100 Days Out

So this week I finally reached 100 days since I left! And it was probably one of the best days I've had so far in the mission. We had a mission tour with Elder Ardern from the First Quorum of the Seventy. So half of the zones of the mission headed to Naga for half of Thursday to hear from him. He's from New Zealand, served a mission in the France/Belgium mission and is probably one of the best speakers I've heard. He was hilarious. For the first bit, he would just have missionaries come up to the pulpit with a scripture and then he would go off for about 10-15 minutes about that scripture and everything we could learn from it. He had some really great insights about the Gospel and how to find new investigators and how to help the less actives. His whole talk was very interactive and he was always coming out to where we were all sitting in the chapel to do things with us. I forgot my notebook at the apartment, so maybe next week I will send out more of the stuff he said and there was a ton of really great stuff. So that was the highlight of the week.

Elder Esteves finally got his new companion too so no more threesome! His name is Elder Rujky from the Marshall Islands. His English is pretty good, but his Tagalog definitely needs some work. He was really surprised when in priesthood, someone tried to get him to teach, but luckily one of the old men started yelling about something, not really sure what, so then the whole lesson planned changed. I was just laughing way hard because the old guy stood up out of nowhere yelling at the member trying to teach. Everyone else was laughing too, but I think he was shouting at him because he was trying to get out of teaching by making Elder Rujky do it.

On Friday, we had Balut for Elder Rujky, my fourth time having it. So that was pretty good. I actually like it. If you don't know what it is, it's a duck egg that has developed for 18 days that they then hard boil, fetus and all. Tasty. We also attended a baptism that day for one of Elder Esteves' investigators so that was good.

Saturday was probably one of my best working days so far. And it's because we had exchanges with the Zone Leaders. So Elder Guila was my companion for the day and I got to lead. We had morning work and tracting for the first time my whole mission which was great because we contacted a ton of new people that seemed really interested in having us teach! I was really grateful for the chance to see what missionary work really should be like and we worked hard. I led a lesson with Juben on the Restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon and he seemed so happy to finally have one and for the chance to start reading. I'm just hoping that I can take this momentum into this week and continue to work. 

One thing that I remember that Elder Ardern taught that I've been thinking about a lot lately is about helping the less actives. And it's something President Eyring talked about too. A lot of times it is very frustrating to go and teach them and have them lie to us about being sick, hiding from us, or not keeping commitments. Sometimes, I found myself getting mad at them because we spend so much time with them but they didn't seem to care. But the thing that I liked about Elder Eyring's talk was that no matter how receptive they are to us, we still need to love them no matter what. And not just less actives, everyone. We always need to reach out to everyone and show them love, even if they are just pushing us away. So I've really been trying hard lately to think of them in a Christlike manner, as the 1 sheep that wandered away and that needed to be found.

Love you all and love hearing from you and I can't wait to get back on next week and see what's new!

Elder Jakob Van Boerum
10/27/13