HAPPY 21ST BIRTHDAY!

Well we had a Awesome week full of great work! And it payed off this sunday. We were able to get a bunch of investigators to church> I was so excited and so was my comp. We have had some of my most spiritual lessons too. It just has been really good. We have had investigators just explain to us how the holy ghost made it manifest to them the truth of this message and its just such an amazing process to see happen as they explain it too you. We have this one guy who is just crazy. He yells like all the time and all he really really wants it to feel peace in a world full of turmoil and troubles. Then we asked him if he had tried to read the book of Mormon to escape from his problems and he then explained to us how he actually had, he had himself forgotten until we asked, then he told us how he felt and how aweosme it was and he described exactly what he himself was looking for from our lessons with him. It was so awesome and humbling to have him tell us these things. Man just being apart of this everyday is so awesome. Its been rough having to study for 4 hours every morning with this new training program but its been awesome and some how ive been able to stay awake and have really successful sessions even with it being that long. We have a lot of families we are teaching and to see full families accept this gospel is awesome. It reminds me how LUCKY we really are. Which i know i still dont fully comprehend how lucky we really are but im so thankful, until this point, we have all been strong. Thats so awesome. Everything has just been going really good. We had to go to the doctor to get my chest xray for going home. I also got one of my last interviews with president this week and that went amazing.
... Man my birthday today was the best mom. We played some sick football. You should have seen the present they gave me Ill send it next week or somthing... U will laugh so hard. After football president fed us mexican food. Sister carlos is a really good cook and it was SOOOO awesome. It was a way sick birthday. I love president sooo much he is so good to me. He spoils me way more then i deserve....

CARABAO

Only in the Philippines...
Sister Shaner was teaching a woman recently whose husband is a rice farmer. Sister Shaner mentioned something about the carabao and this lady said, "You mean you don't have carabao's in the U.S.?" She was so shocked to hear that Sister Shaner had never seen a carabao. She asked "Well, how do you get any work done?" Sister Shaner explained that we use John Deere--a tractor.

HE'S COMING HOME!

I received Elder Riner's flight plans today! It's official! He will be flying into the Pasco airport at 11:00am on December 16th, 2011. We all have had experience with these long flights so you know that sometimes that means 11:00pm or maybe the next day. HAHA But that is the plan for now. You are all invited to the airport to welcome him home and to his Homecoming talk on the 18th. I will keep you posted on any changes.
Daniel will be coming home the 9th of December so we are also excited for that too! What a month.

A VISIT FROM GENERAL AUTHORITIES

... This week we had 2 general authorities come here to our stake conference to divide our stake into 2 and to speak. It was awesome. U remember that one guy that had a thick accent that talked in conference the other week. He was here haha and i got to meet him. He was from like new Zealand or somthing and the other was Elder Nelson from Twin falls idaho. It was aweosme to see them. It was also way awesome to see our stake split. My old bishop was teasing me cause i was here for the branch when it split to 2 wards and then for the division of the stake too. He told the new stake president i shoudl have to speak. I told him haha i dont want to speak that would not be cool. Especially if there are general authoritys there. It was pretty dang cool though. We had some sweet teaching appointments this week. One person we found tried to pay us for our study with them haha. I told my comp he should of took it but he just shook his head haha i was just messing with him. We were able to give some sweet blessings this week too and had some awesome lessons with some people! i love being here apart of this work. Its been really hot though man. It drains you and you just get all sweaty!
That is sick chelsea came home. Who did she hitch a ride with??? YA! its nuts that i have only had 3 areas haha i dont know of anyone else in my mission that has ever been like that. 4 is not very many at all and i only had 3! But im way cool with that. I hate moving areas and i love it this way. Its just an answered prayer for me... My comp is doing pretty good with the language... He is defiantly getting better and we;re having a lot of fun and getting a lot of work done. We are really starting to build up our teaching record and should be getting a LOT of people to church pretty soon. All we are teaching are families so that is AWESOME and we are starting to get the ward pumped about our work too :). Man that is crazy that chelsea already is getting into dating... I mean i think all that free food will be nice for her but i remember reading that she wasnt going to date the first year??? Sounds like everything is going pretty good at home.

THE MTC BATCH

POWER!

YA we were the onse sister Carlos was taking about we just barley got power like last friday night after having a brown out for 10 days... Everything in our fridge just went horrible and there was mold all up in it so we just didnt open it tell the other day and then it got GROSS!!! we cleaned it earlier. It was not a fun job. My comp is cool. We get along great and we've been working hard. This week we got like 16 new investigators and a few of them are really starting to progress. We are really building up a nice teaching pool again and im so excited to see what kind of things we are going to be able to do with these next 7 weeks we have together. So everything is going really good! Having 4 peopl in a apartment is hecktic of course but it is WAY fun. Everything has been going really good as far as the work and im excited to see waht we can get started for us in this next week. We are working hard right now trying to fill all hours of our day with productive work and seem to be doing a pretty good job with that thus far. Everything is going great!

AN UPDATE FROM THE MISSION HOME

RIVER FLOODED BY TYPHOON PEDRING

Two typhoons in one week, but third one was diverted
We did suffer through two typhoons last week. Another one was predicted for this Wednesday but it's course changed and it went south. We actually had few rain clouds that day but nothing much. Some of our missionaries are still without power, but most have it back now. It seems like the worst hit areas were around Santiago. We were there on Tuesday and surprised to see so many huge trees uprooted and the river so swollen. All of our missionaries are now back in their apartments. We are very grateful that the third typhoon missed us!!! We Feel Our Savior's Love.
This weekend is General Conference. We view it a week late since we are a day earlier than the US. We are all excited to be spiritually feed this weekend!
I'm way behind on blog updates and will try to rectify that in the next few days! It's been a very busy couple of weeks. A new wonderful batch of missionaries, zone leader council and lots more. Thanks to all for their love and concern for this mission.