August 9th 2009

Chase arrived in Philadelphia and we were glad to get his email on Thursday and a message from the mission office. The mission office also sent a picture of the President and his wife and 15 elders who had arrived with Chase. Fifteen seems like a large number of new missionaries to get prepared for and get settled. But I think they took good care of all the new elders because they were fed philly cheese steaks that first day. Food is a great pacifier! Especially a philly cheese steak sandwich!

Chase and another new elder went 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia to Reading. They were put with an elder from Kansas so they are a trio. This is probably temporary until an elder leaves and opens a companionship. Here are some of Chase's own words (He writes with no punctuation, capitalization, or paragraphs so I have to fix it as I go so if I lapse into really bad form, I can only blame him, his English teachers, or habits formed while texting :D)

"Wow, this is gonna be a crazy two years over here. The city life is crazy man. Sorry, I got so much to tell you guys about what's gone on in the past two days that I don't know where to start. Right now I'm in Reading, PA. Right now I am in a trio with a guy from the MTC and our trainer, Elder Merrill from Kansas. Elder Merrill is a cool guy and is really go at Spanish. He's half Tongan and is a really nice guy. Reading is about an hour north I think of Philly and is bigger than Boise. The people here are really different. They all walk around with their shirts off and hardly any clothes and the majority of people here are either black or Latino. The streets are lied with row houses and it's pretty "hood" in some spots we went to yesterday. The humidity isn't that bad but your collar is always stuck to your neck. Also the pollution and smog is bad. It's hard to see the sky. There aren't big mountains here so I can't tell where I am most of the time. It's all rainforesty lookin with small rolling hills. Our apartment is really nice though. We have a kitchen, big living room, with desks, bathroom, nice beds, AC and our own washer and drier. But the problem with it isi that all this morning during studying you hear cars go past with their boom boxes and music blasting all the time, and guys with crotch rockets everywhere that pin the throttle all the time so show off a las chicas...

...But ya, Reading is awesome and the popel are really nice and I'm excited so it's all good. I saw my first firefly here, they are really cool and actually glow. But hey, I got to go. Love y'all and I'll write back on next Thursday."