New area: Baua - poor electricity, rats, and pretty views

August 19-25, 2019

So, I've finally transferred to my new area Baua. It took about 9 hours to cross the entire mission to get here but it's all good. The area itself is pretty rural. There's not much of a market to buy things from and there's not many people. We do have an actual church building though rather than just a meeting house. The area is also kind of close to the mountains and the ocean so there's some pretty views. Anyways, here are just a few notes about our area. For one, because it's so rural we have to use a different cell phone service than all the other missionaries in our mission which means that I can't call all the members in my district to do follow-ups even though I'm the district leader. We also have rats in our house. We can hear them running in the ceiling occasionally and at night they come down to ground level. Because of this we need to have all our food put into the fridge or hung up on hangers. This was especially annoying since I just recently got two of my new packages from home that have lots of goodies. Another interesting thing about our apartment is that we have a 'crazy lady' that's our neighbor. She doesn't seem to be all mentally there and can't talk very much. She seems to be nice though. Occasionally she'll open our window and touch my companion while he's laying on his bed. We also don't have a key to our front door because I previous missionary accidentally took it. The final thing about our area is that since it's super rural we don't have much of a market or place to buy food. We buy fried chicken from a street stand very frequently because of this. Another side note, we basically have our own puppy. We always feed it the bones from our chicken and he loves us. He actually even likes to run into our apartment and play with us.

Tuesday - 

 

So I'll probably keep the individual days a little summarized because much of what I wanted to say is in the intro. Anyways, we woke up at 4:00 am to take the bus to my new area. I sat on the bus for 9 hours or so and traveled all the way to my new area. I sat on the bus longer than any of the other missionaries there. I then met my new companion Elder Denton. He's from Tasmania, Australia but had been living in Melbourne before he left. My dad is actually familiar with where he's from since he served there on his mission. Bascially the first day was more of getting organized in the new apartment and a short introduction.

Wednesday - 

Some more area introduction. We also taught a couple lessons to our investigators. I also met the branch president. He's President Suarez and actually served in my last area San Lorenzo on his mission so he knew a lot of the people that I just came from. He also is 5'11" which is really tall here in the Philippines and he can crack coconut shells with his bare hands which is interesting.

Thursday - 

We did some work in our area called Amunitan. We basically got punted the whole day and none of the people we were going to were home. That's okay though because after we started heading home, a wealthy member named Christian Cabading and his wife gave us a ride on their tricey to a resort called Kangaroo Beach and bought us some pizza there. It was pretty and by the beach.

Friday - 

We did some weekly planning in the morning and then some work later. We also did some finding near the beach. We also ran into a big group of teenage girls that had met previous missionaries. They were really wanting to talk to us but didn't seem to interested in learning. On our way home it started raining really hard and was super windy. We talked to someone and they said that it was a typhoon. Of course we didn't learn that until the day of since we're missionaries and separated from the world of information.

Saturday -

More work. We also got a referral from a member and taught her.

Sunday - 

We went to church. I helped bless the sacrament because of lack of priesthood holders. We also did some work in a barangay called San Jose. I also couldn't call the members of my district because we don't have cell service here. 

Pictures - 

package, dog, pretty views, etc.

Exchanges, Hospital, Baptism, Transfers

August 12 - 19, 2019

So a pretty decent amount of stuff has happened this week. Though a lot of stuff happened I am only going to give a brief email because I am transferring and need to prepare my luggage. 

At the start of this week we had exchanges and I went to the area of Dingras with our zone leader Elder Wilson. He's 6'6'' and I'm pretty tall myself so I can imagine that it looked pretty funny for the Filipinos to see two giants walking down the street. We taught a few lessons and it went pretty well. I also got a few new ideas from Elder Wilson to implement into my teaching as well.

We also went to the hospital this week for Elder Doyle's infected toe. It took forever to get a checkup though and the inspection was not thorough at all.

This week we also had another baptism. Our baptismal candidate was Menchie Segui and she's 39 years old. We've been teaching her for a while and she was finally ready for baptism. She's good and her husband now wants to be baptized too.

Anyways, I'm now being transferred to a new area called Baua. It's on the complete other side of the mission (around 9 hours away I believe) and it is much more rural. I'll send another email to update my situation next week.

Stormy Week, Locked in Apartment, New People

August 5 - 11, 2019

It has been pretty stormy this entire week. It's has been pretty windy and rainy, but it's also pretty inconsistent weather. It will rain very hard and be super windy for a few minutes only. Once it gets rainy we immediately put on rain coats (but a lot of the time we are already wet by the time we get them on). After it rains for a short period of time it will just stop and then we get really hot in our raincoats. We then continue to remove our raincoats, but then it will start raining again once we take them off. It's been like this for most of this week. So the weather has been slightly annoying but the work has been alright. We also had our zone conference this week.

Monday -

So Monday was all good and normal but I also studied a talk by Elder Tad R. Callister of the Seventy called 'Becoming a consecrated missionary.' We were told to study this in preparation for our zone conference. It is a VERY good talk about missionary work and pretty inspiring. It's about not only being a fantastic missionary, but being someone who is willing to lay everything else on the 'altar of sacrifice.'

Tuesday - 

We had our zone conference for this cycle at the Laoag Stake Center as usual. It was really focused on becoming what we call 'consecrated' missionaries and was highly related to the talk we were assigned to study. So if you want to know what was discussed you can just read the talk. After zone conference all the missionaries were given flu-shot and any other vaccines needed. Some missionaries were not very excited about this.

Wednesday - 

We returned back to Sitio 1 of Baay to try and teach some of our new people. No one really seemed to be available so we just continued to do some finding nearby. We ended up finding two new people to teach. One was an 18 year old girl who's originally form Manila and the other was a lady that owns a little store. Both lessons went pretty well and we talked a lot to the lady that owns the store. 

Thursday - 

We went to San Pablo to continue finding and to also head back to some return appointments. We successfully recontacted two people we previously taught and were able to teach them again. The first one we recontacted was an elderly lady named Anita and we taught her a lesson about the Plan of Salvation. It felt right so we also gave her the baptismal invitation but she denied it. It was interesting because she says she want us to teach her about God, but that's all. She's already comfortable with her religion and has already been baptized in her church. We tried very hard to explain the importance of authority of the priesthood to her but the necessity never really seemed to become clear to her. The other person we taught was a 20 year old Dexter Agustin. We taught him and his 15 year old sister (who was not with us previously) about the Book of Mormon and each gave them their own copy. It was a good lesson and I feel like they have started to develop an understanding of the importance of the book.

 Also, side note,during my personal study early that in the day I found two scriptures that really stood out to me:

Mark 8:

34 ¶ And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
35 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.
36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

I really liked these verses and specifically the final one. We could have everything in the entire world, all the glory, treasures, money gold, etc. and it's still nothing compared to the happiness and joy that is found in living the gospel and receiving everlasting life.

Mark 6:

54 ...straightway they knew him..

So this verse needs a little context. This is Christ's disciples exiting their boat. When they saw Christ, they immediately recognized him. This verse is kind of a good point of self reflection. Christ's apostles, after hearing his voice and seeing him, instantly knew it was him. If we were to find ourselves in the same circumstances would we recognize him without hesitation?

Friday - 

We returned to Baay again and were able to teach the 18 year old girl named L. Jay again. We also were able to find another new person named Jun Madrid. He's probably 40+ and a security guard in Laoag. Apparently he and his family were previously taught by missionaries two times but because of his schedule it was really difficult to keep having lessons. We shared with him about the restoration of the gospel and he seemed to be receptive and said we can keep teaching them if they're around. It was also super rainy when we headed home and Elder Doyle and I were very soaked.

I also found another scripture I liked during my personal study.

Mark 10:

43 But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister:
44 And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.
45 For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

This verse is very applicable to everyone. If you want to be "great" or the "chiefest" in anything in any aspect of your life, you need to be the servant of those around you. You need to help others be better and as you do so, become better yourself. You need to lead others in a positive, helpful way, just as Christ did. We need to sacrifice our time and efforts for the sake of others in order to become more like him.

Saturday - 

We returned to San Pablo once again. We seem to go to each area (San Pablo and Baay) every other day. Work seems more effective if we just focus in a few specific areas. While we were in San Pablo we returned and taught the Agustin's again. This time we taught Dexter and his brother DJ. Apparently, DJ was even previously taught by missionaries as well. We taught them about prayer, its importance, and how to do it. After that lesson we found a couple new people as well. We found the Dumapay couple. They're an older couple. They're Marylita and Wilfredo Dumapay. Wilfredo has really bad arthritis in every joint in his body and also has kidney stones. Because of his plight of pain we gave them a short overview of the Plan of Salvation and focused on resurrection and our perfect bodies. This message seemed to bring them some comfort and they said we can come back and continue teaching them.

I also forgot to mention that after we returned from church in the morning and did our studies we were locked in our apartment. We did our studies and stuff and as we were about to head out the door wouldn't open. We have two doors, one wooden door and one screen door. For some reason our screen door has two separate bolt locks. There's one outside and one inside. I'm not sure why it's designed like this, but someone had locked us inside our apartment. It took a while but I was able to unlock the door by using a wire hanger. That's just a weird random side note.

Once we returned home from work and got to our apartment we found that one of our windows was left open and seeing as it's been rainy season my bed was drenched in water. I then decided to hang my bed sheets outside but a few minutes later it started raining once again and the wind knocked my sheets off the rope into some dirty water. I slept that night on a dirty mattress probably used by hundreds of missionaries over the years. When I got cold I used the window curtain as a blanket. Luckily it was freshly washed.

Sunday -

We had church and then taught Menchie Segui her final lesson before baptism. She will have her baptismal interview this week and probably be baptized on Saturday if all goes well. We taught her at Nanay Gadu's house again and whenever we go to Nanay Gadu's house we are stuck there for a very long time because Sister Gadu tries to give us any excuse not to leave and gives us LOTS of merienda. 

That was our week.

Pictures - 

I completely failed to take pictures this week. I think we were more concerned about not getting wet when proselyting as we traveled from location to location and in the process I didn't remember to take pictures. Though I don't have any pictures really, I did manage to take one picture of Elder Doyle and I before we left the apartment this morning. I also have a couple videos of stormy weather.

Apartment Checks, Interviews, Door-to-Door Work

July 30 - August 4, 2019

Tuesday -

We started the day with our district council meeting. I assigned Sister Calipayan to teach and it went well. She had lots of activities in her training. After our meeting ended and we ate lunch, we headed back to our apartment in San Lorenzo. 

We ended up doing some apartment cleaning in preparation of our coming apartment checks.

Later in the day, after doing a few cleaning things around the apartment and a little work we headed over to centro San Nicolas in the sister missionaries' area. I interviewed one of their baptismal candidates because I'm the district leader. Of course I won't go into much detail for this person's privacy but this was the first time that I had to deny someone in a baptismal interview and it was a little awkward and I ended up having to call President Peterson to try and sort some issues out. I will have to re-interview this person at a later date and they will need approval for baptism coming from our mission president.

 The day ended with dinner with the Tumamao family again.   

Wednesday - 

In the morning the senior sister missionaries came to our apartment to check on our living circumstances. They weren't too disappointed since we made sure to clean it up real nicely the day before. Of course they still had some complaints since our apartment, like every apartment in the Philippines, has some issues. They were concerned about a couple leaky sinks, a window that didn't have a screen, and a drain that drains very slowly. We also have a rain gutter that's broken. They asked us to talk to our landlord about all these problems.  We're also supposed to give our landlord a deadline. I also re-stringed my guitar again after work because the strings that I bought just last month already rusted and broke. This time I made sure to buy the better strings though.

Thursday - 

We did some work in our area called Baay. Since I've been in San Lorenzo for a little while now it's been getting increasingly harder to find new parts of our area to visit. Though we were planning to go to this area called San Pablo, on our way there, we stumbled onto this small road. It turns out that this road has a lot more houses than we expected so we went house to house try and find new people. We ended up teaching three new people who seemed very happy to have us there and it didn't feel like we were bugging them at all. We also talked to some other people there as well that we didn't teach. One of them was this 50+ year old guy. We talked to him for a while and he told us about his life and how he used to be a soldier, a teacher, then an orthopedic technician in Saudi Arabia, and finally he returned home to work in the bukid. We're excited to return to this area and to find and teach some more people.

Friday -

In the morning we did our weekly planning before we went out to work. Once we got out to proselyting we went to this place called San Pablo. We tried some more finding. The finding went okay and we found a couple people but didn't end up doing very much in depth sharing. We also met this woman named Daisy Vivit and talked to her for a while. As we got to know her she talked about how her husband is a pastor at the Assemblies of God church. She also told us how she previously talked to other missionaries. Though this normally would seem like a circumstance where people would want to argue with us (usually for no reason) that didn't happen. She was really nice and we just talked to her for a while about religious beliefs and the similarities in our religions. She didn't really want to argue, but she also didn't really seem like she wanted to learn too much more than what she already believes, so after a little bit we left. 

Saturday - 

We returned to San Pablo again to do more finding. As we were walking I saw this one road that looked like it led to nothing. I felt like we should head down it anyways, and we did. It turns out that there was pretty much nothing down the road except for one home. When we got there, there was an old lady that was very excited to invite us in and we ended up teaching her the first lesson. She too was previously taught by missionaries, but she used to live in a different home and since she's moved she hadn't seen them since. We ended up teaching her the first lesson and  she received it pretty well even though it didn't seem like she remembered it very much from the last missionaries. \

After that, we continued along the main road and tried to make our way back to some of the homes of people we met previously. Unfortunately, no one was there. We decided to do some more door to door finding. It wasn't super fruitful and we got a sufficient amount of dirty looks. As we were making our way to our dinner appointment and passing by many houses I saw one more house. I also thought that we should go to it. We did and we also found another family that willing to let us teach them. It was a pretty cool day of work.. And even though the decisions to go to those specific places and homes seemed like nothing but a thought in my head at the time, I do know that it was guidance from the spirit in reality. This experience also reminded me of a talk I listened to in the MTC by Elder Bednar about recognizing the spirit. He taught that we often overthink and over-analyze the spirit but, in reality, as long as we remain worthy and are doing the right things, we will have guidance. He also talked about how most of the time that guidance is not recognized immediately but is usually recognized long after. Often it comes as a simple thought, but it can lead to very powerful things and I know that's true myself.

Once we arrived at our dinner appointment we were surprised to find that it was actually a big birthday party with lots of people and karaoke. Though I couldn't really successfully chew through the mixed meats we were fed it was still a good time. I also talked to a recently returned missionary from the Salt Lake Temple Square mission. She was nice and it was interesting to compare and contrast the differences in her mission versus my own.

Sunday - 

As we should, we attended church in the morning and then later went out and did some work with our fellowshippers Ezra Valdez and Rusthel Barruga. They are both preparing for missions. Though I don't think fellowshippers really like to, we did some door to door finding with them and successfully found some new people to teach. Later we headed over to the home of the Gadu family in order to teach our investigator Menchie Segui, who hopefully will be baptized this coming week. Once we taught her, Nena Gadu (the mother) and her Rudy Gadu (her 28 year old son) came along with us to show us to the homes of previous interested people. No body was really there and we just ended up walking to this really far place called Paoay Lake. We're not even sure if it's part of our area or not, but the Gadu's insisted that it was. The lake was actually super cool and big and I'm glad I was able to see it. It's actually a Philippines National Park even though you wouldn't know that by the small amount of people there. Also everyone with us also kept insisting that there's mermaids in the lake. They also said a bunch of other stuff that seemed VERY not true. They talked about how there's five different towns submerged in the water and how there's a golden bell on a Catholic church down there. They also said that anyone who tries to recover it is killed by the mermaids. It was kind of funny too because they 100% believe this. Elder Doyle and I just kind of chuckled about it.

Pictures -

pictures from work, a goat that has hair and a beard, and Paoay Lake