Sorry ... no pictures yet. Next week I will. But I'm in my area today
and these computers are faaarrr too slow to handle that kind of burden
, not to mention possibly riddled with viruses. So I'd rather not. I
would have sent pictures a long time ago , but I thought my memory
card had a virus on it .. or my camera .. because when I tried to
print pictures the file wouldn't open. But I figured it out finally ,
and alls well in zion. Things continue to go well with the comp! He
does a lot of things that gross me out , ha , but I'm sure I do them
too and it's been a great week 1/2 so far. Not to mention , yes , he's
very good at cooking. So I'll be coming home with a lot of Pilipino
dishes to cook. Mostly adobo (which is my favorite) but sinigang and
others. Pigar Pigar is waay good and pretty easy to cook. Inside the
house it takes him a little while to get to things on time like
studies and waking up and stuff , but outside the house he's way
masipag , which is hard working. Which is awwessomeee. No 45 minute
random member stops ... no asking to go home at 7:30 ... I'm loving
it. Not to mention... I'm senior in the area so it's very nice , haha.
Actually , one thing I discovered while looking on the transfer sheet
is that out of my whole batch I'm the only senior among us. That
sounds crazy prideful , ahaha , but I'm more confused really. Elder
Su'A and Soderquist and Solesbee and Tolman are way way good
missionaries , so I'm sure they'll be called to train or something
next transfer. Anyways , this week has been pretty good but
challenging. It's rained everyday (until sunday afternoon) from last
Sunday. So when it rains... every part of missionary work is
challenged. Mostly talking to people and giving out Books of Mormon.
Most everyone ducks inside at the first sign of rain and will not come
out because rain leads to a long series of diseases (they mostly
exaggerate or fake) ha.. but it's okay. Monday and Tuesday were
regular days of missionary work , and then Wednesday we had district
meeting. Ha , it was here that our district leader informed us that we
had Zone Interviews with President Jensen the next day... ha no
advancement. So when we got back we went about our regular missionary
work and ended up at Nanay Mendoza's at 8 for dinner as usual on
Wednesdays. Nanay in tagalog means like mom , and is more or less a
name that most older women want to be called. It's not really a sign
of respect , but everyone wants to be a nanay ... just apart of the
culture. So Nanay Mendoza is this 76 year old woman whose way way
funny. So makulit... which is hard to translate but kind of means like
silly and jokes alot. So it's always fun to share a spiritual thought
with her and get fed. Though for some reason her house attracts more
bugs than I would like. Thursday was a good day. We wake up at 6 , and
head to the buses. Get to Rosales about 830 and President Jensen shows
up with the APs about 10 minutes later , so we start the interviews.
Interviews happen once every two transfer , so once every 2 - 3 months
and President Jensen just has a short interview with every missionary
, divided by zones of course , to see how they're doing and how he can
help and stuff. My past two interviews were okay , but this one was a
lot better for some reason , ha. As usual , the missionaries give the
opening prayer to start the interview , and after about halfway
through the prayer I couldn't think anymore in english and finished
the prayer in Tagalog and was like sorry sorry haha I forgot how to
say that in english , and he was like no no don't worry .. I like
that. Haha. That was the first time I'd prayed in English .. since my
last interview 3'ish months ago. So I forgot how to say certain
things. Anyways , during the interview he asked how I was doing and
stuff and so I just told him how much I am seriously loving everything
and told him about a few of our investigators and stuff and then he
just gave me advice for one of them and opened up and shared a few of
his thoughts from scriptures from D&C 132 ... and I donno why but it
was just a really spiritual few minutes. I came out feeling really
really good , and times like that are just so important for
missionaries , at least for me. You get really recharged after being
so discouraged or anything from working day in day out in the field
and seeing almost no fruit from your labors. But getting to talk to
him (in english) for a few minutes and just talk about my days and
stuff felt really good. Anyways the rest of the day was good , and it
turns out my companion had talked to someone on the bus and gave her
his triple combination and set up a return appointment with her
because she lives in out area. So , I was thinking too too highly of
it ... maybe doubting a bit ... but we went to contact her anyways on
Saturday. Turns out she had left and wasn't there , so my thoughts
turned even more less supportive , haha , but we set up to come back
on Sunday. So yesterday after church we return and turns out she's
there with her two kids so we come in and share. With us was the 1st
counselor of the branch presidency and elders quorum president , and
so we got to know her a bit ... and she turns out to be possibly very
very elect. She had recently gotten a marriage annulled with her
husband , because of certain reasons , and that's amazing.... I mean
it's awful for that , but here in the Pilipinas divorce is not legal.
So anullments are the only way out , and that is expensivev and very
hard. But they did it , which means possible for baptism! She was also
very sweet and very receptive. So we have high hopes for her. We're in
a process of finding finding finding. We have so many investigators
here , but no one wants to come to church and they cannot progress
unless they do so. So we're trying to find new investigators close to
church and we've been so blessed this week from the Lord's help. In
one situation we go to contact a referral , but he wasn't there ... so
instead we get a referral from a relative for a person across the
street who was probably even more receptive and welcoming. So little
things like that have really blessed us this week. Not to mention ,
the rain has hurt the work a lot , but we still broke through it with
a lot of lesson and a lot of good finding. Today we're just in our
area , and we've got to go shop for groceries and then pay the
electricity bill. Bills here are so expensive ... I've got a lot of
hope for this coming week and so we'll see what it lays in store for
us. Nothing unusual happens anymore , haha I'm sorry. And it's hard
for me to collect all my thoughts here on this computer because I can
only see a small box of what I'm writing at a time .. but here are
some of my thoughts from this week that I wrote down to remember. 1.
Mom ... I've noticed that many times are thoughts are weirdly
alligned. Example: You wrote me an email randomly about Elder Merril
my second transfer and earlier that day I met the girl in Dagupan that
knew Mitch. 2. Please send any kind of small missionary books to me!!
I really really love reading. And small missionary books are so rare
and awesome here haha. Like ... NOT A book such as "what I wish I did
on my mission" or something like that but more like tips and stuff on
other religions and other things about the bible and stuff liek that.
There's so many books , I would love that. 3. I forgot to mention a
couple weeks ago , that as me and Elder Salde were walking to a house
Elder Salde randomly jumps back and is like "ELDER! BINABATO!" and I
was like what... what does that mean , and then I saw a rock land like
2 feet in front of me and realized he was saying like bato... which
means rock ... which means someone is throwing rocks at us. And so we
like run back as this crazy woman is picking up rock after rock and
hurling them at us ahhaaha. So finally we wait and then sprint past
her as she barily misses us. She was old and crazy but had really good
aim. Hahaha , so that was a really funny thing thta happened his last
week here! Okay , that's all for this week! I'm excited for my package
momma!! And mom email sister jensen if you're curious about the
package situation , she's incredibly nice. Actually her and president
jensen look (kind of a lot) and their personalities are so much like
yours and dads. It's really weird to have my parents be serving the
same mission as me. But I'm sure they'll be collecting so many letters
and packages from the baguio address even after they move the mission
home. PLEASE GET GARRETTS ADDRESS SOON!!! IT TAKES FOREVER FOR A
LETTER TO GET TO AMERICA AND I WANT TO SEND HIM ONE WHILE HE'S IN THE
MTC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Also Arber's last name is Raci and lives on Deer
Lane in wilton , I just don't know his number. THANK YOU LVOE YOU
ALL!!!
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