Well mom i dont even know where to start with my week. Its been so awesome/ its flown!!!! its crazy how fast it is going. We are teaching a bunch of awesome families right now and they are all starting to progress! we had atleast one member from each family at church yesterday and in every case it was the father. Its just been a ton of blessings mom its so crazy. Man i love all the people we are teaching right now so much. Its going to be SOOOO hard leaving them mom its going to stink. Just yesterday we were going around and it had to be the biggest anti-trunky day ever! it was crazy. We had some awesome lessons, and the best one was with the father and his daughter; that, at first, i was sure were never going to progress. Then after a series of some of the best and most clear lessons i have ever taught to anyone, they started to soften their hearts, and now, they are starting to develop some really strong testimonies. Yesterday we taught the plan of salvation and where we go after this life. The lesson was incredible. Everything just went aweosme and they understood it all which brought a lot of questions up, that we were able to answer. So the whole thing just made complete sense. At the close of the lesson we had the father say the prayer, and it was one of the most humble but spiritually led prayers i have heard on my mission. Just really sincere. Im not read to come home mom. Im going to miss those moments soooo much. I dont know if ive ever felt the spirit so strong. It was just awesome. The whole week has just been like that. THe week FLEW by man i couldnt believe it. We continue to build up our teaching pool but all hours of our day are pretty much full at this point so its awesome. Man i couldnt express to you how happy i am to be wehre i am right now. I love ya mom. Im excited to see you in a few week, but for now, i have a TON more work to still do. Take care and good luck with state.

Four More Weeks

Dude that is SOOOO sick! 34 yards??? that is awesome dad. Sounds like you defiantly did your homework this week. Matt sounds like he is still tearing it up too. Man im jacked. i hope you guys go all the way, I thought about this game a lot this week haha,
kinda hard to stay concentrated on the work lately. Im doing my best though. We added two more dates this week and we now have 11 investigators with dates and 13 went to church yesterday. God has been blessing us with a ton of success. The weeks have just been FLYING by too i cant believe it! Man im not ready to come home though. im loving it out here.
We had to go to this career workshop last wednesday and i got to talk and visit a little with all my batch. They are studs man. Its going to be hard saying by to everyone. Good thing thats still a few weeks away.
Well i dont know what else to tell ya. The work is going AMAZING and i couldnt ask for more.

Man let me tell you i am NOT ready to go home haha. We'll see how it goes but for now its like the farthest thing from my mind. I know its unavoidable but its really not registering to me right now that its getting closer and closer. Im pretty sure its just going to sneak up on me and just going to happen. But im not to worried about it right now. We have so much awesome work right now mom its SICK!!! im so excited for our work. We have like 6 awesome families we are teaching right now which makes up about 25 investigators that are all starting to progress. We'll see as we start to get a little farther into it but for now things are looking good. We have 9 with dates and should be able to give quite a few more in these coming weeks. Im so excited. Its really keeping us busy and we only plan on adding to all this success! Im loving the work right now. Im on the last chapter of Jesus the Christ and the book has been one my favorites ever. Its such a sick book and ive learned SOOOO much from reading it and its caused me to ask a lot more questions, and, consequently, learn a lot more about this gospel. Man i love it! i love how it all makes so much sense and how as i keep studying it, i just come to love it more and more. It really gets me pumped about the work, and by time our studies are done, im so ready to get back out and work again! we had some really really cool lessons this week with some investigators. We are starting to use a lot of analogies in our lessons to make it more interesting and make it easier to understand. Its been effective. Its pretty sick and its been way fun and successful. As you can see the work is going aseosme. Id love to tell you all about it but i only ahve a limited amount of time. Basta the work is going awesome, my own testimony is growing so much, and im not at all ready for this to be over :). Love you mom. THanks again for all your support and for the awesome letters!!!

THE 24TH IS A POPULAR BIRTHDAY!

TRAINING ELDER LANDEEN


Sunday, November 6, 2011
The 24th was a Very Popular Birth Date
We had four missionaries who celebrated their birthdays on October 24. One was serving far away and the other three happen to be serving within an hour of the mission home. Elder Riner approached President about the possibility of the birthday elders coming in for a special birthday lunch. Since their birthday was on P-Day, President thought that was a great idea. He asked the elders what they'd like to eat and they quickly said enchiladas. Now making enchiladas in the Philippines is no easy task. First it's very difficult to find tortillas (but we did) next there is no enchilada sauce for sale (but we found Emerils favorite on the Internet) next its hard to find good cheese (but we had recently been to Manila and brought back a suitcase full) and nobody sells refried beans (but Sister Shaner brought some dehydrated ones from home). So we didn't have any excuse to say no. President made his famous Mexican rice and I made the enchiladas. I made my mom's famous applesauce chocolate chip cake for dessert. Each birthday elder brought his companion with him so we had 6 for lunch. It was a lot of fun. I can honestly say they all left stuffed to the brim!

Anyways, our week was pretty sweet. We have been working as hard as we can but it has rained everyday this week i think. Literally its been pouring all week and we come home soaked to the bone just freezing. Its just kinda annoying cause no one that doesnt know you wants to let you in, and everyone that you do makes you come in, but your soaked so you feel bad. The people here are so nice though. If you dont have a umbrella they make you take theirs, even if you dont want it or you just met them for the first time and there is a good chance that we might night be able to bring it back. Its so cool, theyre just the nicest people ever. My comp and I have defiantly been blessed with some progress this week, and we got a lot of new people to church for the first time and we have a lot of people progressing right now. It sucks cause im not going to be able to see any of them get baptized but that doesnt really matter to me, basta they get baptized! We've been trying really hard to get our ward active in missionary work too. ... We've been having a ton of fun with the work and i cant BELIEVE how fast this last week FLEW! Well thats about it for my week. Lots of progress, loving it and it continues to jsut fly by. Love ya all and hope you have an awesome week!!!
we went back to the same group of people we taught last week, and they want us to teach them, but due to the rain we weren't able to all do it again, so we'll see if we can do it this next week. We did happen to find another HUGE group of people though haha. There are probably about 20 of them. They listen intently and ask good questions but we'll see what really happens with them. Its just so hard trying to get them all to understand it when you can't really focus on their particular needs. but i have faith that good things will come out of it and they want to go to church, so if we can really get all 20 of them there it will be the coolest thing ever!!! did i tell you about the kid im living with? he studied at Harvard before his mission and is smart. We went on splits this week and i got to know a little bit about him so that was cool. He doesnt like to be known as that kid that studied at harvard but he cant seem to escape it.... But we got a lot of new families to church this week and its sweet. I hope we can get them all baptismal dates this week.