Exchanges...and more Exchanges!

Well you probably figured out from the subject that we had a LOT of exchanges this week. 4. Four exchanges with zone leaders and our district leader and it was crazy. We started burning through our teaching pool so just ended up finding and talked with a bunch of people. It was really fun getting to work with all of them, mostly in our area. Though I’m pretty sure we’ve been through our whole area by this point. It is SO small. But we saw some really great progress with a couple people we’ve been teaching. Ariel is doing great still and passed his baptismal interview and will be baptized this Saturday as long as everything works out. So pray for that please. Probably my favorite part of the week was a less active, Tupe, that came to church on Sunday for the first time in FOREVER. He’s not even in our area, but some sister missionaries asked us to work on him. He’s been taught for a while now, without much effect. We just felt impressed to teach some simple lessons on love, faith, and hope, and he finally came! They were all great lessons, and he seemed to enjoy himself once he was there. Now the only trick will be to help him keep it up and get the rest of the family on board. His family has all been members for a long time now, and were actually sealed in the temple, but Tupe’s father (the elder’s quorum president) is less active right now.

Besides that it was kind of crazy with some other stuff that was going on. Wednesday we had to get 41 missionaries to the airport to go all the way to Manila just to have their fingerprints taken. Why it had to be done in Manila? I have no idea. It was just a headache to organize. I would have had to go with them had I not done it over a year ago (I don’t know why I did it so early, it usually doesn’t happen until your last transfer). They all went to the biggest mall in Asia and had fun, but I’m just glad nobody got lost. Bonus was they brought back Krispy Kreme. Haha.

Sorry this email was a little late! During P Day yesterday we had an meeting with President Reeder to talk about an emergency transfer that went smoothly today, so luckily that worked out. That mostly sums up my week! But I love you all!

Meet The Mormons

Not much of a week for us!

We ended up super busy for the whole week with exchanges and zone conferences. We went from one end of the mission to the other within 2 days, so it was kind of crazy! Pretty much 4 days straight of no work in our area... So that was the bad part. But the Zone Conferences were awesome! That's where we get to go with the Reeders to visit the various zones in the mission, have a meeting and workshops and stuff. Always way fun to see my friends in the mission. And this time, we had a surprise for all the missionaries... Meet the Mormons! President Reeder finally got a copy of it a few weeks ago and has been saving it for these kinds of meetings. I think everyone enjoyed it, and I'll still be watching it another 3 times before the end of the transfer. President Reeder also gave us a workshop/discussion about the Atonement, based on Elder Christofferson's talk "Free Forever to Act for Themselves", with a focus on the justice and mercy aspect of the Atonement. It was really cool all of the ideas that missionaries were contributing. I liked the quote that freedom comes not from resisting eternal law, but from applying it. It's like trying to fly a plane. Planes don't fly because the pilot will's gravity into non-existence, but by applying physical laws in such a way as to create lift. Same with eternal principles. Resenting commandments doesn't change the fact that we are blessed for following them. After the second zone conference, we just had exchanges in the farthest south zone and saw the Mayon Volcano, pretty close up, so that was cool. As for our area, we really weren't in it all that much, but Ariel came to church and is pretty much ready for baptism at this point. We are moving Carlito's baptismal date, but hopefully it will all be ready for April.

Love you all!

Madi, congrats on the wedding! It looks like it was awesome and went great!

And happy birthday Dad, you old man! Love you, and I'm so pumped to get back and hang and cycle and ski (if there's snow next year...) and all of that!

Have a great week everyone!

Hellooo

Helllooo. 

Well to be completely honest, not a whole bunch happened this week. We were busy, but none of it was really exciting. We did have a great Mission Leadership Council about finding and we got to discuss a bunch of things about the mission, like improving our teaching and all that. So that was cool to hang with some of those missionaries. Then we did our usual exchange up in the far zones (still haven't broken the speed record...yet). And those all went just great. I came really close to beating a burger challenge, but ran out of time with only 1 patty to go (out of the four that came on the burger). Then it was all the way back here to Naga for Zone training and hopefully to get a bit of work in. When we finally did get to work in our area after all of that, it went pretty well, and some of our investigators are still pushing along and progressing, while others still seem stuck in the same place.

 Ariel came to church again, and we had a couple great lessons with him. His work will be up by the end of the month, and he doesn't really know what to do to support his family yet. He was offered a job driving buses long distance, but that would take him away from his family and the church, so he knew he couldn't do that, and he's still lookin out for anything else he can do. Carlito is struggling a little bit lately because of some crazy love mix-up that's going on with a recent convert from another area. I may have mentioned that divorce does not exist in the Philippines. Legally, you cannot do it (this creates worlds of problems for trying to get people baptized because many of them leave their spouses and just get hitched to someone else, without ever being able to divorce from the first one. I'll have to explain this all another time, or when I get back because it leaves us with a bunch of stuff to sort through before anyone can qualify for baptism). Anyway, Carlito was abandoned by his legally married wife, and now can't get with anyone else, because he would be unqualified for baptism if he did so, seeing as he cannot legally marry another person until the first wife dies. Well this other recent convert has been leading him on (all the time, she has known the law of chastity) and we are just worried that something might happen. It's a big mess, but it's starting to clear up a bit.

Well I hope you will have a great upcoming week. We should hopefully be pretty busy again with zone conferences and exchanges and everything, so it's looking up for us! Love you all.

After MLC, last week, we had to drive a couple companionships up to their areas in the far zones and then have exchanges there. On our way, we went to this restaurant that's right on the beach. they just built an extension (this boat) that's on the sand and all that. So these are just a bunch of pictures we took while we were there.

Found my way back to Roseville

My Challenge Burger
I had 3 minutes to finish the whole thing...including the fries.
The cheese was boiling hot too.

My Exchanges in Daet

1 Transfer Down

So I finally completed my first transfer here in the office! And it went by super fast. So I think I'm starting to get an idea of how fast the next few will go. We are going to be even more busy this transfer with 2 Zone Conferences a week, exchanges, other meetings, and hopefully baptisms! Last week alone was full with taking the departing missionaries to the airport, having the transfer day, and picking up the new missionaries. We only got 5 new ones this transfer; 3 Filipino/Filipinas and 2 foreigners. One of those is a big guy from New Zealand who has been playing professional rugby for a year or so. Really awesome guy, smiling the whole time. I was hoping to play a bit of rugby with him, but he got sent up to the farthest area of the mission so that probably won't be happening anytime soon. haha. It was sad taking all of the missionaries home, and I'll miss all of them, but it seems like their already doin great back home. 

As for this week, there's still a ton for us to do. Tomorrow we have Mission Leadership Council, 2 exchanges in the far zones again (I'll try harder to break the record this time), and a zone training. It's going to be super tiring I think, but I'm still excited for it.

Anika said last week she hit her four month mark in the mission. Well, yesterday I hit my four month mark too...but mine is for time I have left. That's so close and weird to think about. But I'm glad we still are doing a ton to keep busy so I'll try not to think about it too much. Yesterday we also had stake conference and heard some great talks. A few of our investigators came to church as well, and 2 of those we were really surprised to see. One of them was the wife of our investigator Rafael. Until this point she hasn't really been open to hearing from us, but apparently she volunteered to come to church the other day with her husband and kids! So there's some potential there we think, we just haven't taught her yet. We also made the decision to have Carlito's daughter baptized on the same day as him so they can work together on preparing forMarch 28th as their date. We just need to find the time to teach them!

Hope you're all doing great. Love you all and have a great week!

Busy Lang Po

So we were suuuuuper busy this week with planning for transfers tomorrow (the plans changed like 5 times over the week, partly because my Chinese friend is getting kicked out by the Philippines government earlier than anticipated. We celebrated with him on his last night though.), and so we didn't get a whole bunch of work in, so I thought I'll just put a little bit of an update on some of the people we are teaching right now.

Carlito:

Carlito is the nephew of one of our recent converts. He's about 27 and has one daughter that is 8 years old. Carlito has been awesome, coming to church pretty much every week and he loves it there. Carlito was left by his wife a couple years ago, with no hint as to where she went, and since then he has struggled a ton. His only source of income is pretty much just driving a padyak (you'll have to look that one up). He's doing awesome now though, our only problem is that he dropped out of high school so he never learned to read or write, so it's super hard to get him to remember the things we teach him. He still really wants to be baptized though!

Ariel: Ariel is the man. He's about 46 years old, and the son of a member in our area. In the past, Ariel became a Born Again minister, super strong in that faith, but eventually got disillusioned with the system because he said he saw ministers taking advantage of people and taking their money. He dropped off the whole religion thing for a while, looking for a better alternative, even checking out Islam, and not finding much he liked. He kind of got depressed and messed with alcohol, drugs, smoking, at which point he lost the trust of his family. Missionaries tried to teach him a little while ago, but he wasn't interested. Since then, he's had a huge comeback, deciding he wants to make things right with his family. He's been reading the Book of Mormon and picks everything up super quick, and has a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, even defending both against a slightly antagonistic non-member that showed up for church yesterday. He said he knew they were both true and was so grateful for the clarity they both brought to his life. And, crazy thing is, the other day in our lesson (we had planned to teach baptism) he just up and asks us about tithing and says he wants to start paying (Who does that?!). So we just taught that instead. And he payed tithing yesterday. Pretty cool, right?

Elmer: I think I already talked a bit about him, so I won't have much right now, but he's 46, has 6 sons and has been reading a ton from the Book of Mormon and everything just seems to click with him. He has a hold of the doctrine of the Fall after reading 2 Nephi 2, and made all the connections himself. He says he wants to be a true Christian and says he feels that since we have started teaching, he feels cleaner and as though there is more of a clarity in his life. He feels like the church is true, but hasn't committed yet to be baptized. He also calls in his kids to listen in when we come and teach (this is so rare in the Philippines, that I can't even explain that adequately. Honestly it's rare enough to teach a male that is genuinely interested in finding the truth.)

Well that's most of our week I think. We just spent a bunch of other time in the office, and went out as we had time. Really sad to see Elder Zou go, the Philippines government is just trying to stick it to China or something. I don't really know. And then we got a bunch of other missionaries headin out tomorrow. It's going to be really sad to see them go, but they're all excited and I'm happy for 'em. As for me, I learned a ton this week about how important it is to have a correct understanding of God and how he works. That's kind of what most of our lessons came down to this week, was understanding God and His love for all of us. Because he loves us, we have an awesome plan that is meant to help us grow and develop through being humble and following Him. So it was a pretty great week!

Love you all! Here's a couple pictures that I liked.