another week...

well its stinkin hot in the philippines ha im kinda short on time this week but hopefully ill be able to say something at least somewhat good. here in cabagan like ive told you before they have a different dialect than my last area its called ibanug. ive been studying a little bit of it because we have some people were working with that dont speak tagalag and man its crazy and i think back on being in the mtc and listening to my teachers speak tagalag and thinking man how in the world is that a language and yeah of course how everyone quotes on the best two years with the whole "thats not the language they taught me in the mtc" ha cause when i got here it really was a different language. i remember in my first area with elder bangal kind of understanding some of the things they were saying in church and trhen getting completely lost and asking elder bangal why and he said because thats a different language theyre speaking ha. and now that i speak tagalag pretty well its new challenges cause they dont speak tagalag ha but my point is ive learned to like learning. is that a cleche? i actually enjoy it man they really did brain wash me in the mtc. there was this one time last week or the week before that i was in a lesson that a member came with us and he was talking to the person we were teaching and they were talking aqnd i was falling asleep ha cause it was hot and i just kept telling myself come on wake up dummy and focus and then thinking well you cant understand them anyways theyre speaking in ibanug then i just sorta snapped out of my train of thought and started paying attention and sister was telling a story about how her husbands vision is so bad that one day there was a random guy that was walking past their house and her husband thought it was his friend so he called him over and the guy wouldnt come because of course he didnt really know him... and i started laughing and everyone looked at me and i was like what....? and they said what are you laughing at and i said the story of course and they said you speak ibanug? and i said no.... but you were speaking in tagalag... and they said no weve been speaking ibanug this whole time ha! hows that for cool gift of tongues or what. ive been thinking about things at home a lot lately ha i dont know why maybe just cause im the only american in my district and im having a little culture shock but ive decided theres only a few things that i miss the most ( of course family and that stuff ) but number 1 going to the gym every day with jonathan and i really miss carpet. and people being serious about things. ( pilipinos are super happy and funny but when its serious time its serious time ) and thats about it. and of course tri tip steak. my letters kinda random this week it doesnt have very much of a direction my minds kinda in a million places. to be quite honest its really hard to be teaching all less active members i miss teaching new investigators. we have investigators too but man its hard teaching inactive people cause its all problems that they have they dont want to come to church cause this or that or no money for a tricee or this or that sometimes just lazy sometimes shy because they dont have nice clothes a million other reasons. its the coolest thing when you see someone come back to church after so long of not but man i think about my hard head back in the day and sometimes inside i am thinking man if theyre anything like i was this is gonna go right out the other ear after they hear it. but ya just keep on trying to find inspiration of what they need. what will touch their hearts, and what will help them remember the savior. wish me luck huh? hopefully people will open their hearts and let them selves be happy/. iyern lang seguro ang mensahe ko sa inyo... take care family. mahal ko kayou elder landeen

ehello again tapos na ang isa pang lingo. man this cycle is flying by its like my memories are just of sitting in the computer shop writing home to family ha. i had some pretty cool things happen this week ill share at least one of them with you. its about nanay gonzales. she is the mother of a recent convert of the elder that was here before me and she has been an investigator for quite a long time. things with nanay have been kinda difficult because shes so catholic ( as far as catholic traditions go ) but her faith is so strong shes so smart about the bible and she even knows that a lot of things that her church does is not right but she just cant seem to let things goo..... but this past week weve made a lot of progress. we taught again lesson 1 taught the apostasy importance of prophets and all that jazz and she understands it all but she just wont come to church! but on saturday something pretty dang cool happened the ward was doing a half day mission where they split up into groups and go and visit aeveryone all our investigators recent converts less actives and regular members. they went and visited her and that night when we went by to invite her to come to church she had a story to tell us about her experience witht he ward visiting her. she said they they shared with her from the book of mormon and at the ende of the lesson they asked her if she would be the one to pray and she said she just started praying and kind of let it all out and then she said " i felt the presence of god " she said that she really felt the spirit so strong and she started crying during her prayer and when she was tellingus this story she told us she wants to come to church tomorrow and she was all excited about it and of course me and elder aguila were completely blown away cause it was an exact answer to our prayers that nanay will want to come to church. ha pretty cool. shes not all the way there et. she was very firm about how shes only giong to sacrament meeting and that she will be attending afternoon mass after she leaves sacrament meeting and we just said okay nay just come to church. just think about how hard it really is to convert to a different church after how many years even if you know its true theres all your friends at your old church theres your family theres peer pressure your scared you feel its right but of course satans right there telling you its wrong ha its gotta be so hard its really a miracle what happens in the lives of these people.\ thats my story for the week ha other that that its stinkin hot here ive got bug bites on my whole body theres cockroaches all over our house even though its a way nice house our water bill is rediculous cause we have leaks and the owner is too lazy to fix it and i dont understand ibanug their dialect here it sounds like a bunch of birds talking to each other but most importantly i dont have any anxiety so none of that stuff matters. count your blessings ha mahal ko kayu family until next week elder landeen

tranfered na

Hello family….
Well it happened I got transferred ha I am now in the hottest place in the pilippines… tuguegarao ha try to say that one without speaking tagalag ! im actually not in the city mismo but im about 30 minutes outside the city. My new area is called Cabagan! I replaced elder Nay that’s in my batch ha he was here for 7 months and now gonna try to take over ha it’s a huge area and im pretty lost as far as where things are but of course I only got here Thursday night. Its kinda funny because elder rostedt ( the austrailian in my batch ) is the one that was transferred into my area ha. Im glad to have someone I know will work hard taking over. Man its hard leavin an area you’ve been for a long time. Just about 7 months ago? Im bad at math I don’t actually know how long I was there ha) me and elder riner started there with 2 families to teach and a whole bunch of tracting and now man im pretty sure a piece of me is still there. I didn’t ever really understand how hard it would be I heard elder talk about leaving areas and I just figured it was like a well you just get on with the work and get busy but well not really so its stinkin hard. New area new dialect ( well multiple new dialects ) new companion (which by the way is Elder Aguila ) another Pilipino ha taga bicol siya ( he is from Bicol the farthest part south on Luzon, under manila ) He is pretty cool hes very laid back type and sure is a talker im going to get good at tagalag now probably because theres no American to talk to in English at night ha tagalag na lang!

Im glad that I get to come to an area with so many nice people man im always amazed at how nice the members are to the missionaries. Always giving us food and on and on. We got to watch general conference this week! My word general conference is so cool on a mission! Im pretty sure I saw spencer landeen in the priesthood quior… and that was pretty cool ha. Did you all catch david archuleta in the mtc choir? The new elders that just got here from the mtc say hes a pretty popular kid over there in provo ha man that’s gotta be a crappy life cant even go on a mission to serve god without people hasseling you im over that already good thing im bad at singing.

But about general conference… man so many good talks! Presedent uchtdorf and his just stop it. Isn’t it great how simple it all is? I wonder how they handle the stress of watching people not live the gospel when they know how real it is and have the responsibility to help everyone live it. Ah I couldn’t handle it. David F Evans, who talked on Sunday pm was a really cool one for us as missionaries cause it helps you really think about how important every one soul is. Because its not really one. Its all their kids and their kids and on and on. Sharing the gospel in a natural way to our friends its hard but think about how happy that would be to help our friends accept the gospel. David F Evans talked to us in the mtc and he talked about almost the same kind of thing. That a lot of people think the mormons are weird because we act weird ha. When you just throw a pamphlet in someones face and say be bapised theyre going to think your crazy and when your not a missionary theres so many opportunities to do missionary work that’s simple and normal so people don’t think that were just a bunch of weirdos. I thought that was pretty cool.

Sorry thins is probably kinda jumbled my thoughts are kinda crazy right now I still haven’t adjusted to the transfer and my minds overloaded with new names new places general conference and lots of other things hopefully by next week ill have made the adjustment ha. But well that’s about all I have to say right now that’s all I can think of. Mahal ko kayo…. Elder landeen

Hello family its been another week. To make things clear because they probably weren’t last week transfer week is this week not last week ha so ill let you know NEXT week if I got transferred or not. Anyways so a lot of cool stuff happened this weeks back to more miracles ha its almost hard to believe all the cool miracles I get to see everyday and also to see how many people miss the miracles are happening all around them. Ive got a couple I wanna share with you.
On Tuesday we taught a lesson to a nanay lafortesa. She is in her 70’s and she has been smoking for 40 years, drinks coffee 5 times a day and hasent been to church in years. I cant remember if I have written about her yet or not but anyways if I have bear with me. I remember a couple weeks ago when we found her, and I remember the exact thought as it came to mind if you can believe that go down there and try an oym. Her little shack (I guess house if you can really call it that ) is back behind the house of a referral that we were given and when we went there to contact them the second or third time they still weren’t there.. and we were going to leave but…. Then can the thought and long story short we started teaching nanay laforteza. Butt…. Theres always a problem we cant teach a girls without having a boy present. So we found a member tatay manuel.. hes in his 80’s and has no money and were not allowed to pay from travel fare of members with our support money so he has walked with us to our appointments ( don’t worry its not too far and hes still pretty strong , it is a sacrifice and he gets tired but hes willing and still able and is a perfect fellowshipper for nanay because he had word of wisdom problems too for years and he overcame them through the gospel and was baptized ) anyways let me get to what I really want to share… this past Tuesday we went to share about the atonement. It was a great lesson as it always is when talking about the atonement, but out of nowhere nanay just kind of interrupted and said everytime you have come to my house I feel something and ive felt it ever since you started coming. She said I feel so good its just something inside that’s hard to explain like something that’s lumalaki ( which is like getting bigger ) and she just said how much she really feels every=thing weve shared is true and she wants it all in her life. How about that for a miracle. Ive heard “STORIES” of people that experienced things like that but I always had like a hard time with them like yeah that might happen to other people but it doesn’t happen now or like its just a story but I was there and I heard the words with my own ears. IF this wasn’t true then why would she feel that feeling. And if this wasn’t true then why would that spirit she felt have started since the very first time we shared with her. Put it anyway you want it but that would not happen if it wasn’t true. I also believe if we weren’t being obedient to mission rules by making sure there is a guy present in the lesson and not paying for their trice then it wouldn’t have happened. If your not obedient even to the little things your not worthy of that kind of a spirit in the lesson. At least that’s how I feel about things. Theres a saying here in the Philippines… kung gusto may paraan. Kung ayaw may dahilan. Which means if you want to theres a way if your don’t theres a reason. Theres a way to follow everything that your supposed to its so simple 1 nephi 3 7 just gotta believe in it and give up your self and commit to the lord and then… the blessing comes and the miracle happens. 1 nephi 16 nephi breaks his bow his family complains including lehi but then nephi just finds a way to accomplish what god commanded and god provided for him because nephi believed that faith is real and kung gusto may paraan kung ayaw may dahilan.
Family just do it. Its hard to explain how it feels sometimes but really theres some time for no reason I feell so happy I like cant even think straight all I can do is smile and wonder how. I don’t get it sometimes I really just feel like ammon and im going to collapse because im so happy. What they said in the mission call was that you will experience more happiness in your serving the lord than you ever before have felt and well ive felt it and I know its true theres a lot I don’t understand but I don’t believe I could be feeling happiness to this degree if if wasn’t a gift from god because of the truthfulness of the work. Don’t mistake me it doesn’t mean im never sad ( I wish it was like that ) ive felt some of the most sorrow too when people I love reject it but the moral of the story is this Is my testimony I know its real cause ive seen lives changed ive heard testimonies born ive seen miracles happen ive felt the voice of the spirit give me comfort with words to my mind and ive seen so much as the goose bumps on peoples arms while they are trying to find the words to express how they are feeling about what we have shared. With all those witnesses how could it not be? Theres no other way to explain it believe me ive tried and couldn’t do it. So just live the dang gospel its pretty simple. Ha I feel like elder Holland yelling at the elders in the mtc. But anyways that’s my little rant for the day I love you all and ill let you know how things go if I get transferred ill find out tomorrow. Mahal ko kayo. Elder landeen