Preaching to the Dead

Well unfortunately, with my companion Elder Perez, I can't say that it has been a super productive week which is pretty frustrating. On some level it's kind of difficult to realize that I only have control over myself when we're supposed to have the same goal in mind. Though there wasn't a ton of work, the little work that was done was good and I'm glad it happened.

Tuesday - 

We had our district council.. and then the companions of Elder Butler and I just went off and did there own stuff until we had a dinner at the home of a member named Brother Nical. Elder Butler and I ended up doing a decent amount of studying.

Wednesday -

This day also included a lot of studying. I also saw an old white dude with a thick mustache on a very rusty old bicycle which was interesting. It's always weird to see white people here. Later when we went out to actually work we saw a whole bunch of kids around the age of 10-12 smoking tobacco (which isn't unusual) and they all had tattoos. We asked them about their tattoos and they said some adult dude just gives them tattoos for free. So that's pretty messed up, but not unusual either I guess. We ended up teaching 4 lessons. We taught two people that I've been visiting almost my whole time here in Ballesteros and then also found this elderly couple that we talked to and visited with for  awhile. 

Thursday - 

Today was potentially the least productive day so far. There was more studies and then Elder Butler and I started trying to figure out how to play our harmonica's we both have. It was kinda funny.

Friday - 

We went out for a little while and saw two of our investigators.

Saturday - 

Some teaching was done on Saturday. We ended up going to some investigators and also to Fugu to teach my convert Dan-Dan. Then later we had to re-baptize the 9 year old named Wayne that we baptized last week because the baptizer said the incorrect middle name, so that ended up eating most of our day away.

Sunday - 

This was probably the most busy day and it felt nice. The day started at 10:00-12:00. There was a live area broadcast from Elder Holland to the whole Philippines that replaced stake conference. It was a really cool talk and he hit on the topic of our job as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints. He basically said that our job as members is to prepare the earth for the second coming of Christ and we need to be prepared to present the church to him when he comes again. He also taught about how the first law of the gospel is obedience which was awesome as well. Obedience brings forth blessings truly. 

Later we went out on splits with members of the ward. Apparently this is allowed as long as the missionaries split with another Melchizedek Priesthood holder. I ended up going with a member and fellowshipper named Rence that will leave on his mission in March. We ended up teaching to a few people and it seemed to go very well.

After a while we met back up with my companion Elder Perez and his fellowshippers. There was this long time investigator named Brother Oandosan(?) and he invited us to teach at the home of his sister. Their father had recently passed away at 101 years of age. In the Philippines it is tradition for whole extended families to gather after the death of a loved one. For 10 days they mourn with the body of the deceased person in their home in a coffin with a glass lid so you can see the body. Anyways, we went in there and taught a fairly large group of people about the Plan of Salvation and how families can be together forever while standing next to the dead body. We stood up in the front and gave a sermon like lesson as they were expecting and people were crying and things. It was a very interesting experience, but I'm very glad we were there.

Pictures - 

I don't have many pictures this week because of lack of work in all honesty but the few that I do have should include... the less amazing Filipino version of the White House, a couple pictures of a decent meal I had called "Grigliata del giorno" which is Italian for "Barbecue of the Day" (very delicious by the way even though I don't know exactly what meat it is), a picture of Elder Butler's mini-statue of Jesus that I used to explain idols which there are so many of here in the Philippines, a picture of Wayne that we re-baptized (clearly he didn't want a picture taken of him), and finally this notebook that says "Turkey" with the Turkish flag but also elements of Thanksgiving pilgrim stuff mixed in which was just hilarious to find.

Buhay pa rin / Zone Conference

Monday -

So last p-day, after emailing in the morning, all four of us elders headed to Aparri to withdraw our money for the month. Usually, we just go to Allacapan, the next city over, to withdraw money, but this time we went around 2 hours to Aparri. We had never been to Aparri before this time, but it's more of a bigger "city" there. So it had a more legit grocery store. It definitely wasn't anything like what you'd find in America, but I was able to buy actual stick deodorant which is rare elsewhere. Also, I think elder Vaea wanted to buy some "D'sleeks" which are some pants that are popular among missionaries but you can only get them tailored in Aparri. Despite the fact that it had more stores and products and things in Aparri, it still was very garbage ridden and dirty. We also ate at Jollibee's for the first time. It's supposed to be kind of a Filipino fast food place. It being Filipino means it's menu is not similar to other fast food restaurants you know and most of the items were "unavailable." I did get the "Ultimate Aloha Yumburger" though and it was alright.  Unfortunately for Elder Butler he ordered fried chicken and spaghetti for some reason. As you can imagine, it didn't exactly please his palate. Also on the jeepney ride back from Aparri Elder Butler got stuck sitting by a VERY manly bakla on a several hour packed ride.

Tuesday - 

It was New Years day here and it seems like people really were excited here. Everyone seemed to make a big deal out of it and they all celebrated by eating food. In the morning we ended up going to the home of President Guillermo (a member of our branch but also the 1st Counselor of President Petersen in this mission). We stayed there for a long portion of the morning and ate lots of food. After that, at about 12:30 we headed back to the apartment to do some of our normal things, but Elder Perez decided to sleep until like 3:30... After he finally got up we went to the church because our usual fellowshipper Dan Solis was being set apart as a missionary. He was super awesome and a great fellowshipper to have. It's too bad he's leaving but I know he'll actually be a great missionary. We ended up eating after that and I did lots of scripture study and things in the apartment.

Wednesday - 

In the morning Elder Butler and I did our laundry. We were intending on having district council afterword at 9:00 but Elder Vaea said it was cancelled for whatever reason.. After that nothing happened the entire time because of laziness. We ended up having our interviews with President Petersen at 5:30. I ended up making President Petersen very aware of the situation that the Ballesteros elders are in and kind of told him about the relationship between Elder Perez and I. He gave me some advice and told be to keep trying with him, and kind of gave me  "Kill him with love" piece of advice. Also later after we all returned home after the interviews we went to sleep. But both Elder Butler, Vaea and I all woke up in the middle of the night at the same time super sick. Elder Butler and I kinda threw up and all 3 of us needed to go to the bathroom. I think the place we ate at with President made us all sick.

Thursday - 

Thursday was also a moderately useless day. Luckily though, we did have our district council. In the morning we had it and I had been assigned to teach. I taught about teaching by the spirit and how if you're not teaching by the spirit, it's not of God. After that, the APs swang by our house and gave us a new washer because the other one was broken and for some reason our apartment had an old beaten washer when all the other apartments got new ones.

Later in the day all four of us elders headed to Allacapan to stay the night with other missionaries. Our zone conference was on Friday in Aparri and we needed to get a little closer so when we woke up the next morning we wouldn't be late because Aparri is far away.

Friday - 

The next day we woke up at 4:00 in the morning. There was one shower and eight elders in the same building, so we needed to wake up early enough for everyone to shower, but also early enough to leave early in the morning to travel to Aparri and get to zone conference on time. We ended up getting there on time and early enough to also go to Jollibees again. After that we had our zone conference. It consisted of two main topics. Number one, a long, well deserved may I say, chastisement from President Petersen about obedience in the mission. After that, Sister Petersen talked a lot about budgeting and not wasting your money on things and what the mission funds should be used for. The conference seemed very applicable. 

After conference, we had an usually long painful trip back home. The trip actually took so long that we couldn't make it all the way back home and had to stay in Allacapan another night.

Saturday - 

In the morning, we headed home from Allacapan. Another fairly unproductive day except for we did end up going and giving one lesson. We shared one lesson with my recent convert Roldan Gaoat and some other investigators in Fugu. It went pretty well. After that, not much work was done again. We ended up going back to Ballesteros and hanging around the church for a while and talking to some members and things. I can actually slowly feel my Tagalog improving. I can more fully communicate with people than previously. By no means am I fluent but I can definitely feel the Gift of Tongues kicking in a little more. It took LOTS of prayer really. Also I've felt the companionship of Elder Perez and I slightly improve as well. It's also by no means near perfect, but it's slowly improving which is nice. Hopefully it continues that way.

Sunday - 

We had our first 2 hour session of church on Sunday. It was kinda weird but I really could see the benefit of study at home. I'm sure it's a little more applicable when you're actually with your family and can read and discuss scriptures and doctrine together, but I really like to have personal study anyways, so I learned a lot from Come Follow Me. Also, after church we taught a lesson to the girlfriend of some member who leaves on a mission in February which went alright as well. After that we ended up going to the home of a less active family and teaching a lesson as well. That's the most work we've done in a while. At 4:30 we ended up going back to the chapel to watch the Philippines Area broadcast. It was basically an hour and a half of three members of the Seventy speaking in English to people that don't understand it that well. It was kind of funny actually too because it had some really scripted sounding "conversations" where they asked Filipino families how they felt about the area plan and the Come Follow Me program, then the families responded with exact memorized responses with perfectly put together English grammar with their accents. It was kind of humorous really. After that, we headed back to the apartment. I ended up doing my Come Follow Me Sunday studies and then my personal study as well. That 

was the gist of the day. Also during all my studying I found a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson that Heber J. Grant quoted frequently. I've heard it before but it was awesome to here it again. The quote says "That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased."

In my mission so far I've learned many things, but one thing that I have a great testimony of so far is that of scripture study. When I say scripture study, I mean study of both modern and ancient scripture. Sometimes when things get difficult scripture study is a source of a kind of outlet and peace. As I continue to read scripture I continue to learn things that I didn't even recognize before. As I read, I find answers to concerns of investigators, myself, and I also find answers to problems that I didn't even know I had. I know that scripture study along with the influence of the Holy Ghost can be one of our most valuable resources. I invite all of you to more fully study the word of God and I know that it will draw you closer to Christ. In 1 Nephi 10:19 it says "For he that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, as well in these times as in times of old, and as well in times of old as in times to come; wherefore, the course of the Lord is one eternal round." I know that this scripture is true and that through the power of the Holy Spirit we can know all things that are expedient in God if we have sincere faith in Him and His Son. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen.

Pictures - 

the appetizing meal of Elder Butler at Jollibee's, the New Year's celebration at President Guillermo's house, a picture of me preparing to fight the militant NPA group, a picture of how you feel when you express concern to the mission president but he only  responds with "don't worry you'll be blessed" (the picture of me committing Seppuku),  and then a picture of how I used the cardboard box I got as a shelf to organize my stuff.

Pasko na talaga

Overall this week has been pretty good because it was Christmas and all, but not very productive seeing as the companions of Elder Butler and I aren't super excited to do the whole missionary work thing. Anyways, it was really good to talk to my family on Christmas and the little amount work we actually did do was good too. Also excuse the potentially poor quality of this email because we're rushed today.

Tuesday -

Overall, it was a moderately sweaty Christmas. The Christmas morning started with a great time of washing all our clothes because on our p-day it rained the whole day so we couldn't wash outside. During that time, the companions of Elder Butler and I went off and called there families (and friends and did all manner of "bawal" things) at the computer shop. They also took both phones like usual so we couldn't really contact them either when they were done. Elder Butler and I just ended up doing our laundry, snagging something to eat, and talking a while. Eventually we all went to the lunch appointment but it turns out that the nanay that invited us wasn't prepared, which is fine though because we had another appointment scheduled for a very close time anyways too. We just ended up going to the house of Tatay Bundalian, a member, and celebrated a birthday/Christmas party. We ended the day at the house of our fellowshipper Dan and had a dinner there. Overall, the whole day wasn't very "Christmasy" despite the claim of celebrating Christmas from September-January here.

Wednesday - 

On Wednesday Elder Butler and I called home to our families. We were allowed to call home any day from the 25-29 and we decided the 26th because it was Christmas back home. It was really awesome to see all my family, including Caylor even though he's also out on his mission in Des Moines, Iowa. It was good to tell them exactly how everything really is out here, and definitely a lot easier to explain in words rather than in emails. After doing that for a while, we all headed down to the house of Nanay Mabilis for our missed lunch appointment that she rescheduled. It was good as well. The day ended with us going to a cultural show held by the youth at the church.

Thursday -

The day started out with district council. It was a pretty typical district council as you might imagine. After that, we helped clean the church for a very long time because it was left an unusually huge mess after the cultural show. There was trash everywhere and it was a disaster really. I mean the church isn't really always that clean if I'm going to be honest, but it was abnormally bad. After that, we ate and basically, our companions (Elder Perez and Vaea) slept for a really long time... which resulted in a lot of personal study. Also probably at about 5:00 the sky turned really pink. It was super weird because the only other time it did that was before the typhoon, but nothing crazy ended up happening.

Friday - 

We had our district exchanges. Elder Vaea being the district leader told us that he and Perez were going on exchanges together and Elder Butler and I were too. As you can imagine, this was the most productive day of the week really. We ended up going to Elder Butler's area and teaching three lessons while everyone else we tried to go to wasn't home. So we ended up doing a lot of walking and only teaching a few lessons. It was also funny because both Elder Butler and I need to work on our Tagalog for sure, so it was weird that we went on exchanges together. Overall, even though we couldn't communicate perfectly it actually felt like a good spiritual and effective day. Also, during one of our lessons I basically said "Excuse us for our Tagalog" and a recent convert said "It's okay Elder Vaea doesn't really have great Tagalog either." Which is funny because he's been out here much longer than both of us and he and Elder Butler go out and work together but neither of them have very perfect Tagalog.

Also I found a good scripture in Alma 8:19-20 for getting meal appointments with members.

Saturday -

The morning we ended up doing some service in a rice field. We ended up wading in water/mud that sometimes was like 2 feet deep and planting tons of rice for 3 hours. Seeing as we weren't very experienced it also was really slow and hurt our backs. It was kinda fun, but also kind of gross because we had to go barefoot in this brown water with a bunch of snails, and spiders that crawled on the surface. We ended up getting super muddy and tired. It was awful but fun. I'm glad I did it, but I don't think it's something that I need to do again.

After that, we ended up having our baptisms at the church. Four people ended up being baptized. They're all people Elder Viador and I taught before he left, but they just ended up being baptized a little after he got transferred, so Elder Perez ended up getting some "free" baptisms. The first was brother Roldan Gaoat. He's someone we've taught for a while. He did have some problems with the Word of Wisdom that we did get sorted out. We also baptized his adopted daughter named Chu-Chay (Marimar is her real name) who's 10 years old. Along with those two we baptized a 14 year old named Mark Anthony Matas. We taught him all the lessons with Dan-Dan (Roldan) because they live on the same street and he is actually an employee of Dan's. The final person we baptized was named Mark Wayne Sengson. He basically was a member of a slightly less active family and just never ended up getting baptized before. He's 9 and we just taught him the lessons and he was already ready for baptism because he's already attended church and everything. We ended up having my friend and our fellowshipper Dan Solis baptize them.

There's this whole weird big story about that actually. So Elder Perez asked me "Can I baptize your converts?" and I asked "Why? We usually let them choose" and he became very offended. Anyways, on the day we went on exchanges he claimed to have asked Dan-Dan who he wants to baptize him. He said Dan-Dan chose him (which is highly unlikely since Dan-Dan doesn't even really know him) and he ended up calling the branch president claiming that I wouldn't let him baptize the converts. After this feat of drama he just decided to have Dan our fellowshipper baptize them, because if he couldn't baptize them himself, he didn't want me too either. I know that's probably a little confusing story, but lets just say it has been more than difficult with my current companion.

Sunday -

It was a pretty typical Sunday. We went to church, ate lunch, and then did a small amount of work after. We just ended up going to the home of Dan-Dan in Fugu.

Monday -

Which is today.. Basically we need to withdraw money from Aparri today and wash clothes. That's the schedule.

Pictures - 

pictures from a Christmas Eve meal, picture of Christmas day meal, pictures from the cultural show, pictures of the creepy pink typhoon sky, pictures from exchanges, a "spooky" cemetery we found on exchanges, cacti, the beach, baptismal pictures, and pictures with our fellowshipper Dan who's leaving for his mission on Wednesday this next week. Also some pictures from the rice field.

Christmas Call

On Christmas night we were able to talk to both Caylor and Brodie at the same time. It was a little tricky scheduling a time that worked for all of us.It was actually December 26 for Brodie and Christmas night for the rest of us that live in the USA. Brodie and Elder Bulter had to get up very early to make sure that they got to the internet cafe and got the only two computers that had a camera that worked so that we could see his beautiful face when he called on google hangouts. It was fun to see the Filipino kids hovering over Brodie trying to figure out what he was doing (no personal space needed there), we also heard dogs barking and honking horns throughout the call. It was great to be together virtually as a family. My favorite part was our family prayer. Only two more calls home for Caylor and three more for Brodie, but who is counting?