Pagudpud with Elder Powell

Dec. 16 - 22, 2019

I just transferred to a new area called Pagudpud with my new companion Elder Powell. He's 20 and form Tempe, Arizona. This new  area is super awesome and easily the most beautiful area I've been assigned in. It's close to the ocean and mountains as well. Our area actually goes through the small mountains and to all the nearby homes. It's very pretty and green and there's also lots of rice fields in the little valleys. This area actually met my expectations of the beauty that I was anticipating in the Philippines and only took me around 15 months to get here. Because of the dense vegetation there's lots of birds and things unlike some of my other areas. Though it's been very beautiful here we've also seen four snakes already. Three were dead and only one was alive. Unfortunately that one snake was pretty big and bright green and slithering across the street. The scariest one of them all those was actually a dead large snake in our area. It was really dark at night and we found this snake that the locals had killed. It was large and we believe it was a cobra. Luckily they found and killed it in the rice field before it got to us. Another interesting thing about this area is that it's super touristy. There's lots of resorts and even white people that we see occasionally.

As for the missionary work in this area it's not as beautiful as the nature here. We actually have a small branch that meets every Sunday in a small meeting house composed of two separate buildings. One is an old home painted white and the other is a building that was constructed later specifically for sacrament. The branch isn't huge and on Sunday we probably had a total attendance of 30 people or so. Both of the speakers were absent and the meeting ended 30 minutes early.The few members that were there were very nice though. The work of the missionaries for the past few months here doesn't seem to have gone super great either. Our area hasn't had investigators attend sacrament for about a month. Our goal right now is to just find and find and find. That's all we did this week actually. We'll get this area progressing sooner or later.

Also today we went on an unexpected trip looking at the cool sights here in Pagudpud. We got a lot of cool pictures and even saw a waterfall. There's also some cool videos but for some reason they won't upload right now. Those might just have to be saved for next week.

Mga Binyag at Transfers

Dec. 10 - 16, 2019

This whole week has mostly consisted of lots of finding and then ended with three baptisms! I also just got the news that I'll be transferring to a new area of Pagudpud with my coming companion Elder Powell. 

Tuesday -

The whole day consisted of district council in Sta. Ana and then finding. That was basically all.

Wednesday -

Just another day of finding. We've been trying to use the new technique of finding taught to us at zone conference. It's been kind of slow but we're just gonna keep chugging along. At the end of the day the zone leaders interviewed our three baptismal candidates who all passed with no problem.

Thursday -

I had exchanges with Elder Smith who's still in training. He was fun to spend the day with. We also find one new person that we'll probably try and return and teach. She fits the criteria for our missions new people finding technique. We talked to 26 new people the whole day.

Friday -

We basically did baptismal preparation the first half of the day. This included cleaning and filling the baptismal font, creating a program, etc. After we did that we did, as you might have guessed, more finding.

At the end of the day I did studies and finally finished reading the New Testament which was awesome. It's definitely an underused piece of scripture in the church at times.

Saturday -

Now this was the focus of the week really. This was our three baptisms. We baptized Christopher Javier, Mae Albonida, and Joy Rosete. I'll give a little information about each of them now.

Christopher is a 15 year old boy that is doing really great and reads everything we tell him too. When we first met him we were focusing on teaching is 18 year old brother but as we continued teaching it was obvious he was interested too. As time went on we realized Carl (his brother) couldn't be baptized because he can't attend church frequently because of his schooling so our attention shifted to Christopher. It took a while to get him to church because he's shy but once we got him there the first time he went four times in a row without being compelled. He also has made lots of friends with the youth and is doing great.

Mae is a 21 year old girl and is probably the most 'legit' of all three of our baptisms. We met her on the street and simply invited her to church. Without ever having taught her she attended church and brought her aunt Joy (we'll talk about her later) along with her. She then attended all four times as well. She also has done amazing on reading the Book of Mormon and can explain what she reads in depth every time. She also understands the doctrine we teach her very well. She also asks great questions frequently. She was actually also baptized on her birthday.

Joy is 18 years old and really just seemed to tag along with Mae. She also understood things very well and was always happy to have us over. She also has lots of fellow-shipping at church as well.

Interesting side note for the day. After the baptism while we did more finding we met a guy with polio which was crazy.

Sunday -

Finding.

Monday - 

We tried to go to a waterfall this morning. It was pretty. You'll see pictures.

Christmas Conference in Santa Ana

December 3 - 8, 2019

This week has been pretty fun and different because we had our two day Christmas conference and we also had exchanges with the other missionaries in our district. The work took a two day break but it was definitely worth it.

Tuesday - 

This was the day of exchanges. I exchanged with Elder Squire and came and worked with me in Baua. We tried to do lots of finding while testing out the new technique our zone leaders talked to me about during our follow-up call but the day was very slow. Not because of the new technique but because we've went to nearly every house in the small area of Baua and I've met nearly everyone. We tried to do more finding which basically meant going to the far areas that don't have a super dense population and are probably too far to afford paying to get a ride to church. It was a slow but fun day with lots of conversation. Elder Squire is very 'madaldal' as we say in Tagalog.

During the studies of the day I also read rom 2 Nephi 4:17-35 and Revelations 2-3. These are both really cool scriptures. The section of Nephi is about understanding our own shortcomings but also knowing who we can go to for help (Christ) and the two chapters in Revelation are really interesting chapters about overcoming or as I interpreted it, enduring to the end of everything.

Wednesday -

After finishing exchanges we had a good day and talked to nearly 28 new people. We intend to maybe return to two of them though because they showed more sincerity. We also accidentally stumbled upon the house of a less active member named Hitler Tacal which is kind of funny.

Thursday -

This was the first day of Christmas conference. My companion and I had to show up early so I could attend the District Leader workshop with the APs. It ended up just being a three hour discussion and finding people that are willing to attend church. It was actually really good and the techniques they suggested seem like they will be very effective in the Philippines. We basically just try to talk to as many people as possible (since everyone here is willing to talk to you) and then only return to those that say they will go to church after your first interaction with them. Initially this  approach seems harsh but here in the Philippines everyone wants to talk to you but not many are willing to change. This new technique helps us identify those that want to change. I can't wait to see it in action a little more.

The rest of the Christmas conference included a general introduction from President Peterson and then all the different zones doing their performances. These performances included lots of different dances, songs, skits, and things of that nature. It was very enjoyable and a nice break from the everyday mission life. It was also nice to meet up with some of my friends in the mission and also meet some new missionaries as well. My zone did a skit actually of which me and Elder Rasmussen with the main stars for some weird reason. It was a tid bit cringey.

Friday -

This was the second half of Christmas Conference. In the morning after a very cold night's sleep (because of the A/C) we continued in our casual clothes to the meeting hall thing and then had some games organized by the senior missionaries. They were actually unexpectedly enjoyable and sometimes difficult. One of the games was as simple as hitting each other aggressively with pool noodles.

Saturday -

We had an okay day of work once again. In the middle of our work though the sisters from the other area called and said they needed baptismal clothing from our church. We dropped everything and returned from our far area to help them. By the time we got to the church they said that they no longer needed the clothes. We then just returned back to our area and kept working. We ended up talking to 11 new people. One of them seemed kind of interested. Later in the day after we returned home we found another rat and burned it alive in our apartment.

Sunday -

We had a nice day of work applying what we had learned about finding people to go to church. We ended up finding three people we might go back to. Also our three investigators went to church again. They will probably be baptized next week.

Pictures - 

a mix of pictures from Christmas conference, my packages, the rat, and a very uncommon bird

May sakit si Elder Rasmussen

Nov. 6 - Dec 1, 2019

This week was pretty good except for the fact that Elder Rasmussen was super sick for two days (in a row) and threw up seven times. We were stuck in our apartment for a while which kinda slowed the work. Because of this though, we did have some pretty busy days following his 'near-death' experience.

Tuesday -

The day of work went alright but none of our appoints went through. We ended up just doing lots of finding as a backup plan and were able to find some people that seemed at least moderately sincere which was really cool. After talking to 14 new people in the day we returned home to our apartment. Shortly after our arrival our power went out. As everything was dark we saw one source of light out of our window. We looked out and our power-line was had an electrical fire. It went out after about 30 seconds but it was pretty sketchy.

Wednesday -

So this was the first day of Elder Rasmussen's sickness. He threw up in the morning and then threw up several more times. We couldn't really go out and do much. I did some studying.

Helaman 14:30-31 (reference to Alma 3:26-27)

30 And now remember, remember, my brethren, that whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto himself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto himself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free.
31 He hath given unto you that ye might know good from evil, and he hath given unto you that ye might choose life or death; and ye can do good and be restored unto that which is good, or have that which is good restored unto you; or ye can do evil, and have that which is evil restored unto you.

I really liked the two verses listed here. They are both about free agency and the result of our actions. I like the scripture above because it discusses how God gave us free agency to choose for ourselves but he also has given us knowledge so we are not ignorant in understanding what's good and what's evil. Because of this, we have the ability to choose what's wrong and right and in every situation we receive a reward based on our works (whether it's a reward of good or evil).

Thursday -

It was just another sick day. I did more studies and I also did some deep apartment cleaning.

Friday -

We finally were able to get a little work in as Elder Rasmussen's sickness died down. Though we did some work, it wasn't super intensive because he seemed to get fairly easily fatigued. We also went to the neighboring area of Santa Anna and met up with Elders Squire and Garcero in order for me (as district leader) to do a baptismal interview for them. This interview was interesting since the baptismal candidate didn't really speak very good Tagalog (or Ilokano) because she's from a different part of the Philippines. Much of the interview was based on the gift of discernment.

Saturday -

We used this full day to try and go to all the people we failed to go to during Elder Rasmussen's sickness. We were able to contact our mainly progressing investigators and were able to teach them which was great.

Sunday -

It was kind of a slow day of work with lots of attempted finding. There were lots of people that weren't very interested. The one person that seemed to be interested actually was just a JW that was just interested in having a "discussion" which really just them talking a lot about their Bible.

Pictures -

So we're in a computer shop that doesn't allow files to be uploaded to the computer so I can't send pictures. Also, I still don't have a camera.