Another Packed Easter Week

Working with the Members

we have a ton of great members who work with us all the time. this week a RM came with us to work. he was super good. he knew all the doctrine and knew how to support our teaching. he was great. we also had a couple of youth who are preparing for thier missions come with us. i love working with the members! they make it so much easier for our investigators, RC, and LAs progress. we saw the evidence of  that when a bunch of the YSA who went around to the less active youth this week. there was one reacent convert who has also gone less active (paolo) that they visited. then with our BML we were also able to visit him. then yesterday he came to church! it has probably been more than 6 weeks since he last came to church!

General Conference

to answer some of your questions. we haven't been able to watch general conference yet. but they will have the CD by next week so we are getting excited to see it! it seems like the last general conference was just last week! haha time is flying!!!!! it seems like the longer i get on my mission the more and more i love being here, teaching the gospel and helping others come closer to Christ. It makes me sad sometimes that i am already more than halfway done with my mission! but it is good because it just makes me want to work even harder!

Easter

Easter Here they call it Holy week or Semana Sta. basically they celebrate thursday-sunday. for each day ( i forgot thursdays,Good friday, Black saturday, and i also forgot sundays name) mostly all they do is go to church, pray, walk around praying to all the statues that they have put up around the cities. they also made big stages out of tree branches for skits of christs crucifiction. h

Another Baptism and Getting Locked out

other than that this week we had a bunch fun. the sisters in our district had a baptism. i was the suprize baptizer again! so i got to wear the ninja baptizing suit again ahaha! also both our bikes are starting to break/ parts are falling off! haha! we also accidentaly locked our  only keys inside the apartment once! haha. we used a long stick which we put through the window to snag the keys on our desk! haha! i will try to send some pictures.

1. Locked out of apartment

1. kung fu with Brian Salvador

2. some guys burning off the hair of goat to prepare it to be cooked!

Kung Fu Baptism Suits

Rambutan
the fruit with "red spiky exterior that you remove before eating the white flesh before removing the hard nut inside". is called Rambutan! it is super good! you should deffinetly look out for it the next time you go to a asian market,  just to try it. haha. they are one of my favorite fruits. haha.

Rapacon got baptized
Sister Rapacon... did get baptized!!! it was a great baptism. haha. the member that was assigned to baptize her forgot so last minute they asked me to baptize her instead. haha. i had to use one of those kung fu baptizing suits because we didn't have time to go back to the apartment. haha. they almost didn't have one big enough for me! haha! i will send you a picture! haha. after the baptism we also had a branch FHE. it was also really good. allot of members showed up and it made sister rapacon's baptism a little more special. haha.

Bikes
this week was also really cool because we got BIKES! again. haha!!! but because Vigan doesn't really have any dirt roads our bikes are the nice street/racing bikes with the thin wheels. haha. we have been having a lot of fun on them! haha! they are like the average philippine bikes after one or two days pieces start falling off. haha. one of my back break pads fell off and elder hoopes peddles fell of too. haha. we are going to fix them today.

Pictures of Baptism and bikes

Good news of the Gospel and people getting baptized!

Zone Conference
this week was really good. we had zone conference on tuesday. so we went again to laoag. haha. It was super good. our Pres. Barrientos gave traingings on having the spirit with us. i learned a lot! most of it was about obedience. after i saw my past compainios. (E. payne, felices, pingol, Hontanosas, Marsh and Pacala.) they are all doing well. except for maybe elder pingol(my trainee) he recently fell off a trycycle and hurt his head and neck really bad. he told me he had to wear a neck brace for a while. haha! but he is doing better now. haha.

Rapacon
also this week nanay Rapacon got interviewed for her baptism! she passed! wahooo! haha. she has been an investigator for almost 30 years! haha! she always new that this church is true but she was always afraid to be baptised because of her nieghbors. haha. not that they are bad people but she was afraid that they would treat her differently/gossip about her. but she is soo ready to be baptised. she is one of the best people i have ever met on my mission. ever since she was young she has been very religious and has always relied on Christ to help her through her trials. she has no problems with Wow, LOC, or any other commandment. haha. all the members are really excited that she will finally be baptized! haha! and it is because of them that she finally decided to be baptized. haha! so now we are excited for saturday. we will send you a picture of it.

Exams
other than that it is summer here. the school years here are all about to end. allot of the members and allot of our investigators are studying for thier exams this week and allot are graduating so everyone seems busy. haha. it makes it challenging for us to get fellowshipers and teach our investigators. haha. but we can do it. one thing that we were taught at zone conference is that we shouldn't just work hard but to work smart. it reminds me of the story of the wood cutter with a dull ax. haha.

Time in Manila

to answer questions:
1. our area is mostly suburb 2.we dont usually sport contact.(only allowed in the morning-its tuff to get up! haha) 3. something i learned about in personal study: i read Alma 30. this is where Korihor is brought before Alma. Even though i have read this chapter many times i was reminded of the testimony of Alma. He tells Korihor that all things testify that there is a God. and rebukes Korihor for teaching otherwise. this chapter came at the perfect time. one of our investigators seems to be trying to teach us that the BOM isn't true. even though i know it is and he couldn't convince me otherwise, i will admit it was a little frustrating. when i read Alma 30 i think it was alma's patience that i have most learned from. this church is true, the book of mormon is true. we shouldn't get frustrated with those who have yet to learn that. no matter how many times or how many of them say that it isn't true it will never change the fact that it is true.

Hot Showers in Manila
thanks for the emails! this week was pretty crazy actually haha! i think it was tuesday when the travel elder texted and told me+ all the foriegn missionaries going home from june to sept. he told us we all had to take a suprize trip to MANILA!!!!!! haha! it was so we could fix some things for our visas. we took a plane of friday in the afternoon. it was a ton of fun. haha we got to stay in a really nice hotel with good food and...... HOT SHOWERS!!!!!! hahaaha! it was soooo nice! haha! i will never forget how blessed we are in america! before i never really apreciated most of the things that we have including (aircon,warm water, light) I will send you some pictures of manilla. we got back saturday afternoon.

Prince
Manila was super fun but it made it really hard to teach our investigators this week. we lost a lot of proselyting time this week. even though we hardly got to teach we still saw some progress in our area. Prince came to church again. he is getting really close to his baptismal date. his only concern is that we still need to finish his lessons and he lives super far away. the only way we can get to him is if a member takes us to him in a car or tryce. so this week we are going to do all we can to schedule members to take us. haha.

Manila pictures