My Week in Review

Another week gone by! Super fast week! If any one is wondering, dropped under the 300 mark of days left! Be home in no time! ;) Joke, I am loving the mish right now and am learning so much! Wouldn't trade it for anything, other than some cold weather every once in a while!

But this week was a pretty good week. Not necessarily a stand out week but definitely not a bad week. District meeting on Tuesday was pretty good! I taught about the attributes of Christ again. The elders in my district weren't there since they were still coming back from Cauayan so we were short in numbers. The STL's ended up attending so that was actually a good thing since the elders weren't there. Lesson was good and everyone participated really well. I think I'm gonna do something a little different for district meeting tomorrow so we'll see how it goes. Had lunch with the zone at Fatkids again. Ate two burgers again. Super good. Then we went back to Amulung and went to work. Just worked in Estefania, an area close to the church and the apartment. Work was pretty good. Visited a member, taught two investigators and one recent convert. The last lesson was to the member and they gave us dinner. It was super good. I actually can't remember what it was, just that it was really good. 

Wednesday and Thursday were good days of work. We had a lot of success in teaching the people we needed/wanted to. I can't really think of a stand out lesson or anything but we worked hard. We taught 14 lessons in just these two days. I guess we had one lesson on Thursday to a less active family. Only the father was there so we just shared with him. It's the Pamitan family. We shared about having strong enough faith and trust in the Lord to rely on him in times of need. I definitely felt the spirit and I think the dad did as well. Their problem is they don't have the money to be able to attend church. Or that they need that money for other things I guess is a better way to word it. Even with a great lesson, he still didn't attend church yesterday so we will follow up with them this week. At night, we had a dinner appointment with the Padayuman family. After that, we finally went home for the night. 

Friday, the zone leaders came out to Amulung to do a baptismal interview for our investigator, Divine Grace Carlos. Before that, we went to the Abalos' house to have lunch and celebrate Tatay's birthday. It is always a good time with the Abalos family. They are super funny! After lunch, we met up with the zone leaders and went  out to where Sister Divine Grace lives. Interview went really well. Elder Olson said she was more than ready to be baptized. So this Saturday she will be baptized! The rest of Friday we only were able to teach two lessons. It was good though, we were finally able to visit sister Karen. First time since her baptism. Her husband has left now and won't be back for 6 months so it's important that we stay close with her to help her faith continue to grow. We taught her about baptisms for the dead and family history. She had a lot of questions which made the lesson really good! On are way home that night, we remembered all of a sudden we had been invited for dinner at a members house so we had to get off the van and go all the way back to where the member lived. We were only there for a little since we got there late then had to leave to still get a van to go home. But it was free dinner and a nice visit with the member so can't complain! 

Saturday was the family week celebration! If you remember back to one of my first emails from the Philippines, this was in one of those emails. In Bambang, it was celebrated with the entire district but here it was just with the ward so there wasn't as many people but still a lot of fun. Our goal for the day was to strengthen our relationship with the members. I think we exceeded the goal. We had such a fun time with the ward playing all the games, dancing and, of course,winning the contests. I also met a less active that is around my age and was able to build a strong relationship with him. I ended up spending most of the time with him. He is going back to Manila though to work so I probably won't see him again. Overall, the day was super fun. 

Sunday was alright. A little hectic at work. Starting at church, the day was going great. We had a coordination meeting with are new ward mission leader. That was pretty good. Hopefully we can make use out of the meeting. Sacrament meeting was great. Speakers were good and we had 7 investigators there! Jumped up a lot from the 2 last week. Also, we had two less active that are considered returned. Tatay Bacai and his daughter. Work on Sunday was kinda crazy. We always have sisters that want to work with us but only sometimes can get the priesthood. We hoped we would be able to get two priesthood to be able to split and work in two places but we ended up only getting one. So we weren't able to have a splits. Then, a nanay that lives super far asked for a blessing for her Tatay so we had to make a detour and go clear out to their house. We told the fellowshippers to just go to the area we were going to work and wait for us there. Anyway, we finally got to the house and the Tatay had left. He had gone to Tuguegarao so we weren't able to give the blessing. So we started walking back out to the highway and it starts pouring rain. So we got soaked. Finally got back to the highway, got in a van and met up with the fellowshippers that were waiting for us. We ended up only teaching one lesson the rest of the day. It was to a niece of a member that wants us to teach her. Lesson was long because each fellowshipper added in what they wanted to say. After the lesson, the member (Bro Taer) entertained everyone with a couple stories from his mission.  Then we piled on his tricy and he took us back out to the highway.  Overall, Sunday was not the most progressive day work wise but looking at the whole week it wasn't too bad. We are really excited for Sister Divine's baptism this week. She has studied really hard and done everything we have asked to prepare for her baptism.

Hope you all have a great week this week and I love you all! 

Love Elder Haacke

 

I thought I could screen shot on my camera but I was wrong. I have a lot of videos from the family celebration then I was hoping to screen shot from them but I can't. But here is one picture of me getting ready for a game.