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!

Baptism!

Sorry everyone. I know you are all sick of the short emails, but I am way down on time this week. We were at a wedding reception for the branch Presiden'ts daughter earlier, and it took a ton more time then we thought. Anyway, our week was pretty good, and I was able to baptize and investigator of the Sister missionaries here, so that was really cool. Everything else is goin great and I love you all!

6/16/14

Prayers for Stanley

Hey everyone! We had another pretty good week in San Fernando. We contacted one referral named Jorge and he's already come to church! He's a really humble guy,so I'm hoping he will accept the Gospel. We have also continued teaching most of our other investigators, and even had some success with two less active members, teaching them for the first time in forever. Sadly, our investigator Stanley just found out he has cancer, and I don't think he really has the money to pay for treatments, so please pray for him! We are trying to get him baptized soon so that he can have some additional strength as he goes through this.

Also congrats to Anika and Jesse on your calls! I'm super proud of you both and I'm excited for you both to get out here too! We've got almost all the world down now, except for Australia or Polynesia. I hope you are all still doing great! I love you all and will try to send you some more next week!

6/16/14

Elder Poulton and Elder Van Boerum

Elder Brent H. Nelson of the Seventy

Hey Everyone!

So our power went out last night, and was still out this morning so we changes all of our plans and now I've got a very limited amount of time to email, so I'll give you a very quick rundown for the week.

We were visited on Wednesday by Elder Brent H Nelson of the Seventy so he could talk to us for a bit and try to motivate us to work hard. Turns out his brother is in the stake presidency of Holladay Stake. Pretty Cool. He had a lot of really cool things to say, especially about finding, so we are really making a push for that in the mission right now.

Thursday I got to leave the mission for a bit to go to Legaspi and do some immigration stuff. It was cool to see the other mission and meet up with Elder Poulton from my district at the MTC.

Besides this, my week was pretty uneventful. We did commit two of our investigators to baptism and they seem pretty excited. I also got a new companion, Elder Lapana from Samoa. Things are still going pretty great! Still tough, but what mission isn't?

Love you all and I'll make more time next week!

6/2/14

New Ties I bought!

Handmade Machetes

Hey everyone I don't have a whole lot to report this week. Work was super slow because we had to spend a lot of time working with the new sisters in our area. Two of the elders in my apartment got transferred to another zone, because the sister's area wasn't safe, so we got the sisters as their replacements. The don't know their area at all so we had to show them around everywhere. Besides that we had service projects, exchanges and all that fun stuff. One really great thing that did come out of the week is that one of our investigator families came to church yesterday! They are really great and told us they are really searching for the true church and seemed to enjoy meeting some of the members. They already have questions about baptism, so we plan on inviting them this week. 

One thing that isn't so great about the upcoming week is that...I'm getting a new companion. There was an emergency exchange in another area so one of them will be coming to be my new companion here in San Fernando. I know it's going to be kind of challenging, because I'm still pretty new to the area. But I'm up for the challenge and plan on doing what I'm supposed to do. Missionary work. We rarely get to chose what challenges come our way or when they come, we just have to know that the Lord trusts us to handle them and grow from them. I know whatever happens was meant to be and is just a part of the plan that was made for me before I even came to Earth. I can't choose what comes my way, but I can choose what to make of it. And I plan on making a struggling area into a successful one, no matter what setbacks come.

Love you all and hope you're doin great!

5/25/14