Well I have myself a brand new companion.... Elder Abasanta! From Cebu. He's super humble, and way up for doin work. He just finished training a new missionary, but besides that, hasn't had any leadership positions so far and he was super surprised to get called as the new assistant, maybe even a little overwhelmed the first week with driving everyone to the airport, and picking up new missionaries and training and everything. But he's still doin awesome. He's the 12th of 17 kids in his family and currently has 2 sisters serving in other missions here in the Philippines. I'm the first American he's had his whole mission, and he goes home in December.

It ended up being a crazy week with the transfers and everything. We took the departing missionaries home and only once did we almost die on the way to the airport. But to be fair, we were racing the other elders and they kept swerving so I couldn't pass them. Good end to their mission I think. Then it we waited for the arrivals to come out. 11 of them altogether, some of them just temporarily here while they wait for visas. All of them seemed great and pretty pumped, but exhausted from the trip. There was also an elder from East that's 6' 5" and 350 lbs. I think everyone here will want to talk to him and ask him to dunk haha.

After all of that, it just kind of flowed into watching conference, which was great. All of the speakers did awesome and there was a ton of stuff I liked. So much of it was focused on the family and the Atonement. I loved it, and I'll probably spend the next couple weeks just going over the talks. We actually missed a lot of Sunday Morning session because of the way they do conference here. We wanted them to have all of the members watch at their home units, where they fit, and where they won't have to travel as much. Instead, they wanted everyone to come to the stake center...and watch it in English. Why? I don't really know. Not everyone fits, it ends up being too noisy, and a lot of people can't see or understand it. We were really hoping they would just do Tagalog, but I've yet to attend a conference with Tagalog. Really too bad for the people who try to make it, but don't speak any English.

But besides all of that it was still a great week. Love you all and hope you had a great one!