First off - I got your coin tricks Mom , so thank you so much for them. Haha only like 2 or 3 made sense to me and a few were repeated a few times , but it did add to the list of tricks I can show little kids in order to win the favor of their parents , teach , baptize , and get em to the teeemmppllleeeeee. So thank you thank you.
Sounds like you guys have been having a pretty good week - the weather here is pretty much the same all the time , except for the occasional baguio that rolls through ... but even that isn't so bad. Rainy season hasn't really started , yet , so July - October are the heavy rain months. I've noticed a bit that my english hasn't so much as gotten horrible ... but grammar doesn't make sense to me anymore. So if I am adding far too many commas , well.. I'm sorry. First round of classes when I get back will be interesting. Hmm what else. Maybe I'll just talk about my week.
Sooo it was good , haha. There should be aircon in here but there's not ... this is a bummer. We're in Tayug right now - kind of close to our area - and in a mall..ish place. It's not a mall by any standards but has like 4 stores in it , so they call it a mall. And the internet shop we're in is pretty nice , so should have aircon ... but wala. I'm kinda sleepy , too .. donno why. Maybe it's because it's like warm in here. Okay , well I'll talk about my weeek.
Tuesday---- I woke up (my companion wakes up ... says companion prayer ... then goes right back to sleep for 30 or 45 minutes...) ate breakfast , did my little tiny almost nothing work out , then showered and we studied. After that we took off for district meeting (which is held here in Tayug). Get here and the zone leaders had come , so that's always fun to see Elder Podz. His new companion is Elder Clyde whose from Alaska... he's okay. Kind of has no personality. And has the craziest head. Anyways , the district leader and his companion shows up , then the elders from Tayug show up .. and no one has keys to the chapel. So we wait another 30 minutes until they finally track down the keys and we have district meetingggggggggg. super exciting! Anyays , after that we thought we had splits - but that got postponed for a week until tomorrow. It's kind of depressing in that we teach a lot of lessons (the most in the district) every week ... but we get chastized every week because we only have 1 IBD. So they think we're just teaching lessons to get stats ... but we have like 6 investigators progressing that we're not allowed to extend an IBD to ... so... yeah. Anyways Billy left this week for Baguio , so he's about a week away from his baptism. Then these two sisters will be leaving soon , too. Also there's a girl whose living with her "husband" though they're not married ... so she needs to be married before we can extend and IBD to her , too. But her parents live in Ilo Ilo , which is a lot of money away to get them here , which she wants for her wedding. So! Yeah.
Wednesday---- Regular day. Lessons , so forth - ha
Thursday---- Zone Conferenceeee. Finally. These are way fun , because you literally spend every minute of the day that your away from the apartment teaching , in a different language. So when we can finally just sit down in an aircon chapel for a few hours learning in english is so so nice. Also I got to see so many friends from past zones and my batch and stuff. The best was seeing Elder Su'A who was one of my roommates in the MTC. I haven't seen him since the third week in the field , so it's been a long time and talking was so so funny as always. Getting there was crazy though. The Zone Leaders were told it was in Rosales .. so we wake up at 5 to catch a bus ... get to Rosales about 715 ... it gets to 830 and we're like where is all the other zones (our whole zone was there ... we're Rosales Zone) because they told all zones to be sitting down in the chapel at 815. So at 830 Elder Clyde calls President Jensen , and then comes back out of the office and is like oh..kaayy.... it's in Urdaneta. So we sprint as fast as we can out of the church and find a bus after running all over Rosales and get to Urdaneta , haha. Then run to the chapel and were only about 30 minutes late. We got there about 930'ish. So we got to hear some talks , and then about an hour sermon from President Jensen about the Book of Mormon - which was awesome. He's a brilliant brilliant guy , and hearing his thoughts is always so fun. I had heard most of it before , but one thing stuck out to me that was awesome. He was like it took one man 65 days to translate the Book of Mormon ... and it took 50 scholars 70 years to put together the King James Version of the Bible. That should give you some indication of the divinity of Joseph Smith's calling.
So that was pretty awesome to hear from President Jensen , and yeah they took a few pictures. After the conference we had a lunch there , then came home. Once home .. went straight to work.
Friday---- Regular day , and then Family Home Evening at the members house of who just got baptized. Ha , they're my favorite family in this area and way funny to talk to. So of course it was typical Filipino craziness and then really good food.
Saturday---- We had a Recent Convert/Less-Active (Returning Member) Fireside in Rosales in the afternoon. So ... before that. We wake up and do studies and stuff and we get a text at about 11 that says basically ''Hey elders , we're in Rosales for stake meetings , figure out how everyone is getting the fireside later" . That was from the Branch President ... that's how things work here. So I'm like texting everyone I know finding out if they're actually coming or not and trying to find out how much money we're getting from the church budget to pay for a way of getting there .. find out there's only enough money for one tricycle ... which holds 4 people. So I'm texting all the RCLAs to know whether they're coming or not ... and after a couple hours of ridiculousness it all gets settles. But that's seriously how things work .. the Elders take care of 50% of the things here. It's ridiculous. But it all worked out ... with me paying for the other tricycle... so I'm sure that's money that I'll never get reimbursed for. But it was a good meeting in Rosales for all the RCLA.
Sunday---- Regular church , and stuff. And I was fasting to find some new investigators that are interested , because we are lacking so much on finding. And as always , the Lord provides. After church a random man called to us as we were walking on the street and the showed us the book of mormon he'd been reading for the past three years ... ahaha. The problem is he's way old , can't really hear ... so. We'll see. But later on we finally were able to contact a referral of Billy's and they were in the middle of no where bukid (farm) like a solid 25 minute walk to their house ... but there was a mom , the contact (17 yr old boy) and his older brother whose maybe 20 or 21. Anyways they were so sweet and so receptive. Ahhh so awesome. After that we needed to go to Sili (another very far away bukid town) and we're like this is the path right. And they're like oh no , it was... but because of the rain it's impossible to cross here . It's too muddy. So we were like whaaaat , we cannot backtrack all the way to the highway , no time for that. So we proceeded to cross an entire farm field of mud by balancing on the higher mounds of more solid dirt , haha. We had to jump a few times across like rivers of mud and stuff. I was I had taken pictures , but it was getting late and we needed to hurry.
Anyways that was my week! Also I've gotten to the point where I feel comfortable talking to anyone by myself (and this is good because my companion hates OYMing [talking to people on the street] and won't do it ... so now it's me. So we were walking home last night and some teenager kid yells 'Hey Joe!' and starts laughing (as people do every day) but this time I turned right around and beelined straight at them. Ahahaha it was like 3 16 or 17 year olds. The one who yelled hey joe INSTANTLY grabs his cell phone and pretends he has a call and walks straight away , ahaha. But I proceeded to talk to the other two and just told them who we were and stuff ahaha. It was a highlight of the night. People here get so scared when you actually come up to them when they call after you.
Okay well that's all I got for now. Please send me dear elders! I love em. That and emails. Any info about apple and the next batman movie and really any movies and world info I'll take! haha. I'm in a bubble.
Okay , well love you all and talk to you next week!
-Elder White
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