It's Getting Hot

Well this week wasn't the best week ever. Not a horrible week but we had a couple punted days that lasted forever! Thought a lot about Sam this week since I knew she was going to arrive in Taiwan. Sounds like you are having an amazing time so far Sam! But I don't have a lot of time this week since we went on a zone trip this morning to Magot Dam so I'll try and type as much as possible before I have to go. 

 

Week started out same as usual with district meeting on Tuesday. So there is one American member in my mission that goes to Manila and has a person he gets pearls and other cool stuff from and brings it back to the mission to make it available for us to buy as missionaries. He is the one I bought my first Carabao belt from. Well I got another one this week and it is pretty sweet! The first one I got was all black and this one is more brown and has more grooves in it so it actually looks like it is hand made. After district meeting we went back to San Pedro since we had a meeting with the Branch President to finalize the plans for the one day mission we were going to do on Wednesday. That lasted forever since we had to take the list of members that don't have their addresses in the MLS system and print them out and put them in envelopes to hand out to the members on Wednesday. It sounds pretty simple but I have no idea why it took so long. Finally got out to work at like 4:30 but only got one lesson in before dinner. I guess at least we had a good dinner again with the Ramos family and a ride back to the apartment! 

 

Wednesday was the one day mission with the branch. We had around 20 people show up which was pretty good for a Wednesday. Everyone said Wednesday was the best day for most of them. Then some of those that said that didn't even end up showing up. But anyway, we divided into groups and handed out the names to go find and visit. Elder Corcuera and I split and went to different areas. We were able to find the people we had and visit with them pretty quick so then we went around and the members showed me less actives they knew that we could visit. So the goal of this was to be able to locate a lot of the less actives from MLS that we didn't know where they were. Some of the people come to find out had died and many were abroad. Something I thought was really cool was that everyone there was really really excited with the missionary work. They all wanted to keep going so hopefully that means we can get a couple more members to start coming with us!

 

Thursday was the hottest day so far of my mission that I could remember. I think summer is here in the Philippines. The rest of the week after Thursday was just as hot. Felt like I was literally sitting in a pool of water but really it was just sweat. Kind of gross. We were able to endure the heat though and had a good day with 4 lessons so we were pretty happy. We were also able to follow up with some of the people we met from the one day mission. 

 

Friday was pretty interesting. One of the lessons on Friday was to Nanay Dominga Cantor. We have only taught her one other time. As soon as we started she started asking questions about the Book of Mormon. Next she pulled out this super old Book of Mormon and showed it to us. She doesn't remember when or how she got it. On the inside cover was a testimony on paper of the Book of Mormon from a Smith family in Providence, Utah. Their testimony was in English but the Book of Mormon was Tagalog. The picture with the testimony was also an old picture so who knows when or how it got to the Philippines but I thought it was really cool! She loved the lesson we shared with her and we answered all the questions she had about the Book of Mormon. She said she will continue to read it so we will follow up with her this week. 

 

Saturday since it is the last Saturday in the month we had the Elder's Quorum activity in the morning. We played some basketball then cooked hamburgers. They actually were pretty good! So fun thing from Saturday. While at the church for the activity my branch president was trying to figure out family history and he asked for my help. I have never done it before so I didn't really know what to do. I logged in though and saw that I had some stuff in there. Long story short I wanted to follow my name 'Bryan' so I followed Grandma Haacke's line back as far as I could. I eventually got to the end and the name 'Bryan' was still there and the date was in the 1600's! Pretty cool I thought. I could see myself getting into that when I get older and have some time! 

 

Sunday we had a pretty good turn out for church. Two more less actives are considered returned now and are doing great! Had two investigators at church again. These two are a different two from the week before but these two are ones that we have been teaching. They are both 15 years old. One is in a part member family and the other is her friend. Hopefully this week we can get some improvement with some other investigators but we are still happy with the success that we have been able to have with the less actives here in San Pedro! 

 

Hope everyone has a good week this week! Love you all! 

 

Elder Haacke