Monday -
On Monday, aside from typical p-day activities, we also traveled to the mission office to say goodbye to some departing missionaries, and then we had "family home evening" at the Rafol household.
Tuesday -
We had some slow proselyting time in Barangay St. Agustin. We just did lots of door-to-door finding and ended up teaching a lesson, but no body seemed overly interested. We then ended the day with dinner with the Tumamao family, which is a part member family that is close to the missionaries.
Wednesday -
We did some work in this area called Samac and tried to return to some recently found new people. Unfortunately, none of them were there. We then just kept trying to find some new people once again.
Thursday -
We decided to return to the area of San Pablo. We haven't worked here very much so we wanted to see if there were any new teaching opportunities. We did some street contacting of some unenthusiastic people, and then also found a short cut to another section of our area. So that's nice I guess.
Friday -
We did our typical weekly planning in the morning as usual. By the time it hit the afternoon we headed out of our area to centro San Nicolas; this is the sister missionaries area. I then interviewed two of their baptismal candidates since I'm their district leader. The first lady I interviewed was super old and honestly pretty forgetful of the doctrine it seems, but from what I could tell her heart seemed in the right place. I also talked with the sister missionaries about her for a little bit and then I cleared her for baptism. The spirit of discernment said nothing contrary. The second person interviewed was a 13 year old girl. Despite her age she was actually pretty tall, especially for some here in the Philippines. She, unlike the older lady, seemed to know what the sister missionaries taught her and passed just fine.
After that was over, we didn't really have much extra time to work, so I just started preparing a lesson for an upcoming ward leadership training that we were invited too help with.
Saturday -
The previously stated ward leadership training occurred on Saturday the next day. In the morning we headed to the house of the former stake president Brother Rafol to get a ride to the training meeting. We ended up getting a ride with a member named Michael. He's a returned missionary. He gave us a ride on a kurong-kurong (kinda like a tricey). About half way through the ride he decided to tell us that the motorcycle didn't have a brake.. So that was a little sketchy but nothing bad ended up happening. He just had to slow down way before each turn or stop and also couldn't get up to very high speed just in case we needed to stop quickly.
The venue of the event itself was pretty cool. It was at this places called JTL Resort or something. Though it claims the title 'resort' it is far from any resort we're familiar with back home. 'Resort' basically means it has a pool. Anyways, the view was actually very cool. On one side you could see this big lake called Paoay Lake, and then on the other side you could see the South China sea in the distance. The training itself was alright and mostly about ministering. We missionaries were assigned to share about the relationship between Members, Ministering and full time missionaries. Since, I was the only one to prepare anything, I just talked the whole time and then told my companion Elder Doyle to read aloud the scriptures references I found. Our teaching was just about how ministering is basically missionary work for members, and we focused on the idea of "every member a missionary" by David O. McKay. That concept isn't understood very well in this area. Usually, they try and make us do everything because we're the missionaries even though the things they want us to do are ones they could easily accomplish themselves. It seemed to go pretty well. As I was talking I realized no one was any longer paying attention so I just summarized everything and then ended it. That's usually how it goes.
Once that ended, we headed over to barangay Payas to a return appointment we had set up. We showed up and no one was there. After that we then headed to our dinner appointment with the Bulatao family. It was dark for much of the meal because we had an electrical brown-out the entire day, but near the end of the meal the lights flickered back on.
Sunday -
There was a miracle of four investigators that attended sacrament meeting. We were anticipating only two of them (because we'd previously taught them), but it turns out that two of the members that had attended the training meeting the day before brought two new people with them to church as well. So that's awesome and we're excited to start teaching them. Also, later in the day after we did some work we were just walking on the road like usual. As we walked on the road, a guy went by on a motorcycle and we smiled and waved as usual. To our surprise, after about 30 seconds or so, he returned and stopped us. He said something (in Tagalog of course) to the effect of "I want to become a member of your religion. How do I do that?.. Oh, I'm Warmboy Acosta by the way." We then had a nice conversation with him and explained our purpose to him and how we'd be excited to share the lessons with him. He also said that he would be coming to church next week since that's one of the requirements of preparation for baptism. He's also 24 years old and 12th grade school teacher which is pretty cool. If you're a teacher here in the Philippines that's kind of a big deal because it means you're a little more educated than the average person. That means he also should know English a little better than the average fellow as well.
After that Elder Doyle and I walked away very excited. That's the first time that a person has went out and found us. Usually we're the ones finding, but it's cool to see that people are being prepared for the gospel beforehand. Warmboy also talked about how he had recently see a movie called "God's Not Dead" and he felt like it was a spiritual wake-up call for him. So we're just looking forward to start teaching him.
Pictures -
Should include some pictures from the ward leadership training venue, a nice bahay kubo, 'Landslide Phrone Area', and Fiesta Street.
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