Well well well...I think I have another long letter for you guys again this week. I've been writing down lots of little random things that I've been forgetting to write about for the past few weeks, so this weeks letter might be full of random, but hopefully interesting things that have been on my mind.
But first, I will respond to the e-mail Mom sent. This might also be random too. I thought Dad's idea of hiding an egg in the fish tank was hilarious. Unfortunately I did not hide all my Easter eggs, I got too hungry one night and ate all the candy. It was all a delicious snack.
I am surprised at how many people here don't do family Easter egg hunts. Every time I asked people if they did an Easter egg hunt with their families they all said, no....we did go to that city Easter egg hunt, or a neighborhood Easter egg hunt. I always loved our Easter egg hunt.
I do get letters sometimes from friends that are on missions. My friend Joey who's in the Salt Lake City North mission writes me sometimes. Ryan Carreon wrote me (he's in McAllen Texas I think). I just found out my roommate from last year, Sam, is in France. Tony is doing good I think. I haven't heard from him in a while, but last I heard he was really close to leaving, so hopefully all is well.
Zak: The hermit/girls glove joke made me laugh and brought me back to when I was in Bro. Raddon's class. That was probably one of my most memorable and favorite memories about church. I was always excited to go to church because I wanted to hear the end of one of his stories from last week, or see if he would bring us mounds of candy or donuts. Hes an awesome guy. He took our quorum out fly fishing and did lots of fun stuff...unfortunately I had a soccer game during that fishing outing, but it would have been fun to go. Oh yeah, and the Arcadia Invitational track meet is actually a really famous track meet. A lot of people know about it. When I tell people about Arcadia, most people know it because of the track meet, our marching band, or because of the Arcadia mission.
Kylie: I am going to play softball today. Hopefully I'm good. My favorite part is batting...I don't like fielding that much. Most of the people I'm going to play with stink at softball though, so I will probably be good. Someone I'm teaching named Tom Fitchett use to be a professional softball catcher. He tells us stories every time we visit him about catching in the professional league and catching balls that were flying 110mph.
Quinn: The KKK is always interesting to learn about. There is a city down here that I've driven through a lot of times called Santa Fe which is where the KKK leader lives. A few years ago there was this story all over the news about how a black man came to Santa Fe to pump gas and these really bad, racist people grabbed him and tied him to the back of his truck and drove down the road dragging him. Its a pretty disgusting story. That road they drove down is called Highway 6 and I drive down it all the time. I tried to take a picture of the KKK guy's house as we were driving past, but I don't think its a very good picture. His house has all these crazy horse statues and weird stuff all over the front yard.
Ok....for Easter we ate dinner at the Randall's house. It was kind of a last minute thing because we had 2 dinner appointments that fell through at the last minute, but luckily the Randall's had a ton of food and they're super nice people so they invited us to eat with them. Wow...it was a good meal. We had honey baked turkey, honey baked ham, scalloped potatoes, all sorts of fruit, salad, and rolls. I ate a LOT. We have a ton left over so I'm going to be eating honey baked ham and turkey for the next week. I actually had some this morning.
On Saturday night we went to a less active member's home named Ricky Rich. He is a rapper from Louisiana. He doesn't really trust anyone and he usually doesn't let anyone into his home, but he's starting to trust us and he invited us to come in and dye eggs with his family. So of course we did. It was really fun and we got to meet his family and get to know them. The dye doesn't come off your fingers very easily, so I went to church the next day with green and blue fingers. It was pretty fun.
Here's some random facts about our area: I think I told you last week that knocking does not work well in this area. We've knocked almost every day for the past 6 weeks and we haven't found 1 good investigator. All of our investigators have been member referrals or they've seen the church and decided to come out on their own. That's actually the way its supposed to work, so its pretty neat, but knocking can get frustrating. We've been talking a lot to members about how we need their help in finding people and they've been awesome. I think I might have told you all that stuff already, but oh well. Our ward is really big. Each week we have over 300 people attend sacrament meeting. Yesterday we had 348. We cover portions of 3 different cities, so our area is huge. Most people here are attorneys or they work for the oil companies or they are accountants. The houses here are actually not expensive at all. The nice houses here all cost about $300,000. Here they have one of those set-ups where they have model homes and you choose a home and they build it on an empty lot for you. So everywhere they are basically 3 different types of houses. They cost either $160,000, $210,000, or $310,000. So housing is cheap here. This area is growing really fast though, so I'm sure priced will go up pretty fast within the next few years.
This area is really diverse too. Diverse in race and in religion. There are a lot of Muslim and Hindu people here. We cant really preach to the Muslim people because in a lot of their countries its legal to kill a person if they convert away from Islam. So pretty much every Muslim person avoids any sort of contact with us. We're actually teaching a Muslim guy right now, but I guess in his country (Bangladesh) its not so bad to change religions, plus hes never planning on going back there. Other than that, of course there are a LOT of baptist people, then there are catholic people. The Church of Christ is really big around here too.
Random stories:So..last week I saw some Bratwursts (basically big hot dogs) in Wal-Mart and I decided to buy them because I remember last year before a BYU football game someone made some and they were really good. I didn't really have any idea about how to cook them, but I knew I would figure it out. Well, on the back it gave you instructions on how to cook them. You could either cook them on the BBQ or in a skillet. I didn't know how to work the Randall's BBQ so I knew I had to cook it in the skillet. The only problem is that I had no idea what a skillet was. By the way, my companion bought some too, so we were both trying to figure this out. We looked in all the cupboards for something that looked like a "skillet." Well, soon Sister Randall came home and she saw us looking around for this skillet thing and so we turned around and asked her what the heck a skillet is. She laughed and laughed and told us its a frying pan. Well, now I know what a skillet is, but I have no idea why they don't just call it a frying pan.
Next story: I don't think I ever told you guys that I ran over a bird in Galveston. It was my very last week there. There are tons of annoying dumb birds there that nobody likes. I remember riding my bike past a fence where some birds were and the birds didn't fly away. As soon as I rode past I was like...wooow, I probably could have punched one of those birds if I wanted to. So since that day Me and my companion have joked about how dumb the birds were and how we could probably hit one on our bikes. So we would always swerve at the birds and they would always fly away at the last second. Well...a day or two before I left, there was a bunch of birds eating stuff in the grass and I swerved at the last second into the pack and rode right over a big pigeon. It still flew away but it was really dazed and couldn't fly straight. I actually ran over a bird on my bike! I don't know how many people can say they've done that.
More random things: So for lunch my favorite thing to cook is Tacos. I just brown some ground beef, put it in a tortilla, then put some cheese on and eat it. Its actually really good. Another thing I've just started to make is a breakfast burrito. I buy bacon, cook it up, then put in 4-5 eggs and scramble them. Then throw in the bacon, put it all in a tortilla and its a delicious breakfast burrito.
I remember before I left Dad taught me how to make omelets. I don't remember exactly how to do it, so I was wondering if Dad could e-mail me and remind me how to do it. I remember kind of how to do it, but I'm still not sure.
Lastly, thank you to Nana and to Mom for making the posts about my birthday. Christopher and Steven sent me a Thank-you card. It was a thank you for being born card apparently. I thought it was hilarious and it made me laugh a lot. Nana and Bumpa sent me a card, and also Grandma did. The Hix's sent me a card for Easter. I also got that letter from Mom with the print out of all the blog stuff. So I've had some pretty good mail.
Oh yeah, one more thing I had written down. Since my companion is from Tonga I've learned a lot of really interesting stuff about Tonga. I think I may have told you a lot about the things I learned in my first e-mail I sent after coming to Richmond. I know I said Tonga is mostly Mormon. like 60%ish. Well there's actually a law there where you cant work on Sunday. If you see someone mowing their lawn or something on Sunday, the cops will come and stop them. No stores or anything are allowed to be open on Sunday. Only the hospitals. If you need some medicine or something because someone is sick you just go to the hospital, because everything in the hospital is free. Rugby is the big sport there to play. Pretty much everyone plays it. My companion loooved rugby. He might come to BYU to play when he gets back. Hes going home on June 26.
Ok well that's about all. This was another loong e-mail, so I hope you all enjoyed it. I love you guys!!!
Love,
Chase
Monday, April 13, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Yea, It Came! Received Mon, April 6, 2009
Wow...thank you for all the e-mails. And I apologize for not being able to e-mail last week. We drove all the way to the library just to find out the computers were broken. We waited like 2 hours then they were finally fixed, but when we got on the computer to e-mail, we couldn't log into our e-mail website. We eventually had to leave. Normally we would just go the next day, but we live so far away from everything, so we couldn't go do it. We have a certain amount of miles we can drive every month and we were already over by 100, so we couldn't drive way out to the library. My next plan was to use the Randall's computer. They were really busy that whole week and so were we and we didn't even see each other until Saturday. By that time I figured I'd just wait til Monday to e-mail.
SO...here I am. Lets see...we got our transfer calls this morning and me and my companion are both staying. I was really happy about that because I don't really have the whole area down yet and were doing really well together. Last week we taught the Dors and talked to them about baptism and they said they want to get baptized on May 16th. The father lives out in Miami and he wanted to be here for the baptism and that is the first time he could make it out. I was really happy to hear how supportive he was of his family. It would be really cool if missionaries in Miami could teach him out there so he could possibly get baptized with his family. Unfortunately he works 7 days a week and there are other complications so that missionaries cant come. We will teach him when he's down here too.
David Majewski is still planning on getting baptized when he finishes the Gospel Principles book and hes about 1/2 way done right now.
Tom Fitchett is praying about a baptismal date and we will see him again on Thursday and see if hes ready to choose a date.
Then there's the Vietnamese lady named Tien who is going to get baptized in a week or two depending on when we can visit her.So that's 7 people that are getting ready to get baptized!! We are doing really really good. The hard part is finding new people to teach. Unfortunately most of the people here are comfortable where they are and don't think they really need anything else. After thinking and praying about it a lot the thing that keeps on coming to mind is to use the amazing ward members that we have. So this last week or so we have been visiting a lot of members and sharing scriptures about missionary work and teaching the importance of missionary work. Pretty much everyone who lives here knows that knocking doors doesn't work well in this area so they all understand how important it is for them to open their mouths and talk to the people around them. We have gotten a few referrals so we'll see how it goes. I know that if we keep trying and put in all our effort we will find people to teach.
I did get my birthday package and the other package. I loved the tie and I wore it that day. Buying a new shirt was an excellent idea and I was actually thinking of asking for another short sleeve shirt or two, but there was one problem. I've found that the 15 1/2 size shirts are a little too small and I feel like I'm getting choked when I wear them, so I've been wearing all my size 16 shirts. So...do you think I should send it back home so you can exchange it or just keep it with me? I was also wondering if you could send some more ankle high socks. Somehow I've only got 1 pair of those left and about 3 normal length socks. I think other than that I'm doing really well.
How did you guys like conference?? I love it. I liked so many different talks and I have a lot of favorite speakers, but I think my favorite speaker is President Uchtdorf. When he speaks its always filled with power and with passion. He always uses his hands and you can tell what hes saying really means a lot to him. Hes also very confident when he speaks. I think the talk he gave in the priesthood session about Nehemiah was my favorite. Conference was definitely a good birthday present.
I discovered a new favorite cereal. Surprisingly and for the first time in my life, it is a Malt-O-Meal brand of cereal. Its called Muffin Tops. Its just like cinnamon toast crunch, but its blueberry flavored. At first I didn't really like it a ton, but like a week later I started craving it and I've eaten it every day since then. I also started having a craving for donuts. Every single night we always drove past the donut place right when it closed, then one day last week we were in the area when it was open. We went to this big donut place here called Shipleys Donuts. The donuts there were SO expensive. For a maple bar it was like $1.19. At home those are $0.60. I got a normal circular one and it was really good but I don't think I'll go back there again. Coincidentally, the day later we ate breakfast at our bishops house and he fed us donuts. That was one good breakfast. We eat breakfast at our bishop's house every Saturday morning and talk about investigators and everything else, then we go and play soccer with a bunch of members from the church and their friends. The youth are really good about bringing nonmember friends to come play, so every week there's several nonmembers there and it is a really good missionary opportunity. Plus we get to play soccer, so its really fun.
I loved that post about burgers that Mom sent me. I think I'd have to consider myself a burger connoisseur(however you spell it)...well at least bacon burger connoisseur.
SO...here I am. Lets see...we got our transfer calls this morning and me and my companion are both staying. I was really happy about that because I don't really have the whole area down yet and were doing really well together. Last week we taught the Dors and talked to them about baptism and they said they want to get baptized on May 16th. The father lives out in Miami and he wanted to be here for the baptism and that is the first time he could make it out. I was really happy to hear how supportive he was of his family. It would be really cool if missionaries in Miami could teach him out there so he could possibly get baptized with his family. Unfortunately he works 7 days a week and there are other complications so that missionaries cant come. We will teach him when he's down here too.
David Majewski is still planning on getting baptized when he finishes the Gospel Principles book and hes about 1/2 way done right now.
Tom Fitchett is praying about a baptismal date and we will see him again on Thursday and see if hes ready to choose a date.
Then there's the Vietnamese lady named Tien who is going to get baptized in a week or two depending on when we can visit her.So that's 7 people that are getting ready to get baptized!! We are doing really really good. The hard part is finding new people to teach. Unfortunately most of the people here are comfortable where they are and don't think they really need anything else. After thinking and praying about it a lot the thing that keeps on coming to mind is to use the amazing ward members that we have. So this last week or so we have been visiting a lot of members and sharing scriptures about missionary work and teaching the importance of missionary work. Pretty much everyone who lives here knows that knocking doors doesn't work well in this area so they all understand how important it is for them to open their mouths and talk to the people around them. We have gotten a few referrals so we'll see how it goes. I know that if we keep trying and put in all our effort we will find people to teach.
I did get my birthday package and the other package. I loved the tie and I wore it that day. Buying a new shirt was an excellent idea and I was actually thinking of asking for another short sleeve shirt or two, but there was one problem. I've found that the 15 1/2 size shirts are a little too small and I feel like I'm getting choked when I wear them, so I've been wearing all my size 16 shirts. So...do you think I should send it back home so you can exchange it or just keep it with me? I was also wondering if you could send some more ankle high socks. Somehow I've only got 1 pair of those left and about 3 normal length socks. I think other than that I'm doing really well.
How did you guys like conference?? I love it. I liked so many different talks and I have a lot of favorite speakers, but I think my favorite speaker is President Uchtdorf. When he speaks its always filled with power and with passion. He always uses his hands and you can tell what hes saying really means a lot to him. Hes also very confident when he speaks. I think the talk he gave in the priesthood session about Nehemiah was my favorite. Conference was definitely a good birthday present.
I discovered a new favorite cereal. Surprisingly and for the first time in my life, it is a Malt-O-Meal brand of cereal. Its called Muffin Tops. Its just like cinnamon toast crunch, but its blueberry flavored. At first I didn't really like it a ton, but like a week later I started craving it and I've eaten it every day since then. I also started having a craving for donuts. Every single night we always drove past the donut place right when it closed, then one day last week we were in the area when it was open. We went to this big donut place here called Shipleys Donuts. The donuts there were SO expensive. For a maple bar it was like $1.19. At home those are $0.60. I got a normal circular one and it was really good but I don't think I'll go back there again. Coincidentally, the day later we ate breakfast at our bishops house and he fed us donuts. That was one good breakfast. We eat breakfast at our bishop's house every Saturday morning and talk about investigators and everything else, then we go and play soccer with a bunch of members from the church and their friends. The youth are really good about bringing nonmember friends to come play, so every week there's several nonmembers there and it is a really good missionary opportunity. Plus we get to play soccer, so its really fun.
I loved that post about burgers that Mom sent me. I think I'd have to consider myself a burger connoisseur(however you spell it)...well at least bacon burger connoisseur.
- The #1 bacon burger is at Chili's.
- #2 is this place here in Texas called 9ers. They have pound burgers and all these different kinds, but their bacon burger is awesome.
- #3...maybe Western Bacon Cheeseburger at Carls Jr. That burger is so good but the problem is its too greasy.
- #4 Burger King's Sourdough Bacon Cheeseburger.
- #5 Jack in the Box's Ultimate Bacon Cheeseburger.
- Burger Supreme has a decent bacon burger as well.
- In N Out is up there too for overall best hamburger, even though it doesn't have bacon.
Ok, I've got 2 funny stories before I end this long e-mail. The first story is an embarrassing/funny story. Last week one day my companion told me I had dirt or something on my chin. I tried to brush it off but it wouldn't come off. So when I looked in the mirror I saw it was a bruise. After thinking for a while I remembered what had happened. The day before I was trying to put my bike on our bike rack and it kept getting stuck on some strap. So I got frustrated and yanked really hard, then it broke and my fist came flying back and I hit myself in the chin. It must have looked really funny, but I didn't think much of it and kind of forgot about it. For like 4 days now I've had this knuckle sized bruise on my chin that everyone keeps asking me about. I just tell everyone that I upper-cutted myself. Don't worry, i took a picture of it. By the way, I'm planning on sending my memory card home pretty soon.
Story #2: Last week we had a huuuge thunderstorm. This was our day to do our weekly planning so we were sitting inside watching all the lightning and listening to the huge booms of thunder. It just so happens that this was at the end of the month and we had almost no miles left, so we were planning on biking that day. Instead of wussing out and deciding to just drive, we actually both got excited and finished planning as fast as we could so we could go out and bike in the storm. We drove over to the subdivision where we were planning on working, got out of our car, got our bikes off the bike rack, and started biking down the street. The people who saw us get out of our car and get on our bikes in the rain probably thought we were crazy. It was soooo much fun. We were both completely drenched after a couple minutes. There was no point in trying to dodge puddles because we were already as wet as we could get, so we just rode straight through the puddles. Before I left you might remember Christopher gave me these cool rubber shoe cover to put on my shoes to keep dry. In this case it actually did the opposite. At first it was working really well, but when I went through big puddles and after my pants got soaking wet the water ran down my leg into my shoes and the rubber covers kept all the water inside. So I was walking around literally with shoes full of water. I dumped out all the water when I got home and it was pretty funny how much water came out. It was all fun.
Well...I this was a pretty long e-mail so I hope every one enjoys it. Unfortunately I randomly got a nose bleed while I was writing this so it cut out part of my time and I'm not going to have time to write to anyone else. But thank you everyone for sending the happy birthday e-mails. I'm probably going to print them all out and write back to everyone next week. I love you all and I hope you have a good spring break!!!
Love,Chase
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Nothing Received!
Just to let you all know, I did NOT forget to post Chase's letter. We did not receive an e-mail on Monday. Who knows why. I am sure all is well, it's just a wait and see. Maybe we will receive another post card on Friday like the last time he couldn't e-mail on his P-day.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Received Mon, March 23, 2009
Our temple trip was awesome. Half the mission went on Wednesday and the other half (my half) went on Friday. Its called a Temple Zone Conference. We went through and did the 9:00am session, had lunch, then had our zone conference meetings until about 5. The temple was awesome as always. We always take a big picture with all the missionaries in it at every Temple Zone Conference, but you'll have to wait til I get home to see those.
Then our zone conference afterwards was really good too. I learned a lot of things and I took a lot of notes. We also got to see a picture of our new mission president and his wife who will be coming on July 1st. They are named the Salen's, I think. If you get the MormonTimes there is a little paragraph or two written about each of the new mission presidents and they are in there. They are really young and they have 6 kids, their oldest is 14. They both served missions, Brother Salen to Argentina and I don't know where his wife went to.
After that we went and taught our stake presidents neighbor in our stake presidents home. Her name is Tien and she is from Vietnam. She is probably in her mid 50s and she was an English professor back in Vietnam. Surprisingly she still has a pretty thick accent, but I think she can understand it really well. The problem is that shes really hard of hearing so we have to yell when we talk to her. This was our 3rd time teaching her and we invited her to be baptized and she said yes! We are planning on doing the baptism April 11th. The Haitian family (the Dors) also said they want to be baptized and they are just praying for a specific date. David Majewski also said he wants to be baptized but he wants to finish reading the gospel principles book so he can be more comfortable with everything and at least have a decent grasp on the doctrines of the church. He's about 1/3 of the way through. The Dors, David Majewski, and Tien all came to church, so that was nice. We also had like 5-6 less active people come as well. So everything is going really well.
We are having a pretty difficult time finding new people to teach though. We've knocked for several hours this last week and found 0 people to teach. Only one lady let us in and that's because she felt sorry for us walking about in the blazing heat so she wanted to give us water. She was definitely not interested though. I know that if we keep working hard and doing everything were supposed to everything will all work out well.
Today for P-day we went to this place called the Alligator park. Its almost like an Arboretum but there's a lot of really big lakes with a bunch of alligators in them. There is no fence or anything keeping you away from the alligators so it was pretty neat. The only bad part is that you aren't allowed to throw rocks at the alligators, but that's your first instinct when they see an alligator sitting still. I held back most of the time. But one time I threw a rock and it landed right in front of the alligators mouth and it snapped at it, so that was pretty exciting.
Last P-day I got my haircut for $5 at some Vietnamese haircutting and they usually do a pretty good job. This lady didn't do the best job though. Apparently she thought my hair was too thick and decided to thin out my hair a lot with those weird thinning scissors. I guess that's what you get when you pay 5 dollars. Its not too bad though. It'll take all of 3 weeks to grow all the way back anyway.
Hmm...oh I have a funny story about last week at church. Last week we were asked to teach the Teachers Quorum, so we planned out our lesson and we were going to base it off a talk by Elder Wirthlin. Our lesson was on the divine role of mothers intertwined with motivating missionary stuff to make them want to go on a mission. Preparing this lesson also reminded me of something that will make Mom happy. I remember in Galveston on 2 separate occasions I got told that my mother did a good job raising me. A sister missionary told me then later a member did too. So good job Mom. Anyway... so we had our lesson all prepared but when it came time to give the lesson, we both looked at each other to get the talk out and our little paper we prepared. To this day neither of us know where that stuff went. So we had to wing our entire lesson. I just happened to have another talk with me in the car about missionary work, so we used that to kind of help us out. I guess its a good thing that all we do all day is teach. The lesson actually turned out pretty good and at the end of the lesson I asked all them all to raise their hands if they were planning on going on a mission. All 10-12 of them raised their hands, so that made me happy. Their normal teachers advisor guy told us that a lot of them were kind of hesitant and weren't sure if they were going to go, so we told a lot of good missionary stories and got them kind of excited.
Do you remember that one investigator I talked about back in Galveston? His name is William, he's a Hispanic guy from Nicaragua. He had a baptismal date for like a week after I left the area. I heard a week or so ago that everything went perfect and hes already becoming an awesome member, so that made me happy.
Another random piece of news: Grandma talked wrote me a couple months ago telling me that one of David's best friends sons is in my mission. His name is Elder Sharp. I met him a month or two ago. He's a zone leader. Hes a really awesome, humble guy. He's going home in a few months though.
Last P-day my companion and I also went and played racquetball with the zone leaders in their apartment complex. They have a racquetball court there and the zone leaders have racquetballs and rackets. It was really fun. We played about 4 games and I won 3 of them. The last game I lost because my partner wasn't that good so he got bored and pretty much just stopped trying. It was really fun the whole time for everyone else though and were planning on playing again.
By the way, did Brother Jensen ever show you the picture he took with me when he was here? I have all those pictures on this memory card, so you'll get to see all that when I send this memory card home.
Ok, well that's about all for this week. I love you all and I'll talk to you all (I almost typed yall!) later!
Love,
Chase
Then our zone conference afterwards was really good too. I learned a lot of things and I took a lot of notes. We also got to see a picture of our new mission president and his wife who will be coming on July 1st. They are named the Salen's, I think. If you get the MormonTimes there is a little paragraph or two written about each of the new mission presidents and they are in there. They are really young and they have 6 kids, their oldest is 14. They both served missions, Brother Salen to Argentina and I don't know where his wife went to.
After that we went and taught our stake presidents neighbor in our stake presidents home. Her name is Tien and she is from Vietnam. She is probably in her mid 50s and she was an English professor back in Vietnam. Surprisingly she still has a pretty thick accent, but I think she can understand it really well. The problem is that shes really hard of hearing so we have to yell when we talk to her. This was our 3rd time teaching her and we invited her to be baptized and she said yes! We are planning on doing the baptism April 11th. The Haitian family (the Dors) also said they want to be baptized and they are just praying for a specific date. David Majewski also said he wants to be baptized but he wants to finish reading the gospel principles book so he can be more comfortable with everything and at least have a decent grasp on the doctrines of the church. He's about 1/3 of the way through. The Dors, David Majewski, and Tien all came to church, so that was nice. We also had like 5-6 less active people come as well. So everything is going really well.
We are having a pretty difficult time finding new people to teach though. We've knocked for several hours this last week and found 0 people to teach. Only one lady let us in and that's because she felt sorry for us walking about in the blazing heat so she wanted to give us water. She was definitely not interested though. I know that if we keep working hard and doing everything were supposed to everything will all work out well.
Today for P-day we went to this place called the Alligator park. Its almost like an Arboretum but there's a lot of really big lakes with a bunch of alligators in them. There is no fence or anything keeping you away from the alligators so it was pretty neat. The only bad part is that you aren't allowed to throw rocks at the alligators, but that's your first instinct when they see an alligator sitting still. I held back most of the time. But one time I threw a rock and it landed right in front of the alligators mouth and it snapped at it, so that was pretty exciting.
Last P-day I got my haircut for $5 at some Vietnamese haircutting and they usually do a pretty good job. This lady didn't do the best job though. Apparently she thought my hair was too thick and decided to thin out my hair a lot with those weird thinning scissors. I guess that's what you get when you pay 5 dollars. Its not too bad though. It'll take all of 3 weeks to grow all the way back anyway.
Hmm...oh I have a funny story about last week at church. Last week we were asked to teach the Teachers Quorum, so we planned out our lesson and we were going to base it off a talk by Elder Wirthlin. Our lesson was on the divine role of mothers intertwined with motivating missionary stuff to make them want to go on a mission. Preparing this lesson also reminded me of something that will make Mom happy. I remember in Galveston on 2 separate occasions I got told that my mother did a good job raising me. A sister missionary told me then later a member did too. So good job Mom. Anyway... so we had our lesson all prepared but when it came time to give the lesson, we both looked at each other to get the talk out and our little paper we prepared. To this day neither of us know where that stuff went. So we had to wing our entire lesson. I just happened to have another talk with me in the car about missionary work, so we used that to kind of help us out. I guess its a good thing that all we do all day is teach. The lesson actually turned out pretty good and at the end of the lesson I asked all them all to raise their hands if they were planning on going on a mission. All 10-12 of them raised their hands, so that made me happy. Their normal teachers advisor guy told us that a lot of them were kind of hesitant and weren't sure if they were going to go, so we told a lot of good missionary stories and got them kind of excited.
Do you remember that one investigator I talked about back in Galveston? His name is William, he's a Hispanic guy from Nicaragua. He had a baptismal date for like a week after I left the area. I heard a week or so ago that everything went perfect and hes already becoming an awesome member, so that made me happy.
Another random piece of news: Grandma talked wrote me a couple months ago telling me that one of David's best friends sons is in my mission. His name is Elder Sharp. I met him a month or two ago. He's a zone leader. Hes a really awesome, humble guy. He's going home in a few months though.
Last P-day my companion and I also went and played racquetball with the zone leaders in their apartment complex. They have a racquetball court there and the zone leaders have racquetballs and rackets. It was really fun. We played about 4 games and I won 3 of them. The last game I lost because my partner wasn't that good so he got bored and pretty much just stopped trying. It was really fun the whole time for everyone else though and were planning on playing again.
By the way, did Brother Jensen ever show you the picture he took with me when he was here? I have all those pictures on this memory card, so you'll get to see all that when I send this memory card home.
Ok, well that's about all for this week. I love you all and I'll talk to you all (I almost typed yall!) later!
Love,
Chase
Monday, March 16, 2009
Received Mon, March 16, 2009
Ahh...its nice to finally be able to e-mail again. I feel like I haven't e-mailed in forever. I'm glad you got that postcard thing...I hated not being able to at least say I'm alive and well on P-day, then I remembered on Tuesday that I had those post card things and it worked out perfect.
We didn't really have a lot of errands, it just took forever. We went to the mission office to get a Book of Mormon in Tagalog and Elder Taufa had to pay some fees for something. We got some new office missionaries (they're old people..like in their 70s) and they don't really know what they're doing so it took forever. Then we had to go get our oil changed and we had to wait at this place for over and hour. It was pretty frustrating. Then we had a zone activity that took forever, then we had a dinner appointment to get to.
This week has actually seemed pretty long. We had appointments with like 3-4 new people that we found and they all fell through. Almost nobody we tried to contact was home, we just had some bad luck. Luckily we did have some really good lessons with our good investigators. Almost all of them told us how Jehovah's Witnesses had stopped by and tried to give them anti-Mormon literature and all their pamphlets. Luckily our investigators are good and told them they didn't want it. One even told them that hes "practicing LDS." haha...that made me feel good. We're pretty sure all those new people we had appointments with got anti'd too. They all of the sudden decided they didn't want to hear the message that they use to be so excited to learn about. The same thing was happening in my last area too. I don't know if anti-mormon people just follow us all the time or if they just happen to live in the areas we have appointments.
I'll tell you about all our good investigators though. First there's the Dors. They are a family from Haiti consisting of a mother, 2 daughters, and a son. I don't remember if I told you but the chapel in our area is brand new. It just got dedicated last week and it got finished a couple weeks before I got here. So when it got finished the Dors just decided to try it out and as it turns out they love it. Several other families just randomly showed up that week too...there were like 16 investigators at church. We've taught them like 3-4 times and they are awesome. The mother read the entire gospel principles book in like a week. The kids all go to mutual/webelos and even help out with the fundraiser stuff. Were are probably going to give them baptismal dates this week.
Next is David Majewski. His wife is a member but he is not. His wife has been inactive since she was a teenager and they just had their first kid and decided to start coming back. Right before I got here Elder Taufa went over to meet him for the first time, but he was really sick, so they gave him a blessing and the next day he was healed. He's one of the most genuine investigators I've met. He really wants to know if this is a good church to raise his family in. He's progressing really well and gaining a strong testimony. Last week he had his baby blessed. He went up there to hold the microphone, then to show the baby to the audience after the blessing so he got to be a part of it. I loved seeing that.
Then there's Tom Fitchett. He just had a bad heart attack and his heart actually stopped like 4-5 times. His sister in law is a member so she sent the missionaries to give him a blessing. Now hes recuperating well and he knows he was kept alive for a reason. Right before he had the heart attack they actually just bought a new house and were about to move, so me and my companion along with a couple other members helped pack up everything and move it all. That really touched his and his wife's hearts. He's been around members of the church for his whole life and already knows a lot about it. He told us hes already 90% sure the church is true. We taught him a really good Restoration lesson and this family named the Otis' (they helped with the move) come with us to teach him and they are doing an awesome job fellowshipping. So those are our 6 people! They're all awesome, but there's always room for more.
The hard thing about this area is that everyone works all the time. Most people work 6 days a week so we can only visit them once a week. Pretty much nobody is home during the day time either, so its kind of slow during the day, then were packed at night. We're doing pretty well though.
Oh yeah...I don't think I ever talked about when I left from Galveston. The day before I left me and my companion went all around Galveston, visiting our investigators and saying good-bye to members. We also rode around and went off all my favorite jumps on the island. The hurricane cracked a lot of sidewalks and made some almost perfect jumps, so that was really fun. Then at about 4pm we were riding to a members home and we came up to this street to cross it and saw all these parade floats riding past. We looked down the road and saw an endless line of them. Apparently one of the parades for Mardi Gras was about to start. As we stood there for like a minute figuring out what to do all the people on the floats started throwing Mardi Gras beads to us. One guy yelled out, "HEY ELDER BOYS!!! GO JOSEPH SMITH!! I LOVE MORMONS!!" It was pretty funny. Later that night we visited some members and they just barely got back from another parade and they gave us tons of Mardi Gras beads. I went around and took pictures with a lot of people, so I'll have to send those home soon.
About that...I think the best way to send pictures home would be to get another memory card and just send it back and forth. So Mom maybe you could get one and send it in the next package you send. You could also send more stamps. I have like 5-6 left so I'll be fine for a little while, but you might as well just throw it in a package you send.
Hmm...I wrote down some other things to write about, but I left the paper at home. Oh yeah...I just remembered some of them. Well first, yes we get a lot of dinner appointments here. Every single day we have an appointment. The food is almost always good. If you're going to gain weight on your mission this is the area you'd do it in. I haven't gained any weight yet though. Me and Elder Taufa go and work out in a nearby gym every morning too, so if its possible for me to gain weight, this is where it will be.
Right before I left Elder Pedersen got word from his dad that Bronco Mendenhall just contacted him and he has preferred walk-on status on the BYU football team. That means he's going to be on the team for sure, but he wont have a scholarship at least for his first year, so that will be cool to see.
A week after I left Galveston, our Spanish investigator William, got baptized!! Hes the one who said he wanted to go on exchanges and help us find more Hispanics. I was happy to hear that his baptism went smoothly and hes still doing good.
Hmm...thats about all I can think of! This is a pretty monstrous e-mail, so I hope it makes up for having no e-mail last week. I love you all!! Everything is going awesome here. OH yeah...we get to go to the temple this Friday! So that will be fun. Have a good week!!
Love,
Chase
We didn't really have a lot of errands, it just took forever. We went to the mission office to get a Book of Mormon in Tagalog and Elder Taufa had to pay some fees for something. We got some new office missionaries (they're old people..like in their 70s) and they don't really know what they're doing so it took forever. Then we had to go get our oil changed and we had to wait at this place for over and hour. It was pretty frustrating. Then we had a zone activity that took forever, then we had a dinner appointment to get to.
This week has actually seemed pretty long. We had appointments with like 3-4 new people that we found and they all fell through. Almost nobody we tried to contact was home, we just had some bad luck. Luckily we did have some really good lessons with our good investigators. Almost all of them told us how Jehovah's Witnesses had stopped by and tried to give them anti-Mormon literature and all their pamphlets. Luckily our investigators are good and told them they didn't want it. One even told them that hes "practicing LDS." haha...that made me feel good. We're pretty sure all those new people we had appointments with got anti'd too. They all of the sudden decided they didn't want to hear the message that they use to be so excited to learn about. The same thing was happening in my last area too. I don't know if anti-mormon people just follow us all the time or if they just happen to live in the areas we have appointments.
I'll tell you about all our good investigators though. First there's the Dors. They are a family from Haiti consisting of a mother, 2 daughters, and a son. I don't remember if I told you but the chapel in our area is brand new. It just got dedicated last week and it got finished a couple weeks before I got here. So when it got finished the Dors just decided to try it out and as it turns out they love it. Several other families just randomly showed up that week too...there were like 16 investigators at church. We've taught them like 3-4 times and they are awesome. The mother read the entire gospel principles book in like a week. The kids all go to mutual/webelos and even help out with the fundraiser stuff. Were are probably going to give them baptismal dates this week.
Next is David Majewski. His wife is a member but he is not. His wife has been inactive since she was a teenager and they just had their first kid and decided to start coming back. Right before I got here Elder Taufa went over to meet him for the first time, but he was really sick, so they gave him a blessing and the next day he was healed. He's one of the most genuine investigators I've met. He really wants to know if this is a good church to raise his family in. He's progressing really well and gaining a strong testimony. Last week he had his baby blessed. He went up there to hold the microphone, then to show the baby to the audience after the blessing so he got to be a part of it. I loved seeing that.
Then there's Tom Fitchett. He just had a bad heart attack and his heart actually stopped like 4-5 times. His sister in law is a member so she sent the missionaries to give him a blessing. Now hes recuperating well and he knows he was kept alive for a reason. Right before he had the heart attack they actually just bought a new house and were about to move, so me and my companion along with a couple other members helped pack up everything and move it all. That really touched his and his wife's hearts. He's been around members of the church for his whole life and already knows a lot about it. He told us hes already 90% sure the church is true. We taught him a really good Restoration lesson and this family named the Otis' (they helped with the move) come with us to teach him and they are doing an awesome job fellowshipping. So those are our 6 people! They're all awesome, but there's always room for more.
The hard thing about this area is that everyone works all the time. Most people work 6 days a week so we can only visit them once a week. Pretty much nobody is home during the day time either, so its kind of slow during the day, then were packed at night. We're doing pretty well though.
Oh yeah...I don't think I ever talked about when I left from Galveston. The day before I left me and my companion went all around Galveston, visiting our investigators and saying good-bye to members. We also rode around and went off all my favorite jumps on the island. The hurricane cracked a lot of sidewalks and made some almost perfect jumps, so that was really fun. Then at about 4pm we were riding to a members home and we came up to this street to cross it and saw all these parade floats riding past. We looked down the road and saw an endless line of them. Apparently one of the parades for Mardi Gras was about to start. As we stood there for like a minute figuring out what to do all the people on the floats started throwing Mardi Gras beads to us. One guy yelled out, "HEY ELDER BOYS!!! GO JOSEPH SMITH!! I LOVE MORMONS!!" It was pretty funny. Later that night we visited some members and they just barely got back from another parade and they gave us tons of Mardi Gras beads. I went around and took pictures with a lot of people, so I'll have to send those home soon.
About that...I think the best way to send pictures home would be to get another memory card and just send it back and forth. So Mom maybe you could get one and send it in the next package you send. You could also send more stamps. I have like 5-6 left so I'll be fine for a little while, but you might as well just throw it in a package you send.
Hmm...I wrote down some other things to write about, but I left the paper at home. Oh yeah...I just remembered some of them. Well first, yes we get a lot of dinner appointments here. Every single day we have an appointment. The food is almost always good. If you're going to gain weight on your mission this is the area you'd do it in. I haven't gained any weight yet though. Me and Elder Taufa go and work out in a nearby gym every morning too, so if its possible for me to gain weight, this is where it will be.
Right before I left Elder Pedersen got word from his dad that Bronco Mendenhall just contacted him and he has preferred walk-on status on the BYU football team. That means he's going to be on the team for sure, but he wont have a scholarship at least for his first year, so that will be cool to see.
A week after I left Galveston, our Spanish investigator William, got baptized!! Hes the one who said he wanted to go on exchanges and help us find more Hispanics. I was happy to hear that his baptism went smoothly and hes still doing good.
Hmm...thats about all I can think of! This is a pretty monstrous e-mail, so I hope it makes up for having no e-mail last week. I love you all!! Everything is going awesome here. OH yeah...we get to go to the temple this Friday! So that will be fun. Have a good week!!
Love,
Chase
Friday, March 13, 2009
Received Fri, March 13, 2009
We got this postcard from Chase this afternoon:
Dear Family,
Sorry I couldn’t e-mail this week. We had a couple extra errands we had to run this week and it all took forever. Normally we would just grab some fast food and e-mail during lunch the next day, but we were kind of far away from any e-mail place so we have to wait until next week.
I just didn’t want anyone to worry. I’m doing really good still and me and Elder Taufa are having fun. We’ve had some awesome lessons. Ok, well I’ll be sure to e-mail this week. I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Dear Family,
Sorry I couldn’t e-mail this week. We had a couple extra errands we had to run this week and it all took forever. Normally we would just grab some fast food and e-mail during lunch the next day, but we were kind of far away from any e-mail place so we have to wait until next week.
I just didn’t want anyone to worry. I’m doing really good still and me and Elder Taufa are having fun. We’ve had some awesome lessons. Ok, well I’ll be sure to e-mail this week. I love you all!
Love,
Chase
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