Maliayang Pasko

Maligayang Pasko

Hey Everyone!

So I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. We ended up being really busy here with visiting people, Christmas party, meetings, and a whole bunch of other stuff. A pretty tiring week, but good nonetheless. Most of our investigators were gone for the week, so we decided to go out finding new investigators and also visiting less active members and seeing what we could do for them. Most of them were pretty open to talking with us, and we met a few for the first time. They were smoking and asked us "Oh this is against the commandments right?" and we said yep, and they just kept right on smoking. But we did have quite a few people end up coming to church.

One hard thing was the bishop here had rented a jeep to try and get some of the less actives to be able to come to church. So we talked to the driver and had it all set, then he bailed on us at the last minute. The only problem was he didn't tell us, or anyone else. So a bunch of people were waiting, but...no jeep showed up. That was too bad.

This next week should be fun though. We have a bunch of exchanges, nearly every day this week, so we will be back and forth between our areas and others every other day. It's going to be exhausting, but fun I hope. We've got some really good missionaries here that we will get to work with.

Well I love you all and miss you a ton! It was awesome getting to skype with you (family). I was thinking about you all a lot and how grateful I am to be here, even for Christmas. But this is the last one, so it should be even better next year! I miss all of you (my friends) too! Keep up the good work with whatever you're all up too! Talk to ya next week!

Happy New Year too!

Merry Christmas!

Well another week that went super fast. Maybe it was just that we were so busy with a bunch of stuff. We had exchanges that went really well, and we found quite a few new investigators. I'm starting to get really familiar with the area, and so that's helping a ton.

A couple highlights for the week.

We went to visit our investigators Abby, Carlo, and Chris, (all about 17-19 and in college). We walked in and Abby was sitting at a table reading the Book of Mormon and a Gospel Principles book. Just in her free time. She says she's been finding the answers to questions she's had her whole life, then Carlo joined and said the same thing. They then worked on convincing Chris to come to church this week because "it's different there, at the Mormons. You feel the presence of God." We then gave them a list of questions and scriptures we wanted them to try looking up over the Christmas break, because they'll be going home for about 2 weeks and will probably have plenty of time to kill. They are going to be baptized.

Interesting thing was teaching an apostate member of the church. I'll tell you more about him over skype, but he pretty much goes out and preaches the Gospel (good thing) while at the same time spying on members and actively campaigning against the stake presidency and other church leadership (bad thing). Oh yeah, and he wants to have his kids baptized.

Other fun thing was the Christmas conference on Friday. Just went and hung out together for a few hours. And out of nowhere, President Reeder pulls out Frozen. So we watched that for the first couple hours to celebrate Christmas. Everyone was into it and stuff, and then the movie ends and the feelin hits everyone that it's back to bein a missionary again. But all told, it was a really good time and I got to see a lot of people that I missed. So cool.

Well I'm excited to skype this week. And we are trying to work out some things to do for the week because everyone will be drunk on Christmas Eve, singin karaoke, while their kids blow up fireworks. They may not really be in the spirit to listen to us, but we're gonna give it a shot anyway. And we have the ward Christmas party tomorrow that wasn't planned until after sacrament meeting yesterday. We'll see how that turns out.

Love you all and hope you have a Merry Christmas!

Hey everyone! 

So last week was super busy, so I don't have a ton to talk about in terms of work, except that two of our current investigators are GOLDEN and are going to probably be baptized by early February. We got super lucky about them, and they have a ton of good questions. They even came to church for the first time yesterday, even though about half the ward was missing because of the rain (it wasn't even that strong, but sacrament meeting attendance here drops a ton if it's even a bit rainy.) So that was really cool, and it looked like they had a great time.

Highlights of our week were just planning stuff and going to meetings. We had a really cool thing called Mission Leadership Council last week, where we got to Naga and spend a bunch of time on training, reporting on our zones, and making plans for the mission. I learned a ton, and I think we are going to make some huge impact for our zone. It was kind of weird being there, and I felt a little out of place at the beginning. There's tons of really cool missionaries there that I have a ton of respect for, and I felt a kind of inadequate I guess at first. But by the end, I started to feel more comfortable with contributing to everything we were doing, so it all turned out great. We set some pretty big goals for our zone, especially in terms of finding, and President Reeder seemed to like what we were doing there. Our zone is going to kind of be a bit of a testing ground with some of the things we planned, so if it works out, it could be really awesome. We are in the biggest zone right now, and we have a bunch of awesome missionaries that are doing work. We'll see what happens there. But we are excited because this week is our Christmas party, so we kind of get a day off for the most part, which will be nice relaxation. I let you all know how that goes!

Love you all! And I hope it snows more there soon for all of you!

Training Meeting For Zone Leaders

Buhay Pa Ako

Well maybe you all heard, but there was a typhoon that came through here. They were forecasting it to be super huge and everything, but in the end it kind of died out, and just dumped a ton of water. We spent most of the past three days just sitting in our apartment, which at some point last night started leaking a ton. But it was still okay, just too bad we didn't get to really work.

And that's because I'm in my new area. I just got called to be a zone leader here in Goa zone, and my new companion is awesome, Elder Sonderegger from Farmington. We've had a bunch of super awesome lessons so far. We found some college age students who had TONS of questions about God and the Bible and stuff and they are super receptive. Complete accident that we found them too. We went to a boarding house to find another guy, but he wasn't home so we just starting talking to a couple of people there and felt inspired to ask some questions, and what to you know, she's looking for a ton of answers and for the true church of Christ. We gave an awesome lesson on the spot, and she asked us where and when our church is. She wasn't able to make it because of the storm, but it looks really promising!

Well that's pretty much all I've got for this week. Work was cut short because of the typhoon, but already I can see being in this area is going to be awesome. Love you all and hope you have a good week!

Hey Everyone.
So another week that went by super fast. We mostly just kept up the same
work we've had going for the past couple weeks and saw some really good
progress with our investigators. There baptisms should be coming up within
the next couple weeks if everything works out. We also had a family of less
actives come to church that haven't been able to come in a long time. The
father had a stroke over a year ago, and is able to walk now, but it's
really slow and he struggles. But They made it to church! And their son
came, and he's about the age to be preparing for a mission, so we hope to
begin work on that with him soon. He had plans originally, but then left to
go work for a few months.
We did struggle with one less active family this week. We aren't really
sure what happened, but they've turned pretty cold all of the sudden. We
went to their house, and saw them in the doorway, but they didn't see us
yet. I told my companion to wait until they were out of sight, because I
wanted to see if they would hide (Filipinos will rarely reject you, they
just hide instead). Well, I was correct. They sent their son out to say
they were gone, then we told him we saw them and he panicked and didn't
know what to do. Then I found the dad trying to escape by crawling under
the wall (He also seemed a little drunk), so I guess they really didn't
want to talk. Hope we can figure out what's goin on there.
I did a lot better this week about trying to be loving, and I guess found
that that's the key to everything. You have to go out with a good attitude
or you're going to have a terrible day no matter what happens. On the other
hand, as you look at people for who they are, and what their potential is,
it makes it a lot harder to get mad at them. Sometimes it's still sad to
see people wasting that potential through drinking or disobedience or
whatever it is, but I do what I can to help them try to work it out.
Well I love you all! Have a great week, and I'll have more next P Day!

"I think when Elder Holland has free time, he goes off and hunts Satan"

Hey Everyone!
So another week down, went by pretty fast. But we saw some super awesome
things, that I can't describe in detail right now, but basically a less
active member has completely flipped his life around within just a couple
days and is working his way towards being active and worthy to baptize his
son. He's so far gone 5 days without smoking, which is huge for him, and he
seems more determined than I've ever seen him to get his family to accept
the gospel and eventually be sealed! We also had a few investigators at
church, so they are staying on track to be baptized on the 29th if
everything else continues to run smoothly (please pray for that). Another
investigator didn't come because she said she was going to visit her Born
Again church for the last time, to tell them she's not coming back because
she's getting baptized with the Mormons. We had a pretty good laugh at that
one, because we just imagined how that conversation might go. After all the
singing and dancing that they do there, when it all quiets down and
everyone is feelin' good, she'll just randomly say to the pastor she's not
coming back and then walk out. She's also kind of old, so I think that just
adds to it.
Besides all that, everything still seems to be going well. Just goin at it
day by day. It's crazy how fast some days fly by, but other days honestly
just drag on, especially the ones where I'm struggling not to throw the
kids into fields. But I've held off on that so far, so I guess my patience
is building. I think I'm just going to try and kill them with kindness or
something. Buy 'em candy or something maybe. I don't know, but maybe
there's something to being Christlike that might do the trick. Just have to
think of what that might be.
Also quote for my week that I heard on exchanges:
"I think when Elder Holland has free time, he goes off and hunts Satan."
Love you all, and I'll talk to ya next week!

I'm Not German

Another week that went by super fast. We were busy with exchanges and
everything, but it all turned out well and ended up great last night when
we got to watch a Special Area Broadcast for the Philippines in which Elder
Ardern, his wife, Bishop Cousee, Elder Robbins, And Elder Oaks and his wife
all spoke. Elder Oaks used to be the area president here 10 years ago, so
he really knew a lot of the problems that we face here with membership. One
of the things I like that he really emphasized was that the Gospel is all
about change. A lot of members here get into the church, but often aren't
really fully willing to make the changes that will bring them to full
activity and help them receive the fullness of the blessings of the Gospel
that are waiting for them. They always hang onto something. Another problem
is that a lot of members don't really want to put anything into their
membership in the church. Refusing callings and talks and all of that. But
all in all, they were really great talks, that I got a lot out of, but
almost nobody there could understand Bishop Cousee's accent...
We've also seen some good things with our work. We gave out a few more
baptismal invitations, that were accepted, but may take some time before
they work out. One of them pretty much asked us to be baptized, so we were
really happy to set a date with him.
This week I've been working really hard to be more loving. I've gotten
frustrated a lot lately with people lying, and hiding, and kids yelling
vulgar English at us. I've just really been working on stopping and
thinking that they don't know what they're saying, and they don't know what
they're missing out on. I've been trying to think how Christ would react to
a situation like that. What I *want* to do is throw the kid into a rice
field. What I *should* do is try to compassionately explain to him what
he's saying. But if he persists, I guess the rice field is still an option.
Well that's mostly it. Also a follow up on that whole me being German
thing. I tried explaining my choice to my Filipino companion later that day
and all he said to me was "Wait, so you're not really German?" I've been
with him for 7 weeks haha. Another housemate has been telling everyone that
I'm half. Half-what? I don't know. Just half he says.

I'm German???

Well conference was waaaay awesome. I wrote down a ton, but haven't had
time to go over it all yet, so I think I will talk more about that next
week. But Elder Uchtdorf's talk in Priesthood (we watched that first),
really helped set the tone for the rest of Conference for me. I went in at
first thinking about all the things I needed to find answers for for
investigators, less actives, members of my district, and so on. But he said
some really great things that helped me realize that I can't help others if
I can't help myself first. So while of course I still looked for answers
for others, I really tried hard to see what I could learn too.
One of the other things I felt from conference was something I've been
thinking about a lot lately. When gaining eternal life becomes our greatest
desire in this life, we will achieve it. And by that I don't mean simply
wanting something. Of course when something is your *greatest* desire,
nothing will get in the way of you working towards that. There were quite a
few talks about distractions and let things get in the way of ultimate
goals. But when will we decide that eternal life is something to work for,
not just some distant dream?
Besides all of that, I think I've given up on trying to explain to people
where I'm from. I always get asked that, and I answer the U.S. Then they
ask where. So I say Utah, and that confuses them because they have no idea
where that is. "Is that in California?" is a usual reply. The question that
follows is along the lines of, "Then why is your last name German?". I
don't try to explain that it's Dutch anymore. I say that's where my
ancestors are from. "Oh so your father and mother immigrated to the U.S.?"
No, we've been in the U.S. for generations. "Then why is your last name not
American?" I try to explain that everyone in the U.S. is descended from
immigrants, so last names vary. Now, they are really confused because they
think the U.S. is currently full of Northern European immigrants. After all
of this explanation, the question usually comes again: So you're German?
Too frustrated at this point, I just answer yes. Then, occasionally, they
say, so your a Nazi...
So I think I will just start to tell people I'm German to save time and
energy.
Well I hope you all have a great week! Love y'all.

20 in Libmanan

Well I'm 20 now. So that's pretty cool.

But enough about that.

Everything here in Libmanan is going really great! Last week a big river flooded about 15-20 feet so that was fun. We had a really good attendance the yesterday at church, and 9, yes 9, investigators came to church. Some of those are now pretty much qualified for baptism! Along with that, we had 15 less active members come, some of them for the first time in a loooong time. This was accompanied by some great lessons about the Restoration, and many other things. 

Getting a ride in the dump truck

One thing we also taught a lot this week was the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Really helped me to learn that it's not just some check list (faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, endure to the end), but a process of becoming something. All of these things, as grand and beautiful as they are, mean absolutely nothing without any application in our lives. So the question is: who am I now? Who do I want to be? And what am I going to do to become that? Of course the obvious answer is I want to be like Jesus. But also an important step is to recognize the special talents and gifts we've been given, and what we want to make of those. How do we apply the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the blessings we've been given (along with the trials) in our lives? Never forget what He did for you, and always remember what you can do for Him. For me, just going through the motions doesn't make you any more of a Christian than simply putting on scrubs makes you a doctor or putting on a nametag makes you a missionary. It's all about effort, and becoming something, and becoming something for the right reason.

Excited for the upcoming week and who we will be able to help!

Well I love you all and hope you have a great week!

8/21/14

4 Baptisms Last Week

Hey everyone.
Well we had 4 baptisms last week, so that was really great. My companion
baptized the four of them and I conducted and we had some pretty good
attendance! We hope to start a couple of them in preparing to serve a
mission in a couple years, so that will be pretty exciting too. We also saw
some less actives at church that haven't attended for a really long time.
So, to put it simply, everything is goin pretty well here in Libmanan. I
also found out that neither my companion or I will be transferred, which is
great because I feel like we've been working really well together.
We've also had some disappointments with Less Active members. We try again
and again with some of them, but they never seem to make real progress. I
guess I've learned a lot about agency in the past little bit. It's one of
the greatest gifts we've been given in this life, the ability to choose
what we want to make of it. We are all born with weaknesses, or challenges,
physical, mental, or emotional. But we also have a potential that no one
can take away except ourselves. That potential is always there, but can
only be unlocked through the Atonement of Christ, through following the
counsel of modern prophets. I like to think that our potential is exactly
what Jesus thought of as he suffered through the Atonement. On the other
hand, it can only be held from us by our own disobedience, not by the
dictations of anyone else. But no matter what path we may have taken in the
past, or what others around us may be doing, there is always healing
available for us and them. The world is dark. Life isn't easy. It was never
meant to be. That heaviness can be compounded by the decisions of others.
But in the end, we can *always* bear up that weight and carry on to a
better future and a brighter day. I may not be able to make someone come to
church. I know I can never force a man to pray or to believe in modern
revelation, or do any number of other things. But I can do that for myself.
I will close with a favorite poem of mine.

Invictus by William Ernest Henley



Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods my be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not whined or cried aloud,

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul

Birthday Week!!! 20 years old!

Well I'm 20 now. So that's pretty cool.

But enough about that.

Everything here in Libmanan is going really great! Last week a big river flooded about 15-20 feet so that was fun. We had a really good attendance the yesterday at church, and 9, yes 9, investigators came to church. Some of those are now pretty much qualified for baptism! Along with that, we had 15 less active members come, some of them for the first time in a loooong time. This was accompanied by some great lessons about the Restoration, and many other things. 

One thing we also taught a lot this week was the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Really helped me to learn that it's not just some check list (faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, endure to the end), but a process of becoming something. All of these things, as grand and beautiful as they are, mean absolutely nothing without any application in our lives. So the question is: who am I now? Who do I want to be? And what am I going to do to become that? Of course the obvious answer is I want to be like Jesus. But also an important step is to recognize the special talents and gifts we've been given, and what we want to make of those. How do we apply the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the blessings we've been given (along with the trials) in our lives? Never forget what He did for you, and always remember what you can do for Him. For me, just going through the motions doesn't make you any more of a Christian than simply putting on scrubs makes you a doctor or putting on a nametag makes you a missionary. It's all about effort, and becoming something, and becoming something for the right reason.

Excited for the upcoming week and who we will be able to help!

Well I love you all and hope you have a great week!

9/21/14

New Area, Libmanan!

Well I got transferred! I'm in an area called Libmanan, just a little north of where I was before. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere, but is a pretty nice place and we even have a 7-11. The branch here is also pretty strong, but still having some struggles with less actives. There are about 500 members here, and only about 100 were at church yesterday, so we have a lot of work to do, especially in reactivating priesthood bearers. So far, we've had some pretty great work, and have some progressing investigators and several new investigators that have some potential. My new companion is Filipino, Elder Mercado. My two other housemates are also Filipino, so I guess my Tagalog might start to improve again. There's also two sisters here, one from Virginia, and one who just arrived from Peru, and they are both great. Sorry, I don't have a whole lot more, I'm still getting used to the area! Love you all and I'll have more next week

9/14/14

My Surgery in the Philippines

No I didn't actually have surgery here. I just wanted Mom to have a small heart attack when she read the subject line haha.

Good last week for me here in San Fernando. On Saturday I found out that I would be transferred to a new area, which I will be going to tomorrow. Still don't know where I'll be goin or who I'll be with but that's part of the fun right?

Our week wasn't super eventful, but we were able to visit a lot of the members and work with a few of our investigators which is nice. Problem is, one of them left for Manila early in the week because her daughter there is sick, so...I guess we'll teach her when she's back haha. But we are still working with her family that is still here. We also finally figured things out with one investigator, Louie. He's been on the fence for a bit about moving to another town for college, so we weren't really sure what to do with him. But he finally decided to stay in our area for a few months at least. He's golden, already completely believes in everything and has a great testimony and desire to know more and completely follow what we teach him. He already looks forward to an eternal marriage (I think he's 19). He has some funny questions about the church though, just because he's still really unfamiliar with a lot of things. "Do we believe in Christmas in this church?" I just like the way he says it, because it's not "your church" but "our church".

Anyway, like I said I'll be leavin tomorrow, off to a different place! One thing that was interesting was talking with some of the missionaries that will be going home tomorrow. I realized how much I'll miss some of them, and that that will be me in just 9 and a half months. So I guess I better work even harder; there's not much time left! Love you all, have a great week!

9/8/14

A Sense of Sacred

Helllllooooo again.

The past week was great, got to spend some good time on service and building houses. Then we had a great Zone Conference where we talked about obedience and about the talk "A Sense of the Sacred". It's a really great talk, if any of you want to try reading it. It talks all about how we can gain an appreciation and reverence for sacred things, and the importance of that in our lives. It was really great to hear from President and Sister Reeder as well! We also had a decent turnout yesterday for church, with 7 of our Less Active members coming to church. We've found out that they don't really need a big long lesson once a week, but constant, short visits just for us to show them that we really care for them. We did have several great spiritual lessons that did end up with bringing members back to church. Our less active second counselor opened up to us and told us he thinks he's ready to begin the repentance process to come back to church and lead his family again. So hopefully we can get moving on that with the help of our Branch President! Besides that, not really an eventful week. Near nighttime on the way to an appointment, we walked passed a "Hot Babes Bar" where there were some women outside who were yelling at us to join them, for free because we're foreigners, but we thanked them for the offer and said we're ok and kept goin haha. Kind of a random experience. I thought of the great and spacious building, but this one wasn't very tempting haha. Random lesson to not get distracted from the Lord's work. Anyway, hope you all have a great week

9/1/14

Strengthening the Branch in San Fernando

Hey everyone!

Short on time this week. We spent the morning building a house for a member, so we had to cut our time down on everything in our schedule.

We had another pretty good week. We felt like a lot of our less actives have been making some great progress, so we decided to try out some more finding. We got a lot of Filipinos hiding and running away, but we tried not to get too discouraged. We ended up talking to several people who were really nice and seemed like they could really benefit from the Gospel, so now we are just working on following up with them. Things are pretty much all settled down here in our area, so I don't have a whole lot to talk about. Just keep working away here in San Fernando. It's been a pretty rough area, but we have seen a lot of progress, not in terms of investigators, but mostly just in strengthening the branch. We still get a little opposition at times, but I feel like everything we've done has been for the best, so we just trust in God and keep movin on and doing what we were sent here to do. Anyway, Love you all and hope you're doing great!

8/25/14

The Benefits of Service

Hey everyone! This week wasn't too bad. We kept ourselves pretty busy with service and stuff. Last Wednesday, a lot of the priesthood got together (even a few less active members) and took a hike up into the mountains to cut down some bamboo and other wood to rebuild the house that I mentioned last week. It took most of our day up, but ended up being a great chance for everyone to fellowship each other and provide service for a family that really needed it. It turned out to be super successful, because the family that we cut all the wood for came to church on Sunday! I haven't seen some of them at church since I've gotten to the area, so that's great news for them. We also did some more service on Saturday for another family whose house got trashed by the typhoon. They were all super grateful, and we had a good time doing it. After the service we got to attend a baptism for some investigators I interviewed a couple weeks ago, and they were both super happy. I was really excited for them. We finally have power again also in most of our area, so we are pretty much back to the regular schedule now, no more curfew. It's great because that was a huge limitation. Most fathers weren't getting home until around our curfew time, and we can't go into houses without any males, so we should start to pick up work again soon. This next week should be a little bit better, and I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks and I hope you're all doin great!

8/18/14

Priesthood

Hey Everyone!

So we had another pretty good week. We spent a lot of it running around coordinating branch efforts to rebuild a house for a member family whose home was destroyed during the typhoon. It took a lot of time, and the week started off kinda rough, but finally we got it all worked out. The priesthood was able to come together yesterday and finalize plans for getting all of the materials, which will be donated by a member, from the mountains, then bringing them back down to where the house is and spending the day repairing everything we can. I'm so happy the branch is finally taking the lead on this, and I'm so proud of the progress they have made. This family has been struggling since the typhoon, so it's been great to see things finally working out for them. All of the priesthood will be participating and a lot of the Relief Society too. We also got together the auxiliary presidents for a Family Home Evening last Saturday for a less active family. It was a really great time, and the family was asked to bear their testimonies at the end, and they talked about how they love the church, and know they need to come back to activity. And they did show up for church on Sunday! We had one of the highest attendances we've had since I've been in the area and 8 less active members came from our area. It's been such a struggle, but Sunday felt like such a successful day and I think we finally got our branch out of the tough place it was in and moving forward. The leaders of the church are now really working together and are leading efforts to fellowship and reach out to less actives. I think we are laying a great foundation for the next missionaries to come through here.

Besides that, our work was mostly just visiting other less active members. We are still having a tough time with a couple of them, but I feel like there is still some little progress. Now we are ready to start shifting back towards investigator work. Hope you're all still doin great, and I love you all! 

8/11/14

8/3/14 No email!

Elder Lakopo Faipolo

Hey everyone.

So this week was another pretty slow week. We spent most of it trying to finish the clean up for our area. So this just meant a ton of service projects. It ended up making it super tough to have any teaching, especially with our 6 p.m. curfew still. We have an early curfew right now because of the power outage. We are still without power and running water, and probably could be for another week or so. We just barely saw the first electrical workers in our area this morning, so at least that is a good sign. Hopefully they can get it up and running soon.

We also have transfers this week, but we found out we will both be staying in the area for another 6 weeks. I'm kinda sad, but also happy. It's a super tough area, but I feel like we are beginning to see some good progress among the members and we were able to serve a ton of them over the past couple weeks. One of the old couples kept telling us that they will never forget us, because we have been so good to them. All of their children are gone, so they didn't really have anyone to help them after the typhoon, so we were there a ton to help them out. They are some of my favorite members in the area.

Hopefully I'll have more to report on next week! Love you all!

Elder Iakopo Faipolo

(My Samoan name. My companion has started teaching me and I'm gettin ok.)

7/27/14

Typhoon Aftermath

I'm just copying my email this week from a letter to my mission pres. 

As you know, our area was hit very hard by the typhoon. After spending the night in Milaor, Elder Lapana and I felt that we needed to go straight to visit the members in our area. I don't think that anybody had warned them of what was coming or that they could evacuate. We stopped briefly at our apartment to make sure there wasn't too much damage, then immediately went back out. Luckily, none of our members were hurt, but some of them received some really serious damage to their homes, so we immediately went to work cleaning and doing what we could. Wednesday was mostly spent visiting as many members as we could so we could assess who needed the most help soonest, and we based the rest of our week on what we saw. We spent every day out cleaning up the damage for our members, and despite not getting any lessons, I feel the work we were able to do was just as important. Several members were extremely grateful for our efforts and it was a great chance for us to show our love for them. We had some really great experiences, and one of the elderly members couldn't stop talking about us being their strength after the storm.
As Sunday was coming, we knew we were going to be the speakers in church. We had picked topics that we thought would help the branch, mine being gossiping. But in the aftermath of the typhoon, I felt impressed to change it. We've felt a lot of contention in the branch between members and even towards us at times. So I chose a new talk. I wanted to base it on President Uchtdorf's talk "The Merciful Obtain Mercy". I talked to the members about how now, more than ever, it is so important for them to come together and be one by putting aside old grudges and personal problems and recognizing that no one is perfect, especially us missionaries, and that we all rely on Christ. I began by saying I had prayed a lot about this, and that I wanted them to try and feel the spirit as I spoke plainly to them. I asked them to forgive us for anything we may have done to offend them, and to forgive the other members for their mistakes. At first I felt there was no effect from my talk; one member did thank me, but one Tatay was still angry with President Paloma for not taking action before the typhoon and not visiting the members after and we still felt a little bitterness towards us from the branch president. But during priesthood meeting, it was decided that we needed to all visit the members as a priesthood body. When some made objections that their were no vehicles, one member offered to drive us all in his car. So after church, we got together to visit. I could still feel some slight discomfort among the brethren. I still feel like what happened after is a small miracle. As we went from house to house, visiting with the members and seeing the damage done, I saw them all becoming close and interacting with each other. Some who earlier that day would hardly speak to each other were now laughing with each other. They began to make plans together for how to aid each member that was affected and when and how to start, they being the ones taking charge instead of relying on us. When we visited the Tatay who was mad with President, he took President Paloma aside and apologized to him for his behavior earlier and showed so much gratitude for the service we had given earlier in the week and for the visit from the priesthood. One of the counselors took an especially active roll, and I think he and President Paloma resolved their differences over the day. I don't believe that I said anything particularly significant during my talk, but I did feel the Spirit testifying to me of it's truth, and I think the members felt it to. I'm so grateful for the support that the Lord gave us yesterday in uniting us as priesthood brethren in San Fernando and helping us feel the Spirit. I think this may be one of the biggest steps forward I've seen in the branch here, and this is just a starting point. They were already discussing plans for future visits and work together and with us. It's hard for me to explain in so short a space what happened, and I apologize for the length of the letter, but it was such an uplifting experience that I don't think I will ever forget. It was a miracle.

7/20/14

 Getting a ride in a dump truck!

Rat Hunting!

Hey Everyone!

So this was a kinda slow week. Didn't get a ton of lessons, but that was somewhat intentional. We decided we wanted to find and meet every less active in our area, even if we don't really get a chance to teach them. This turns out to be a lot bigger of a task than you would think. Here, people don't actually have addresses, so you just go to an area and ask around. So we separated our area into pieces and have started going to each place to find the members there. The lucky thing is we usually have at least one active member there to ask about the less actives. Problem is, we found out a bunch of them have actually moved away, but are still on our list for some reason.

 Me and my district rat hunting!

Rats on Rice

Saturday was a super rough day though. We planned our whole day around a Family Home evening that the branch had set up with a less active family to work on activating them. Then we get there and not one member showed up. We tried texting and calling everyone, but nobody replied. We did have a couple lie to us and say they were busy. Then we visited them, and they weren't actually doing anything. haha I love this branch.

Highlight of our week was probably Sunday. Despite the FHE falling through, that family still came to church. We had 9 less active members attending church, the highest number I've had since I got here. They all seemed genuinely happy to be there too, although it was just as chaotic as usual. Philippines sacrament meetings are basically a free for all. Then afterwords I went and interviewed a family for baptism, which went great. We then returned to our area and were able to teach a couple lessons, one to a less active member that killed her husband. I'm still not sure whether it was an accident or on purpose though...She lives up in the mountains and sometimes people there are crazy.

Found this in the middle of nowhere!

At the beach

So all in all it was a pretty good week. We spent most of it without a fridge, because ours broke 2 weeks ago, but we finally got a new one. So now we are just preparing for the hurricane tomorrow. Love you all and hope you're doing great!

Elder Van Boerum

7/14/14

Rat Hunting and Rides from Strangers

Well everyone, I'm sorry I didn't get to send an email last week. I was in a computer shop with a ton of little kids and they were all yelling and trying to read my emails and stuff, so we just decided to leave and try to make it home for studies. But this week I have a little more time and some positive news I guess.

We finally got a Branch Council Meeting together. Two weeks ago, after our email time, our President Reeder called me to tell me he's worried about our branch and wants us missionaries to shift our focus from investigators to less active members. Our feeling was that there wasn't any point baptizing someone into a non-functioning branch where they would likely become less active. We Elder Lapana and I decided that if our branch president wouldn't take the initiative, we would. We visited him and told him we have to have a meeting this week to discuss the branch's problems. He agreed, but didn't think anyone would come. When Sunday finally came, we actually had most of the auxiliaries at the meeting! It turns out they've been wanting to take action for a while, but president had never called a meeting to do so, so they were kind of helpless. We've already seen some good things happening from this too.

So that mostly sums up our work. We've almost completely shifted our focus towards less actives.

The fun part of the week, and probably one of my favorite parts of my mission was: Rat Hunting. One of the counselors of the Stake Presidency invited my District to help him clear his rice fields of rats. We had no idea what this meant so we just showed up not knowing what to expect. He has us remove our shoes and we start trekking through the rice fields. On the way, he hands each of us a big stick and just says "for the rats". We get there and they have a big machine for crushing the remaining rice stalks. The guy controlling that makes a circle around a portion of the field, causing the rats to run to the center of the circle. The circle gets smaller and smaller and rats randomly run out trying to escape the machine. That's when we take our sticks and smack them. I had the first couple kills. We probably caught about 45 rats, or 5 kilos. Best part is that we had them for lunch. Tasted kinda like chicken. I'll send the pictures next week.

The next day, we decided to have an adventure day and try part of our area that hasn't been visited by missionaries. About 3 hours of walking through the mountains showed us why no one goes there. But we made it to the ocean, and it was really beautiful. But then we had a problem. We had to reclimb the whole mountain if we wanted to get back. It was that or take the long way by boat through a different zone. We picked the mountains. We walked for about an hour and we were already exhausted. But some nice guys in a van came and were nice enough to give us a ride back to the main part of our area. I know it's usually not good to accept rides from strangers driving a van, but in this case it was a blessing.

Love you all and I'll talk to ya next week!

7/7/14

No Letter This Week!

Computers crashed!

6/30/14

Challenges that help us grow...

Well just another quick update this week. My computer just barely crashed. I love Philippines internet shops.

This week turned out to be a super rough week for us here in San Fernando. We had a day or two that went really great, but more often than not, we hardly got anything going for us. We tried to shift our focus temporarily onto some of the less actives in our area, including a member of the branch presidency, but it didn't seem to go anywhere. I felt like we gave great messages, really tried to bring the Spirit, but just could not make anything happen. Our attendance at the branch hit a low for my time here of 36. The Previous to Stake Conference last week we were nearly at 60. We also couldn't get any investigators to church, despite promises that they would be here. Missionary work can be pretty rough.

I'm still happy to be here though. At least I have a challenge to help me grow. We may just drop some of our investigators and start fresh for a bit. Go spend a few days just finding. Many of those we are teaching have been stuck in the same place for months now, and aren't really willing to change. Elder Lapana and I have some goals to go and find some families that we can teach. Most people here won't be taught as full families, usually because the father runs away. Hopefully with the guidance of the Spirit we can be led to someone who really needs to here from us. 

Hope you're all still doin great! Love you!

6/23/14

 Guto.  People eat these!