Just Another Day in Paradise

Well, another week. Not too much happened this week to be honest, except my tagalong is getting better because I have no choice he really doesn’t know ANY English. We have a lot of investigators right now, and pretty soon were going to be having a ton of baptisms, actually seminary just started and in one day we had ten referrals and we keep just getting more and more but there all like 13 or 14 little boys, so I could be getting a TON of baptisms but there is no way I’m going to have all those baptized boys go inactive and have that on my conscience so were going to meet with their parents. If their parents will listen too then that would be awesome. But if not the kids can just keep taking seminary and learning about our church and hopefully get baptized when their older. But really this week hasn’t been so adventurous like the others. A ton of walking and contacting and stuff it’s pretty boring but I die every night when it’s time to go to bed. One of our investigators gave birth to a dead baby this week. She fell and didn’t really think too much of it but her stomach was hurting for three days then she gave birth and it was dead. Way sad and weird but I think they already buried it and everything. It was actually our investigators kid that is already a member and always listens but she is like 28 or something. Well that is really it. Besides a bunch of teaching and walking and things I don’t want to type, I am really starting to like my comp. he is pretty funny, he is way way cool and I love him.

A NEW COMPANION

when i read that we should be getting good referrals this week mom my mouth dropped, we got the best referrals i have received my whole mission that really really want to be baptized.. haha crazy! (I had just wrote and told him we had been to the temple this week and that he should be expecting some good referrals. HAHA)
Oh man this week has been a, well i don’t know what it is really called in English but its baligtat in Tagalog lol, it like flipped upside down or the opposite of my whole mission. Its nuts i have went from the BESt comps ever to one of the most disobedient missionaries in the Mission.LOL its kind of funny, i was soooo scared at first but i am sooo thankful for it now, i know there is a TON i am going to be able to learn from it and i know i will be able to help him. But holly cow he is disobedient, we listen to NOT good music, he has a cell phone, if it wasn’t up to me i think we would work a good 3 hours a day lol. But i have realized nothing really matters besides he is willing to go out and work when i want and come home late at night when its the right time. Of course i want to tell him THAT MUSIC IS NOT APROPRIATE but i really really don’t want to be on bad terms with my comp so ill endure and ill put subtle hints and stuff and i think i can help him out a lot. U know ur comp is bad when ur zone leader comes up to u after and is like, “just love ur comp" i was like NO lol and then pres must know too cause he came to our ward totally unexpectedly yesterday and was like, how is ur comp, is he working? lol so i am pretty sure he knows about him But besides that... i got to meet our pres, he is sooo awesome i love him so much. He has surprised me twice now. First he shows up way randomly to our district meeting and randomly interviews 5 of us, and every one of the others had something in common but me, they were all leaving, he just called me in to talk with me and stuff it was weird but way cool i loved it. He said that he has been praying about me and says ill get a lot of good opportunities in my mission, so that’s cool. i love him SO much and his wife is just as cool, SO cool. she cooked me my pizza and gave me root beer and brownies and ice cream to eat with it... i love them SOOO much. And then the work has been good. We have a ton of progressing now its soooo awesome i will probably baptize like 8 in these 6 weeks, pres told me this is my last cycle. So i am working my butt off now trying to help it out before i leave. OH I LOVE THE MISSION.
(Are the little boy and girl you baptized still going to church?) oh heck ya there soo strong, and did u ever get that other pic i sent? Of my other baptism, mike and nanny cita. There strong tooo, everyone i have baptized so far is way strong.
(Do you need another package?)
ya, i almost killed my comp, i prayed for patience lol cause last night he ate my fastbreak, i was SOOOO mad inside, the only important things in the package are candy bars and pictures, just don’t forget that stuff. and just send the cheap like 13 dollar one it doesn’t have to be big
(Hum. You must be preparing to live with a wife! They break you in by giving you a guy to figure out first before they will give you a wife to try and figure out! Ha-ha)
I don’t want to get married anymore, alright mom take care, good luck with everything luv ya! Thanks for the support

A New Mission President

About my week… well I got to meet my knew pres this week; Oh we’re so lucky, he is way way cool and I’m really excited to have him as our pres. We got to have interviews and meet his wife and everything, she is way way cool too. That probably made my week that they are just so cool. Man this week flue, it’s getting faster and faster I can NOT believe that this week is already over its way crazy I can’t believe how fast it’s flying. It’s really starting to speed up now and it’s pretty cool. We have some good investigators and were finding knew ones and the work has been going really good. I’m defiantly getting a new comp this week ha-ha so we will see how that goes, I hope so bad he will want to work. Naylor has been an awesome comp and it’s going to be pretty different with him gone, he has been with me my whole mission in the Philippines. We had some pretty funny things happen too. We got to teach a preacher that was way cool. He couldn’t argue with anything we said and just had to believe that there was no such thing as one church. He asked if it said anywhere in the bible the one church we should join and he wouldn’t accept anything but in the bible so I was like. WASTE OF TIME. And then we are teaching this one lola (grandma) and she asked if she could pray, in English! So she did, I literally almost bit my tongue off I was biting it so hard, just so I wouldn’t laugh, it was absolutely horrible, as so and we were out of there sight we were laughing sooooo hard. And I can’t believe how much we have been walking lately, every day its crazy! But it’s good too. I started learning Ilocano a little bit too, its way awesome I want to learn it SO bad. Dude halo halos are the absolute best! u love them, u don’t have the right ingredients I don’t think to make its though but maybe, its way good though, they don’t put any ice cream or anything just so u know it’s just shaved ice. Its like shaved ice with condensed milk and evaporated milk, then u put the other stuff in there like pineapple and bananas, some kind of jello balls and then just other stuff, then sugar too. But the biggest is the first three. They are pour but it’s just life here and it’s not like anyone starves to death they just don’t eat the greatest foods. And it’s crazy how nice they are, even if they have nothing they offer to feed us and then they cook the BEST meal for us I feel bad eating its crazy . I studied a lot of things this week. I am mostly studying about what we will teach later in the day and then go really into it but I studied a lot about the plan this week and I've just found awesome scriptures to use and then as u learn deep into the doctrine it makes it easier to teach it even just the gist of it its really cool. Mom my teaching has SHOT through the roof this transfer, there is no comparison, u can just see the people really really listening and I ALWAYs want to teach I hate walking or just messing around. Its way cool the desire I have gained to teach now. It’s probably just cause its way easier to teach then stinking walk We go about 3 times a week to each house we are teaching. And ya it is cool we get to teach a lot I would be so mad if it wasn’t like that. And in a day sometime 4-6 so it’s not a ton but it’s alright. We def have the highest numbers in our district and we should have the lowest cause our area is so small I swear I have talked to ALL of mabini well of course we oym, and there are some cool people like that, and we see people run away from us alllll the time, its sooo funny I mean I have seen people straight BULT for cover u would laugh so hard I miss everyone too but this is where I am suppose to be and everyone knows that too, elder Holland said "I’m glad ur home sick, he said the Christmases that my kids were on their missions were the hardest ever but the ones after they got back were by far the greatest" :) I’m excited ha-ha but take care I love ya have a good week

The Rainy Season Has Arrived

i just ran into the table, u can see it on the picture with al the bloode on the ground. it was weird, i really was lie not freakin out at all i thought the whole thing was just kinda funny, but my comp was EvERyWHERE and then all are neighbors were too i was actually pretty funy.
ya i did, and it was like not a hospital lol it was crap and it cost like 35 bucks or somthing lol no insrance, it was just all horrible, i kid u not i got SOoooooo many shots and it was all right in the midde of the thing the guy filled it up FULL three times and put it all into my leg, that was the worst part then when he was sticking i could still kinda fill it lol then i got more shots and it was just a mess lol
hahaha yeah they are pretty stickin funny. DONT loose them plz lol but did u see me jump into the bukid? HAHA oh and ya i got s bunch of
stiches, i didnt want to tell u tell it was healed and its healed now i just got a sick scar, everyone thinks its the coolest but its just
ugly, but i had to like force noone in the office to tell u lol

oh ya a ton, it is awesome, and yesterday was the best ive ever taught ever it was so sticking awesome,like u have not idea how bad it was at the begging of me and naylors comp, it was so bad, i mean it was just soooo hard, but now its so much better and verses just pop in my head all the time now i love it, yesterday

we had this girl we were teaching that just looked like she wanted to kill us, and then she got her bible and then i showed her everthing i was talkin about and then it turned out really good and she is going to pray about js and stuff, she was way hard but it ended up really good.
um no we didnt have any this week, but we have atleast like 8 lined up and then we should probably get even more this week

, i wonder who isgoing to be next comp, oh me and naylor are going to plant rice today, its going ot be soooooo hot.

This week has been pretty good. The highlight was deffiantly our baptism, i got to baptise a mom and a brother this week it was awesome, i was kinda worried about mom i just didnt know how strong her testimony was cause she is PURE illicano, she understands tagalog so we could teach her but it was hard for her to talk back but after we baptised her she bore and AWESOME testimony, oh i got the chills it felt soo good, and then the boy will stay strong too he is probably going to go on a mission! oh the funniest thing was at the baptism, as u can tell from the pics the mom is pretty short and big, well when i baptised her i got her way under, elder naylor said, but when she was coming up she couldnt catch her footing and i had to do all i could not to laugh, same with naylor, but i love being able to do the prayer in tagalog. Did i ever tell u how i blessed this nanny, i tried to do it in english but it i forgot my english at the time so i ended up just doing it in tagalog, the funny thing was after i blessed her she crossed herself, i laughed so hard it was horrible. that happend like 3 weeks ago. Everyone asks for blessings here... Yesterday i had to teach class at church with elder naylor. i was way nervous but it ended up being really good. Me and elder naylor have started eatin way good, before it was either can foods and rice or nothing, but now we are mixing it all up and we eat somehing diffrent all the time and its way better now. we also started working out again but its soooo hard to work out out here i dont like it at all but naylor really wanted to do it so its all good. This morning we played a ton of basketball, i thought i was going to today, its a way diffrent game out here i thought i was going to die, its not that u run out of breath eather its just that it is sooooo hot and we play right under the sun. the craziest is that the philopinos play either bare foot or with just sandles, can u imagine, i step on feet all the time but it doesnt even hurt them, and its not like it slows them down at all either, its just nuts. But anyways this week has been awesome, my tagalog gets so much better all the time and im way exited for that, we even had a split and my comp was PURE tagalog no english but we talked the whole day and there was no language barier it was pretty cool.

i do swim to every appointment, but actualy this week wasnt as bad except for last night but seriously it rains like u wouldnt believe but we still work and sometimes the let us in, but i dont have to use the foot stuff. iam not gaining any weight, but i am ok i dont need too. um we dont ride trycycles our area is small enough to walk. and i walk a TON. u woudnt believe. Dude mom this week was soooo awesome mom
oh man so this week has been a FULL stinking week. Alright so first of all me and elder naylor decided we were going to set a knew record of OYMs cause it was horrible., together wehave litterlay talked to all of Mabini so we just decided we were going to talk to them all again, cauase we were lacking investigators, so we did it. Dude the old OYM record for our mission was 118 and elder Naylor knows cause his trainor was a AP and all he wanted to do was brake that record but he couldnt. But anyways we worked our freakin butts off and we got 171, DUDE!!! we killed the old record. Im pretty sure were going to get yelled at but these OYMs were all leggit, we were ALWAYS looking and talking to EVERYONE we saw, and the thing is a oym is offer ur message and even if ur talking to 10 poeple that counts as an oym so even though are number is 171 we talked to like 500 stinking people, and they were all really good ones and we wrote all there names down so we cant get in trouble, this has been the BEst thing in the world for my tagalog and my teaching, i love the mission any weakness u have u find and it slaps u right in ur freakin face but i have been perfecting all my weeknesses through setting goals and man my teaching has gotten sooooo much better in one week its nuts and my tagalog. Oh im soooo close, i just need vocab, my vocab is already pretty good its just when u talk to freakin preiest, they have huge vocab, wich reminds me, we kinda got in a fight with so witnesses, it all starting cause he was ike hey i have a question for u, as we were walkin by, and so were like what, and he was like how long was it from when adam last saw god to christ birth, i just freakin laughed. but he was like oh your dumb u guys dont know anything about the bible come to my house and ill teach u some things. oh man , but i am starting to get realy good with using scriptures, i have starting memorizing a lot of them and like everything someone says i can think of a scripture now, its really cool, and that just started this week. yesterday was funny, first of all i was SOOOOOO close to throwing up at a member house it was bad! if i would have that would have been so bad, it is like this rice that they boil and it all like slimes together ands its really horrible but its there desert and there so proud of it but its HORRIBLE. but by some miracle i finished it and we left imedianty that nanny is so crazy she literally FORCES food into my mouth, and its not regular food its like freakin the weirdest plants in the world. oh and then i was oyming this one lady and she was a freakin NUT cases lol. she was like what is that on ur face and i was like its because i sweat all the time, and then i tried to offer the message and she was like no i cant i have a calling to and i was like whats that and she was like i heal people and those things on ur face are evil spirits and they are trying to take over ur face because ur extremly guapo HAHAHa and of course i was getting the biggest kick out of this so i was like, "OH crap,What do i need to do?!?!" hahaha and she was like u need to wipe cocanut oil on ur face in this wierd way and then u need to put boiling water on ur face, and i was like alright, i was like can we set a appointment to come back and she said no we needed to do it right now, and then i looked back and my comp and this family is looking at me wierd and i just started laughing, and the family was like " Man u have to have reallly good tagalog to be able to talk with her" lol i guess they all know she is kinda crazy. Oh then this story, Ive repented so dont judge me, but this guy was just freakin drunk and he kept calling me over and i was by him and im like this is close enough i aint going there and he was trying SOOOO hard to get me to take a shot, he was like " Come on man i want to be ur frinds and if u take a shot ill go to ur god next week" lol u woulnt believe how drunk this guy was. and his frind was just as drunk and funy, man it was so funny, and so i was like no and he wouldnt stop so i was like, u do it first, and so he starting filling up his cup and then he stopped and i was like WHAT? come on that is nothing and so he put a ton in a drank it and i was laughing so hard and then we just left. Oh this week was so good. crzy experiences, met crazy people, everyday i came home freakin DEAD exhauster.
Got to LOVE the mission

man i got that package this week, thank u so much that was way awesome! i was so shocked but mom u need to figure out this mailing thing u need to use those one boxes where u just pay for how big the box is then u stuffed it, the vedio was sooo awesome me and elder naylor watched it and i loved to so much. this week has been really good, lots of wierd stuff has happened and its a way big change being with elder naylor but i love it so much more. We went to the sabue (Temple) dedication thing sunday and saturday they had some kind of other celebration deal for it, it was pretty leggit. The best part of this week has been the language though, i am not saying i have it but i can say whatever i want and i understand 90 percent of everything said, now i just need to extend my vocab really but i am way excited for it. OK so this week was nuts, rainy season starts now and when i say that i mean it STARTED, like every night but one or two we came home at night completely soaked to the BONE like just completely, its ridiculous but its alright the only thing i feel so bad going into houses so wet and then when it rains everyone just shuts down its kinda funny how stickin scared it seems like Philippians are scared of the rain, but it literally makes rivers how hard it rains and im not exaggerating, so thats kinda cool, i am pretty excited for the work this week too cause me and naylor are going to find a lot...a lot a lot so we will see what happens, its going to be hard work but it will be good for us. This morning was interesting, so me and naylor wake up at 4 to run to the other zone to play basketball but my ankle was to jacked up so we got a tricycle and then we went and played, it was way way fun, but then we returned and the elders had gotten robbed the night before, its funny there is 4 elders and really only 1 got way way robbed like lots of money and camera and bag and just stupid stuff like that, the best part is we talked to the cops and they know exactly who did it lol but they arnt going to do anything thing cause they know that the guy these guys work for is way high and that they have a ton of guns so the cops arnt going to do anything about it, lol o the Philippines. But the work is going so good, i am learning sooooo much and i am not just saying that, i am really learning a ton and i see God in all my doings all the time.

its 1 dallar to 45 pesos just so u know ( I have all his money in his checking account. After the other Elders got robbed he decided I better not leave much money in his account)


we are in a diffrent town right now cause its way better, this is like the only one that has a pizza shop lol i get to eat PIZZA, thank u so much for the package i loved it. Every package has to have some kind of pics or vedio or somthing but that was way great. Oh ya ashton has gotten bigger and so has cassi a little and then kellon oh my gosh he is a little fatty now and he has grown so much bigger and taller i couldnt believe it. Oh and it didnt make me homesick at all i mean i think about it but it just maked me want to work harder then come home to that after 2 years lol, um ya i use my crocs and i had to buy knew shoes, i already went through those onse lol, everyone one says i walk fast, if missionaries are saying that, i have a problem lol
just so u know i am pretty good with regular food situation, like they have alright stuff and right now i am just lacking because i am living in the boneys, the biggest things in packages are like the candies and the pics and stuff.
the prophet dedicated it, i dont get to go to the temple this whole two years, and it was our church for the whole philippines sunday. Mom i have to go, love ya, cant wait to here from u next week, thank u again for the package it was aweomse, and make me a knew account before i get robbed please.