Casey's email 9-10-2012

so... today was a very very interesting day.... it started off with working out hard core this morning at 630... im proud to say that i can now single arm curl 60lbs :).. my goal is 75.. and i want to get my bench from 225 to 250.. that would be sweet.. anyways we got done working out and showered and got ready for the day.. we, (my companion, me and the 2 roomate missionaries) then got in our car and drove to the Franconia/ Springfield metro station. we road for about half an hour till we got off at........DRUM-ROLL please.... the Pentagon.. heck ya! haha we were then met by a man in a beige suit and he took us through the security process.... after all the boring stuff we then got inside... dang that place is cool... they have so flippin much things in there.. the have a best buy and millions of different restaurants and a flower shop and a dentist. a dry cleaners and a taco bell -_-... we got to walk around while the guy told us a lot about it.. did you know that if you laid the empire state building on its side, it would fit inside the Pentagon...pretty cool.. i think he said something like 6.5 million or billion square feet... on about 500 acres of land.. we then proceeded to walk around and we went down the defense hallway.... i walked right next to the secretary of defense's office door :) then we all were hungry so we went and ate in the court yard... i got a hotdog from the famous hotdog stand in the center of the court yard where apparently some time back a Russian spy satellite was watching the Pentagon and noticed a ton of people going under neath these two umbrellas. the Russians thought that it was a tunnel way for people to go underground or something like that.. haha pretty funny.. we walked around some more and saw a bunch of cool art and lots of people of high positions in cool uniforms.. then went out and saw the Memorial... we also got to see them setting up for the ceremony for tomorrow (September 11th) in memory of 9/11.. they were draping down the big flag like the did years back.. pretty cool thing...

  so on our ride back from the Pentagon it was pretty boring we just kinda talked to people and such.. nothing big. we got back to the Springfield Franconia metro station and walked back to where we parked... when suddenly... dun dun dun dunnnnn.... our car was gone!?!?!?!? what the fetch?.. dudes wheres our car?.....hmm... so our car got towed and we were stuck in an area and the towing place was about 5 miles away... we called our zone leaders and they had to come drive half an hour to pick us up and take us to the towing company... while waiting for the zone leaders we relaxed in a dunkin donut shop sippin on a nice cool water while eatin some doughnuts....just sitting and waiting... zone leaders finally came... took us to our car and (I paid the other missionaries paid me back) $125, we were finally able to drive back and to the library where i am now emailing all of your :) apparently we parked in the parking lot NOT for commuters... hope ya like my little story.. it was fun experiencing it...well most of it.... pretty interesting day.. its gonna make for a nice long journal entry....

Picture #1 is my awesome weight set... yes they are gold and silver... its not real gold but i made them look pretty sweet :)..

Picture#2 my companion has some laser pointers and i adjusted the shutter speed so i could write things with it :)

Picture #3 smiley face with the laser pointer

Picture#4 this is the pentagon memorial from 9/11... its got a lot of meaning behind it.. the benches pointing towards the pentagon have a name on each person who was on flight 77 that hit the pentagon.. the benches facing away from the building are for the people who died inside the pentagon.. each bench has a name on it and the year they were born.. the youngest was 3 years old born in 1998 and the oldest was a 71 year old..oh.. the benches are the floating things...with little water things under it

Picture#5 my companion just chillen in the metro waiting for our train

 gtg.. love ya lots.. give everyone my greetings form North VA.  write me.. i need more letters!!!!.. :) bye bye

Casey's say PLEASE WRITE!

Casey's say PLEASE WRITE! 
He would love to hear how things are going. 

His address is:

Elder Casey James Chaffin
Washington DC South Mission
5242 Lyngate Ct
Burke, VA 22015

Casey's email 9-4-2012

hello my beautiful family and friends.. so this week was a good one. lots of mini miracles were seen and smiles made :)

 so today was district meetings. we had an awesome lesson on virtue... we were given an egg to hold on to and protect. we were then blindfolded and taken outside to the Forrest and had to walk through the Forrest over trees and through bushes while holding on to a rope. while slowly finding our way through we had the district leaders try to smash our egg (our virtue) we had to do all we could to protect it... but if it got broken!! we had to step away form the rope and plead for help... after asking for help we then received a new egg and was guided back to the rope. this activity was a great way of showing how we should live both as missionaries and non missionaries. the egg is something we hold dear. sometimes we are tempted and smash our egg or lose our way from the correct path of life. but when we think we are lost, confused, or sad because we feel alone and we've lost everything. all we need to do is just plead for help by getting on our knees and praying for guidance or support. its ok to mess up or sin. we are all human and far from perfect. even though sometimes we can be stupid and try to hide the egg by sticking it in your pants like i did... i ended up smashing the egg all by myself even without temptation. i just happened to run into a tree.. i didn't know it was there cause i was blindfolded.. sometime we cant see trials coming. when they do come we just need to remember that Christ will always be standing with you to give you a new egg so you can continue on your way.

    Another good thing we had happen this week is we just found out that pappy the toy maker our eternal investigator told us that he hasn't been taught any lessons and that past missionaries have just done service for him.. he told us that he recorded an lds documentary that talks a lot about us (due to Romney running for president and he happens to be lds). pappy asked if we could sit down with him to explain things and he had lots of questions about things. he has told us multiple times that he is just so amazed and impressed with the missionaries and our values and church. when people bash our church he will get very offended and correct them. he hates anything negative said about us... we are praying to put him and his wife on date soon :) for the next two weeks we are going to be helping pappy set up for his toy shows and we will be giving him the lessons too...

First picture here is of a deck us four elders (Elders Ker, Macfarlane, Watson, and I) painted for an investigator. it was a three day process... such a pain.

Picture #2 has anyone seen the show "the middle" this picture looks similar to the opening scene of that show.

Picture #3 we decided to go to the complete other side of the Bristow area and we found this one lane bridge..  it is at the top of a hill so you can't see oncoming traffic... the best you can do is sit there, pray, count to 3, then hit the gas, and hope no ones is over there...the one way bridge was so small that we could reach our hands out the window and touch each side... id say it was just barely big enough for a truck with wide hips(dualy).

  

Picture #4 this is what Bristow looks like.. one random house then 100 acres of fields and Forrest surrounding it... pretty crazy how there is country so close to the city..

Casey's email 8-27-2012

my new comp is Elder Ker. hes from provo utah and hes been out for 9.5  months now.. he came from a high baptism area and he says its unacceptable to have so little investigators.. so we bringin it up... hes awesome.. 

this weeks been great.. Elder ker and i have been doing so much work. we are determined to get these two wards up. we got 1 more solid investigator from a part member family and he says he knows joseph smith was a prophet and stuff... hes just not ready in this part of his life he says... so we shall see how it all goes..

So I've been with my new companion for a week and a half now. hes pretty much amazing and we have the coolest room mates now... Elder Ker and i are working so dang hard. we are starting to see improvements already!. we have gotten 4 new potentials and we have 2 investigators now. our goal for this transfer is 7 baptisms because there is so much potential with part member families and such. people just like to be difficult so we just have to beat them over the head with the spirit haha...

we are tracting every night every day. we found these apartment places in our area (they were hiding from us) and so we are tackling like 20 doors in half an hour.. so we are doing good.. we keep getting potentials and we just have to keep following up with them to make them progressing investigators... I've got faith in this area and my new companion!! :)

things are cooling down very slowly... but its still hot and humid... i miss snow.. and cold weather.. the day i see 30 degrees ill be so happy...
 

uhm lets see here.. there really isn't anything else to talk about.. no crazy miracles this week.. just lots of hard work and tracting... sorry this is so short guys..and i finally recieved a letter in the mail!! first one in roughly 4 weeks....hah except the package from lake powell...

Casey's email 8-20-2012

we got to go to the Marine corps museum!

im a flippin giant... from left to right. my old DL Elder hussey then his comp elder chung from china. then elder bentley and me... elder hussey as of this transfer is now my Zone leader..

Casey's email 8-13-2012

well we do nothing but tract so i have lots of different experiences. we've had everything from people calling the cops on us to crazy baptists pretty much pulling us in the house to give us water...  we meet a lot of preachers/ministers. everyone around here think they are saved because i know god exists or crazy things like "gos spoke to me through my dog hah" and things like that... we've been yelled at, cursed at, flipped off, hugged, and almost kissed.. hahah its such a variety of people here... Buddhist-Baptist to Catholics and Muslim... i don't know if i told you but we had the opportunity to have a lesson with our investigator and president at the mission home... it was amazing! president riggs is the most spiritual guy I've ever met... he is bound to be an apostle soon!!. so this catholic is 19 years old and is big into logic's.. we talked about things from happiness being relative or objective to god and whether he is a linear god or if he himself have his own god he looks up to and all this crazy stuff... after the lesson president called us and was like i advise you to discontinue all communication with this kid because he is just trying to convert you to Catholicism. sooo.. as of right now we have 1 investigator in prince william and a whopping ZERO investigators in bristow ward. transfers are this Thursday. zone conferences are once a month. district meetings are once a week. ive only had one companion(my trainer.) we have 1 lesson a week. .we have 0 member presents. i still don't know what its like to teach a real full lesson.. they've all just been question and answer lessons with the same person. we find 0 investigators a week. we can stay out till 930 if teaching a lesson. muscle strength is great.. im on creatine. my muscles are 17.5 and solid as a rock. i now flex in my suit and my sleeve is so tight i cant pinch any fabric.. i just do shopping emailing and letters and sports on p-day.. nothing out of the ordinary.. we are going to the marine museum at quantico today tho..we get $165 a month for food and such... so not much.. im sorry i don't write just normal emails.. ill try to do it but i just don't know what to write about lol

well its been about 85 this past weeks so its been a bit chilly... at 85 is when we turn the ac off and just roll down the windows...

       

we have CVS.. our other stores here are Giant, Food lion, Harris Teeters, and walmart

well lets see here... so we got pranked by our district leader a few days ago and our roomate elder forrest got suuuper upset... it was funny cause the district leaders came over while my companion and i were home but they were so quiet we didn't even know they were there so they messed up the place then dipped out.. we had this super long talk with forrest so he wouldn't call president. i did most the talking. forrest kept coming up with ideas to try and prove me wrong and make me feel sorry for him. but in the end i got him to apologize to everyone. he told us he was bullied in high school and his entire life goal is to get revenge on anyone who tries to mess with him... so he just tries to make everyone feel bad 

 

Woodbridge Zone Conference

Woodbridge Zone Conference

Casey's email 8-6-2012

hah funny story... so we've been working with this investigator for about a month now and he came up with this question that we couldn't answer... we got the dale city elders involved and they couldn't answer the question either so we decided to introduce him to president Riggs.... president Riggs is so amazing and in tune with the spirit... we had a 3 hour lesson at the mission home.. the whole time we talked about objectivity and relativity... all this crazy stuff... president kept answering this kids questions and they were PERFECT answers.... but the kid kept twisting and changing his ideas and kept contradicting himself... in the end when we got back to our apartment president called us and was like..."hes a great guy and i loved talking with him but i feel strongly about you needing to drop him because he is trying to convert you to Catholicism..." haha so hes gone... and this kid is only 19... crazy smart..

... i miss lake powell... make sure you keep those waverunners up and running so you can still have some fun!... and if calli goes make sure she does some sweet wakeboarding for me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 . 

family before friends coco... hah i bet she hasn't heard that one for a while :P

 Teaching.. hah well saying we lost our one main investigator... it slowed way down.. but we are doing everything we can to progress... comps cool... transfers are coming up on the 16th.. hes getting transfer trunky.. he really wants to leave..

My finger's great! i get my stitches out today 

did i tell you i met sister cook of the general yw presidency, she was here for the youth conference.. i played scrabble in front of her.. jha

My companion drew this...shark against penguin... dodge verse a nissan... hah.. his favorite car and animal vs. my favorite car and animal

Casey's email 7-30-2012

 well funny story... it involves my index finger and a chainsaw.. hahahaha no worries i still have a finger... just a minor cut..i was using a chainsaw to cut up fallen trees...

caution don't look if blood sensitive!!

 

ya itll be a pretty bad scar.. but i have literally no pain.. and its healing super quick... its so hard to button a shirt with only one hand

me and the chainsaw that cut my finger... then me and my comp with pappy the toy maker... hes the guy we were cutting the wood for

Casey's Email 7-24-2012

hey everyone.. sorry i wasn't able to get on yesterday, i was in DC :P

My appartment

Washington DC and China Town

Casey's email 7-16-2012

i was playing zone sports.. they had it early this morning.

life is hot and humid... i cant walk to the car without sweating bullets...i sweat a lot..

we get rain but only at night and it just makes the humidity 10000000%

the spirit works in crazy ways...  we only have one real investigator... everyone else is going no where

well everything is "woods" here. my wards bad at referrals, we have done nothing but tracted and called and street contacted for the past few weeks..  i am proud to say tho that my arms have gotten to 17 1/2 inches around and I'm the strongest of the 4 guys in the apartment and in the top three in my zone.. that's really the only accomplishment i can say I've gotten for these past 2 months.. I'm going to talk to my zone leaders and tell them that i'm not ready to train so hopefully ill be transferred this transfer instead of elder bentley... cause its custom that after a greenie is done being trained then the greenie becomes a trainer...

i haven't been able to get to bed untilll midnight every night because everyone thinks our room is the party room and i just lay there in bed waiting for them to leave 

i pretty much figured id send a letter to every single living person i know to hopefully get a letter from someone.....

i do everything... i do lunges while holding a 35lb weight in each hand...i jump rope for half an hour... i am doing crazy bicep/tricep work outs cause i want to get to a 20" arm... 

Did I tell you that Nate met your new Mission President?  He actually was in their meetings at the MTC and was passing a mic around for them.

 that's awesome... president riggs is LEGIT...first time he met us all he already had everyone's names memorized..

Pctures

 Casey's mouth is open in every picture lol