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!