GOOD-BYE CAUAYAN

There was a huge crowd at the farewell fireside


This was a very talented batch of missionaries and the evening was filled with great music all performed by these departing missionaries.



The day started off early as departing missionaries arrived at the Mission Offices with all their luggage. Here Elder Riner greeted some of the wonderful sisters he taught from Alicia 4. They came all the way to Cauayan to say thank you to their favorite elder!



Elder Bangal and Elder Riner (co-trainers of Elder Landeen in the middle)



Thursday, January 12, 2012
Whoever said "Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow" is Nuts
There's nothing sweet about parting with our beloved missionaries. In Mid-December we sent our January batch home in time to spend the holidays with their families and return to school at the start of the Winter Semester. This batch was some of our dearest, most diligent missionaries. We truly mourned their departure. We are so proud of their accomplishments.
We had our usual farewell fireside and were thrilled to see members from all over our mission who came out on a rainy, cold night (many traveling for hours) to say goodbye to these dear missionaries. All in attendance got to hear and feel their final testimonies as they shared a few words about their missions.

After our farewell banquet we went to the bus station where we parted with many tears. I love every one of those missionaries and pray that they will continue to live a life filled with faithful service

COMING HOME

Ill just tell you about my last week in person mom. I have a huge farewell party tonight. Im going to ball haha i already know it. Im leaving my family for the 4th time....
Well mom i better get going. I love you and i cant wait to see you! im soooo excited to go to the temple too!!!! see ya in a few days. Thats weird to say!

man your guy's week seems like it was FUN! that is so sweet. Man im glad jord will be there to see me. I just want to see fam and friends! Man, im not going to say im not excited to see you all, but MAN mom, our work is going SO good. We had our transfer meeting this week and that was fun. Got to see a lot of old friends and comps and stuff. But for the most part everyone is noobs man. Everyone i know has pretty much went home; its not like it use to be... This picture is one sick thing that happened though. I have a great grand child in the field now. That is Pretty dang rare, but that is that picture i just sent you. Me, Jackson, jackson's kid and jackson's kids kid. It was pretty cool. Then the other people was the class of our investigators. thats only a few of them. One family had to leave after Sacrament meeting and then the kids were in there own classes. There was too many of us for the room. Next week we are moving into a bigger one. I kid you not mom. Our investigators, plus all their kids, made of over 1/3rd the people in our ward right now. It was SOOOO sick. Just really humbling to see so much progress. I bore my testimony in both ward yesterday. It was good. I loved the chance to leave that last testimony of mine with everyone. All my investigators were shocked. A lot of them didnt know i was going home. Its so sad cause they all talk about it now and tell me how much they're going to miss me and stuff. Its so hard! i Love these people mom. Im just not ready to go home. All in all the week was just awesome. All our key indicators were way high and our work was just full. Its awesome!!! Im just going to keep it up. No slowing down. Im going to try to even do better if at all posible this week. Last one, why not right :). Alright mom i love you. Hope everything continues to go well. Have fun picking daniel up.

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!