OKAY YA'LL

Let's talk about the week.

Time is short , so I'll be typing fast.
After I got off the computer last week we hung out at the SM for about 15 minutes waiting for lunch ... because we were being treated at 1:30 to good food. So as we were strolling around we bumped into President Jensen , which was weird ha , who I guess came back up to Baguio for P-Day. Then we go head into lunch and there ended up being 9 of us , 6 missionaries. The members were of our ward but knew the other missionaries because they've ward hopped a lot of the past few years because of moving. The main woman was Sister Rehbaum whose from Australia , still filipino , and crazy nice. Loves the church , loves the missionaries , and has a prett successful business based out of Utah and with a lot of other locations. I'll ask her again for the name , it's a health food company with room for advancement for it's members - she says. Says it's rated like 5 star the best every year or something for a while ... sounded like a rival to Uncle Brian's company so I told her he worked for "(synergy? is that right?) so we had fun talking about that. Mom and Dad I gotta get out of Baguio... haha , every day I keep thinking I wanna live here as soon as possible. If I wasn't having to walk up and down mountains of concrete with legs burning every day I would live here in a heartbeat. Baguio is awesome and beautiful. If I were you guys I'd save up and move here as fast as possible. But after that we got home and had just enough time to sprint to a lesson a mile'ish away. Oh yeah the food she treated us to ... so good. Pizza and italian food with cheese cake. She must have spent about 100 - 120 dollars on all of us which is sooooooooo much money to a filipino. To most that's a month or two's salary. She's got money though. Tuesday was district meeting and afterwards I went on splits with Elder Heninger , my district leader , in their area. He's canadian , but everyone just refers to white people as american. Heritage means nothing. So that was the second time I'd worked with a white person since my trainer left. It's weird not speaking in Tagalog. I'm not sure how much I like it. Small talk is hard , but when I get going you can't shut me up ... there's a lot of jokes that don't work as well in Tagalog. So then Wednesday we switched back , and thaaaat was a hard day. There's one barangay here (means like town.. but smaller.) that is way close to the church but has been proselyted to death. I really hate it. Okay , thats a bad word. I won't be proselyting in there anymore. People know the missionaries and want nothing to do with them , and it's such a steep climb , and we always get punted from lessons there. So after wednesday and tuesday and monday we only had 7 lessons taught and I was getting down ... it's hard to walk around climbing stairs and stuff for 8 or 9 hours and hardly teach any lessons. A mission is a lot of things , but mostly mentally draining. I can only take so much rejection in one day. So at the end of the day we had like a long prayer in trying to understand what we need to do for this area ... we keep getting dropped from people and it seems like no one is interested. Thursday comes along and had a pretty revelatory personal and companionship study in what we need to do , but got punted a lot as well. One thing I've noticed about the mission is that the fruit reflects the attitude. It's easy to be happy when things are going well , but when things get rough that's when your patience is tried. And that's the time when you need to find something to be happy about , because as soon as you stop smiling and stop being psyched about what you're doing that's when everything crumbles and nobody wants to listen. But when you're beaming and just kind of like joke with the people , who are shocked in the first place a white person speaks their language , and don't let the little things get you down , that's when they let you in and listen ... if only for a minute or two. So this week we talked to 30 people ... which seems low but the mission average is about 10 a week. So it's pretty high for our mission. So that's what I realized needed to change , that when we're rejected like crazy we gotta remember whose time this is and really stop caring about the little things.
So Friday comes. yeeessss ... so good. Finally got in 6 lessons , but that didn't really matter. The best was the Laordan Family. Let me say that again. Family. I want a family baptism so so bad. Nothing compares than seeing a mother , father , and kids all accept the gospel together. It's so strong. Other missionaries have it , I have nothing. So. Last Friday we went exploring down one of the barangay's we inherited from the death of the APs here ... (nice symbolism , eh? I'm witty.) anyways. Our area is now one of the biggest in the mission because we essentially have two areas , and so we went down Crystal Cave (which has crystal caves) and found a small dirt/muddy road we'd never been down. Thought... let's try it out. This was last week , or two fridays ago. Talked to some humble homes [the people inside] ... not much acception but gave away a couple books of mormon. After trudging through mud and getting soaked in it , we were heading back to the road when my comp was like hey what was the name of that last house we were at ... I tell him John Rondan , he goes okay thanks. Heads to this house down another small staircase and asks if they know where John Rondan is (ha ... that's a small tactic that we try since people are a bit more open when you first ask them a question and don't immediately jump into missionary stuff) they tell us and we stand around and BRT a bit ... build relationship of trust ... talk about their family , it's a 45 year oldish woman and her mom , maybe 65ish. They're pretty nice , and so after about 15 minutes they tell us missionaries came by back in 1995 and ate dinner a couple times and then had to leave cuz they got pulled out of the area. So then after another 10 minutes we share a little bit about the book of mormon and then give them the introduction to read. My comp and his split/comp came by on tuesday and nobody was home , so when we came by on friday we were surprised to meet the husband and the 45yrold woman. They gave us a couple chairs and we waited around and talked to the husband for a bit while the mom finished up dinner and stuff for her kid. Maybe she's like 40. I can't tell. anyways , then we come inside and start talking a bit ... and husband is a bit quiet , but still nice. We ask her how her reading is and IMMEDIATELY she slaps off facts from the introduction and we were shocked. She was like yeah it makes a lot of sense , some things in the bible are lacking and this fills in. Literally I was about to give her a high five , I can't believe she read (very few do) and then she agreed with it , and then she actually understood the bible isn't perfect. Then the husband left for a second to attend to something outside , during which she bore testimony of her reading of the book. And this is the awesome part , even before she started I started feeling a little different ... something growing in my chest. Then she tells us how she was having a really hard day , just bad things going on and stuff , she sat down saw the BoM and picked it up to read and instantly felt different. Oh man mom and dad ... I've felt the spirit in lessons , I know I have , but I was like tearing up as I heard this it was NUTS. I have no idea why I felt it so strong but she was like I know this book is something different , and not just ... basta basta ... which is hard to translate but means like it's not just for nothing. I couldn't hardly find the words to speak , but we bore testimony and then told about John 10:16 which she was like oh my gosh I've always wondered what that meant we were like BAM! 3rd nephi. It was awesome. The dad came back and we bore testimony again , probly 75 times and then left them some reading. the amazing thing is , she wasn't even that interested when we came the first time. It was her mom that was more interested , and they have so many kids who they say are looking for religion too , and AHHHH PRAY FOR US!!!!! AND FOR THEM!!! Literally I love this family.
Everything else peals (I feel like that word doesn't make sense) in comparison , but after that we taught annootthheerrrr awesome lesson to another investigator. Just a really good day. Saturday , another pretty sweet day. Oh yeah ... haha , Thursday. I fell down a staircase and cut my arms up. Forgot to bring my cord , so I'll send those gnarly pictures next week.

Sunday , two americans from salt lake city came in. Scott and Hannah. About 25ish years old. Said they were touring Asia and stopped in Baguio for a couple days. I instantly was jealous. Stealing my dreams. But it was cool , they stayed for all the meetings so I got to talk to them for a while. June: the girl Hannah looked a litle like Shelsea and had your friend Becka's personality ... kinda like that. She also said she use to live in Maryland. They were crazy nice. Then last night we got fed Barbecue and Potato salad by sister rehbaum and it ended as a good week. Gotta go now , meeting some other missionaries for lunch. LOVE YOU ALL!@#!@#!@#!#!@#!#!@#!#!

ILL ANSWER QUESTIONS NEXT WEEK SORRRYYYYYYYy