normal church. I'll tell you our crazy Sunday schedule for church next week.
I'm going to be excited to get that stuff you sent Mom...that's all exactly what I've been needing. And yeah it takes a week and sometimes a little more to get mail here. It gets sent to the mission office then they send it out here with whoever happens to be coming out here within the next week. Sometimes nobody comes out for a while though, so it takes a while. I do love the things you send though. Elder Pedersen saw our fantasy football stuff and he said he wants to do that when he gets back from his mission. He's heard of it before but nobody has ever explained to him what it is.
Jake got his mission call...that's awesome!! I'm glad to hear Jeff is doing well still too. Ive been pretty worried about that situation.Ok, this was a pretty packed e-mail...next week I'll have to include some more stories and random things that have happened to us during the week.
I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Monday, October 27, 2008
Received Mon, Oct 27, 2008
Dear Family,
My new companion's name is Elder Pedersen. He's huge...hes like 6'3 or 6'4 or something. Hes a football player. He graduated high school then left for his mission. SUU has offered him a full ride (EVERYTHING paid for) scholarship to play football for them. A couple weeks ago Bronco Mendenhall talked to his Dad and said he wants to meet with him in February and talk about recruiting him for BYU. If that goes well and Bronco can give Elder Pedersen a scholarship, he is going to play there. He's a receiver. He has only been out on his mission for about 9 months, so hes pretty new. Hes only been out like 6 months more than me. He is our new district leader and hes pretty nervous about everything. He's nervous about being district leader and because we are pretty much whitewashing the area. We're pretty much starting over with all new investigators and everything because most of them moved out during the storm. I'm not really very stressed out about it because I don't see any reason to be. I figure if we just do what were supposed to and work our hardest every day, opportunities to teach will arise and this area will be up and running again. So as long as I'm trying my hardest every day, I'm not really stressed out about whats going to happen.
Elder Pedersen is a good missionary though. Its been interesting to see how he does things as opposed to Elder Nielson. He does get kind of frustrated about having to whitewash though because its hard to know what to do sometimes. As time goes on it'll be fine though. It has been pretty hard to know what to do sometimes though...especially when it gets dark. It gets dark at like 7:30, so after that we cant find people to teach and we don't have a ton of investigators to set up appointments. Elder Pedersen is also a really deep sleeper so he sleeps through any and every alarm, so I wake him up every morning. That helps me get out of bed though. I guess the only weird thing about him is that he rarely closes the bathroom door when he's going to the bathroom. The last week has been interesting with him though because he's pretty much just following my lead. I have to decide who to visit and I'm the one who has to lead the way there. I'd only been in the area for like a week and a half and now I was the one responsible for knowing where everything was. I'm proud to say we never even got lost and we've been doing pretty well. Luckily Galveston is pretty easy to navigate in. Its been kind of fun being the leader though.
My stay in Texas City was pretty good. I love working with other missionaries because it gives me more exposure to different techniques and just different ways of doings things. It gives me experience. I learned a lot of valuable things in Texas City...some good things to do and some things I shouldn't do. They aren't exactly the hardest workers. They drive around and visit members for pretty much the whole day. They stay at each place for like an hour and a half too. They don't even share a spiritual thought with them half the time either. After a while I just started sharing the spiritual thoughts and started hinting that we had to go. I could tell the members would get uncomfortable with us there for so long but apparently the other Elders don't see that. One of them has been here a long time and hes just waiting to go home and the other one has only been out 6 months or so and he just follows along with what his companion does. I know I'm going to have at least one companion who doesn't really want to work on my mission, so I just always know in my mind that I'm going to always do what were supposed to regardless of what people around me are doing. I got a little practice with that in Texas City. I woke up on time and did all my studies when I was supposed to. The other missionaries weren't really bad but they were slow to get up and study and do the things were supposed to. It was all a good, learning experience for me. Being in a companionship of 3 wasn't too weird for me. I think a lot of people thought we were like FBI agents though. It is kind of intimidating on people who don't know us. It was funny to watch people's reactions.
Yes I'm still in the same area, its called Galveston East.
Yes were allowed to baptize illegal immigrants...I'm pretty sure there are several that attend the Galveston branch.
I did get those nasty pictures of your foot, I'm not sure if those are the pictures you're talking about.
No I did not receive the flash drive. I came across a little problem with that. I don't have the cord that connects my camera to the computer and I need that in order to put pictures on the flash drive. Maybe I can just try to buy one at Wal-Mart if I'm ever there again. I also thought of a back-up plan. I can just make a CD with all my pictures on it and send that home. I might try to do that today.
No I haven't received my absentee ballot. there was actually a problem with that. I didn't get a chance to fill out those papers that first week because my time ran out on the computer and I don't think you could print there anyway. So I sent it out last week and I think that was right on the deadline. hopefully that turns out alright.
So...I'm assuming we finally got our family pictures. Can you make a copy of one and send it to me? That would also be really nice if you could send me a bunch of stamps along with it. I'm out of stamps and I don't think I'm going to be able to go to a post office any time soon.
I found my new favorite thing last week. A powerade slushy from Sonics. They are soooo good. Its a blue powerade slushy. From like 2-5 they are half off too. Ive only gotten fast food like twice on my mission, but last time I had one of those and it was delicious.
In Texas City we visited this one Hispanic family and they were cooking dinner out back on their grill. That was the most meat I have ever seen in one place before. They had a massive grill FULL of meat. On the table they already had 3 plates stacked high of all sorts of meat...sausage, steak, ribs, chicken, etc. They were also cooking a huge thing of brisket. Apparently they just leave the brisket in the BBQ overnight. Definitely dangerous but it looked good. The food I ate was amazing too. People are pretty big on BBQing around here and they always buy ridiculous amounts of food.
I don't think I've ever told you about bed bugs before. Apparently bed bugs are real. They are tiny black bucks that hide in cracks in couches and beds and come out and suck your blood when you're sleeping. During my first stay in Texas City I got eaten every night by them. I've never even seen them though. Luckily we don't have bed bugs in our new apartment...those things are annoying.
Ok, I need more suggestions for food to make. I already make grilled cheese and BLT's all the time. Yesterday I thought of making those tacos we make at home with meat, cheese, lettuce, and beans. Quesadillas with chicken might be good. What else is good and easy to make?? I need ideas!
Ok, that's about all for this week. Were doing our best to find people to teach every day. We are visiting a lot of the people we did service for, the only problem is most of their houses are destroyed and they aren't living there right now. We are slowly finding more and more people though. Its a slow process but its hopefully going to get up and running pretty quickly.
Alright I love you all and I'll talk to you next week!
Love,
Chase
My new companion's name is Elder Pedersen. He's huge...hes like 6'3 or 6'4 or something. Hes a football player. He graduated high school then left for his mission. SUU has offered him a full ride (EVERYTHING paid for) scholarship to play football for them. A couple weeks ago Bronco Mendenhall talked to his Dad and said he wants to meet with him in February and talk about recruiting him for BYU. If that goes well and Bronco can give Elder Pedersen a scholarship, he is going to play there. He's a receiver. He has only been out on his mission for about 9 months, so hes pretty new. Hes only been out like 6 months more than me. He is our new district leader and hes pretty nervous about everything. He's nervous about being district leader and because we are pretty much whitewashing the area. We're pretty much starting over with all new investigators and everything because most of them moved out during the storm. I'm not really very stressed out about it because I don't see any reason to be. I figure if we just do what were supposed to and work our hardest every day, opportunities to teach will arise and this area will be up and running again. So as long as I'm trying my hardest every day, I'm not really stressed out about whats going to happen.
Elder Pedersen is a good missionary though. Its been interesting to see how he does things as opposed to Elder Nielson. He does get kind of frustrated about having to whitewash though because its hard to know what to do sometimes. As time goes on it'll be fine though. It has been pretty hard to know what to do sometimes though...especially when it gets dark. It gets dark at like 7:30, so after that we cant find people to teach and we don't have a ton of investigators to set up appointments. Elder Pedersen is also a really deep sleeper so he sleeps through any and every alarm, so I wake him up every morning. That helps me get out of bed though. I guess the only weird thing about him is that he rarely closes the bathroom door when he's going to the bathroom. The last week has been interesting with him though because he's pretty much just following my lead. I have to decide who to visit and I'm the one who has to lead the way there. I'd only been in the area for like a week and a half and now I was the one responsible for knowing where everything was. I'm proud to say we never even got lost and we've been doing pretty well. Luckily Galveston is pretty easy to navigate in. Its been kind of fun being the leader though.
My stay in Texas City was pretty good. I love working with other missionaries because it gives me more exposure to different techniques and just different ways of doings things. It gives me experience. I learned a lot of valuable things in Texas City...some good things to do and some things I shouldn't do. They aren't exactly the hardest workers. They drive around and visit members for pretty much the whole day. They stay at each place for like an hour and a half too. They don't even share a spiritual thought with them half the time either. After a while I just started sharing the spiritual thoughts and started hinting that we had to go. I could tell the members would get uncomfortable with us there for so long but apparently the other Elders don't see that. One of them has been here a long time and hes just waiting to go home and the other one has only been out 6 months or so and he just follows along with what his companion does. I know I'm going to have at least one companion who doesn't really want to work on my mission, so I just always know in my mind that I'm going to always do what were supposed to regardless of what people around me are doing. I got a little practice with that in Texas City. I woke up on time and did all my studies when I was supposed to. The other missionaries weren't really bad but they were slow to get up and study and do the things were supposed to. It was all a good, learning experience for me. Being in a companionship of 3 wasn't too weird for me. I think a lot of people thought we were like FBI agents though. It is kind of intimidating on people who don't know us. It was funny to watch people's reactions.
Yes I'm still in the same area, its called Galveston East.
Yes were allowed to baptize illegal immigrants...I'm pretty sure there are several that attend the Galveston branch.
I did get those nasty pictures of your foot, I'm not sure if those are the pictures you're talking about.
No I did not receive the flash drive. I came across a little problem with that. I don't have the cord that connects my camera to the computer and I need that in order to put pictures on the flash drive. Maybe I can just try to buy one at Wal-Mart if I'm ever there again. I also thought of a back-up plan. I can just make a CD with all my pictures on it and send that home. I might try to do that today.
No I haven't received my absentee ballot. there was actually a problem with that. I didn't get a chance to fill out those papers that first week because my time ran out on the computer and I don't think you could print there anyway. So I sent it out last week and I think that was right on the deadline. hopefully that turns out alright.
So...I'm assuming we finally got our family pictures. Can you make a copy of one and send it to me? That would also be really nice if you could send me a bunch of stamps along with it. I'm out of stamps and I don't think I'm going to be able to go to a post office any time soon.
I found my new favorite thing last week. A powerade slushy from Sonics. They are soooo good. Its a blue powerade slushy. From like 2-5 they are half off too. Ive only gotten fast food like twice on my mission, but last time I had one of those and it was delicious.
In Texas City we visited this one Hispanic family and they were cooking dinner out back on their grill. That was the most meat I have ever seen in one place before. They had a massive grill FULL of meat. On the table they already had 3 plates stacked high of all sorts of meat...sausage, steak, ribs, chicken, etc. They were also cooking a huge thing of brisket. Apparently they just leave the brisket in the BBQ overnight. Definitely dangerous but it looked good. The food I ate was amazing too. People are pretty big on BBQing around here and they always buy ridiculous amounts of food.
I don't think I've ever told you about bed bugs before. Apparently bed bugs are real. They are tiny black bucks that hide in cracks in couches and beds and come out and suck your blood when you're sleeping. During my first stay in Texas City I got eaten every night by them. I've never even seen them though. Luckily we don't have bed bugs in our new apartment...those things are annoying.
Ok, I need more suggestions for food to make. I already make grilled cheese and BLT's all the time. Yesterday I thought of making those tacos we make at home with meat, cheese, lettuce, and beans. Quesadillas with chicken might be good. What else is good and easy to make?? I need ideas!
Ok, that's about all for this week. Were doing our best to find people to teach every day. We are visiting a lot of the people we did service for, the only problem is most of their houses are destroyed and they aren't living there right now. We are slowly finding more and more people though. Its a slow process but its hopefully going to get up and running pretty quickly.
Alright I love you all and I'll talk to you next week!
Love,
Chase
Monday, October 20, 2008
Received Mon Oct 20, 2008
Today has been a pretty crazy day.
It is the end of the transfer already and my companion is going home. We dropped him off in Sugar Land about an hour ago and I'm here with the zone leaders doing e-mail at a library.
After this I will go and stay with the Texas City elders and we will be a companionship of 3 until Wednesday when I will get my new companion.
Yesterday I was really sick. I'm not sure what it was, but I think it might have been from the food I day the night before. We ate once at 4pm at a Hispanic lady's house. It was like pasta then some tortilla's with steak. That was pretty good, but it had a ton of onions. Then we ate at 7pm at another members house. They made some weird Indian food with couscous and they poured some weird stuff on top and put yogurt in it. It was a bit strange, but it actually tasted alright. I felt good and even ate again before I went to bed, but the next morning I woke up at 5am and felt really sick. I threw up a little after that, then I threw up about 4 more times until about 2pm. After I had thrown up so many times I had nothing left to throw up, so I wanted to get a little something in my stomach. I drank some powerade and that healed me up quite nicely. I felt a lot better after that. I ate a little bit of yogurt too. I did that at like 2 and didn't throw up again. My nausea went away and everything. I think powerade is a miracle drink. I had to ask the senior missionaries to go get some for me and I even knew which color would be the best for my stomach at that time. I napped for most of the day and went to sleep for the night at 7. I lost 4-5 pounds in that one day, but I feel fine today. That morning I was kind of in denial that I was sick though because it had been so long. I would throw up, then rest for like 5 min, then go shower or do my laundry or do whatever else I would normally do. After about the 3rd time I didn't have enough energy or strength to walk more than about 10 steps and realized I should probably rest. I'm all better now though.
Last week I got to go shopping and buy real food for the first time since I've been here. I might have already told you but I've been living pretty much off frozen foods that you just heat up, because we have been moving around all over the place so we couldn't really buy cooking stuff. So I bought a whole bunch of fruit and good food. For lunch some of the things I've had are chili dogs, a couple BLTs, and chicken fingers. I always eat my food with some grapes, an orange, and some fruit juice. Its made a big difference to be eating a lot healthier.
I also got my haircut at supercuts. I said what Christopher told me to say, which is, a 3 on the sides and trim the top. I was the only person there and some Asian guy cut my hair. After I told him that he never said another word. Usually they ask you how you want your sideburns or the back done and if you are satisfied. He just cut everything without saying anything and he took forever. He cut the front part like a retard too. He just combed it straight down and cut it straight across. Mom always cuts criss cross kind of so its not just like straight across, but apparently this guy didn't know. Everything else was fine though. I'm just happy I have shorter hair.
Hmm...what else happened this week. We have been mostly visiting less active members and members this week so I could get to know them before Elder Nielson left. I have also been trying to get to know the area, because my new companion will know nothing. There are about 3 active families in the Spanish ward right now. We have been visiting this one less active Spanish lady named Milagro this last week and we got her to go to church on Sunday! She hasn't been to church for 16 years and she finally agreed to go! It was really exciting. Were going to keep visiting and working with her.
Ok, I wrote down a bunch of random things I've thought of that I haven't told you from the past, so the rest of my e-mail will be random thoughts.
Dad do you remember that BYU quarterback named Gifford Nielson? He is the stake president of the Houston South Stake and we worked with him every day. Elder Nielson and I went to his house too...I didn't even know who he was at the time. Hes also a sports caster for a TV station down here. Tracy McGrady also lived down the street. He's got a huge house surrounded by a big gate.
I noticed this week that about 75% of the Spanish speakers that we are teaching are illegals. They usually aren't even that secretive about it to us either. One guy named Pachuca told us that the cops came and knocked on his door 3 times already, but he just went out the back door and hid. Hes been here in America for a couple years and his family doesn't want him to come back until he can get legalization papers for his whole family.
Haha...that reminded me of when we were trying to get Milagro to come to church, she knew Elder Nielson wanted to become a lawyer after his mission and she said she'll go to church as long as he comes back eventually and helps her get her legalization papers. He said he wont be done with school for another 7 years or so, but she said she didn't care and that she could wait. I think she was only half joking.
I was also just wondering how Brother Melton is doing. And has anyone talked to Jake Melton to see how he's doing at BYU?
Mom I think it would be best if you bought the flash drive and sent it to me. I don't know when I'll be able to go to a Wal Mart again. We usually just do our shopping at a nearby grocery store. I'm hoping next week I'll be able to get some of my pictures printed off, because I'm not going to be able to this week.
Ok well that's about all for this week. I cant believe a transfer has already passed. English missionaries have 17 transfers and Spanish missionaries have 16. I'm down to 15 left already! I'll have a new companion in a few days. I hope hes willing to work hard because this area is going to require a lot of work. We only have about 2-3 investigators who didn't move away because of the storm. There are a lot of really good finding opportunities though and this area has huge potential. We just have to be willing to work really hard for it. Regardless of how my companion is, I'm going to do my best to take advantage of what we do have.
Ok Ill talk to you all next week! I love you!!!
Love,
Chase
Ps. I got the absentee ballot thing yesterday and I'll send it in today.
It is the end of the transfer already and my companion is going home. We dropped him off in Sugar Land about an hour ago and I'm here with the zone leaders doing e-mail at a library.
After this I will go and stay with the Texas City elders and we will be a companionship of 3 until Wednesday when I will get my new companion.
Yesterday I was really sick. I'm not sure what it was, but I think it might have been from the food I day the night before. We ate once at 4pm at a Hispanic lady's house. It was like pasta then some tortilla's with steak. That was pretty good, but it had a ton of onions. Then we ate at 7pm at another members house. They made some weird Indian food with couscous and they poured some weird stuff on top and put yogurt in it. It was a bit strange, but it actually tasted alright. I felt good and even ate again before I went to bed, but the next morning I woke up at 5am and felt really sick. I threw up a little after that, then I threw up about 4 more times until about 2pm. After I had thrown up so many times I had nothing left to throw up, so I wanted to get a little something in my stomach. I drank some powerade and that healed me up quite nicely. I felt a lot better after that. I ate a little bit of yogurt too. I did that at like 2 and didn't throw up again. My nausea went away and everything. I think powerade is a miracle drink. I had to ask the senior missionaries to go get some for me and I even knew which color would be the best for my stomach at that time. I napped for most of the day and went to sleep for the night at 7. I lost 4-5 pounds in that one day, but I feel fine today. That morning I was kind of in denial that I was sick though because it had been so long. I would throw up, then rest for like 5 min, then go shower or do my laundry or do whatever else I would normally do. After about the 3rd time I didn't have enough energy or strength to walk more than about 10 steps and realized I should probably rest. I'm all better now though.
Last week I got to go shopping and buy real food for the first time since I've been here. I might have already told you but I've been living pretty much off frozen foods that you just heat up, because we have been moving around all over the place so we couldn't really buy cooking stuff. So I bought a whole bunch of fruit and good food. For lunch some of the things I've had are chili dogs, a couple BLTs, and chicken fingers. I always eat my food with some grapes, an orange, and some fruit juice. Its made a big difference to be eating a lot healthier.
I also got my haircut at supercuts. I said what Christopher told me to say, which is, a 3 on the sides and trim the top. I was the only person there and some Asian guy cut my hair. After I told him that he never said another word. Usually they ask you how you want your sideburns or the back done and if you are satisfied. He just cut everything without saying anything and he took forever. He cut the front part like a retard too. He just combed it straight down and cut it straight across. Mom always cuts criss cross kind of so its not just like straight across, but apparently this guy didn't know. Everything else was fine though. I'm just happy I have shorter hair.
Hmm...what else happened this week. We have been mostly visiting less active members and members this week so I could get to know them before Elder Nielson left. I have also been trying to get to know the area, because my new companion will know nothing. There are about 3 active families in the Spanish ward right now. We have been visiting this one less active Spanish lady named Milagro this last week and we got her to go to church on Sunday! She hasn't been to church for 16 years and she finally agreed to go! It was really exciting. Were going to keep visiting and working with her.
Ok, I wrote down a bunch of random things I've thought of that I haven't told you from the past, so the rest of my e-mail will be random thoughts.
Dad do you remember that BYU quarterback named Gifford Nielson? He is the stake president of the Houston South Stake and we worked with him every day. Elder Nielson and I went to his house too...I didn't even know who he was at the time. Hes also a sports caster for a TV station down here. Tracy McGrady also lived down the street. He's got a huge house surrounded by a big gate.
I noticed this week that about 75% of the Spanish speakers that we are teaching are illegals. They usually aren't even that secretive about it to us either. One guy named Pachuca told us that the cops came and knocked on his door 3 times already, but he just went out the back door and hid. Hes been here in America for a couple years and his family doesn't want him to come back until he can get legalization papers for his whole family.
Haha...that reminded me of when we were trying to get Milagro to come to church, she knew Elder Nielson wanted to become a lawyer after his mission and she said she'll go to church as long as he comes back eventually and helps her get her legalization papers. He said he wont be done with school for another 7 years or so, but she said she didn't care and that she could wait. I think she was only half joking.
I was also just wondering how Brother Melton is doing. And has anyone talked to Jake Melton to see how he's doing at BYU?
Mom I think it would be best if you bought the flash drive and sent it to me. I don't know when I'll be able to go to a Wal Mart again. We usually just do our shopping at a nearby grocery store. I'm hoping next week I'll be able to get some of my pictures printed off, because I'm not going to be able to this week.
Ok well that's about all for this week. I cant believe a transfer has already passed. English missionaries have 17 transfers and Spanish missionaries have 16. I'm down to 15 left already! I'll have a new companion in a few days. I hope hes willing to work hard because this area is going to require a lot of work. We only have about 2-3 investigators who didn't move away because of the storm. There are a lot of really good finding opportunities though and this area has huge potential. We just have to be willing to work really hard for it. Regardless of how my companion is, I'm going to do my best to take advantage of what we do have.
Ok Ill talk to you all next week! I love you!!!
Love,
Chase
Ps. I got the absentee ballot thing yesterday and I'll send it in today.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Received Mon Oct 13 2008
I'm finally in Galveston!!! We are staying in that condo with the senior missionaries...it is reeally nice. Me and Elder Nielson get the master suite because we have to put our desks in there to study. It is a really big condo and its new too. I took some picture of it. I think I'm just going to go to a walgreens or something to print out a lot of my pictures and send them home. Our schedule has been pretty much the same this last week. We work in the mornings until like 2 or 3 then come back to our apartments to proselyte for the second half of the day. A lot of people still arent back on Galveston yet so we dont have a ton of people to visit, so the half days have been working well. On Saturday we did have a full normal missionary day though. It was pretty good, but not a single person was home that we visited until like 5pm. We OYMed a lot of people at a washateria. (OYM = Open Your Mouth. Thats were you walk up to random people in the streets and talk to them. Tracting is when you go from house to house knocking on doors). So we did find a few potential investigators. We are also teaching one hispanic guy named Germán. Hes actually really smart and he is picking up on everything we teach him. Elder Nielson has been teaching him for a few months. His only problem is that he is living with his girlfriend, which is stupid because he tells us she always goes out and cheats on him. Thats even more awkward because he tells us when his girlfriend is sitting right there beside him. I guess thats not too weird in their culture. Another of our investigators is named Janaki. She is from India and she is Hindu. Shes definitely a very interesting person. Elder Nielson has been teaching her for a couple months too. She wanted to take our picture before we started our lesson because she is going to go back to India to visit her family in November and she wants to show all of her friends the missionaries that always visit her. She also invited us to come with her to India and she promised us she could provide us protection because the US Embassy is near where she lives. We told her we couldnt leave our area and she was disappointed. She also asked for like 5-6 Books of Mormon in her native language so she could give them to her friends. Shes a pretty good investigator...shes already spreading the gospel to people in other countries. The weirdest thing is that she believes everything we teach her, but she also believes her Hindu religion. We asked her if she believed the story of Adam and Eve and she was like, well yes of course! She understands how God blesses you for following the commandments and everything too. She goes to her Hindu church every Friday still though. She says that she believes everything we teach her and that she goes to her Hindu church to preserve her culture because that is something she never wants to lose. She's a pretty funny person. She says the word "evidentally" in just about every other sentence. She gave us some Indian bread too before we left, that was pretty good. She also told us she wants us to visit her for the rest of her life. I guess thats why we have home teachers!Oh yeah, I remebered I totally forgot to tell you last week that we had a Temple Zone Conference. For zone conference we got to go the temple in Houston! It was awesome. We go to a session in the morning, then have a 2 hour conference afterwards. It was really nice to be able to go back to the temple again.I also finally got that box with the trenchcoat and helmet delivered to me. Its a really nice trenchcoat...it will be good for when it gets really cold. That lighter raincoat that you sent me a picture of will be really good to have too. It has only rained one time since I have been here too, which is really unusual apparently. The weather has been pretty much perfect every day. Because of the lack of rain, the humidity hasnt been very bad at all either.I've been able to start biking more now because we proselyte at night time and I love it. We ride down along the sea wall so there is a cool ocean breeze that blows against you and you ride right along the ocean. Have I explained the sea wall to you before? The whole side of the island has been lifted up like 17 feet, so in order to get down to the beach you take these stairs to get down to the water. They did this to prevent flooding. So the sea wall is a big wide pathway that goes along hte ocean. There is a street that goes along the sea wall too...it is called Sea Wall blvd. So its nice to ride, and like how I explained last time it is really easy.One neat experience that I got to have was during service some guy in charge needed some Spanish speakers to help translate so he could communicate with a hispanic guy who neededed help with his house. Me and Elder Nielson got to go do it because Elder Nielson is one of the Elders to speaks Spanish the best. I actually did some of the translating too...it was really really cool. Another good experience was when we were doing service at another Spanish members home, so of course we were speaking Spanish to each other the whole time. Then when I was taking something outside, I was talking Spanish with one of the people there and one of the neighbors walked up to me and was like "Do any of you here speak English?" That made me pretty happy.I'm not going to be able to write a hand-written letter today so I'm going to give you my little informational tidbit about the island here. I think I'm going to keep doing this as I learn more about this place. I find all these things interesting, and I think it helps paint a picture in your mind about where I'm serving. So Galveston is mostly made up of two main groups. One group are young people who are going to the UTMB hospital for their doctoral residence or whatever its called. (I dont know if I told you, but the UTMB, University of Texas Medical Branch, hospital place is on the island) These people make up a lot of the Galveston ward. There are UTMB students and workers all over the island. The other group are the business owners. There are a lot of tourists here so people set up stores all over the place. The island definitely is not very wealthy. I doubt theres a single house here that was made after 1950. The only large houses are these big huge houses that were made in the late 1800's so they are really old. I took a picture of one of them...a recent convert lives in one of them. All the other houses are small and old. A lot of them are more like shacks. But they have recently closed down all the projects. That is most likely because a lot of the people who live there are the ones that do the looting. So they exported all of those people out of the island. They also have set a curfew is one portion of the city, which happens to be the poorest/ghetto part of the island. Nobody is allowed to be outside in that area past 10pm.I STILL havent had a normal meeting here in Galveston. Yesterday we had stake conference. It was really good. The Houston temple presidents live in this stake and they spoke for a few minutes. The main theme was service. They encouraged everyone to help each other out. One speaker made an analogy to bees. He said we all need to be more like bees. Not only are they always busy and doing something, but they always work together. A bee cannot exist alone, it always depends on its colony. I also found out that I think every choir has at least one overzealous singer, like the lady with the big red wig in our ward. The one in this choir was hilarious. She belted out those high notes...I still have problems holding the laughs down when I hear people like that sing.Ooo...I also learned one more thing this week. Remember how I told you how people always say Im fixin to do something? Well I just heard the ebonics form of that. Its, I'm fi'in to. It sounds more like "Im fin da eat some food" or something like that. It took me a second to catch on. I'm gonna be trilingual by the time I come back home...I'll know Spanish, English, and Ebonics.Hmm...well in other news we found out that we are going to do full time normal missionary work this whole week! President Allred is going to continue rotating through the mission and sending districts to come help with service each day, but our district is going to put a hold on service for now and start workin our areas. I'm way excited. This week is going to be awesome. It will definitely be hard though, because I know not a lot of people are home right now and their houses are unlivable.I remember one more thing I think I forgot to tell you. Remember how we walked into Sister Boone's (MTC pres's wife) and asked her if we could sing Army of Helaman? Well that happened our last week in the MTC when President Uchtdorf came to speak. They even got permission to change the words "And we will be the Lord's missionaries" to "And we are now the Lord's missionaries." It was awesome...I think every person there was singing. It was cool to know that we got to do that because of us asking. I guess learned that from Mom...you'll never know if you can get something until you ask for it.Today for P-day we went to Moody Gardens. Its this place that has a big aquarium, some rainforest place, a hotel, and a bunch of other stuff. We went to the aquarium...it was pretty cool. I couldnt take many good pictures though...camera's dont shoot through glass very well, especially when its dark. I'm also going to go get a well-needed haircut.Well, I'm going to fill out this registration ballot. Ohhhh yeah, Mom the address you have is wrong. That is the old apartment which is now ruined. I think the new address is 500 Ferry, #322. You should call in and get the new address. It should be something very similar to that. Ok I think that's just about it! I love you all and I'll talk to you later!!Love, Chase
Monday, October 6, 2008
Received Mon Oct 6, 2008
Hmm...where to start.
I got 3 letters from you I think. I got that manila envelope with return address labels, and a letter including the blog post. It made me laugh...that was a pretty creative idea to put the post + comments on a piece of paper. I'm also glad you send me those return address labels, they make things a lot easier. Christopher's wooden pen thing was crazy. That definitely sounds like a neat class. Its something I would enjoy taking.
In that one envelope you sent a picture of that raincoat thing and asked if I wanted it. I think that would be perfect. It would be good if you could get it in the darkest color they have. I think I saw a navy blue there...that would work perfect. I've been really lucky. It hasn't even rained once since I've been here! The weather has been perfect almost every day. The sky is always blue and the clouds are all just puffy and white; none show any risk of raining. I did hear that for the next 3 days they forecasted rain. So far the skies look pretty blue, but we'll see.
I really enjoyed conference a lot. The Galveston chapel still didn't have any power so we drove to the stake center in a city called Friendswood. We stayed there all day on Saturday...from the morning session until after the priesthood session. Then yesterday they had some massive generator (it filled up the whole back of this guy's truck) come and give power to the building so we could watch conference there. We even had AC...I was happy for that. Dallin H. Oaks gave almost the exact same talk to us in the MTC when I was there...he makes some really interesting points. There is so knowledge and so much to learn from every talk that it is simply impossible to pick it all up on your first time hearing it, so I am excited to be able to read through them again when the Ensign comes out.
We invited one of our investigating families to come to general conference and they were until they got into a car accident. They said it wasn't really serious, but it was almost a head-on collision. I have only taught one lesson so far, and it was to them. They have been conveniently living here in Texas City in a hotel while their house has been getting fixed, so we and taught them on Friday. The Mom's name is Kathy and she has two daughters named Kaitlyn and Taylor. They are 17 and 11 respectively. This was actually the first time Elder Nielson has been able to teach Kaitlyn because she has always been gone and at work when they came to teach Kathy and Taylor (they had been teaching then for about 3 weeks before the hurricane). The place Kaitlyn worked at happened to be one of the piers that was out in the ocean that got completely washed away. All you can see are the little wooden stilts that use to hold it up. And they don't have school for another week or so, so she doesn't have too much to occupy her time. At the end of the lesson we asked them to be baptized on October 18th and they all said yes. For Kaitlyn we said that we knew she had only been taught once, but we asked her if she would follow the example of her mother and sister and be baptized on the same date as she continues to learn of the truth of the gospel. She said yes too. Kathy does smoke though, so we are going to have to help her get over that. They are really a pretty amazing family.
Last night we went out for the second time to visit a member who lives here in Texas City. (The ward boundaries for the Galveston ward includes the whole island plus Texas City). She is somewhere in her 70's and she was baptized in 2000. She is a widow and lives by herself. We were really happy we decided to visit her because apparently one of her closest friends died that day and she was feeling pretty bad. She needed somebody to vent to for a while and just talk to. She felt a lot better by the time we left. That is the extend of my teaching so far!
I do have an update on my living situation though. Once again, it was pretty unexpected. We this condominium place pretty close to where we used to live. The condos are way nice, but they are also expensive. They are about $900 every month. So the president decided to put 2 of the senior missionaries in there with us. So me and Elder Nielson are going to be living with 2 married old people...I'm not gonna lie, that will probably be kind of weird. At least it is a really nice apartment though. We are going to move in as soon as they turn the power on. The building itself has power and they are turning the power on to the individual apartments when they pay their deposit. We already paid, were just waiting for them to flip the switch to turn the power on. I cant imagine that will take very long. So hopefully when I write next week I will be writing from Galveston.
Here is my exciting story for the week. So on Thursday of last week we had just gotten done with doing service all day when the sister missionaries called us and asked if we could help them unload boxes for a grocery store called Arlan's. We were like uhh...no why would we do that. They have employees for a reason. After a little more confusing we found out that one of our recent converts, Abraham, had called the sisters and asked them to come pick up some food or something. We decided that we might as well go and help out our convert with whatever he needed. So we show up and this Arlans is all boarded up because it had gotten flooded. Abraham took us around the back inside where the insurance adjuster and store owner was. They only got a few inches of floodwater in the building, so barely anything got ruined, but they couldn't guarantee that all of it was completely untouched and uncontaminated, so they legally couldn't sell it. So there was a grocery store full of perfectly good food that they couldn't sell. Apparently the insurance adjuster was Mormon and wanted to donate the food to the missionaries. This is probably one of the coolest things that has happened to me. He gave us some boxes and said we had free access to all the cereal, poptarts, cake mixes, and candy in the store. We got to fill like 3 boxes full of food for ourselves. Then we filled up boxes for the rest of the mission. We spend hours there boxing food and loading it into a trailer. Me and Elder Nielson only took 3 boxes for ourselves, but I got everything I wanted. I stuffed the boxes full of Trix, Apple Jacks, Froot Loops, and a couple other cereals. Then I put in a carton of Skittle, a couple bags full of reese's, a couple bags of twix, and 4-5 boxes of honey buns. I also got like 6-7 cake mixes. Oh yeah, then we took 5-6 huge boxes of Tide detergent. Each box of that stuff costs like $8.67...that must be some good detergent. We got all that stuff plus even more I'm sure I'm forgetting. But that was definitely a good day.
Wow Mom...sounds like you're having quite an adventure with your leg there. Sounds pretty painful too. I'm sure you drugged yourself up pretty well though. I think you're the only person I know that could stay so busy even with a broken leg. I guess you can only go up from here though..your leg is going to be getting healthier and healthier every day. All you have to do is wait it out and soon it'll be completely gone. That's the good thing about healing..you don't even have to do anything, just let time pass and it just automatically heals.
That place called Gilchrist where there was only 1 house standing is on the Bolivar Peninsula. The only way to get there is by driving onto Galveston and taking a ferry across to the peninsula. I've heard the story about that house several times and I've seen pictures of it too...its pretty amazing. The ferry to Bolivar hasn't even opened yet though. Its actually in our area, but we never visit it because its pretty impractical to go over there. It would be a whole day ordeal and there aren't even very many people over there, so we pretty much ignore it.
Sounds like Dad has been keeping himself pretty busy fixing all that stuff. That is actually something I would enjoy doing. I would like to learn how to fix sprinklers and do all that kind of stuff, because its practical and it will undoubtedly be useful for me one day. I bet I'll have plenty of chances to learn those things though. But hey, if our house ever gets flooded then I'll know exactly what to do. I've actually been in charge a couple of times of showing people what to do and how to take care of these houses. Pretty much all you do is carry the heavy stuff out, tear out the carpet and anything underneath, then cut a line about 4 feet high around the walls and tear off the bottom slab of sheet rock and throw it in the curb. Unless the mold has crossed the 4 foot mark, then we strip the walls to the top. Its pretty fun, especially smashing out sheet rock. Its just like when me and Steven were helping Craig at his house and we got to punch holes in the garage walls. I'm doing that pretty much all day. Well...I guess its more fun when it doesn't reek the worst smell you could ever imagine.
OK...time to answer Mom's questions:I'm in Texas City still, hoping to move to that condo in Galveston.Yes I used my bike last night actually. I love biking..I'm actually glad I'm in a biking area. I can't wait to be able to ride my bike along the sea wall in Galveston. You ride right along the beach and you have that cool breeze blowing at you all the time. That's going to be way fun. But anyway, last night we rode our bikes to that widow's house. My companion lead on the way there because he knew where he was going. On the way back I wanted to lead and I told him we should ride fast so we could get a little exercise in. Biking in Texas is really easy..it is completely flat everywhere. I was in my hardest gear the whole time, pedaling pretty easily the whole time and I don't even think I started breathing harder than I would be if I was just walking around. I'm not sure how you're supposed to get tired when you bike here...I guess that's a good thing. We got back pretty fast..well at least I did. My companion fell back kind of far, but I waited for him outside the apartments. It was down a reeeally long road so I could see him way back there the whole time. It was a good ride. Nope, haven't been in the rain. Maybe I will for the next few days though! Yep, taught that lesson to Kathy and her family. No...not really speaking much Spanish, sadly. Hmm...looks like I already answered most of these questions already. I guess I'm getting better at writing.
Oh yeah, I still have 1 question. What do you think is the best way to send pictures home? I've taken a ton. I was thinking it'll be easiest to just get the printed at some place here so I can write on the back of the pictures and explain them. But I also have a bunch of pictures of the destruction and I don't think it'll be worth it to print like 20 of those. Maybe there's some way to send them online. Or maybe we could just send a flash drive back and forth or something, so I could send all the pictures digitally, as well as a hard copy. That way I could send home some of the less interesting ones on the flash drive and print all of the other ones. Christopher would know best about that kind of thing probably. Anyway...I should probably go. It sounds like everyone is doing well as always. I'm excited to get back onto Galveston. When we get there we're going to be able to do a lot more missionary work, that'll be fun.
One more thing. I don't know if I mentioned it but there is a chapel on Galveston. There is the Galveston Ward and the Lehi Branch. They both have the same boundaries and use the same building, but the Lehi branch is the Spanish branch...not sure why they call it the Lehi branch. I don't really get a lot of things though...like how the bishop of the ward (which speaks English) is a native from Venezuela who speaks Spanish perfect and his English is pretty good but not perfect, and the branch president of the Lehi branch is a white guy that just learned Spanish on his mission. Anyway, I went to the ward council meeting for the Galveston Ward yesterday and the Galveston ward is definitely suffering from the hurricane. So many leaders and members left and won't be back for several months, and some aren't even coming back. For example, the only Young men's leader here is the 2nd counselor, and now he's in charge of all the young men's program. There aren't many leaders left so people are filling a lot of space. If the ward is doing that bad, you can only imagine what is left of the branch...not much. Someone even asked if it still existed. It pretty much only exists right now because the branch president is still here. Well, I guess that means we're going to have to baptize a new ward and a new branch. We better get on that pronto.
Ok, well it was great hearing from you and I'm happy to hear everything is going well back at home. I love you all and pray for you!
Love,
Chase
I got 3 letters from you I think. I got that manila envelope with return address labels, and a letter including the blog post. It made me laugh...that was a pretty creative idea to put the post + comments on a piece of paper. I'm also glad you send me those return address labels, they make things a lot easier. Christopher's wooden pen thing was crazy. That definitely sounds like a neat class. Its something I would enjoy taking.
In that one envelope you sent a picture of that raincoat thing and asked if I wanted it. I think that would be perfect. It would be good if you could get it in the darkest color they have. I think I saw a navy blue there...that would work perfect. I've been really lucky. It hasn't even rained once since I've been here! The weather has been perfect almost every day. The sky is always blue and the clouds are all just puffy and white; none show any risk of raining. I did hear that for the next 3 days they forecasted rain. So far the skies look pretty blue, but we'll see.
I really enjoyed conference a lot. The Galveston chapel still didn't have any power so we drove to the stake center in a city called Friendswood. We stayed there all day on Saturday...from the morning session until after the priesthood session. Then yesterday they had some massive generator (it filled up the whole back of this guy's truck) come and give power to the building so we could watch conference there. We even had AC...I was happy for that. Dallin H. Oaks gave almost the exact same talk to us in the MTC when I was there...he makes some really interesting points. There is so knowledge and so much to learn from every talk that it is simply impossible to pick it all up on your first time hearing it, so I am excited to be able to read through them again when the Ensign comes out.
We invited one of our investigating families to come to general conference and they were until they got into a car accident. They said it wasn't really serious, but it was almost a head-on collision. I have only taught one lesson so far, and it was to them. They have been conveniently living here in Texas City in a hotel while their house has been getting fixed, so we and taught them on Friday. The Mom's name is Kathy and she has two daughters named Kaitlyn and Taylor. They are 17 and 11 respectively. This was actually the first time Elder Nielson has been able to teach Kaitlyn because she has always been gone and at work when they came to teach Kathy and Taylor (they had been teaching then for about 3 weeks before the hurricane). The place Kaitlyn worked at happened to be one of the piers that was out in the ocean that got completely washed away. All you can see are the little wooden stilts that use to hold it up. And they don't have school for another week or so, so she doesn't have too much to occupy her time. At the end of the lesson we asked them to be baptized on October 18th and they all said yes. For Kaitlyn we said that we knew she had only been taught once, but we asked her if she would follow the example of her mother and sister and be baptized on the same date as she continues to learn of the truth of the gospel. She said yes too. Kathy does smoke though, so we are going to have to help her get over that. They are really a pretty amazing family.
Last night we went out for the second time to visit a member who lives here in Texas City. (The ward boundaries for the Galveston ward includes the whole island plus Texas City). She is somewhere in her 70's and she was baptized in 2000. She is a widow and lives by herself. We were really happy we decided to visit her because apparently one of her closest friends died that day and she was feeling pretty bad. She needed somebody to vent to for a while and just talk to. She felt a lot better by the time we left. That is the extend of my teaching so far!
I do have an update on my living situation though. Once again, it was pretty unexpected. We this condominium place pretty close to where we used to live. The condos are way nice, but they are also expensive. They are about $900 every month. So the president decided to put 2 of the senior missionaries in there with us. So me and Elder Nielson are going to be living with 2 married old people...I'm not gonna lie, that will probably be kind of weird. At least it is a really nice apartment though. We are going to move in as soon as they turn the power on. The building itself has power and they are turning the power on to the individual apartments when they pay their deposit. We already paid, were just waiting for them to flip the switch to turn the power on. I cant imagine that will take very long. So hopefully when I write next week I will be writing from Galveston.
Here is my exciting story for the week. So on Thursday of last week we had just gotten done with doing service all day when the sister missionaries called us and asked if we could help them unload boxes for a grocery store called Arlan's. We were like uhh...no why would we do that. They have employees for a reason. After a little more confusing we found out that one of our recent converts, Abraham, had called the sisters and asked them to come pick up some food or something. We decided that we might as well go and help out our convert with whatever he needed. So we show up and this Arlans is all boarded up because it had gotten flooded. Abraham took us around the back inside where the insurance adjuster and store owner was. They only got a few inches of floodwater in the building, so barely anything got ruined, but they couldn't guarantee that all of it was completely untouched and uncontaminated, so they legally couldn't sell it. So there was a grocery store full of perfectly good food that they couldn't sell. Apparently the insurance adjuster was Mormon and wanted to donate the food to the missionaries. This is probably one of the coolest things that has happened to me. He gave us some boxes and said we had free access to all the cereal, poptarts, cake mixes, and candy in the store. We got to fill like 3 boxes full of food for ourselves. Then we filled up boxes for the rest of the mission. We spend hours there boxing food and loading it into a trailer. Me and Elder Nielson only took 3 boxes for ourselves, but I got everything I wanted. I stuffed the boxes full of Trix, Apple Jacks, Froot Loops, and a couple other cereals. Then I put in a carton of Skittle, a couple bags full of reese's, a couple bags of twix, and 4-5 boxes of honey buns. I also got like 6-7 cake mixes. Oh yeah, then we took 5-6 huge boxes of Tide detergent. Each box of that stuff costs like $8.67...that must be some good detergent. We got all that stuff plus even more I'm sure I'm forgetting. But that was definitely a good day.
Wow Mom...sounds like you're having quite an adventure with your leg there. Sounds pretty painful too. I'm sure you drugged yourself up pretty well though. I think you're the only person I know that could stay so busy even with a broken leg. I guess you can only go up from here though..your leg is going to be getting healthier and healthier every day. All you have to do is wait it out and soon it'll be completely gone. That's the good thing about healing..you don't even have to do anything, just let time pass and it just automatically heals.
That place called Gilchrist where there was only 1 house standing is on the Bolivar Peninsula. The only way to get there is by driving onto Galveston and taking a ferry across to the peninsula. I've heard the story about that house several times and I've seen pictures of it too...its pretty amazing. The ferry to Bolivar hasn't even opened yet though. Its actually in our area, but we never visit it because its pretty impractical to go over there. It would be a whole day ordeal and there aren't even very many people over there, so we pretty much ignore it.
Sounds like Dad has been keeping himself pretty busy fixing all that stuff. That is actually something I would enjoy doing. I would like to learn how to fix sprinklers and do all that kind of stuff, because its practical and it will undoubtedly be useful for me one day. I bet I'll have plenty of chances to learn those things though. But hey, if our house ever gets flooded then I'll know exactly what to do. I've actually been in charge a couple of times of showing people what to do and how to take care of these houses. Pretty much all you do is carry the heavy stuff out, tear out the carpet and anything underneath, then cut a line about 4 feet high around the walls and tear off the bottom slab of sheet rock and throw it in the curb. Unless the mold has crossed the 4 foot mark, then we strip the walls to the top. Its pretty fun, especially smashing out sheet rock. Its just like when me and Steven were helping Craig at his house and we got to punch holes in the garage walls. I'm doing that pretty much all day. Well...I guess its more fun when it doesn't reek the worst smell you could ever imagine.
OK...time to answer Mom's questions:I'm in Texas City still, hoping to move to that condo in Galveston.Yes I used my bike last night actually. I love biking..I'm actually glad I'm in a biking area. I can't wait to be able to ride my bike along the sea wall in Galveston. You ride right along the beach and you have that cool breeze blowing at you all the time. That's going to be way fun. But anyway, last night we rode our bikes to that widow's house. My companion lead on the way there because he knew where he was going. On the way back I wanted to lead and I told him we should ride fast so we could get a little exercise in. Biking in Texas is really easy..it is completely flat everywhere. I was in my hardest gear the whole time, pedaling pretty easily the whole time and I don't even think I started breathing harder than I would be if I was just walking around. I'm not sure how you're supposed to get tired when you bike here...I guess that's a good thing. We got back pretty fast..well at least I did. My companion fell back kind of far, but I waited for him outside the apartments. It was down a reeeally long road so I could see him way back there the whole time. It was a good ride. Nope, haven't been in the rain. Maybe I will for the next few days though! Yep, taught that lesson to Kathy and her family. No...not really speaking much Spanish, sadly. Hmm...looks like I already answered most of these questions already. I guess I'm getting better at writing.
Oh yeah, I still have 1 question. What do you think is the best way to send pictures home? I've taken a ton. I was thinking it'll be easiest to just get the printed at some place here so I can write on the back of the pictures and explain them. But I also have a bunch of pictures of the destruction and I don't think it'll be worth it to print like 20 of those. Maybe there's some way to send them online. Or maybe we could just send a flash drive back and forth or something, so I could send all the pictures digitally, as well as a hard copy. That way I could send home some of the less interesting ones on the flash drive and print all of the other ones. Christopher would know best about that kind of thing probably. Anyway...I should probably go. It sounds like everyone is doing well as always. I'm excited to get back onto Galveston. When we get there we're going to be able to do a lot more missionary work, that'll be fun.
One more thing. I don't know if I mentioned it but there is a chapel on Galveston. There is the Galveston Ward and the Lehi Branch. They both have the same boundaries and use the same building, but the Lehi branch is the Spanish branch...not sure why they call it the Lehi branch. I don't really get a lot of things though...like how the bishop of the ward (which speaks English) is a native from Venezuela who speaks Spanish perfect and his English is pretty good but not perfect, and the branch president of the Lehi branch is a white guy that just learned Spanish on his mission. Anyway, I went to the ward council meeting for the Galveston Ward yesterday and the Galveston ward is definitely suffering from the hurricane. So many leaders and members left and won't be back for several months, and some aren't even coming back. For example, the only Young men's leader here is the 2nd counselor, and now he's in charge of all the young men's program. There aren't many leaders left so people are filling a lot of space. If the ward is doing that bad, you can only imagine what is left of the branch...not much. Someone even asked if it still existed. It pretty much only exists right now because the branch president is still here. Well, I guess that means we're going to have to baptize a new ward and a new branch. We better get on that pronto.
Ok, well it was great hearing from you and I'm happy to hear everything is going well back at home. I love you all and pray for you!
Love,
Chase
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