hello everyone. another speedy week ha. we had a lot of "success" this week that im pretty happy about so ill share some of them with you,, first off sister tumalliwan. this is one of the less active members we have been working with. she was being visited by the elders before i got here and 2 times a week since i got here but she hadnt come to church for i dont know how long its been months. self declared "inactive" ha. she used to be active used to participate in missionary work and her family would all go to church together. but when her friends started moving away and her family imigrated to america she eventually just stopped going to church. anyone that has been on a mission ya know how theres some people that you just are feeling close with? like for no res\ason in particular you just feel like you are closer to them that others. well thats kinda how it feels with sister tumaliwan lessons here have been so great. so on monday we had set a family home evening at her house and had talked to a whole bunch of members to come with us to her house and a lot agreed the be there at 600 monday night. one family the albanos have a van that they agreed to load up some plastic chairs from the church and take then to sisters house and then the cabalsas (another family) said they would all go and some few others. anyways on monday this is the story. of course things dont ever go smoothely... the first problem we encountered was the albanos van wasnt going to be available until 700 at night and sister tumalliwans house is about 15 minuted away so probably around 730 or 745 they could be there. next we were trying to get ahold of cabalsas because brother albano wasnt going to come so they needed to have someone else drive their van but the cabalsas werent answering texts and it was getting close to 6 and sana we were already at sisters house but we had to go to the cabalsas house to see if brother can drive their van... so we hoped in a tricee and got to cabalsas house and then we found out that brother could drive the van and everything was gong to be fine it was just going to start late. but then i got a text that i couldnt understand because it was in tagalag text language so i gave it to brother chua to translate and we got in a tricee and guess what happened.. within a matter of seconds the phone was gone. we looked everywhere on the road in the tricee an our pockets it was just gone. and when that happened we couldnt even text and say we were going to be late cause we didnt have her number anymore! then by the time we arrived at sister house we had to go around inviting the members down there to come ... and there ended up being bery few that were going to be able to come... and then we ended up being kinda far from he house again inviting people and it was late and no trcees to give us a ride and no phone to tell them where we are so we just ran back w\and when we got there we were dieing of sweat.... and the other familys hadt showed up yet... and it was stressfull.... and then finally after we did everything we could people finaly showed up and it was a great night. and the best part was after months pf being inactive.... she used her faith.... got rid of her fear and shyness and came to church again. man what a feeling. that was a pretty cool experience. things dont ever seem to work out how you expect or how you want them to but when you do your best and do your part which is usually stinkin hard god steps in and the miracle happens. its such a great experience to see people coming back. im so glad to be able to be here now doing what im doing. helping members come back to christ that have lost there way., love you family and hope you are all doing well.... elder landeen

hello everyday what a fast week thats gone by. its like i skyped yesterday and now im back to typing. lots has happened so ill get started right away! first of all wednesday was transfer day and my comp got transfered! he had been saying that hes been feeling the transfer for weeks and he knows hes getting transfered.. and of course i had to tell him that he doesnt know that gods in charge and he just kept saying he knows so i made a bet that all pay for mcdonalds if he gets transfered but if he doesnt he had to buy me 1.5 liter ice cream (chocolate temptations) well i learned my lesson dont gamble on a mission ha ha. so since my comp got transfered it means of course theres a new missionary staying in the appartment with me.,... you would think right? ha well this is what happened on trsnfer day they do power point slides for all the areas. they have pictures of the companionships and when one gets transfered the picture of your new companion takes its place. when it finally came to cabagan ( my area ) the picture that came up was ... a picture of a missionaary name tag. that said future missionary. i was confused..... my companion is a name tag? ( my mind shorted out for a second ) but then i realized that my companion was a part time missionary! thats why it said future missionay. cause hes not yet a missionary. its an interesting situation ha ill try to explain why. with part time missionaries they arent set apart, he wasnt given any kind of directions really just basically president carlos went to his ward and said "do you want to come be a companion of a missionary for 6 weeks " ? when he accepted he said get ready and be in cauayan on wednesday ha ha (3 days later) its pretty crazy if you ask me. its weird having a companion that hasnt been through the temple and stuff i have to keep reminding myself that i dont have to call him elder ha just bropther/ anyways his name is brother chua hes half chineese ill send a picture of us next week. things are going great with us and it has been a really good week. now ive got just 2 short little things to share that happened in the same day and then one more another day. first we were in a bayan (like a town) called san pable working with in active members. we had a lesson plan made and we were going to teach them about joseph smith again. when we got there tatay( the dad) wasnt there and nanay ( the mom) hadnt read her reading assignment. so it was pretty natural that we were going to change our plan but before we started the lesson or decided what we were going to teach we had been talking for 5 or so minutes about different types of food. whats are our favorite foods and how to make them and things like that. then we ended up sharing in 2 nephi 32 about feasting on the words of christ. and in the lesson it related parfectly to what we were sharing and nanay told us this is just the kind of thing she had needed to hear that it was masarap sa mga pakiramdam (literal translation is delicious to the feelings) but basically she said its made her feel good inside while listening. it was just a cool little thing on how the spirit works even though our plan changed that ended up being what she needed to hear that day. next later that day i had been thinking to change our plans for that night and go teach one of our new investigators. we are teaching him at thte house of his friend which happens to be that recent convert that i wrote about two weeks ago that got a little offended at the members. when we got there our investigator wasnt available so we just asked romel if we could share some scriptures with him and he didnt wanna listen he was being a punk ha but then i just started the lesson anywhays ha we were there so we were goint to share. and what happened was we just picked randon\mly some scriptures in 3 nephi 9 when christ is inviting the people to come unto him and repent and be saved.,... and we talked about it and romel endeed the lesson saying thanks a lot i realized in the lesson that me being mad at members isnt right cause noones perfect and i felt the spirit thanks a lot for sharing that its exactly what i needed to hear. so 2 times in 1 day i heard someone say that its just what they needed to hear ha ha pretty cool stuff. the next one was on friday we were walking to our first appointment and it started to r\ain... and i mean rain it just poured and lightning and man it was crazy weather. we were standing uder an overhang of a roof and a random guy came and told us to take his umbrella and just bring it back the next day ha. then we kept gpoing out to our appointments and man the wind was hard enought to make it hard to walk and we were soaked from head to toe and it was a brown out and the streets were flooded above our ankles but we just kept going and we were able to teach some really great lessons and touch some hearts ha. long story short it was a cool week and im glad im here. well i love you all and ill talk to you next week ! elder landeen

Helllllo again. Ill get right to it Things in cabagan went alright this week. We had quite a few appointments that fell thtough because it was fiesta in a lot of the barangays here. And because you probably don’t know what that means ill explain it ha. For every barangay ( a barangay is like a small city. That is subdivided into puroks or little neighborhoods ) but anyways thay all heve a date once a year for a fiesta in celebration of their santo or the saint of their barangay ( it’s a catholic thing ) and when its fiesta they make a ridiculous amount of rice and lecheon pigs ( when they cook the pig over the fire ) and all sorts of other food basically a big party. we didn’t get to eat unfortunately cause we went by when they were still cooking but hopefully ill still be in cabagan in june for their fiesta its apparently a pretty big celebration with food everywhere you go. I think we should adopt that in America and unstead of having (block parties) have whole neighborhood parties where everyone spends all their money and goes into debt to have more food than anyone can possibly eat and just go house to house eating and talking and all that fun stuff ( that’s about what it comes down to ha add the drinking and it’s a real party ha ha) anyways it’s a pretty fun part of philipino culture theyre sure not shy about things. Next yesterday (Sunday) we were pretty disappointed cause church was starting and none of our inestigators gad showed up ha.. then there was an opening prayer( of course) and when I opened my eyes there they were ha nanay gonzales and her son and brother bautista snuck in during the opening prayer. And then after sacrament meeting they were out the door in seconds ha. That’s when you know an investigator is still not quite there yet when they don’t want to attend classes after sacrament. Ive learned that one in Santiago when they start coming to all 3 hours of church its like magic happens. Something just clicks in their minds and then you don’t have to ask them to read they just read and they just come to church. Man I cant wait till the day that nanay Gonzales has that click shes got some weird idead about things when we say are you going to come to church tomorrow this is her reply… bust kung dadalhin ako ng dios sa simbahan ninyo… nandoon ako. Which what she is saying means if he lord carries her or directs her to our church then shell be there ha ha. Weve figured out her problem but not what to do. She has a testimony she knows its true shes just afraid of her family because her husband is in America looking for work and he doesn’t have a job yet so her family is helping to support her and shes afraid if she is baptized they will stop supporting her. Hard problem. But well just keep on working with her theres always a barrier but nothings impossible. I heard something pretty sad yesterday from a recent convert. He was baptized about 6 or seven months ago, he is the only member in his family.. and he has been wanting to go on a mission so bad but recently hes been coming to church for only sacrament and not weiring a white shirt and tie and I was able to talk to him last night and found out what was going on in his life. He said when he was an investigator he was so impressed with the members when he came to church there was someone that sat next to him and everyone shook his hand and made him feel important.. the missionaries were good examples of being christlike and everything was great and he got a testimony of the gospel and was baptized. Then he said the past few months his desire to go on a mission has be going away and I asked him why and he said im disappointed with the members and with missionaries. He said this is the true church and they act the same way all the other people act. The youth lieing to their parents and missionaries that hes seen disobeying rules that even he a recent convert knows they shouldn’t be doing. He said I believe the church is true but I just thought better of the members and am really dissipointed in them and missionaries ive seen coming here when theyre not supposed to facebooking and not being obedient to mission rules. The reason im sharing this with you is because us as members we know the truth and is makes me sad to see someone discouraged because members of the true church aren’t good examples of how to live or what to do.. of course no ones perfect and cast the mote out of your own eye before your brothers but you never know whos watching. And when they hear gossip and all these other things ( I know im guilty in the past ) it hurts the image of the church. Just thought id add that in there cause sometimes we forget that as members we honestly have to keep a standard.. of being Christ like. Of NOT judging others for what theyre doing and NOT lieing and spreading gossip and NOT looking down on our neighbors cause they live a different lifestyle. We help our fellow men and we do nice things for them member or non member and we do things that Christ would do if he were here. Anyways sorry that’s just whats on my mind right now. For all of you mothers happy mothers day! Mahal ko kayo elder landeen

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