Heyo

Heyo family! This is another rushed email seeing as I just did more college stuff for a while only to find out that I can't do anything until I get my password figured out , ha. But at least things are rolling in the right direction. Right now I'm in Dagupan and we'll be heading back to our area pretty soon. It's been a pretty good week. Tuesday was district meeting , our last one for the transfer , and it was a simple workshop and then we headed home right after to work. A kid in our branch whose about to head off for his mission in 3 weeks came and worked with us. When my companion was Elder Danao he never really talked to us , but me and Elder Blancia are way friendly to him so he likes us and wants to come and work with us now , which is good, ha. We had a really good day of work , and despite him not yet being a mission he bears a really really good testimony. Bearing a good testimony isn't the easiest thing at first , but he just knows how to do it powerfully and doesn't overdo it at all. One of our lessons was to our IBD and a part-member family. We talked about noticing the blessings in our lives and wow , that was an incredibly strong spirit. One of the strongest I've felt my whole mission during a lesson. It was just palpable and evident on everyone's face. That's just a different experience when you can literally see the Spirit working in people. Towards the end of the lesson I was going to ask them the difference they were feeling now as opposed to earlier when we were just joking around with them a bit before we started the lesson , but even before I could my companion jumped in and bore testimony about what he was feeling. Then the wife [about 30] said she felt it and so did the husband [not yet a member , 34] said he felt it really strong. It was just a really good lesson. As my companion continued on the wife left to go outside because she started crying. It was a really really good feeling. It's a testimony in itself how hard it is to notice the Spirit if it's noisy or something. Because in their house it's a tiny little cement box with no lights , but super duper quiet. Had it been just slightly noisy there's no way we would have been able to notice it. So that was a really good day. Wednesday we also worked really fast and the day started off with a suppeerrrr loud and obnoxious lesson to these people whose house we wanted to rent. They were just really loud and joking around and not serious so even when we were teaching [and they really wanted to listen ... their personalities are just not serious] about spiritual things there was just nothing there. It was literally night and day with what happened in that Tuesday lesson. So leaving that lesson I was pretty .. ticked off .. haha because they were just giving me a headache. But after that we taught 4 straight lessons that were really good and got a number of people promising to come to church that before had not been making much progress , so that ended up being a great day. Thursday I woke up with a sore through and a runny nose .. we started our weekly planning but instantly had to address some companioship things because my companion is .. kind of a child .. but we're working through it. He's just not adjusting to the whole "I'm no longer a regular member , but now a missionary" thing. It's okay though ... we're working through it , ha. Friday I woke up with an even worse cold , which peaked at a 101.5 temperature during the day , but we still went out to work because we had a number of important lessons. It started raining and thundering pretty soon after we left , but despite the little amount of work we got done it was still a good day. Saturday was nutss. In the morning we tried looking for a house. We ask and ask and ask ... and nothing. Nobody has anything to rent. We get some tips about a barangay with supposedly [a lot of great houses for rent] ... nothing. All tiny bamboo houses , haha , and nothing even close to mission standards. After that we track down the keys for the church so our IBD can be interviewed. We go pick him up and the family whose going to bring us there is like still changing and getting ready , we get to the church about 15 minutes late , but he's interviewed by the zone leader - passes - then we race back for a family home evening [branch home evening , really] at a less actives place. We're like an hour late! [we were at the interview which took forever]. We show up and everyone is waiting on us , hahaha. There was like 25 of them. We get there and the first counselor is like , okay do you have a program. I'm like what ?? Why do I have to make the program [I don't actually say that , just thought it] So I make one up super quick , I give the message , then we play a bunch of games and it was really good bonding for a lot of less actives that were there. The next day at church most of them came! It was awesome. We had a toonnn of less actives at church and some really good meetings. Afterwards the highlight of the night was sharing a message at our branch president's house and him saying how we were the first missionaries to share a message with them since they were baptized [2006]. We're taking our last appointment every Sunday night to visit a different leader. Today we went bowling [8 of us] and Elder Bolen is now in my zone again. So we have a longgg bowling rivalry. Stupidly we played 6 games [my arm is dead] and he beat me 4 - 2. Nottt my best games! Anyways those are my updates for this week. How did you like the wood carving mom and dad? And I understand about the whole money thing , that's super expensive. The older kids should pay their own way!! ha. But to be honest I really wanted to come home with my batch and see you guys in New York for the first time , but I'll think about it. If money is tight then I'd rather not be selfish. But I'll ponder on it this week. Love you all. I'm still relatively healthy , ha. MY stomach is growing larger! -Elder White