Fastest baptism date ever!

Hello everybody!

This week has been pretty dang good! I´m not really sure why though... We have found quite a bit of new people to teach (which is a miracle) and the work just seems to be going better!

Let me share just a quick story about a guy named Rodrigo. Elder Fuller and I were walking down this one street in a neighborhood where everybody is VERY Catholic and don't want anything to do with missionaries. So after getting many doors slammed in our faces, I started to get frustrated. I thought to myself, why are we even here? What does the Lord want me to do in this neighborhood? Shortly after, I saw a rather old man sitting under a tree outside his house. I walked straight up to him and said, "Hi good brother, We are missionaries sent by God to help you feel happier in your life. God has placed us here in your path so that you can accept the only true restored gospel on the face of the earth. Would you allow humble messengers from God to help you acquire more peace in your life?" Without even thinking about it the man said, "Of course!" Then, without skipping a beat, I said "Well, we teach about faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism by authorized servants of the Lord, the reception of the Holy Ghost, and persevering to the end. We want to help you fulfill these eternal steps of Christ's Gospel found in the scriptures by inviting you to be baptized in the only TRUE church of Christ. Will you be baptized June 4th?" He thought about it for 5 seconds and responded, "I WOULD LOVE THAT!"

I was really excited to have an experience like that, he actually does seem really serious about progressing and being baptized and I'm anxious to start working with him more.

Well... I don't have a ton of time to write because I have to start prepping for a ward activity. All of missionaries are making a food from their home country and I have to start cooking. Last time we did this I made funnel cakes, but this time I wanted to switch it up. I decided on French Toast! It's going to be soooo good though! I decided to make an apple cinnamon sauce and a strawberry shortcake sauce to put on the french toast. I already have the sauces made and they taste sooooo dang good! I'll send a couple of pics! Mom, I tried to make the apples just how you would make them for pork chops and I think that they came out pretty dang close! You´d be proud.

I hope that everybody has a great week!! Talk to you later!

Chase found sushi!

Making the French toast apple topping. Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Almost Done

Done

Yum!

Piano Guys Fireside was a success!

I would like to start off by saying that the Piano Guys fireside was a success! I'd say about 400 people came! It was kind of sad because about double the amount of people came for this activity than they did for General Conference... but that's okay! I was really happy that Jon Schmidt and his family could all get there alright and were willing to do an activity like this! Jon shared some of the piano guys videos and gave the behind the scenes and compared each video with a scripture. His main focus was that if we trust got and put him first in everything we do, we will discover our purpose and he will help us fulfill it. Two of his kids also played the guitar and sang a primary song. At the end Jon Schmidt played his own song Waterfall live for us and he and his wife shared their testimonies. There were a ton of investigators that showed up and President Hayes was really proud that Elder Fuller and I could get the whole activity set up in just one day!

In other news... we had an Elder get hit by a car... he dislocated his shoulder and he had to be sent home. That was kind of sad. He only had two months in the mission.

Our investigator E. finally got a job! He has been promising us that he would stop drinking coffee if God would give him a job first! He has already broken up with his girlfriend and coffee was the only thing holding him back from being baptized! I hope he keeps up with his promise!

Lately I´ve been depending a lot on the tender mercies from the Lord to help me out in the mission... I don't know if it's because I'm coming up on the year mark or what, but I´m worn out. These past couple months have been hard. More emotionally than anything else. I guess part of it might be for being trapped in a 3x3 meter box every day for about 8 hours.

I have been studying a lot about the character of God lately and have found a lot of cool stuff. Just to share a quick scripture with you all: Moses chapter 7 in the Pearl of Great Price has some really great stuff. In this chapter Enoch is seeing the coming of Jesus Christ and after Enoch sees that there will be some people who will continue in their sin and will not accept Christ even at his coming, verse 28 describes them as the "residue of the people". When Enoch turns back to God in the same verse he sees that God is crying and asks, "How is it that thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy ... And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations." This is a question that I´ve had before. God has so many children, how is it that He can really care for each and every one of us. Let alone, enough to cry for us when we turn our back on Him. The answer is simple, "The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands..." verse 32. God is our loving heavenly father. He created us and we are made in his own image. He really does care for us and wants the best for each and every one of us. I can't comprehend how He does it, but he really watches and guides us in everything that we do.

That was probably my favorite part of the week. I love reading scriptures and coming across something that hits your hard like that. I encourage you to read that chapter. It really helps you see things on a bigger scale.

Thanks for the emails and the love and support! Sorry for not having any pictures this week...

Love you all!

Exciting Stuff is happening and Chase is somehow in the middle of it.

Hello,

I was suuuuper tired and worn out from the week before. I was seriously dragging. Today I finally got to catch up on my sleep and I am doing better!

This week our investigators are doing alright, not progressing as much I would like them to be... but they are good. We are really trying to find new investigators. It's  hard to find people that are willing to listen to you here in the city.

I do have some exciting news though!! We have two missionaries that are serving like 10 hours away from the mission office near the Panama border. It's a really touristy place because it's a huge jungle rainforest. One of the missionaries down there called the office and told me that they just ran into Jon Schmidt (the pianist from the Piano Guys) down in their area. I thought it was pretty cool that they got to meet him, but didn't really think that much more of it. Well, last night I got a random call on my phone and when I answered it some Gringo started talking to me. It was him! He said that he wanted to do a little fireside for some of the missionaries and their investigators and wanted to see if we could set something like that up for tomorrow. Of course we said yes and got to work. Well we called the Stake Music Coordinator (who happens to be a BIG piano guys fan) and she blew this activity waaaay out of proportion. She got the best church piano shipped to our stake center, made brochures, and invited pretty much all of Costa Rica. It ended up getting so big that I just got off the phone with Elder Cordon, a member of the general 70, who was asking me all sorts of details about this "Countrywide Fireside".... I had no idea it was going to get this big. He explained that he thought it was a great opportunity but had to get it approved by the proper brethren with the keys over these kinds of things, so he called Elder Duncan of the Area Seventy to get permission. It's now all set up and an official church sponsored activity that got thrown together in about 4 hours. hahaha I have no idea how its all going to go down and I'm supposedly the one who set it up! I also just got done talking with Jon Schmidts wife on FaceTime and we are going to pick them up from the San Jose Mariott at 3 tomorrow to take them to the fireside. I have no idea exacly how I got involved in this or how it's going to turn out but it sure is exciting!

Well sorry I dont have much more to tell you about... I will try to make next weeks a little more interesting!

Have a fantastic week!

25 overnight guests in Chase's home and different Easter rituals.

Hello!

This week has been insane. I have been worked sooo hard! We had changes this week, which are always crazy, but this week the flights got all split up and we had to run back and forth from the airport all the time. We also had the whole mission go to the temple this week. Luckily, the planning for that wasn't too crazy, but all of the missionaries came to San Jose the night before their temple day to sleep. And guess where all the missionaries sleep when they come here? My house. I had three nights in a row with over 25 missionaries in my house... I didn't get any sleep at all! They were all so loud! And to make this worse, right after that I had to wake up at 2:00AM to drop off the returning missionaries at the airport. I can safely say I'm dead tired.

Okay that's enough of that. This email is going to be pretty short because other than crazy office stuff I haven't been able to do anything exciting this week. Easter was weird here... Most of the people here treat it like any other day. In church they didn't really even talk about Easter. It's weird. The Catholic church here celebrates Holy Week. It consists of lots of parades where people follow big crucifixion statues and chant the Hail Mary and the Lords Prayer in Latin. It is actually kind of scary. One night I was working in the office late and saw a bunch of sirens and heard a woman screaming in a very monotone creepy voice. I ran outside and saw about 50 people in the street holding up a big cross chanting things that I couldn't understand. I took a video of a procession during the day, but the pastor got mad at me.

Yesterday we found a spider bigger than my hand just chilling in the office. It was funny how much it freaked out my companion. I'll send a video of it.

I hope you all had a good easter and that you enjoy General Conference this weekend! I'm really looking forward to it, because I'll actually be able to understand it in spanish this time! haha

Love you all! Look forward to hearing from you all next week!

Unusual week and experiences

Well this week has been one for the books. I have had so many crazy, weird, interesting experiences this last week, hopefully I can remember them all. I'll just start with Saturday. We have been teaching a cool 14 year old named A. He has been really open to our lessons and everything, and we got to teach his mom once and she only kind of paid attention to us. Well Saturday night we stopped by to teach the family a lesson. When we knocked on the door the Mom answered and told us to come in. So we followed her in the house. As we entered, the house looked totally different. There was a huge painting of some hooded figure with runes and the star of david and a menorah on his forehead and a weird altar set up in the corner with strange bottler and candles. I thought it was kind of strange, but we started off our lesson. Right after the prayer she said to us, "Just to let you guys know, I'm not interested in changing my religion. I am interested in the truth. All truth. You have truth. I have truth. We are all truth." I was kind of confused by her comment so I started asking her question about what she meant. She started telling me that she was an Agnostic Rose Cross follower and that she believed in the hidden truths of the bible. She also told us about her own spiritual journey and how we can reach higher levels of spirituality. She said, "If you ask any of our neighbors what we do here, they will say that it is black magic.... but it's not. It's white magic. The level of spirituality that we have reached has enabled us to do things..." She said she couldn't tell us anymore because of an oath of secrecy that she had sworn. At this point I was creeped out but extremely curious so I kept asking her questions trying to get more information from her. She didn't say much more, but showed me a wall sized painting that her husband (who is a cultist priest) had painted. It depicted a huge black swan feeding 7 baby birds its own flesh from its stomach. Behind it was a big cross with all sorts of other symbols. She said if we ever decided to join her we too could know the meaning behind the picture. She said she feels an energy from us that tells her that we are ready to learn the deeper truths and she invited us to go to a Eucharist next week. (We won't be going.) After all of that we shared a very brief lesson about Joseph Smith and ran away.

On another note, remember Elder J? The sick elder that was with us for a couple days? He didn't get any better... we had to send him home yesterday. It was really sad. He only had about 3 months left in the mission and really wanted to finish. Wednesday night we stopped by Presidents house so that he could have his last interview and we had cookies and ice cream there. After that we had to wake up bright and early to drop him off a the airport.

After that saddish morning we had to set up for a leadership meeting with all of the Zone Leaders here in the office. It was a pretty big meeting because we are going to have a new Assistant. Elder Hansen, He was my zone leader when I was in Siquirres. Im excited to get to work with him!
 

Two of the sisters that came up for the leadership meeting couldn't get back to their area because it is Holy Week and there weren't any busses to get to their area 3 hours away. So president told us that we had to go drop them off in the car. So all day yesterday we spent 7 hours in the car driving down to Perez Zeledon, Cartago. It was actually a really pretty drive. You go up this really tall mountain through some really windy roads. It was really foggy and rainy so sometimes you could only see like 10 feet in front of you. Funny story. On the way back I was really tired so I bought a huge coke to stay awake. Well, naturally after drinking a huge coke, I had to use the bathroom. So I pulled off the side of the road up to the border of this dark rainforest to go to the bathroom. As I commence doing my business I realize that it doesn't sound like I'm hitting plants. I squint and see that I'm peeing on a huge cross!! I peed on somebody's grave!! In the middle of the rainforest! I think I might be cursed now.

So those were just some of the highlights of my week... Next week are changes and we are getting 3 gringos, 5 latinos, and 2 senior missionaries. I'll finally have some work to keep me busy in the office! We are also going to the temple as a mission next week! That should be a lot of fun!

Thanks for all your emails and prayers!

Housing the sick and getting to drive.

Hello!

This week was a lonnnng one. Not because of all the work I had to do, but because of how long I sat around doing nothing!! I don't know why but all of a sudden all of the missionaries are getting sick! This last week we have had two missionaries that have had to go to the hospital. And guess what that means. All the sickies get to stay with us and we have to take them to their appointments..... yay.

One missionary had pneumonia and showed up at our house at midnight. We shipped him off the the hospital with President and babysat his companion all day in the office and in our area. After two days of that, they both got to go back to their own areas. Two days ago another sick elder stayed with us who has some major muscle problems. The doctor diagnosed him with gastritis and muscle contractions but I really don't think that's what it is... he can hardly stand up and walk. But anyways, we were in charge of taking him to the hospital because President was 8 hours away visiting a far away zone with the assistants. Because it was an emergency President gave me permission to drive to the hospital! Yeah that's right, I got to drive! President is really frustrated that we can't get licenses here and he said that I can drive with my US license and passport if it's an emergency. He said if I get a ticket, maybe it will let the area office know that they need to find out an easier way for us to get licensed here. haha Hopefully that doesn't happen!

This week was also Sister Hayes birthday so the assistants, my comp and I went and bought cupcakes and some lilies for her! It was a nice little surprise for her before our staff meeting! I'll try to attach a video if the email lets me.

I dont really have much else to update you guys on... We´ve got a biggish group coming in in two weeks so hopefully that will keep me a little busier here. Everything is shutting down this week for Holy Week and all of the Catholics are starting their holy week traditions. It's going to be really hard to find people to teach this week because everybody is going out of town!

Love you all!

 

Mom note- Chase's video he talks about is on my FB page if you would like to see it.

Chase happy about driving!
 

 

Painted a house and made Dad's famous Chocolate Chip cookies amongst other things.

This week was kind of.... interesting. I feel like I did a lot and a little at the same time.

I sat around the office and did a whole bunch of studying again because my companion had a lot of financial stuff to do and I had nothing from migration to do. If you´ve never really sat down and watched the mormon messages on LDS.org, I invite you to check some out. After almost watching all 100+ of them I can guarantee that there will be one that you will like! haha

This week was kind of frustrating because we did all that we possibly could to find new people to teach, but had no success. Being in the city is like that. At least the people that we are teaching are moving along really well! With Eduardo we started teaching about the word of wisdom and he agreed to live most of it EXCEPT the coffee part. He decided to make a pact with God. He said that once God gives him a job he will stop drinking coffee. I told him that it doesn't work like that... but we will see what happens!

We have been teaching this realllly evangelical lady named Karol. She is really interested in our beliefs but doesn't want to change her religion. Every time we end a lesson I also remind them that we don't just share messages with people, we are called to serve the people in whatever way we can. Well usually people just laugh and say that everything is good, but this time Karol took us up on the offer and asked us if we could paint her moms house! I rounded up the two other elders and two sisters that are serving in our ward and we went out early one morning to start painting. We ended up painting for 8 hours!!! It was quite the day! I was kind of annoyed at how long it was taking and was starting to feel like we were just wasting our time, but when we finished Karol said that she wanted to have all of the missionaries over to her house one night so that we could get to know her and her family better! It was a huge step of progress for her! Just through a simple act of service she was able to see that we are normal people that like to serve others! While we were working we talked about gospel topics and about the mission and I think Karol really liked what she heard.

Other than that... I don't think I have much more to report on... Next Monday the new missionaries are having the month check up and that means that I get to go and "help out"(which really just means eat a really nice barbecued American meal. Being in the office has its perks;))

Pics:
1. I gave Sister Hayes(Presidents Wife) Dads cookie recipe and we made cookies together!! They almost tasted as good as he made them:)

2. One of the Elders decided to get cheeky and throw a bunch of paint on me... Don't worry I took the higher road and didn't get him back too badly. (even though I reallllly wanted to!)