Dear Family,
When you live with members, you get to hear a little bit more than normal about whats going on in the news and whats going on in the world. They’ve been telling us about all this huge flooding and mudslides that have been going on in Southern California. I’ve had a couple other people tell me the same thing and I’ve seen a few pictures. Then in Mom’s e-mail I just hear there was a little rain storm then it was sunny all day. I thought that was funny. I was disappointed that I was missing out on some awesome rain storms. I knew it couldn’t be very bad, but I imagined that there would be like a river going down Highland Oaks dr, like there has been in other huge storms. Our house is in a pretty ideal location, up on a little hill, so even if there was a lot of flooding, it couldn’t touch us.
Ok, here is the transfer news. My companion, Elder Roberts, is getting transferred! There is going to be a change in every zone leader companionship this transfer. There have been a lot of changes and moving around lately. I am pretty excited for it though. My companion is an awesome guy, but he’s been in this area forever and he is a pretty strong headed guy, so he naturally tries to do everything by himself. It has gotten a lot better since the start of the transfer though. My guess is that I will probably get a pretty new, if not brand new zone leader. You never know though. I’ll find out on Wednesday.
Elder Pedersen and Elder Campbell, 2 of my companions are going home tomorrow. A couple other of my friends in the mission are going home too. I think the weirdest thing though is that all the sister missionaries who came out with me are going home tomorrow too. I don’t think I would be able to be satisfied if I already went home. I know these next couple months are going to flyyy by…time always seems to be going faster and faster and faster in the mission. That’s why you just have to do everything you can, while you can and not take a single day for granted.
This week I got to on 2 exchanges. The first one was to a Spanish area that covers the north part of my area. I was with Elder Carroll, who I have served around a lot in my mission, so it was fun to be with him again. It was also fun to be in a full Spanish area again. I loved it. One thing I noticed is how my Spanish has not gotten rusty at all. If anything it has just gotten better. It feels good to be at a very comfortable level of speaking the language. In my area I still run into a couple Hispanic people a week. This week I ran into a Hispanic guy and he told me he was from Bolivia, then I mentioned that I knew some people from Bolivia and that I had tried Peanut Soup, which is a popular thing to eat in Bolivia, and he was really surprised and opened up and started talking to me about everything. Then we talked about he church and he said the church was all over in Bolivia, then he said, “So when are you coming over to visit me?” I love Hispanic people. I didn’t even have to ask him. I gave that referral over to the Spanish elders…hopefully something good comes from it. It is amazing how I talk to 70 people a week and maybe 1 or 2 says I can come by sometime and if I am extremely lucky, maybe they’ll even set up an appointment, and if I’m unbelievably lucky, they might actually be there when we show up for the appointment. Then probably around half the Hispanic people I talk to say that we can come back and teach them. I hope I get to end my mission in a Spanish area…we’ll see.
I also got to go on exchanges to Galveston Island this week. This was the first time in almost a year I have been there. They are rebuilding all the piers at the beach and all sorts of stuff. It was way fun to go back there. It was a good day too, just like how I remembered it. Like 72 degrees with a nice ocean breeze. I think the coolest thing that happened though is that I ran into this lady who I taught my very first lesson to. We gave her and her 2 daughters baptismal dates, but then they disappeared with all the hurricane stuff. Well, I ran into her again and the missionaries are going to go back there and start teaching them again. I am excited about that.
In our area we still don’t have a whole lot going on right now, but we are working with a 10 year old kid named Anthony. He is living in a pretty bad situation. He lives with his mom and dad, who is almost never home, and his brother and his cousin. They live in this nasty little motel room. The mom is way too overweight, so she cant really move around a whole lot, so the place is just gross. All the kids do all day long is sit there and play video games. They have had pretty rough lives as you can imagine. All of them are members except for Anthony, but all of them are inactive. Anthony has started coming to church and he asks us every week if he can get baptized. Unfortunately we cant baptize him if he has absolutely no family support, because there isn’t very much of a chance he will be able to stay active. We have made a ton of progress with him in the past couple weeks though. He is now involved in scouts which he absolutely loves, which also helped him make a bunch of friends and people are available to give him rides to church and scouts every week. Elder Roberts and I are like big brothers to Anthony. We look out for him and make sure he does his homework and we reward him when he does something good. It has been neat to see him start to take responsibility and want to start to do good things as we reward him and help him see why it is good. Hopefully he will be able to get baptized.
We have had pretty good weeks these past 2 weeks. This week we taught 26 sit down lessons, which are lessons where we actually go into a home, say a prayer, have a full lesson, end a prayer, and leave. Elder Perry came and he challenged all of us to get 20 sit down lessons per week. We have been doing really well at that. We’ve also each been hitting our talk to 10 people each day goals as well. Hopefully we’ll start to see more good things happening. We have been seeing a lot of the less active people we teach start coming to church and progressing, which is awesome, but I hope we can start to see some results with non members too.
This should be an interesting week with Transfer meeting coming up, then Zone Leader Council, which is that loooong meeting we have with all the zone leaders once a transfer. I always have to bring candy to keep myself entertained and awake. I am not a fan of meetings. This meeting is always an awesome one though. Today we are planning on going to NASA to take a tour. That will be cool. Speaking of cool, enjoy that Cool Whip Delight…that stuff is delicious.
Ok, have a good week! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
PS. I also got a letter from Tony this week...he is doing well. I think he had a pretty difficult companion to start out with, but all is well now and it sounds like hes enjoying it a lot.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Received Tue, Jan 19, 2010
Dear Family,
I’ll start off with the whole driver’s license thing. I’m glad you remembered because I totally forgot about all that stuff. If I do get something in the mail, maybe it would just be easier if one of you signed my name on the paper for me and sent it in. I don’t know how that would work or if it would work, but I thought I’d throw it out there.
I only have a couple things written down for this week. Its been mostly the same stuff going on. But I do have a couple things. The first one is about the show Extreme Home Makeover…I think that’s what its called. I know you know what it is. Well they are doing one of those houses here in Kemah, which is right by League City. I guess there is some family here and they take in all these foster kids. They’ve had like 20 something kids go through their home and they’ve adopted a lot of them…like 8 or 9. Several of them have disabilities too. Their house got destroyed last year by the hurricane and they haven’t had any money to fix it, so they have been living in FEMA trailers. So Extreme Home Makeover came in and built a massive house for them. It is the biggest house they’ve built on the show. Its something like 8 bedrooms and they have an elevator in the middle of the house so the kids with disabilities can go up and down. We stopped by to see the house. There were toooons and tons of volunteers there. I’d say probably 80% of them were standing around and they’d pick something up every once in a while and give it to one of the few contract workers who knew what they were doing. They really did work on it 24 hours a day though. I think that episode goes on the air in March or something.
You will never guess what I did for some service this week. We mucked out a house! I never thought that over a year after the hurricane I would muck out another house. Apparently some lady finally got cleared by her insurance to muck everything out, so I guess she knew a member and the member sent us to go help her. It was a lot more fun when everything wasn’t saturated in sewage water. The insulation was nasty though…I did not go near that stuff. It was black. It was fun to smash in the walls and tear everything apart though. It brought back a lot of memories.
The only other really eventful, out of the ordinary thing I remember from this week is that on Sunday I got to interview a family of 4 for baptism. Baptismal interviews are always fun to do. You get to hear first hand about all these people’s conversions. All of them are amazing too. Everyone had to overcome some pretty significant things whether it be family issues, friends, word of wisdom issues, or whatever else. Its probably one of my favorite parts in the mission.
I bought myself a little Christmas present yesterday. I’ve started to try to do exercises in the morning again and I decided that I’m just going to do pushups in the morning. I want to do 100 push ups every morning. I honestly didn’t think I would be able to do more than 15 pushups without stopping right now, but I was and I did a couple sets of 20. I’ve been doing about 85 pushups in the morning. Anyway, sometimes it hurts my wrists to do pushups on the ground and some missionaries have these things called Perfect Pushups that they use and I’ve used them before and I liked them, so I decided to use some Christmas money to buy them. They are those things you see ads for on the TV that were designed by some navy seal or something and basically all it is, is that you spin your wrists 90 degrees as you do the pushup and it works more muscles and takes the stress off you tendons. We’ll see how those work. They are small so it will be easy to just throw in my suit case.
This is the last week of the transfer! So that means next week I will have transfer news. Now I will be veeery surprised if I get transferred, but you never know. Everyone has been moving around a lot lately. My companion has been in this area for like 6 months, so he could go at any time. I am pretty sure I will go back to Spanish sometime, but my guess is that will be in 2 more transfers. Speaking of that, it has been really cool to see how my Spanish has not gotten worse at all. If anything it has gotten better. I see Spanish people throughout the week, so I always take the opportunity to go talk to them. It doesn’t feel like I’m rusty at all. Plus I’ve been handing out about an average of 1-2 referrals to the Spanish Elders every week, so that makes them happy. And today I am on exchanges in one of the Spanish areas, so that is fun. And all the interviews I do are in Spanish. I’ve done about 6-7 interviews this transfer, so that is always fun.
We are still searching for people to teach in our area. We have been hitting our goal of each talking to at least 10 people every day and we finally found a person or 2 who actually might be interested. We have return appointments this week, so we’ll see how it goes.
Well, as always it was awesome to hear the updates from home. And yes I am back to full health. And I bought some hand sanitizer, so I need to start using that stuff again. It always seems like there is something going around in every house we go into. And Bub, you should start that Driver’s Ed. You should just do it online like I did. I would just put on some music and read through that stuff on the weekends and I got done with it pretty fast.
Ok have a good week!! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
I’ll start off with the whole driver’s license thing. I’m glad you remembered because I totally forgot about all that stuff. If I do get something in the mail, maybe it would just be easier if one of you signed my name on the paper for me and sent it in. I don’t know how that would work or if it would work, but I thought I’d throw it out there.
I only have a couple things written down for this week. Its been mostly the same stuff going on. But I do have a couple things. The first one is about the show Extreme Home Makeover…I think that’s what its called. I know you know what it is. Well they are doing one of those houses here in Kemah, which is right by League City. I guess there is some family here and they take in all these foster kids. They’ve had like 20 something kids go through their home and they’ve adopted a lot of them…like 8 or 9. Several of them have disabilities too. Their house got destroyed last year by the hurricane and they haven’t had any money to fix it, so they have been living in FEMA trailers. So Extreme Home Makeover came in and built a massive house for them. It is the biggest house they’ve built on the show. Its something like 8 bedrooms and they have an elevator in the middle of the house so the kids with disabilities can go up and down. We stopped by to see the house. There were toooons and tons of volunteers there. I’d say probably 80% of them were standing around and they’d pick something up every once in a while and give it to one of the few contract workers who knew what they were doing. They really did work on it 24 hours a day though. I think that episode goes on the air in March or something.
You will never guess what I did for some service this week. We mucked out a house! I never thought that over a year after the hurricane I would muck out another house. Apparently some lady finally got cleared by her insurance to muck everything out, so I guess she knew a member and the member sent us to go help her. It was a lot more fun when everything wasn’t saturated in sewage water. The insulation was nasty though…I did not go near that stuff. It was black. It was fun to smash in the walls and tear everything apart though. It brought back a lot of memories.
The only other really eventful, out of the ordinary thing I remember from this week is that on Sunday I got to interview a family of 4 for baptism. Baptismal interviews are always fun to do. You get to hear first hand about all these people’s conversions. All of them are amazing too. Everyone had to overcome some pretty significant things whether it be family issues, friends, word of wisdom issues, or whatever else. Its probably one of my favorite parts in the mission.
I bought myself a little Christmas present yesterday. I’ve started to try to do exercises in the morning again and I decided that I’m just going to do pushups in the morning. I want to do 100 push ups every morning. I honestly didn’t think I would be able to do more than 15 pushups without stopping right now, but I was and I did a couple sets of 20. I’ve been doing about 85 pushups in the morning. Anyway, sometimes it hurts my wrists to do pushups on the ground and some missionaries have these things called Perfect Pushups that they use and I’ve used them before and I liked them, so I decided to use some Christmas money to buy them. They are those things you see ads for on the TV that were designed by some navy seal or something and basically all it is, is that you spin your wrists 90 degrees as you do the pushup and it works more muscles and takes the stress off you tendons. We’ll see how those work. They are small so it will be easy to just throw in my suit case.
This is the last week of the transfer! So that means next week I will have transfer news. Now I will be veeery surprised if I get transferred, but you never know. Everyone has been moving around a lot lately. My companion has been in this area for like 6 months, so he could go at any time. I am pretty sure I will go back to Spanish sometime, but my guess is that will be in 2 more transfers. Speaking of that, it has been really cool to see how my Spanish has not gotten worse at all. If anything it has gotten better. I see Spanish people throughout the week, so I always take the opportunity to go talk to them. It doesn’t feel like I’m rusty at all. Plus I’ve been handing out about an average of 1-2 referrals to the Spanish Elders every week, so that makes them happy. And today I am on exchanges in one of the Spanish areas, so that is fun. And all the interviews I do are in Spanish. I’ve done about 6-7 interviews this transfer, so that is always fun.
We are still searching for people to teach in our area. We have been hitting our goal of each talking to at least 10 people every day and we finally found a person or 2 who actually might be interested. We have return appointments this week, so we’ll see how it goes.
Well, as always it was awesome to hear the updates from home. And yes I am back to full health. And I bought some hand sanitizer, so I need to start using that stuff again. It always seems like there is something going around in every house we go into. And Bub, you should start that Driver’s Ed. You should just do it online like I did. I would just put on some music and read through that stuff on the weekends and I got done with it pretty fast.
Ok have a good week!! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Received Mon Jan 11, 2010
Dear Family,
This has been one crazy week. I think I mentioned last week in my e-mail that I woke up not feeling very well. Well it never really went away. Today I feel the best I have felt since I got sick, so I am hoping this whole thing passes. I called up the guy in charge of missionary medical stuff, but he is kind of crazy and just told me to take a bunch of medicine and stay inside for 48 hours. There was no way I could just sit around inside for 2 days…even if my health did get better, I would probably be mentally insane. Plus it wasn’t so bad, so we kept working.
So with that in mind, here are some of the things we had to get done this week. First, we had to plan, prepare, and do a Zone Meeting, which is basically a meeting where all the missionaries in the zone come to and we have to train them and put on this whole program. So we had to plan out the whole meeting and prepare our training. It actually turned out really well. We trained on the L. Tom Perry Plan, also called the Ward Mission Process, which is basically where the auxiliary groups are supposed to give us names of 5 people to visit. That hasn’t really been happening in any ward in the mission except for the League City ward, which is where Elder Roberts and I are serving. So we trained the missionaries on how to help their ward get that started. A lot of missionaries called us up afterwards and told us of a lot of good experiences that came from the things we trained them on. I am pretty happy about how it all went.
The next huge task was that we had to prepare for stake correlation, which is that meeting where we meet with the stake presidency, the high councilor over missionary work, and with our mission president and we talk about how all the wards are doing. We have to fill out these long tedious reports for each ward and we have 9 of them in our zone/stake, so you can only imagine how long that took. That meeting ended up going very well too. The whole Ward Mission Process came up into conversation and they decided that they wanted to train all the ward leaders on this whole thing and teach them how to get it started. That is exactly what we wanted to have happen, so we’re excited to have that happen. After this meeting and after all this gets running, there is going to be a big difference in the work here.
The NEXT thing is that we had to move on Thursday and help 2 other companionships move. We moved in with members. They are named the Seely’s. I’m not sure how to spell it. They are probably about 50 and their youngest daughter just moved out of the house to go to college. They are a pretty cool family. We live upstairs where we have our own room and study area and everything. Its definitely not as big and spacious as the Randall’s home in Richmond, but not very many people’s houses are that big. So we did all that on Thursday.
Then we just had all the normal missionary work stuff. In the mission we have recently been stressing how every missionary needs to get 10 OYMs a day. OYM = Open Your Mouth…so in other words, you need to talk to 10 people a day. It is actually a lot harder than it sounds. You just don’t see 20 people(for both companionships to get 10 OYMs) in your path each day, so we’ve had to go to shopping center parking lots to try to find people to talk to. We have not had much luck at all yet. Its so interesting to see how all the different cultures are. I could get rejected by 10 American white people in a row, then if I go up and talk to a Hispanic person in Spanish they always sit and listen and they always say you can come back and teach them. Of course a lot of the time they really aren’t very interested and they really don’t want you to come back, but they are too nice to tell you no. I think that a lot of the people who have grown up here just have it trained into their minds not to let anybody take advantage of you. They see 2 20 year old kids walking around in nice clothes, and naturally you think they must be getting something out of it and they must have some hidden motives. The good thing is that when you find someone who says you can come back, they are serious and they are usually really good investigators, so in the end it all ends up the same. We just have to keep looking!
The Keichler’s, who Mom got that knitted thing from, are an older couple who have had missionaries in their home for like 2 ½ years. The missionaries finally moved out into a different place. They live in our ward. So of course they love the missionaries and I guess she sends one of those things to all the missionaries who come into the ward. They are nice people.
So that was my week. Somehow we made it through all that and we got everything done on time and we had a decent week in terms of missionary work. This week will be much more relaxing.
In response to news at home and Mom’s e-mail…Bub you are the man. As long as you get a decent GPA you are pretty set. Of course if you think you can do even better, it never hurts to take it again, but a 30 is very good.
I think church at 11 is the perfect starting time. Our ward currently starts at 8:30 and it is way too early, especially when you have early morning meetings. We might have to cover another ward, which means we would have 6 hours of church plus at least another hour or 2 for meetings. That does not sound fun.
Alright I think that’s about it for this week. Ohh yeah..I realized yesterday that I hit my 18 month mark on Saturday! That is kind of exciting. I was gone on exchanges in Sugar Land with the assistants that day. I was with Elder Schwarz who is one of my good friends in the mission, so we had a really good time. It didn’t even cross my mind all day until Sunday in one of our meetings I saw the date was the 10th and remembered that the 9th is always another month mark. Oh yeah and one more thing. I don’t know how often they have you go and give a missionary report in sacrament meeting, but in your next one could you please tell everyone how grateful I am for all the letters and stuff they sent me at Christmas time. I don’t think I’m going to have enough time to write everyone back, but I don’t want anyone to go unthanked.
Oh and the other last thing is that it has been FREEZING here again. It was down in the 20s on Thursday and Friday, then it was in the 30s on Saturday and now today its warming back up and it will be warm again. We didn’t get any snow…the skies were all clear, but all the water puddles and everything did freeze over. I wont be surprised if it is in the 70s this week. There is a saying in Texas where they say, If you don’t like the weather, wait a couple minutes. Obviously referring to how frequently the weather changes.
Ok have a great week, I love you all!!!
Love,
Chase
This has been one crazy week. I think I mentioned last week in my e-mail that I woke up not feeling very well. Well it never really went away. Today I feel the best I have felt since I got sick, so I am hoping this whole thing passes. I called up the guy in charge of missionary medical stuff, but he is kind of crazy and just told me to take a bunch of medicine and stay inside for 48 hours. There was no way I could just sit around inside for 2 days…even if my health did get better, I would probably be mentally insane. Plus it wasn’t so bad, so we kept working.
So with that in mind, here are some of the things we had to get done this week. First, we had to plan, prepare, and do a Zone Meeting, which is basically a meeting where all the missionaries in the zone come to and we have to train them and put on this whole program. So we had to plan out the whole meeting and prepare our training. It actually turned out really well. We trained on the L. Tom Perry Plan, also called the Ward Mission Process, which is basically where the auxiliary groups are supposed to give us names of 5 people to visit. That hasn’t really been happening in any ward in the mission except for the League City ward, which is where Elder Roberts and I are serving. So we trained the missionaries on how to help their ward get that started. A lot of missionaries called us up afterwards and told us of a lot of good experiences that came from the things we trained them on. I am pretty happy about how it all went.
The next huge task was that we had to prepare for stake correlation, which is that meeting where we meet with the stake presidency, the high councilor over missionary work, and with our mission president and we talk about how all the wards are doing. We have to fill out these long tedious reports for each ward and we have 9 of them in our zone/stake, so you can only imagine how long that took. That meeting ended up going very well too. The whole Ward Mission Process came up into conversation and they decided that they wanted to train all the ward leaders on this whole thing and teach them how to get it started. That is exactly what we wanted to have happen, so we’re excited to have that happen. After this meeting and after all this gets running, there is going to be a big difference in the work here.
The NEXT thing is that we had to move on Thursday and help 2 other companionships move. We moved in with members. They are named the Seely’s. I’m not sure how to spell it. They are probably about 50 and their youngest daughter just moved out of the house to go to college. They are a pretty cool family. We live upstairs where we have our own room and study area and everything. Its definitely not as big and spacious as the Randall’s home in Richmond, but not very many people’s houses are that big. So we did all that on Thursday.
Then we just had all the normal missionary work stuff. In the mission we have recently been stressing how every missionary needs to get 10 OYMs a day. OYM = Open Your Mouth…so in other words, you need to talk to 10 people a day. It is actually a lot harder than it sounds. You just don’t see 20 people(for both companionships to get 10 OYMs) in your path each day, so we’ve had to go to shopping center parking lots to try to find people to talk to. We have not had much luck at all yet. Its so interesting to see how all the different cultures are. I could get rejected by 10 American white people in a row, then if I go up and talk to a Hispanic person in Spanish they always sit and listen and they always say you can come back and teach them. Of course a lot of the time they really aren’t very interested and they really don’t want you to come back, but they are too nice to tell you no. I think that a lot of the people who have grown up here just have it trained into their minds not to let anybody take advantage of you. They see 2 20 year old kids walking around in nice clothes, and naturally you think they must be getting something out of it and they must have some hidden motives. The good thing is that when you find someone who says you can come back, they are serious and they are usually really good investigators, so in the end it all ends up the same. We just have to keep looking!
The Keichler’s, who Mom got that knitted thing from, are an older couple who have had missionaries in their home for like 2 ½ years. The missionaries finally moved out into a different place. They live in our ward. So of course they love the missionaries and I guess she sends one of those things to all the missionaries who come into the ward. They are nice people.
So that was my week. Somehow we made it through all that and we got everything done on time and we had a decent week in terms of missionary work. This week will be much more relaxing.
In response to news at home and Mom’s e-mail…Bub you are the man. As long as you get a decent GPA you are pretty set. Of course if you think you can do even better, it never hurts to take it again, but a 30 is very good.
I think church at 11 is the perfect starting time. Our ward currently starts at 8:30 and it is way too early, especially when you have early morning meetings. We might have to cover another ward, which means we would have 6 hours of church plus at least another hour or 2 for meetings. That does not sound fun.
Alright I think that’s about it for this week. Ohh yeah..I realized yesterday that I hit my 18 month mark on Saturday! That is kind of exciting. I was gone on exchanges in Sugar Land with the assistants that day. I was with Elder Schwarz who is one of my good friends in the mission, so we had a really good time. It didn’t even cross my mind all day until Sunday in one of our meetings I saw the date was the 10th and remembered that the 9th is always another month mark. Oh yeah and one more thing. I don’t know how often they have you go and give a missionary report in sacrament meeting, but in your next one could you please tell everyone how grateful I am for all the letters and stuff they sent me at Christmas time. I don’t think I’m going to have enough time to write everyone back, but I don’t want anyone to go unthanked.
Oh and the other last thing is that it has been FREEZING here again. It was down in the 20s on Thursday and Friday, then it was in the 30s on Saturday and now today its warming back up and it will be warm again. We didn’t get any snow…the skies were all clear, but all the water puddles and everything did freeze over. I wont be surprised if it is in the 70s this week. There is a saying in Texas where they say, If you don’t like the weather, wait a couple minutes. Obviously referring to how frequently the weather changes.
Ok have a great week, I love you all!!!
Love,
Chase
Received Mon Jan 4, 2010
Dear Family,
I am glad to hear everyone had a good time with the wedding/visit to Utah/Idaho. It sounded like it was all fun. It sounded like a lot of eating too, which is definitely a good thing. So where are Steven and Heather living right now? I know they eventually plan on moving down to California again for Steven’s job.
I finally got the lost package with the Sees candy and stamps! I don’t know what the deal was, but it looked like it has been tossed around a lot. It was all ripped down the side and somebody had tried to tape it back together. Everything was still in there as far as I could see though. The Sees candy was still delicious, so thank you.
After e-mailing last week I got started to get sick and I think I had the 24 hour flu. My companion got it a couple days before and its spreading like crazy in the mission. Yesterday I started to get a sore throat and this morning I woke up and it has gotten pretty bad. I have a headache, backache, and sore throat. It already feels much better though. I called up the 2 senior missionaries in charge of all the health stuff with missionaries and they told me to stay in for 48 hours and to take Tylenol and ibuprofen. They are kind of crazy. I did take some Tylenol and I’m going to buy some ibuprofen…hopefully that helps with the back. There is no way I’m staying in for 48 hours though. I have never been sick so many times though. Before the mission I was never sick, now in the mission I’ve gotten sick like 7 times. I wash my hands all the time too. Luckily it usually never lasts more than 24 hours.
I got to go on exchanges to an area called Clear Lake this week. I know if I ever explained it fully, but I know I did mention the League City Zone was barely created when the League City Stake was formed about 2 months ago. Well when that happened, the stake took in wards from another stake just north of us, which is actually outside of our mission. Because of that our mission boundaries changed and we got a couple new areas and some new missionaries. Clear Lake is one of those new areas. Ever since being in our mission, the area has never had a baptismal date. I’m not really sure what the problem is…I know there were some pretty disobedient missionaries there who got sent home, and that always leaves a bad taste in the member’s mouths, but I honestly believe you can change that pretty fast if you just work hard and work well with the members. Anyway, when we went on exchanges we planned out some good lessons and planned to extend baptismal dates in every lesson. We only got in to teach 1 of the investigators they had planned, but we taught the lesson as we planned, extended the date and he accepted! I think a lot of missionaries just get afraid of extending baptismal invitations and they end up doing it pretty weak, or just not at all. I think our experience at least helped cure this problem at least a little bit. They went to teach one of the investigators who we had planned for, but wasn’t home, the day after I left and they extended another date. That was good to hear.
Elder Cameron, my last companion, also called me up last night to update me on how all the people from my last area are doing. A lot of the people that I found and taught with Elder Cameron are progressing well still and are getting closer to baptism. That was a pretty amazing area. Hopefully we can turn this area into an area like that. Our teaching pool is pretty sparse right now though. Although we did get another baptismal date and find a few new hopeful people, so things are looking better.
Ok, one more thing. My driver’s license expires on my birthday in April. I talked to our vehicle coordinator guy and he told me I have 2 options. 1: I can go to the DMV here and get a Texas driver’s license, or 2: I can write to my family and see if they can extend my driver’s license. At first I thought it would be pretty cool to have a Texas drivers license, but then I started thinking about it and thought it might cause problems living in California, but having a Texas driver’s license. I’d have to change the address and all that stuff. So the best option would probably be to extend my driver’s license at least until I get home, so I can go and get a new one when I get back. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll just get one here. So, could you please try to find out what all needs to happen in order to extend my license?
That’s about all for this week. Pray that we can find some new good people to teach! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
I am glad to hear everyone had a good time with the wedding/visit to Utah/Idaho. It sounded like it was all fun. It sounded like a lot of eating too, which is definitely a good thing. So where are Steven and Heather living right now? I know they eventually plan on moving down to California again for Steven’s job.
I finally got the lost package with the Sees candy and stamps! I don’t know what the deal was, but it looked like it has been tossed around a lot. It was all ripped down the side and somebody had tried to tape it back together. Everything was still in there as far as I could see though. The Sees candy was still delicious, so thank you.
After e-mailing last week I got started to get sick and I think I had the 24 hour flu. My companion got it a couple days before and its spreading like crazy in the mission. Yesterday I started to get a sore throat and this morning I woke up and it has gotten pretty bad. I have a headache, backache, and sore throat. It already feels much better though. I called up the 2 senior missionaries in charge of all the health stuff with missionaries and they told me to stay in for 48 hours and to take Tylenol and ibuprofen. They are kind of crazy. I did take some Tylenol and I’m going to buy some ibuprofen…hopefully that helps with the back. There is no way I’m staying in for 48 hours though. I have never been sick so many times though. Before the mission I was never sick, now in the mission I’ve gotten sick like 7 times. I wash my hands all the time too. Luckily it usually never lasts more than 24 hours.
I got to go on exchanges to an area called Clear Lake this week. I know if I ever explained it fully, but I know I did mention the League City Zone was barely created when the League City Stake was formed about 2 months ago. Well when that happened, the stake took in wards from another stake just north of us, which is actually outside of our mission. Because of that our mission boundaries changed and we got a couple new areas and some new missionaries. Clear Lake is one of those new areas. Ever since being in our mission, the area has never had a baptismal date. I’m not really sure what the problem is…I know there were some pretty disobedient missionaries there who got sent home, and that always leaves a bad taste in the member’s mouths, but I honestly believe you can change that pretty fast if you just work hard and work well with the members. Anyway, when we went on exchanges we planned out some good lessons and planned to extend baptismal dates in every lesson. We only got in to teach 1 of the investigators they had planned, but we taught the lesson as we planned, extended the date and he accepted! I think a lot of missionaries just get afraid of extending baptismal invitations and they end up doing it pretty weak, or just not at all. I think our experience at least helped cure this problem at least a little bit. They went to teach one of the investigators who we had planned for, but wasn’t home, the day after I left and they extended another date. That was good to hear.
Elder Cameron, my last companion, also called me up last night to update me on how all the people from my last area are doing. A lot of the people that I found and taught with Elder Cameron are progressing well still and are getting closer to baptism. That was a pretty amazing area. Hopefully we can turn this area into an area like that. Our teaching pool is pretty sparse right now though. Although we did get another baptismal date and find a few new hopeful people, so things are looking better.
Ok, one more thing. My driver’s license expires on my birthday in April. I talked to our vehicle coordinator guy and he told me I have 2 options. 1: I can go to the DMV here and get a Texas driver’s license, or 2: I can write to my family and see if they can extend my driver’s license. At first I thought it would be pretty cool to have a Texas drivers license, but then I started thinking about it and thought it might cause problems living in California, but having a Texas driver’s license. I’d have to change the address and all that stuff. So the best option would probably be to extend my driver’s license at least until I get home, so I can go and get a new one when I get back. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll just get one here. So, could you please try to find out what all needs to happen in order to extend my license?
That’s about all for this week. Pray that we can find some new good people to teach! I love you all!
Love,
Chase
Monday, January 4, 2010
Received Mon, Dec 28, 2009
Dear Family,
The whole story about trying to leave for Utah but running into all those problems was funny, but at the same time, I’m sure it was pretty frustrating. It will be a good story in the future though. That is pretty exciting that Steven’s wedding is already about to happen…that came up pretty fast. You will have to give me a full recap. Zak and Quinn will definitely have to go to Tucano’s some other time. It is definitely my favorite restaurant.
Well there is not too much to update on here. It was fun being able to talk on Friday. I thought about a lot of things before hand to talk about, but completely forgot about everything when I called. Its a weird feeling trying to talk about whats been going on for the past year and a half in only 40 minutes. I guess all that really matters is to know that everyone is doing good and were happy.
We definitely have a lot of work to do here in League City though. This last week has been kind of a difficult one with Christmas and our zone conference and my companion got sick, so were hoping for a good week this week. We honestly don’t have much of a teaching pool. It seems like the missionaries who have been in this area have been going to the same people over and over again for the past 10 months and they are getting nowhere. So hopefully we can find some new people.
I guess I will tell you a little more about my companion. Like I said, he is named Elder Roberts and he's from the San Francisco area. He is one of those guys who just taaaalks and talk and talk loud and all the time. It is so over the top sometimes it makes me laugh. He is definitely a people person though. He is good at talking to people and getting them to like us. We are definitely working on working together though. I guess with all his last companions they would just jump in and kind of cut each other off when they would want to say something. That is definitely not a very smooth way to do things, so we’ve talked about that and our teaching has gotten much better.
One thing I’ve learned is that in order to have powerful teaching, you and your companion absolutely have to work well together. A lot of times that won’t come naturally, so you have to talk about it, figure it out, and probably change/sacrifice a few things to make it work. It took me a little while to figure that out, but it makes things a lot easier. I think we will have a good time together.
Ok that’s really about all I have for this week. Hopefully I have some good updates for next week. I know you guys will. I love you all and I hope everyone has a great time at Steven’s wedding!
Love,
Chase
The whole story about trying to leave for Utah but running into all those problems was funny, but at the same time, I’m sure it was pretty frustrating. It will be a good story in the future though. That is pretty exciting that Steven’s wedding is already about to happen…that came up pretty fast. You will have to give me a full recap. Zak and Quinn will definitely have to go to Tucano’s some other time. It is definitely my favorite restaurant.
Well there is not too much to update on here. It was fun being able to talk on Friday. I thought about a lot of things before hand to talk about, but completely forgot about everything when I called. Its a weird feeling trying to talk about whats been going on for the past year and a half in only 40 minutes. I guess all that really matters is to know that everyone is doing good and were happy.
We definitely have a lot of work to do here in League City though. This last week has been kind of a difficult one with Christmas and our zone conference and my companion got sick, so were hoping for a good week this week. We honestly don’t have much of a teaching pool. It seems like the missionaries who have been in this area have been going to the same people over and over again for the past 10 months and they are getting nowhere. So hopefully we can find some new people.
I guess I will tell you a little more about my companion. Like I said, he is named Elder Roberts and he's from the San Francisco area. He is one of those guys who just taaaalks and talk and talk loud and all the time. It is so over the top sometimes it makes me laugh. He is definitely a people person though. He is good at talking to people and getting them to like us. We are definitely working on working together though. I guess with all his last companions they would just jump in and kind of cut each other off when they would want to say something. That is definitely not a very smooth way to do things, so we’ve talked about that and our teaching has gotten much better.
One thing I’ve learned is that in order to have powerful teaching, you and your companion absolutely have to work well together. A lot of times that won’t come naturally, so you have to talk about it, figure it out, and probably change/sacrifice a few things to make it work. It took me a little while to figure that out, but it makes things a lot easier. I think we will have a good time together.
Ok that’s really about all I have for this week. Hopefully I have some good updates for next week. I know you guys will. I love you all and I hope everyone has a great time at Steven’s wedding!
Love,
Chase
Received Mon, Dec 21, 2009
Dear Family,
Transfer news: All of my predictions for transfers were correct! I am in League City.
It is an English area. Half the zone is English and half is Spanish, so I will be doing all the Spanish baptismal interviews and all the exchanges to Spanish areas and my companion will do all the English stuff. So thankfully I will still get to speak a little Spanish. You can look on a map to see where League City is, but it is basically just a little more on the mainland from where Galveston is. So I will get to go on exchanges to Galveston! I am excited about that. League City is also where a huge NASA base is. You know in all those famous lines where they say “Houston…we have a problem” or whatever? Well they are talking to the space center here in League City. A lot of the members at church work at NASA. There are always air force jets flying around here to patrol the area too. I’m sure for one of these P-days I will go tour the place.
My companion is Elder Roberts. He has been out for about 14 months, and this is his 2nd transfer as a Zone Leader. He actually has a twin brother in this same mission. His twin brother came out about 8 months before him and he just happened to get called to the exact same mission. He is from northern California somewhere. All of my companions except for my Tongan companion have been from Utah up until now. He is a pretty funny guy. He is pretty outspoken and opinionated…it makes me laugh. He goes off on these rants talking uncontrollably sometime. It is pretty funny…I am helping him with that. This zone was created last transfer when the League City stake was created. So everything is pretty new and President told me he wants us to really get things going here. It should be fun. At our district meeting on Friday it was really weird to find out that I am the oldest (as far as time in the mission) missionary in our district. Time really has been flying by.
We are living in an apartment here, but we are going to move in with some members at the beginning of the year. I have mixed feelings about that. Its always kind of hard to have to share a fridge and everything with members. I’m sure it will all be good though. And no I am not unpacked yet. Our P-day ends at 2 today too so I don’t think I will be able to unpack today either. The second half of our P-day is going to be used on Christmas this Friday. So on Christmas we will do our normal studies in the morning until 11, then were thinking everyone in our zone will come to the stake center here and we’ll open presents and half a lunch and all that stuff until about 3, then we will go out and start working again. On Sunday we passed around lists for members to sign up and let us come by on Christmas and share a short Christmas message with them. So that is what we will be doing for most of the day. But on Tuesday is when we will be having our Christmas Zone Conference. We haven’t gotten very much info as to what is going to happen, but I will let you know next week.
Christmas phone call: I am thinking I will call at around 7pm my time on Christmas day, which is 5pm California time if I am not mistaken. And yes, I still do remember our home phone number and mom’s cell phone and dad’s cell phone number, so I should be ok.
In our area we don’t really have a very big teaching pool right now, so we will be working on that. In the mission we have a goal to have every single companionship baptize every transfer. I’ve actually had a personal goal in my mission to at least average 1 baptism per transfer too. I am right on track with that right now, so hopefully we can keep that up. Good things have been happening all across the mission too. Areas are starting to baptize where they haven’t seen baptisms for a long time and more and more people are starting to baptize. It is pretty exciting.
It has been pretty slow in the area so far because of all the meetings and things we’ve had.
On Wednesday it was transfer meeting and we had to drop everyone off in their areas and drive all over the place, so we got back at like 7. Thursday we had a Zone Leader Conference, which is pretty much an all day meeting. We left at like 7:30 and we got back at about 6:30 or 7. Friday we had our District Meeting, then a big planning session which lasted several hours. Saturday was our only mostly normal day. Then Sunday we had church which starts at 1 (the worst time for church…it eats up your whole day. Next year it starts at 8:30 I think). Then we had an investigator fireside at 7 which goes until the rest of the night. I think the investigator firesides are probably one of my favorite meetings…I may have written about this before. It is the fireside that Bessy Aquino spoke in last week. Well that was for the Spanish one, then last night we had an English one for this part of the mission. 2 recent converts of only a couple weeks speak, then a convert of like 5+ years speaks. They always have good stories.
I do have one kind of funny story. One of the few people in our teaching pool is a 10 year old kid named Anthony. The rest of his family are inactive members. So we were teaching him on Saturday and trying to get him to come to church but he kept throwing out the excuses like “I am busy” and other made up things. Basically he just wanted to stay home and play video games. We explained to him that in order for him to understand why he needs to come to church, he needs to come and find out for himself. Its something that you just feel and you know is right. He kept asking why, so I used this analogy that I heard…I think Boyd K Packer use. I asked him how salt tasted. And he was like…”I don’t know how to describe it!” Then he runs over to the cupboard and pulls out thing of salt and dumps a bunch in his mouth. It was hilarious. Then of course he starts to spit it out, so I asked him, “now do you know how salt tastes?” and he yelled”YES!!” then I say, “How?” He says as he is still trying to wash his mouth out, “BECAUSE I TASTED IT!” Then I said, “Ok, so how are you going to find out why you need to come to church.” He promptly yelled, “BY GOING!” It was hilarious….it worked a lot better that I had ever expected too.
Ok, well that is about all for this week. We will talk on Friday, so I will be able to fill you in on any other stories that come to mind then. Heather also wrote me this week…that was nice. Ok, have an excellent winter break and a merry Christmas! I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
Transfer news: All of my predictions for transfers were correct! I am in League City.
It is an English area. Half the zone is English and half is Spanish, so I will be doing all the Spanish baptismal interviews and all the exchanges to Spanish areas and my companion will do all the English stuff. So thankfully I will still get to speak a little Spanish. You can look on a map to see where League City is, but it is basically just a little more on the mainland from where Galveston is. So I will get to go on exchanges to Galveston! I am excited about that. League City is also where a huge NASA base is. You know in all those famous lines where they say “Houston…we have a problem” or whatever? Well they are talking to the space center here in League City. A lot of the members at church work at NASA. There are always air force jets flying around here to patrol the area too. I’m sure for one of these P-days I will go tour the place.
My companion is Elder Roberts. He has been out for about 14 months, and this is his 2nd transfer as a Zone Leader. He actually has a twin brother in this same mission. His twin brother came out about 8 months before him and he just happened to get called to the exact same mission. He is from northern California somewhere. All of my companions except for my Tongan companion have been from Utah up until now. He is a pretty funny guy. He is pretty outspoken and opinionated…it makes me laugh. He goes off on these rants talking uncontrollably sometime. It is pretty funny…I am helping him with that. This zone was created last transfer when the League City stake was created. So everything is pretty new and President told me he wants us to really get things going here. It should be fun. At our district meeting on Friday it was really weird to find out that I am the oldest (as far as time in the mission) missionary in our district. Time really has been flying by.
We are living in an apartment here, but we are going to move in with some members at the beginning of the year. I have mixed feelings about that. Its always kind of hard to have to share a fridge and everything with members. I’m sure it will all be good though. And no I am not unpacked yet. Our P-day ends at 2 today too so I don’t think I will be able to unpack today either. The second half of our P-day is going to be used on Christmas this Friday. So on Christmas we will do our normal studies in the morning until 11, then were thinking everyone in our zone will come to the stake center here and we’ll open presents and half a lunch and all that stuff until about 3, then we will go out and start working again. On Sunday we passed around lists for members to sign up and let us come by on Christmas and share a short Christmas message with them. So that is what we will be doing for most of the day. But on Tuesday is when we will be having our Christmas Zone Conference. We haven’t gotten very much info as to what is going to happen, but I will let you know next week.
Christmas phone call: I am thinking I will call at around 7pm my time on Christmas day, which is 5pm California time if I am not mistaken. And yes, I still do remember our home phone number and mom’s cell phone and dad’s cell phone number, so I should be ok.
In our area we don’t really have a very big teaching pool right now, so we will be working on that. In the mission we have a goal to have every single companionship baptize every transfer. I’ve actually had a personal goal in my mission to at least average 1 baptism per transfer too. I am right on track with that right now, so hopefully we can keep that up. Good things have been happening all across the mission too. Areas are starting to baptize where they haven’t seen baptisms for a long time and more and more people are starting to baptize. It is pretty exciting.
It has been pretty slow in the area so far because of all the meetings and things we’ve had.
On Wednesday it was transfer meeting and we had to drop everyone off in their areas and drive all over the place, so we got back at like 7. Thursday we had a Zone Leader Conference, which is pretty much an all day meeting. We left at like 7:30 and we got back at about 6:30 or 7. Friday we had our District Meeting, then a big planning session which lasted several hours. Saturday was our only mostly normal day. Then Sunday we had church which starts at 1 (the worst time for church…it eats up your whole day. Next year it starts at 8:30 I think). Then we had an investigator fireside at 7 which goes until the rest of the night. I think the investigator firesides are probably one of my favorite meetings…I may have written about this before. It is the fireside that Bessy Aquino spoke in last week. Well that was for the Spanish one, then last night we had an English one for this part of the mission. 2 recent converts of only a couple weeks speak, then a convert of like 5+ years speaks. They always have good stories.
I do have one kind of funny story. One of the few people in our teaching pool is a 10 year old kid named Anthony. The rest of his family are inactive members. So we were teaching him on Saturday and trying to get him to come to church but he kept throwing out the excuses like “I am busy” and other made up things. Basically he just wanted to stay home and play video games. We explained to him that in order for him to understand why he needs to come to church, he needs to come and find out for himself. Its something that you just feel and you know is right. He kept asking why, so I used this analogy that I heard…I think Boyd K Packer use. I asked him how salt tasted. And he was like…”I don’t know how to describe it!” Then he runs over to the cupboard and pulls out thing of salt and dumps a bunch in his mouth. It was hilarious. Then of course he starts to spit it out, so I asked him, “now do you know how salt tastes?” and he yelled”YES!!” then I say, “How?” He says as he is still trying to wash his mouth out, “BECAUSE I TASTED IT!” Then I said, “Ok, so how are you going to find out why you need to come to church.” He promptly yelled, “BY GOING!” It was hilarious….it worked a lot better that I had ever expected too.
Ok, well that is about all for this week. We will talk on Friday, so I will be able to fill you in on any other stories that come to mind then. Heather also wrote me this week…that was nice. Ok, have an excellent winter break and a merry Christmas! I love you all!!
Love,
Chase
Monday, December 14, 2009
Received Mon Dec 14, 2009
Dear Family,
Surprise surprise…I am getting transferred! I definitely did not expect that and I am a little sad. This is probably one of my favorite areas. We have appointments all throughout the day every day. There are usually only like 3 or maybe 4 hours of the day in the afternoon where we don’t have any set appointments and during that time we always have things to do or people to contact. It has been awesome. I don’t think I mentioned it last week, but one of the Assistants is going home this transfer, so they had to pick a new assistant. I definitely did not want that to be me. For one, because that is a 100% English area, for 2, they spent so much time in the office doing all these random projects and I would prefer to be out teaching people doing normal missionary work. They just have crazy schedules. So I have been worried about that for the past couple of weeks and I shared with President my thoughts in my last president’s letter. Last night President Saylin asked one of the zone leaders from the other Spanish zone to be the AP…so I am way relieved. He is one of my good friends in the mission, so that makes me really happy too. I am really excited for the next couple of transfers.
There are only a couple zone leader areas with spots open for me to go to, so I think I figured out where I am going. I love playing the guessing game and trying to predict where everyone is going. I think I’ve got it all figured out. I am probably going to be going to League City, which is out near Galveston, which means I’ll get to go on exchanges with the Galveston Elders. That will be awesome. The downside is that the area is an English area. Half the zone is English and half is Spanish, so they have 1 english and 1 spanish zone leader there. I’ll get to go on exchanges to all the Spanish areas, but my area will still be English. I also told president that I want to stay in Spanish for the rest of my mission. Well, this is what he responded:
“I appreciate your sharing your desires with me as to your own transfer
destiny! The good news is that you have lots of mission left to serve! We
will see where the Lord takes you! This I promise you -- you will receive
assignments to go where He wants you to be. I'll tell you, my friend, I am
very confident that there is no better place to be that where the Lord wants
you to be! Hang tight -- good times are coming!”
Basically that translates to, he is aware of my desires, but the lord wants be somewhere else and I will probably get to finish off my mission in a spanish area. I am ok with that.
Well enough of transfers talk. Transfers are always exciting so there is always a lot to say about it. But I do have some stories for this week.
On Tuesday, Bessy and Luis Miguel got baptized! It was an awesome baptism. I baptized Luis Miguel and Elder Cameron baptized Bessy. I have always tried to get members to do the baptisms, but they really wanted us to, so of course we accepted. My favorite part about the baptism was when Bessy bore her testimony right after getting baptized. She is going to be such a strong member. I think one of the most satisfying things on the mission is when you baptize someone and you don’t have any doubt in your mind that they will stay active for the rest of their lives. This was one of those baptisms.
On that same day on Tuesday, we actually got fed breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was awesome. There is a senior missionary couple that lives in our apartment complex and they invited us over for dinner that day, then we had lunch at a member’s home, then our dinner was the baptism “refreshments.” I say “refreshments” because when Hispanics say that, it means a meal. Whenever we have family home evenings they will allllways make a full course meal afterwards as the “refreshment.” So after the baptism we had pupusa’s, which are a delicious El Salvadoran food. It looks almost like a pancake, but it is made out of tortillas, and it is filled with meat and beans and whatever else they choose to fill it with. Pupusas are definitely one of my favorite foods I’ve had out here.
Then last night we put on an investigator fireside. That is where everyone in our zone brings their investigators to a fireside and we have a couple recent converts tell their conversion stories, then have a final speaker who is usually someone who got baptized several years ago, so they can hear testimonies of new converts, then of a convert who has been in the church for a long time. It is always a really good fireside. Bessy was one of our recent convert talks and she did awesome. I was also the one who conducted the meeting. This was my first real meeting I’ve conducted in Spanish. I was definitely nervous, but it turned out alright.
Ok here is an awesome story. So every P-day we go to the same Wal-mart and on the way we always drive past this donut store called Best Donuts. We always joke about the name and talk about how they have the self proclaimed Best Donuts. Well knowing me, of course I suggest we go try out these so called best donuts. When we pull up all the lights are off in the store, so we sit there for a second, then the owner of the shop, an asian guy, asks us if we wanted to buy some donuts. I told him yes of course, because they are the Best Donuts. They were about to close, but he let us in and showed us all the donuts he had left. I asked him if we could get discounts for the donuts since they were about to close. He was like, “Yes….I give you everything for 8 dollar.” There were over 50 donuts there! Of course we bought them! It turned out to be like 15 cents a donut or something. We all stuffed ourselves. I had like 8-9 donuts for lunch that day. Delicious. I do have to admit it made me kind of sick, but I would still do it again.
Next story…so you remember my story about giving the blessing to the guy who got shot in the head? Well the mom of that guy called us up again and wanted us to come back to say a prayer with them or something. When we show up we find out she wanted us to come back and see him because he is now conscious and he is recuperating very well. So we said a prayer of thanks with them. They all want to us to teach them. (None of them are members…the mom is just friends with a member of the church and she is the lady who referred us to go give the blessing). It was pretty awesome.
Well this lady has another friend whose son is also in the same hospital and she wanted us to go give a blessing to him. He has a pretty crazy story too. We don’t have all the details, but he was at some party and he fell/got pushed off the balcony of a 2 story building and landed on his head and he had been in a coma for 5 months. He was in the ICU with all these tubes and things keeping him alive. We had to put on a gown thing, gloves, and a mask in order to go into the room and give him the blessing. It was pretty intense.
We’ve had a lot of good things happen this week too with all our investigators. We’ve found some new people who are pretty awesome. There are going to be a lot of baptisms here next transfer. I am sad that I have to leave, but that is what we do as missionaries. We just go wherever were sent and we work our hardest and do our best wherever we’re put. So I am happy.
Oh, and to answer your questions, no I did not get any Sees candy nor a package from the YM/YW.
The polygraph test sounded pretty intense, but working for the department of defense sounds pretty awesome.
Ok, well next week I will be writing from a brand new area. We’ll see where I go! I love you all and hope you have a good week!
Love,
Chase
Surprise surprise…I am getting transferred! I definitely did not expect that and I am a little sad. This is probably one of my favorite areas. We have appointments all throughout the day every day. There are usually only like 3 or maybe 4 hours of the day in the afternoon where we don’t have any set appointments and during that time we always have things to do or people to contact. It has been awesome. I don’t think I mentioned it last week, but one of the Assistants is going home this transfer, so they had to pick a new assistant. I definitely did not want that to be me. For one, because that is a 100% English area, for 2, they spent so much time in the office doing all these random projects and I would prefer to be out teaching people doing normal missionary work. They just have crazy schedules. So I have been worried about that for the past couple of weeks and I shared with President my thoughts in my last president’s letter. Last night President Saylin asked one of the zone leaders from the other Spanish zone to be the AP…so I am way relieved. He is one of my good friends in the mission, so that makes me really happy too. I am really excited for the next couple of transfers.
There are only a couple zone leader areas with spots open for me to go to, so I think I figured out where I am going. I love playing the guessing game and trying to predict where everyone is going. I think I’ve got it all figured out. I am probably going to be going to League City, which is out near Galveston, which means I’ll get to go on exchanges with the Galveston Elders. That will be awesome. The downside is that the area is an English area. Half the zone is English and half is Spanish, so they have 1 english and 1 spanish zone leader there. I’ll get to go on exchanges to all the Spanish areas, but my area will still be English. I also told president that I want to stay in Spanish for the rest of my mission. Well, this is what he responded:
“I appreciate your sharing your desires with me as to your own transfer
destiny! The good news is that you have lots of mission left to serve! We
will see where the Lord takes you! This I promise you -- you will receive
assignments to go where He wants you to be. I'll tell you, my friend, I am
very confident that there is no better place to be that where the Lord wants
you to be! Hang tight -- good times are coming!”
Basically that translates to, he is aware of my desires, but the lord wants be somewhere else and I will probably get to finish off my mission in a spanish area. I am ok with that.
Well enough of transfers talk. Transfers are always exciting so there is always a lot to say about it. But I do have some stories for this week.
On Tuesday, Bessy and Luis Miguel got baptized! It was an awesome baptism. I baptized Luis Miguel and Elder Cameron baptized Bessy. I have always tried to get members to do the baptisms, but they really wanted us to, so of course we accepted. My favorite part about the baptism was when Bessy bore her testimony right after getting baptized. She is going to be such a strong member. I think one of the most satisfying things on the mission is when you baptize someone and you don’t have any doubt in your mind that they will stay active for the rest of their lives. This was one of those baptisms.
On that same day on Tuesday, we actually got fed breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was awesome. There is a senior missionary couple that lives in our apartment complex and they invited us over for dinner that day, then we had lunch at a member’s home, then our dinner was the baptism “refreshments.” I say “refreshments” because when Hispanics say that, it means a meal. Whenever we have family home evenings they will allllways make a full course meal afterwards as the “refreshment.” So after the baptism we had pupusa’s, which are a delicious El Salvadoran food. It looks almost like a pancake, but it is made out of tortillas, and it is filled with meat and beans and whatever else they choose to fill it with. Pupusas are definitely one of my favorite foods I’ve had out here.
Then last night we put on an investigator fireside. That is where everyone in our zone brings their investigators to a fireside and we have a couple recent converts tell their conversion stories, then have a final speaker who is usually someone who got baptized several years ago, so they can hear testimonies of new converts, then of a convert who has been in the church for a long time. It is always a really good fireside. Bessy was one of our recent convert talks and she did awesome. I was also the one who conducted the meeting. This was my first real meeting I’ve conducted in Spanish. I was definitely nervous, but it turned out alright.
Ok here is an awesome story. So every P-day we go to the same Wal-mart and on the way we always drive past this donut store called Best Donuts. We always joke about the name and talk about how they have the self proclaimed Best Donuts. Well knowing me, of course I suggest we go try out these so called best donuts. When we pull up all the lights are off in the store, so we sit there for a second, then the owner of the shop, an asian guy, asks us if we wanted to buy some donuts. I told him yes of course, because they are the Best Donuts. They were about to close, but he let us in and showed us all the donuts he had left. I asked him if we could get discounts for the donuts since they were about to close. He was like, “Yes….I give you everything for 8 dollar.” There were over 50 donuts there! Of course we bought them! It turned out to be like 15 cents a donut or something. We all stuffed ourselves. I had like 8-9 donuts for lunch that day. Delicious. I do have to admit it made me kind of sick, but I would still do it again.
Next story…so you remember my story about giving the blessing to the guy who got shot in the head? Well the mom of that guy called us up again and wanted us to come back to say a prayer with them or something. When we show up we find out she wanted us to come back and see him because he is now conscious and he is recuperating very well. So we said a prayer of thanks with them. They all want to us to teach them. (None of them are members…the mom is just friends with a member of the church and she is the lady who referred us to go give the blessing). It was pretty awesome.
Well this lady has another friend whose son is also in the same hospital and she wanted us to go give a blessing to him. He has a pretty crazy story too. We don’t have all the details, but he was at some party and he fell/got pushed off the balcony of a 2 story building and landed on his head and he had been in a coma for 5 months. He was in the ICU with all these tubes and things keeping him alive. We had to put on a gown thing, gloves, and a mask in order to go into the room and give him the blessing. It was pretty intense.
We’ve had a lot of good things happen this week too with all our investigators. We’ve found some new people who are pretty awesome. There are going to be a lot of baptisms here next transfer. I am sad that I have to leave, but that is what we do as missionaries. We just go wherever were sent and we work our hardest and do our best wherever we’re put. So I am happy.
Oh, and to answer your questions, no I did not get any Sees candy nor a package from the YM/YW.
The polygraph test sounded pretty intense, but working for the department of defense sounds pretty awesome.
Ok, well next week I will be writing from a brand new area. We’ll see where I go! I love you all and hope you have a good week!
Love,
Chase
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