kamusta po kayo mga pamilya ko? kailangan ko kausamin sa inyo tungkol sa marami mga bagay na hindi ko alam kung saan magsimula! pero i guess ill start right here.

another week gone? ah! its gone so fast i dono what happened.

anxiety is getting better and thats good im eating a lot beter, the temple breakfast is sooo good compaired to the cafeteria food here ha but food is food right?

a couple updates, i should be getting flight plans today, so what i will do is mail them home and have you make a copy of them so well have them for the scrap book, i will be printing some pictures today so sorry i havent sent any i just have been lazy i guess.

weve had a lot of changes in our teachers, our regular teachers are brother welsch, brother day, and sister sorensen, and sister sorensen is done on saturday cause shes going to nursing school, and brothers day and welsch cant both work full time in two districts so we only have brother day now, and a new teacher sister ball. i dont really like the idea of new teacher right at the end but i guess i needa get used to change a lot right? i just have gotten pretty close with brother welsch and its a bummer cause hes a great teacher.

i had a few way cool experiences this week!

on thursday i got to host the new missionaries as you know mom and that was a lot of fun. i spent most of my time just greeting the families and telling moms its going to be alright there was one mom that chased her son all the way to the wilfred woodruff building because he "forgot a cd" whach i dono why hed need one but i think she was just havin a hard time lettion go. it made me laugh a little.

tagalag is either coming or im just not caring about how slow progress is cause i can speak pretty well in my lessons, i dont speak correctly by any means and im pretty sure ive never conjugated the verbs right, but oh well! ive got the first visoins, missionary purpose, baptismal commitment, and james 1 5 all memorized in tagalag and man that took forever!

i get to be an usher for the coming devotional that will be sweet! im hoping its someone from the twelve cause its our last devotional. i also got to bless the sacrament on sunday and that was a great experience too.

so elder tomale got a letter from his family and his father is really sick. he was very upset about it and i dono how this worked up but through prayer, the promptings of the spirit a priesthood blessing the scriptures and a hymn in tagalag we turned tears and pain into smiles hope and one of the greatest spiritual experiences ive had. its really humbling to think that got will work through us to answer uther peoples prayers. it makes me want to better every day that perhaps i can always be used in that way.

there was also an experience i had with our zone leader elder johnson. once again through the promptings of the spirit anger towards his dad, bad memories and pain was turned into a softened heart a desire to patch things up and bring love into his relationship with his dad which is pretty damaged. all through the promptings of the spirit this happened. i dont even understand it but its so amazing i wish i could put it in words how it feels, but well i cant.

mom as always thanks for the love and packages, elder rostedt was really strengthened and as always elder tomale too. he calls you all his family. they are actually at the salt lake

20 seconds left gotta go! mahal k kayo talaga ! elder landeen

kumusta pamilya ko magandung araw!

i dono where this week went i swear i was writing wemails just a day ago times speeding up so fast its crazy. so i got a lot to say it probably wont make sense but here it goes.

first mom i foundf out elder tomale loves lays original potatoe chips so thats an idea.

second im sorry to be asking for stuff but theres an elder rostedt from australia thats not recieving much mail and hes struggling kinda bad. i was honored to be able to give him a preisthood blessing. and while i was thinking later that night i thought it might brighten his spirits to recieve a package. if you could, send things like pop tarts and just foods he can munch on at night and send him your love and testimonies.

we had fantastic devotionals this week one was on how the first presidency wanted us to make sure we are teaching that this is the gospel of jesus christ, but it was given him to heavenly father and we need to teach the fathers plan in everything we do. this was something i knew and understood but it never registered to me like it did during the talk. the other one was about success as a missionary. and it was definately something everyone needed to hear. im gonna send my notes from them home so you can read them and then if you would send them back so i can have them it would be great ! i wanna share more of whats going on just so little time to type and write.

raoul is one our elder needs and i's progressive investigators and he is just about to be baptised were just finishing out the commandments. its super hard cause so much vocab to learn in tagalag but somehow the lord helped us do this and its pretty cool to look back and see how hes used us.\

oh yeah one of the concepts talked about on sunday was perhaps. re read alma 29 and see how many times he uses the word perhaps. we go on missions so that PERHAPS the lord will use us to bring souls unto him. success isnt a guarantee if your idea of success is how many people you baptise and this is evident by the difference between ammon and arrons mission. was ammon more diligent and spiritual than aaron so he got more conerts? of course not. it was just his lot to fall onto a hardened people. the promise the lord gives us is we will have joy in our labors. not that we will have a lot of converts because the choice is entirely on the peoples use of their agency. also read jacob five and see how the lord talks about his vinyard. he never says when i digh about and prune my vinyard it will bring good fruit, but he hopes that perhaps it will. so ive decided thats my mission motto persay that perhaps the lord will use me to bring many souls unto him.

mahal ko kayo! i love you all. elder landeen.

lots happened this week.. i think im not sure what happened to the week or the month or my p day ha it goes by so dang fast its incredible. i leave for the pinnes in three weeks and it is blowing my mind!

last night we went to the trc and taught about recieving revelation in church. its always stressful befor trc cause you never feel prepared and you never think you will know how to say things in tagalag but last night went very well. even though during the whole lesson my mind was sayin i dont have any idea what im talking about and my heart and mouth were goin in a completely different direction. its hard to explain what it feels like to bear your testimony that you feel and at the same time your mind is telling you your making it all up. like i feel like im telling the truth and lieing at the same time and sometimes i am so happy and sometimes so sad its so hard to explain ha but oh well.

my patriarchial blessing is something i read lots it has a whole new meaning now. i didnt understand what people meant by it changes meanings depending on where your at in life but now i get it cause things it says i took completely differently before hand.

elder tomale is sure appreciative of everything you all have sent he says that you are now his family and i like that. im so blessed to have a family like you all that wiil show compassion to someone who is in need on a minutes notice. i hope to one day have a tiny bit of his faith and i feel so blessed also to be able to know someone as strong as him.

elder dickey is one of the elders in my district and he has ocd too and its so nice to be able to talk to someone who understands how im thinking so thats been a blessing also.

elder christian is our new district leader and elders johnson and tenny are the new zone leaders. thats about the only thing changed oh yeah the district above us ships out on tuesday so next week we are the oldest. wow.

i ran into jason today while i was talking to josh ha it was cool bein together for probably the last time. josh leaves next week so there wont be that many more chances of that.

i have to tell you of something the older district did to us the other day it was super funny and i guess its been a traditoin for the tagalog zone for a few years now. but anyways its a game called ooga booga. you have two chair facing each other and its like simon says. they brought us into a room one by one and played this game. theres three rules that are on the white board. have fun dont tell anyone and dont get mad. so they have scores on the board of everyone that has played so far and what your trying to do is mimic what the other parson is doing like simon says so if they raise their right arm i have to raise my right arm , left arm for left arm and so on and every time you move you say ooga booga. and the goal is to see how little mistakes you can make in a minute. so your playing this game thinking im gonna win while little do you know the person behind you is pouring water on your chair and so when the other person jumps into his seat your following him and you sit in a big puddle of water. it was pretty funny and one by one we gotta watch everyone in our district do it. just kinda a going away present ha it was nice to have a laugh in the midst of so much work.

but anyways ....

thirty seconds left mahal kita elder landeen

kumusta po kayo mga pamilya ko, ayos lang at ayos sometimes here, lots to say so here we go
first off thanks so much for the packages for elder tomale. He told me that when he got the packages he felt the spirit and the love of god for him so that really helped him out. its great to be able to be of service to someone.
still strugglin with anxiety pretty bad. had a couple of the worst days this week bug im hangin in there. the meetings with the councilor have helped but well its just so mentally straining all the time i feel like just sleeping all the time cause it gets me so tired. its really crappy cause it feels like a wall thats keeping me from finding happiness in the thing i knew and know can give me more happiness than anything else and im tryin my hardest to do what the councilor says for me to do but well its just really hard i appreciate your prayers for me.
tagalag is coming pretty good though ha elder needs and i had our first baptism (mock baptism) on monday of conrad and raoul 9 another one of our progressing investigators ) has set a date to be prepared by. its kinda well really crazy to think we have taught someone in complete tagalag when it feels like we know nothing ha but that just testifies that the spirit help us missionaries even when our minds arent seeming to work right!
too bad the strawberry trip didnt go well fishings not so fun when you dont catch anything but im sure it was still nice to get out there.
it is crazy that its been a month it feels like its gone so rediculously fast i cant believe it im gona wake up one day and have a plane to catch. im kinda excited to stop off at the hong kong airport and see how crazy it is when everything is in chineese and a million people all around thats gonna be an experience for sure.
i think ive prayed more in the past week than i have in my whole life. maybe thats why its happening to get me to the point where im just always relying on the lord cause i definately am right now. totally goin on the hope that itll get better eventually.

so i was wondering i have this tape recorder if you have one too family itd be cool to get some tapes so i could hear your voices and i think id be aBLE TO send something that actually makes sense im way better at talking than at typing.

i love you elder landeen

kamusta po kayo mga pamilya ko? sobrang magandang dito this week was great so many great experiences! hopefully i can get this down good. ill start off with whats most heavy on my mind.

we have an elder in our district has name is Sailosi Tomale. he is from tonga, he is the only member in his family, he doesnt speak english very well and since were learning tagalog in english im sure you can imagine the struggle. he writes his family but they dont write him. he doesnt recieve news or letters or anything from home and its... well its just too much.

he has probably the most faith out of anybody i have ever met in my life i cant imagine what hes going through. but anyways i knew him and another elder in my district was having a hard time so me, elder tomale, elder moore, elder yost( elder tomales companion) and elder mansfield went into a class to read scriptures together. i wasnt sure what i was going to say to help encourage but somehow the spirit led me and us into an amazing esperience.

elder tomale opened up to us on how much he loves us and how he needs our help and then he told us it makes him happy when he sees up open mail and get packages because we are happy, but it makes hiim sad because every day theres no mail for him. i very rarely have seen a big stong tongan cry and open up like that but this leads me to my point...

i need you guys to send him something. i dont know what whether its food or a letter of encouragement you know what missions are like anything that you would have appreciated. his address will be the same as mine, just change my name to sailosi tomale and unstead of phi- cau it will be phi san. hes going to the san pable mission.

i cant stand knowing that he doesnt get mail and it just well i just want to help him hes such a good person. and also i dono if this is possible, but president monson gave a talk in general conference fairly recently where he told a story about a missionary he met that wasnt recieving mail, and he told him to write his family every week and eventually his family will write him. if at all possible would someone find that talk and see if you can print it in tongan? kevin your a genious online i have faith in you. if not in tongan though english will be great.

i got to go to the temple today, man was it great to be there. we did a session then some innitiatories and then we ate breakfast. i cant think of anything better than going to the temple after some hard weeks theres real power there and i feel so blessed to have been able to go so often. elder rostedt who is from australie told me of when he used to have to travel 24 hours to get to the temple in sidney and it kinda put things in perspective,

anxiety is still a daily battle but now that im fighting it with the big guns im doin a lot better. dropped 6 pounds and that is crappy but oh well. too bad i dont have some protien and a bench set!

so ive decided me ald elder needs are somehow the best companionship, its weird cause we are both so different as far as people go but when it comes to teaching and the gospel we use each others strengths and are able to teach surprising welll even though we ( well hes great im not so good ) arent too great at tagalog. he knows and remembers so much and i feel like im pretty in tune with the promptings of the spirit so those two strenghts together we have been able to teaach some great lessons. we have 3 progressive investigators ( brother day, brother welsh, and sister sorensen) that we are teaching and everyone else got dropped by their first one im not bragging or anything its just kinda cool how you can still bbe affective when you dont know how to say anything other than alam ko po na ( i know that )

alam ko po na totoo ang simbahan at alam ko po naw buhay si jesu kristo. i m outa time i was gonna bear my tagalag testimony but i guess next week. i do appreciate letters so so so so so so much. thanks for your love and suppert. mahal kita talaga! Elder Landeen

okay so lets see if i can do this....

to start of lets say i have had a breakthrough on wednesday. i was getting progressively worse everyday and i thought for sure i couldnt handlle it anymore. so my branch president told me to go talk to a counsilor and when i did it was exactly what i needed.

he told me i have definate anxiety and he called it like over analysis chronic thought or some kinda think like that where basicaly one random thought that comes to mind out of nowhere for no reason is over analyzed and branches out into a million different things then eventually you have a blurred perspective on reality and it is your reality and ya but i thinki have had quite the reality check so until next week i will be trying to tell myself to shut up everytime i start thinking. but i have to do this while im thinking non stop all day about tagalog and the gospel. and when the thought that comes to your mind is you dont have enought faith to do this and your supposed to telll yourself to shuty up when you think about that while at the same time your talking about faith all day.... i think you know what im getting at. quite the talk at hand. good thing god loves us right?

with that out of my chest ill just go to sharing something good.

yesterday at the trc it was awesome i still have no idea what i am doing and i just throw out random crap but i honestly feel like the random crap i throw out is still being guided by the spirit. i dono much but one thing i do know is how to follow a prompting and to not question it even if it doesnt make sense to you.

each companionship in the district has had a progressing investigator in that they are teaching every day or two, and its all in tagalog. it helps you understand what it means to rely on a companionship as a team effort and definately rely on the lord for guidance. im not bragging when i say this but the other companionships that were teaching konrad ( its really brother day but his character is Konrad, someone he taught on his mission) has been dropped because he lost interest. but me and elder needs have been teaching him and he has actually been progressing. our lessons seem terrible to me and yesterday i had to slip and use english but the thing we have is the spirit and i know that withouut it wed be sunk for sure.

The old zone leader elder partridge is about to ship out to manilla next week and i see a lot of myself in him. he seems absolutely terrified but at the same time excited. his tagalag isnt the best in his district but i can tell he understands the workings of the spirit- at least as well as any of us. but the reason i say this is man he has been a great zone leader and he understood what i was feelin and has been able to give great advice.

just so everyone knows my district will be performing nearer my god to thee in tagalag in front of the mtc and i found out how much i enjoy singing. weird to me but it is what it is im gonna try to develop that talent for sure.

if anyone thats learned a language wouldnt mind writing me a letter with study strategies of how to get better that would be helpful cause i dont thinki know how to study very effectively and i needa learn that before im in the jungle.

its cool seein josh here amd its going to be interesting to see how jason is his first couple of weeks hopefully by then i will be in joshs shoes and be able to give him good advice ha

im so excited to be able to teach real people. one thing for sure that i have loved the whole time here is teaching no matter what what i practived teaching at the trc or just whenever i really enjoy it because i keep thinking about how i will be able help people and ah man im just about outa time. sorry if this letter told you nothing good!

a couple things... when you respond to emails will you use dear elder? that way i can read it and dont use email time to read. wheni get to the fiend itll be different but as for here i found that dear elder is the fastest way cause it gets there the same day so its just like email.

well i love you all thanks for the letters and love

mahal kita, Elder Landeen

kamusta po kayo? its miini p day and it feels great to have a little time to catch up on language. its a lot harder for me to remember things than i expected but thats alright. im keeping super busy and i like the structured days. i love it here. home was great but the spirit here is so strong all the time and you cant beat that. my kasama elder needs is really smart so he helps me and is patient with me so thats great. i saw josh the first day he was waITING for me in the cafeteria and it was great to see him, i havent seen him since though. so i have a couple more things i forgot... sorry if i just keep asking for things i dont mean to but i think i came very un prepared. i need toenail clippers and a nail file, and mom if you could make me a big stack of flash cards with like a ring or something holding them together that would be great ive been making them out of index cards that i rip in half and its getting really tiresome.

so far ive learned to bear my basic testimony and i have got that down pretty well, we are goin to learn to pray tonight, and we have learned like a thousand vocab words and how to basically greet people. tagalag sounds so weird im ecxited to talk jibberish to you when i get home.

i have to confess its a little discouraging when everyone seems to get the language quicker than i because im usuall one of the brighter kids but im pretty sure humility is exactly what i need so humility is what i will be working on. even though it is hard its amazing to me waking up and remembering things which the night before i had no idea so the gift of tongues is real.

my district is great, there is twelve of us total, the companionships are elder rostedt(he is from australia) and elder Nay, elder Dickie and Elder Mansfiels, Me and Elder Needs, Elder Christian and Elder Zeigler, Elder Johnson(he is the district Leader) and elder Moore, and Elder Tomale( he is from Tonga and he speaks basicaly no english, i feel bad for him but i can tell he is a strong person because he doesnt seem to be discouraged) and elder Yost.

our zone leaders are Elder Partridge and Elder Wong. Elder Partridge seems to be a lot like me in how he was his first week and they are both very helpful and supportive.

The Branch President is President Stott, His councilors are first, Brother Jesse, and second bro Gurney. we have only met them once as of yet so i dont know all that much about them.

I love having all you can eat food and that great, i found out the weight room doesnt have free weights so im kinda upset about that, the gym is closed right now though anyways because the floor is being re surfaced, and the temple is closed too which makes me a little sad but i guess ill just have to be patient.

if i dont writhe much letters please forgive but dont stop writing me, i told dad i wont tell you if im having a hard time but i really needa put everything into catchin up with people on tagalag.

mahal kata ang pamiliya ( i love you family )

tty when i do, Elder Landeen