The Storm of the Spirit

Zone Conference

This week was a crazy week. On Wednesday we took a bus to an area called San Lorenzo. it is close to Laoag. We slept at the elder's apartment. It was a mansion!!! It was sooo nice! It has AC and two stories, 2 bathrooms (with showers)! Elder Pacala and I were pretty jelous! haha! We slept there with 8 other elders.On Thursday morning we got up to go to zone conference in Laoag. It was really good Our president gave a training on getting investigators to talk more than we do. It was all about scriptures and asking good questions. We learned a lot and we have used  what we learned in our lessons. We have seen a big difference in our lessons. I think the biggest thing that I learned this week is that missionary does not mean teacher. haha. it means that we are the ones who get up at 6:30, walk,and open our mouths in front of other people. I learned this week that Heavenly Father, Christ and the Holy Ghost are the ones that should be teaching. We are just there to help our investigators understand that the scriptures are the words of Christ and what they are feeling is the Holy Ghost. I have learned that this is the best way for investigators to gain a testimony of what we are called to share. We had a reacent convert express to us how she has known missionaries who at every appointment would endlessly argue or explain doctrines but, the recent convert explained that this only frustrated her and her family. They didn't want to do what the missionary said because they felt everything he said, though true, was only coming from him. She told us that they have learned so much more as missionaries used scriptures and bore there testimonies. She also explained that they felt more prompted to do as the scriptures said.

Typhoon Again

This week was also crazy because we had another bagyo(storm/typhoon). It rained all Friday and we were drenched by the time we returned to the apartment. On Saturday, the typhoon came. Our president texted us saying "stay in your apartments! DO NOT WORK!" so the whole day we just sat in the apartment and studied. We had a Brownout (blackout-not sure why they call it a Brownout) so we studied by candlelight the whole time. It poured buckets and the wind made it look almost like the rain was falling horizontally! haha. A bunch of trees got knocked down and a bunch of branches fell around our apartment. We were very blessed though, our roof did not get dammaged at all. The only thing that happened to us is that a tree broke and is now leaning on our apartment, but nothing broke.

We were supposed to text our district leader every hour about our situation but we had run out of Load(min/text) on friday so we just waited for our DL to call us. On Saturday our president let every missionary eat then go to bed early!!!!! We went to bed at 7!!!! hahaha 11 hours of sleep!!! It was Awesome!!!haha!

On Sunday, the rain had stopped. we went to church on the way we saw a bunch of trees that had fallen over and a ton of broken branches on the ground. Everyone's houses seemed fine. We still didn't have any power and we also ran out of Gas! So we cooked our lunch on a small fire we made outside with a few kind of dry sticks! haha it was like we were camping! We got power again at night and we were able to use our rice cooker to cook our food(rice and ulam).

IT was a crazy experience. We heard that our district leader's apartment got flooded chest deep and they evacuated to a members home! I have never been more thankful for our small bug infested apartment! haha!

Today we were able to buy groceries and we will buy gas later so we are good now. We have also visited most of the members in San Juan and they seem fine as well. We are very blessed that no one was flooded and that all their houses are still fine. We were so happy to see most of them still go to church on Sunday even though there was debri everywhere.

Two Typhoons and Some Good Sleep

Committed Investigators

this week was good. we have still been doing finding. we went back to the family i told you about. only the father was able to be taught. last time we left a book of mormon and an assignment to read the introduction. he showed us that he had read past the introduction and was currently reading the testimony of Joseph Smith! We were so suprised!  before during most of the lessons he hadn't participated too much! he had just sat quietly and listened. we then taught him more about the book of mormon. we bore our testimonies that it is true and that he will recieve an answer that it is true as he reads it and prays to know wether it is true. He seemed to be excited to read it! It is too bad we only were able to visit them once.

Typhoons

we were going to return on saturday to commit them to comming to church, but our president texted us. he said that all the missionaries in the mission had to return to thier apartments by 5 that day because there was a Typhoon coming. so that is what we did. the APs and the zone leaders texted us a bunch always asking if we were doing ok. haha. I was kind of excited i had never experienced a typhoon before on my mission. we just studied in our apartment while we waited. not much happened. it rained a little. the next day we went to church. None of our investgators we had invited to church came! not even the ones who have baptismal dates coming up. we had 2 brand new investigators come to church. One we had actually taught once. she lives way out in one of our farthest areas. one of our Reacent converts is friends with her and brought her. the other we had never met before. she is the daughter of a young couple that we taught a few times. our BML brought her. We were super blessed that they came! we will deffinetly focus on them and their families this week. in sacrament Elder Iosefa (zoneleader), Elder yuson, and I gave talks. I talked about endurance. haha i am still no good at giving talks!haha! but i am grateful for the experience. I feel like i have gotten over the nervousness, that i used to get before and while i gave talks, a little bit. Just wait ill be a pro when i give my homecoming talk haha!

Sleep

after church we had to go directly back to our apartment because of another typhoon that was coming. so we just studied the whole day. only around 8pm it started to get windy and started to rain. we lost power around 9. our president said we could go to bed at 9:30! YES hahahahah! i think i slept through the storm. haha. in the morning i was dissapointed. only a couple twigs had fallen from the trees. i was expecting a big storm. haha. Everyone had seemed really worried.

More Cleaning

we are still looking for a new apartment. there were elders in the apartment before me. they just NEVER cleaned. Elder Pacala was super suprised when i started cleaning everything. he just finished his training and he told me he never saw his trainer cleaning, other than sweeping. so i have been teaching him what an apartment should be like. today we cleaned the kitchen. Gack! hahah there were some smells in there that i don't ever want to smell again! It took us about 2 hours but it is starting to look and smell better.

Growing Into a Man

Referrals in Rafaro

This week we had a lot of refferals in a place called Rafaro. It is far away in the middle of the bukid(rice fields) so we have been doing a lot of walking! haha! Every night we get home and I drop onto my chair and try not to fall asleep! haha! It is good though! I like feeling tired it makes me feel like I am growing and improving not just my body but my mind and skills as well. haha! Each day it gets easier and easier.

Finding Families

This week we found a the Paraon family. We have been teaching the father(Jose) and his daughter(nevalyn). They are super kind. We are working on getting their mother into the lessons but she seems to always be doing something when we go there. when we first found them both me and elder pacala felt that they would progress and we decided to focus on their family. They are very receptive and humble. However, as we have been teaching them it has suprised both elder pacala and I how much satan does not want them to know the gospel. Each time we have tried to teach them it seems like the lessons are always interupted and the spirit lost. We were going to teach them the restoration and commit them to baptism but a big group of teenage boys showed up near where we were teaching and became very noisy.

The Devil Cannot Stop Us

This experience reminds me of the story of Joseph Smith. when Joseph Smith was taken from his home at night and tarred and feathered but he still whent to preside at the church meeting the next day. There he told the congregation something like "the devil can not force the prophet to do anything"--- I know that there are many forces against this work and this area and every area and mission to stop the work from progressing but the devil can not stop us from doing anything if we have the faith to follow Christ. I pray everyday that I and our investigators gain this faith. I feel like there are so many people here that are prepared but they lack the faith to give up family relations,work,to endure trials, and give up vices.

New Area

This week Pres. Barrientos told us to start looking for a new apartment. he told us that he wants to put 2 more missionaries into San Juan! haha we have been looking for another apartment and we may have found one but we need to wait for the owner to come back from manila. hopefully this next transfer our president will open the new area in San Juan. I am excited! haha!

to answer your questions:

1.my week in the BUG hotel has been great we recently have found new and different kinds of friends living there also. haha maybe I will send pictures... it is actually becoming a lot more clean. This week I started on the kitchen.

2.Our branch in cabugao has about a 200 attendance but from San Juan only about 30 attend.

3.Mom you don't need to send anything i am doing alright but if you do don't send razors, bug spray/killer, cleaning suplies(we already have plenty). don't send the taco seasoning packets (I get sick everytime we use them). maybe just send stuff I can give to kids or members.

4. I feel like i have only gotten here! I still have so much to learn! in addition to tagalog, I have started to learn Ilocano it is basically the same grammar but almost all the words are different! haha! (Mabisin Nakon!- Im Hungry! Mangan tayon!-lets eat! haha)

Adventures in a new location

New Companion…Great! and New Apartment…Not so great… 
So when we first got to our area we jumped out of the bus and pulled our suitcases out onto the side of the road. my companion, He is a shortfunny guy who kind of sounds like hermit the frog.haha. he is philippino and only speaks tagalog, lead me onto a gravel path between some large houses. it seemed like as we kept going they kept getting nicer and nicer i was just getting excited about our apartment, and then i saw it the last house on the path. Its a concrete cubo hut! (a shack with leaves for a cealing) WHAT!? haha! but it only got better. haha. when we got inside i found that it was 3 rooms:bedroom/studies, a bathroom, and a kitchen. it is super stuffy and there were spiders everywhere!  there was a musty smell in the whole apartment. I started cleaning right after we got back that evening. i havent stopped since. every time i get i start sweeping cobwebs and killing spiders. It was almost worse than cleaning the sheranians dungeon! haha! in our apartment i have seen Ants, cocroaches, spiders as big as my hand, and rats! haha... i wondered the first night how i was going to survive! haha! since last tuesday the appartment is starting to look a lot better. this morning we tackled the bathroom and a little bit in the kitchen. it is still far from clean though. today we are going to buy a lot of cleaning supplies and pest killer.

other than the apartment i have really liked this area. the members are really nice and seem proactive and excited about doing missionary work. we are the only 2 missionaries in San Juan and we and the members go to Cabugao about 15 min bus ride for church. they are super dilligent and even though it is far a lot of members from san juan still go to church.

Our area is really big it goes all the way to the base of the mountains to the sea. I haven't even seen a quarter of it yet. from what elder pacala told me he also hasn't seen most of the area. his trainer just took them to the same places all the time. since tuesday we have been doing a lot of finding.becaous we only have a few investigators and most of the investigators we had were not progressing.

our area is also really pretty. it feels like i have finally come to the philippines. even though the people here are more rich than those in aparri. there are a lot of trees and it is a lot cleaner. there is almost no trash.

Who is Your Hero? - Elder Hickey

Holidays

This past week there were two philippinno holidays. Aquino's day-some famous leader who helped free the Philippines and then today actually is Hero's day. They celebrate all the Philippino heros. One hero called Lapu Lapu, looks like a native American, but he has a big sword and a african looking shield. He aparently fought against the Spaniards with an army that only had swords,shields,bow,etc. whereas the Spaniards had guns. He ended up killing the Spaniards leader Magellan and kicking the Spaniards out.

Because of the holidays most people didn't have school on thurs-mon. so many of our investigators went to visit their families in different parts of the Philippines, so we didn't get too many investigators to come to church/progress this week. We did have one(Jerwin Ladran) who traveled back sunday morning to go to church. haha he was so tired! he looked like he was going to fall asleep in our gospel doctrine class.

Transferred

Transfers are tomorrow. I found out yesterday that I will be transferring but I didn't find out, until today, who my new companion would be or where my next area would be. We need to wake up tomorrow at 3am so that we can get to where the bus stop is at 5am! haha we will have to go out  and find/hire a multicab driver willing to get up that early! haha 

My new companion is Elder Pacala He is actually in the same batch as Elder Pingol. so he just finished his training also. Our area is in San Juan. Almost as far as I could have been transfered!  I have heard that It has more spanish culture there and the architecture in some places is really old and pretty. I am excited but I am also sad that I have to leave elder Pingol and all of our investigators.I am also a little bit worried about our area, But I know elder Pingol will take care of it. He is 10 times better than I was when I finished my training. Elder Pingol's new companion will be Elder Marsh!!! My mtc companion! haha! I feel like all the trainers are just switching trainees!

Some Pictures

Some of the Basics

The Weather

The weather is actually really hot and dry! It is wierd because it is supposed to be the rainy season. However, this week it is supposed to rain 6 out of seven days.  It would be nice to get some cloud cover!  We had a zone activity this morning. We played basketball,volleyball,and had a waterballoon fight! haha it was fun but I got a bit sunburnt.

Investigators

Our investigators are all still doing good. The father of the Belina family is down to a goal of 0 cigarettes per day. we taught them on Saturday night, but they didnt come to church! We don't know what happened! We are going there tonight. I hope they are ok, they are not the type of people to lie/make false promises. We think they might have had an emergency.  

Our other investigators are also doing good. Most of the investigators I told you about last week came to church. Our area is progressing. We have found a couple more investigators with really good potential. The next two transfers in this area will be exciting! I am so excited for this branch!

Meals

Yes we eat rice every meal! I never really apreciated rice before my mission. When I first got here I didn't like rice too much and it kind of weirded me out that we had to eat it at every meal. I have really learned to love it over my mission! I have found out that even when you only have a little bit of ulam(real food) you can add a plateful of rice and it is just as good AND filling! haha! It makes the groceries a lot cheeper!...Yes, we have to be careful about what we drink. It is nice because they have water purifying stations everywhere here. Most people buy their drinking water from them so usually we are fine. But we usually don't drink anything but softdrinks if we are outside of the apartment... I know its not healthy but that is what people always give us.

So Happy to Be a Missionary

This week was really good for us. a lot of our investigators are progressing including the Belina family, Sister Maricon, bro Jerwin, and and new investigator Jerico Perez.

the father in the belina family is down to 2 cigg. or less every day. he has a huge desire to quit now. we explained last week that we would want to baptized the family together and because of his addiction we would need to reschedule their baptism a couple weeks late. I think this made him realize that he is holding his whole family back with his addiction. The time before last we were expecting him to have done our commitment of only 3 ciggs. but he suprized us with only two. we were super happy because it was really hard for him to go from 4 to 3. before we even commited him to go to 2 he did it. They have a great family and want to go to the temple to be cealed as a family.

Sister Maricon is the one that lives with the member. she is about 22 and they have a super cute 1year old kid. whenever we teach them he always shakes our hand first and has learned to call us EDE(elder) haha! sister maricon right now is working on getting married to her Live-in(the member) he just returned from manila so now they can get the papers they need to be able to get a marriage licence. she has a baptismal date on sept 27 so we are trying to speed them up a little bit. maybe we will have the marriage then the bapt on the same day... haha! Bro. Jerwin is not her husband but a college student that lives near her. he is a little bit feminine so they became good friends. he is also progressing toward his baptismal date.(same as maricon.) We are afraid though that if maricon isn't married and bapt by their bapt date he will be too shy/scared to be baptized. he is super smart and always has really deep questions which we love answering but he is a bit shy.

Jerico Perez is a new investigator that elder pingol and elder benaly found last wednesday when we went on exchanges. He is a college student also. he used to be a investigator a long time ago in a different city(he is only living in aparri as he goes to school.) He is super humble and sincere! he is also hardworking. We have found that he has a special recepetibility to the spirit. we have only taught him 3 times but after two lessons he came to church and had a bapt. date. this last time we taught him he asked about fasting,tything, and he asked about deacons,teachers,and priests. he was interested to know why at such young ages kids become deacons,teachers,and priests. haha He used to be a catholic so he is used to older men holding those positions. the question kind of threw me back i had never thought about it. I had always just known that you became a deacon at 12 and a teacher at 14 and a priest at 16. haha. He also expressed a concern of his. His parents really don't want him to be baptized and he is afraid to tell them that he has started listening to the missionaries again and that he has a bapt. date. we invited him to pray, to fast (we also explained how,why,etc), and to just bear his testimony to his parents. he is so faithful! I know that he will be able to help his parents understand. I learn from him about humility,sincerity and a desire to follow christ every time we teach him.

the last couple weeks i have felt soo blessed! i have been happier than i ever have been on the mission! I love our investigators so much! we only have 2 more weeks in this transfer and there is a good chance that i will transfer. i will miss all of our investigators so much! If i transfer i am worried that i will get super area sick! Haha! whatever happens it will be ok though. I think that Elder Pingol will train after this transfer. he is super good at teaching. I know all of are investigators will be fine and he will help them continue progressing he is so much better prepared to train than i was when i started training him! haha! I feel like i have learned so much the last 2 transfers! I feel like i have grown up! haha! I feel happier than ever before in my life. the days are flying by! I am scared how close i am getting to one year! as The character in Rocket Man said.... "ITS GOING TO FAST" haha!