malapit na

well what the kwan where did december go? where did my companion go? where did the sky go?
riner left this week, on wednesday. it was pretty weird for him to leave. i miss the guy but at the same time it is nice to have a change with things. my first companion elder bangal left too. so now its just me and the zone leaders. i find myself in quite a prediciment. i cant figure out if im the zone leaders assistant or the assistant to the zone leaders. ha ha jk. but really it is super confusing right now. not only do we have 2 areas we are working, weve got all the zone leader stuff we have to do, its christmas right next sunday and this week we have zone conference, a christmas decotional the next day, then christmas eve, then christmas. its gonna be tough gettin to our investigators., plus my ward is going on a temple trip starting tonight until thursday so as for finding people to go with me on splits yeah thats not happening yet im not sure what were going to do. we have literally no time for studying cause of the zone leader stuff ha super busy and confusing and stressful but man its nice to be workin my butt off finally im gettin my lazy butt in shape ha.

yestarday the baptisms that happened last week were comfirmed st church. i actually got to comfirm sister lleneta and that was one of my coolest experiences here yet. i hadnt given a blessing in tagalag yet, and when bishop told me i was going to be setting here apart of coulrse i immediately said ok then immediately was like oh crap what am i going to say. but something happened it wasnt someting spectacular but it was a complete miracle in my book. i just knew wat to say, thought after thought in tagalag just came, and man it was seriously like i wasnt the one talking. she started crying and i was shaking so bad i thought i was going to fall over ha but man it was awesome. that was probably the highlight of my week.

as for the baptisms here on the 24 they all had to be moved. because of word of wisdom and sacrament attendance problems. i dono how it is in other countries but here they have special snandards for baptism where they have to have gone to church 4 times consistantly without missing more than 2 times, and have had 4 weeks with no word of wisdom problems at alll. they are perfect standards for here to make sure people will stay active and were not baptising people to go inactive. but they are super hard for example for the paz family, tatay has been coming to church consistantly but they have a 2 month old baby and it was cold and rainy and their ride was a trycycle so they couldnt risk the baby getting sick again cause he was just barely sick, but now because fo that we have to move their baptismal date. bummer but watcha gonna do.

yestarday was an all day splits for me so i was with just a fellowshipper all day and was responsible for all our investigaters at church man it was hard but well god provides. sometimes to be honest i wonder how he is doing it, like yesterday we had one lesson that the investigaters ( it was our first time teaching the tatay and the second to the nanay) they both started crying really bad. their life is super super hard right now a lot of trials. and i dont thing i handled it very well at all a completely blanked and felt like i had just confused them really bad, but they accepted a return appointment and were greatful to have heard the word of god and really nice and i think even thought i am not perfect and i dono what i said maybe they heard something that they really needed to hear. it wont be the first time that i didnt see the whole picture and thats just how it is for us as humans, in isaih it says my ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts. so if i do my best say everything and do everything i can the lord promised hell do the rest and well i believe the promise is true cause if it wasnt noone would ever be converted noones perfect at teaching or anything i guess. busta im greatful for the help the lord gives us as his imperfect servants.

the flooding... there was a flash flood down in mindanou ( very far away from where i am, its actually a different island) but it killed over 80 people 10 or more were members. which is super sad. theres llots of flooding here where i am. theres a typhoon going on right now, theres different classes of them and this one is just basically non stop rain. not even very heavy rain just lasts forever and man its sad to see the damage that happens to these people houses. and even crazier to see how well they deal with it. i guess if thats all you have ever known then thats your reality. well merry christmas everyone mahal ko kayo! things here are great workin hard and excitied for christmas. until next week ingat po!

oh yeah i forgot to tell you i went to mass on saturday! man it was crazy this it the church we went to it was for a funeral of the mother of a member, but they just go to mass and they add some crazy ritual with it for the funeral they have some incense smoking thing they the priest guy lights and swings over the bodies while chanting soething, and well man catholic church is well something else ha they actually had a pretty good sermon about being a good person and what the guy taught wasnt incorrect just all the prayers and rituals are pretty well just what christ said not to do but anyways that happened :) and riner burnt me on the face with his shirt that was on fire. ill tell you that story next week while skyping but yeah so im going to have a scar on my face from now on! yay!

ano ba iyen

floods, baptisms, and change, nice full week .....

to start it off i wanna tell about one family were teaching the ali ali's ivew talked about them before this is the one thats waiting to get married, so this past week was pretty crazy for them. their house is right on the bank of a little river and they are pretty prone to flooding. they have 2 kids one santino he is like 2 and a half and one girl that is 1 here birthdays actually the same as sophias ha. but anyways the little girl is sick and so is sister ali ali, and it had been r=aining all day and we were worried about flooding. so at about 8 50 we were coming home from our appointment out in saint james and we both were like man do we go see if they need helf what do we do? and so finally we tell the tricee driver that weve gotta stop. its pouring rain and i mean pouring we ran all the way to their house and sure enough they were flooded. luckily the inside only had a little bit in as of then. they diodnt end up needing our help but they were thankful that we came. then... the next day wee came back, tatay was at work and sister was alone there in such a mess. everything was floded. it was knee deep inside her house, man it was just a mess. so we spoent a while helping her organize things at her house and she was planning on going to church on sunday it didnt end up happening but with her if she doesnt come its because she literally cant she is so faithful. the thing that got me the most was here she is in the middle of a flooded house and all the things she was saying was how greatful she is for the gospel and that heavenly father would send the missionaries to make sure they were okay. she was just as happy as ever. so adversity... what is it really ther facts are that crap heppens and we can choose to count our blessings or get upset. am i good at this nope. but man after seein this i wanna be better.

now the baptism part. WE HAD SUCH A GREAT SUNDAY! brother and sister lleneta were baptised, and charley and nomar were baptised. i got to baptise sister lleneta and nomar, and elder riner baptised tatay lleneta and charlie. man what a great experience i like cant even say what it felt like. these are real people choosing to become new and follow christs example cause i coulpe of young kids came to their house and started teaching them about god..... what we do is absolutely crazy.... and absolutely true. man what a world. while we were waiting for their actual baptism there were a couple speakers and stuff i just felt so warm and just well cant even say. its real what were doing i dont understand it but its real. man what an amazing experience.

and for the change..... riner leaves on wednesday. im getting put into a threesome with the zone leaders for sure and we will be working two areas and doing the zone leader fun stuff so im going to be super super busy for the next 4 or five weeks. which is exactly what i want i just hope ill be able to get to everyone that i want to.

theres a new mission corriculum here in the pilippines that starts in january. this is for the whole pilippines. its going to be awesome and this is why they are doing it. this is the church statistics here. theres over 600 000 members in the pilippines and only a little over 100 000 are active. this is absolutely terrible statistics. so many people that made covenants and now arent keeping them. either cause they werent taught right they got offended their records got lost they were baptised by an idiot missionary when they were 10 with no other members in their family ( apparently that has hapopened a lot here ) or a whole list of other reasons. but starting this next year there will be no more tracting as missionaries. no more tao pos. all of our efforts will be on recent converts and less actives. and teaching the referrals that they will hopefully give us. pretty drastic change lol so when i got my mission call and it said you will be doing a lot of work with re activation he wasnt lieing. its going to be great and im excited to see how this new program will be. well mahal kita everyone im going to work on sending pictures! ingat po until next week.

this is the sister ali ali flood.

garabeee

sege ... ano ang aking mga bagong balita? garabee talaga hindi ko kaya maisalarawan kung ano nangyari... pero susubukan ako.

ok whats my new news? geeze i cant explain what happened. but i will try.

to start off i gotta tell you about the miracle that happened yesterday. we had 19 investigators come to church. 19!!!! all of our progressing investigators except for two that usually come were at church. man we must be doin something right, or gods doin something behind the scenes cause man it was cool the room we have gospel principles in is now too small for our investigators sonext sunday we will be moving it lol pretty crazy i cant even believe it myself.

other than that it was a pretty normal week we did have something pretty crazy happen to us the other day at our house. it was a brown out ( a black out is for some reason called a brown out here ha ) so we were doing comp study on the porch.. and this young guy and like 11 year old kid walked up and started talking to use. he introduced himself as preacher michael or something like that and he was just being all friendly ( building relationship with trust ) basically he was oyming us he asked if he could come in and talk for a minute he is just waiting for his students to show up for something (not come inside the house but just in the gate) but anyways we just said sure why not. and he was making small talk about how he met the missionaries in belewarte and he knows a little bit about what we do and he was asking how the missionary program works and it was kinda cool that one by one people started showing up. we ended up somehow having like 20 baptists in our front yard lol it got real crazy real fast then they asked us if maybe we had any king james bibles that we hand out to people and we said no but we do have book of mormons and he said yeah ive studied about the book of mormon and we said really? then he said how its part of what they do they like to study about other religions... and cults ha ha ha yeah then we had to leave for our appointments so he asked if we could pray so we said why not so i got my first taste of a baptist prayer . prasie the lord amen! ha anytime he said people liked they added their yes and man it was weird, it almost bothered me the kind of feeling i got there at the end i was like man i hope this isnt how people feel sometimes when we are offoring our message to them! busta it was a fun little experience, very strange though.

we have 4 baptisms this week ! im really excited its my first investigators i get to see baptised. we wont be baptising them lleneta is a mother and father and they are getting baptisded by the member that gave them to the missionaries as a referral ( this guy is a stud with member missionary work ) and the others and 2 kids our age thet their familys are members so they will be baptised by members of their families. wow its really amazing i dont even know what to expect to feel at their baptisms im ecxited though. well im runnin low on time so mahal kita everyone oh yeah about skyping a little more details..

thanks to keving ive got an account all set up. the plan is (and this is subject to change) that we weill be heading to a computer shop monday morning here ( so it will be sometime on christmas night for you ) i should be able to do the whole deal the video and speaking and elder riner said the connection when he did it last year was great so i hope thats the same for this year. ill let you know what the exact times and everything as soon as find out but thats the general plan as of now.

well mahal ko kayo family. have another great week . ingat

deja voo again wowwww.... well this is tough sitting at the computer the week went so fast i dont even remember what happened. ill try to pull all i can out of my memory hopefull this wont be boring. first of all we had 14 investigators at church yesterday! it was so great i thought i was gonna burst of joy. it was 2 of their first times too the pascuals. this is a father and his daughter her name is kitty. both their spouses arent interested as of now but they are progressing so well yesterday i had one of the greatest lessons ive had yet with them. we met them just tao poing ( you dont knock on peoples doors here.. you stand outside the gate and call tao po! which sranslated means basically people are here ha.and its funny sometimes the different responses people give. sometimes people say ano iyon... ( whats that ) or just flat bakit? ( why ) and then just the friendly kumusta is great ) but anyways with tatay he was so like closed when we first met him. he is a member of dating daan which is this weird religion that basically just bible bashes on others they have this preacher guy thats way good with the scriptures and twists them into whatever he wants but anyways his point of view was just i just believe in the bible thats all i need. we taught him the last part of the plan of salvation so from the spirit world to judgement and kingdoms of glory. it was like a lightbulb turned on ! he was just like that has to be true ive always thought about that like theres good people and bad people but what about the just okay people theres a place for them too! they asked so many good questions which is weird for pilipinos cause man they sometimes just dont think about things too hard. but busta it was soo cool and theyre going to be coming to church from now on. just some pilipino culture real quick mariendas are pinakamahalaga here ( the most important ) mariendas are just snacks that they give you and some pop just whatever they have or theyll run to the tindahan real quick (these little stores they have everywhere mostly like attached to peoples houses that have all kinds of food and candy and just smack food ) but anyways the love it they love more than anything to feed you and thats fine with me he. last night we went to this family the dagubans for a dinner appointment and nanay was just so excited about something she couldnt stand it and it turned about to be ice cream for us ( ice cream is pretty expensive here ) she was litterally happier than anyone ive ever seen simply for the fact that she knew we were going to love the ice cream she bought for us. man isnt that something? how excited was i ever to give people food at home or to serve? not that much. maybe thats why shes so happy all the time she knows something i dont. i plan on finding out though.transfers are this week. my companion from the mtc is going to be training a new missionary already ha so is the other kid that stayed in my room elder ziggler. the zl's keep telling me that i wouild have been if riner had left already and that im going to next cycle after were put into a 3 some but i hope theyre lieing cause i dont wanna train yet i still have so much to learn. what ever happens shempre ill do it but well for a lot of reasons i dont really wanna say i dont think i should have any kind of a calling for a while till im ready. id be happy staying a junior forever if i could ha a lot less stress. well time to upload some pictures for you i hope you like them! mahal kita everyone tty next week. elder landeen