Finishing November

Happy December everyone! Can't believe it's already the last day of November. Christmas is going to be here in no time! November has flown by and it ended with a pretty busy week! 

Started out normal with district meeting on Tuesday. Didn't really attend a whole lot of it since I had to help another Elder in my zone contact the doctor. We had to call to a landline and we don't have load to a landline with our phones so we had to go buy load at the store. Then when we finally called the doctor, they put us on hold for a while so of course, the load we bought ran out while we were on hold so we still couldn't contact the doctor! Phones are messed up here. They don't make any sense. Anyway, ended up finishing district meeting and the Elder just went through Sister Rahlf to get what he needed. After lunch, we were walking back to the highway to get on a bus to go back to Echague and we saw the two elders about the doctor. Turns out they were on their way to Cauayan to go to the hospital there. He was feeling the symptoms of a Hernia so he went to get it checked out. We did not have a good day of work on Tuesday. We got punted at almost all of our appointments. Then it started pouring rain! On the bright side, we decided to do some finding and we found a new less active. Other than that, that was basically it for Tuesday.

 

Wednesday we had MLC in Cauayan. It was pretty good. We had a somewhat Thanksgiving lunch so that was awesome! Ham(like the ham at home), mashed potatoes, corn, and a fruit salad. No stuffing though. In MLC, we started the discussion for new Standards of Excellence for 2016, new mission vision, then some other announcements. Sister Rahlf taught us about being a missionary at Christmas and then President Rahlf taught us about gratitude. It was a good lesson and very important. That is what we'll teach to the zone on Tuesday. Oh yeah, before MLC started, we went to the hospital to visit my two Elders that are there and bring them their clothes and stuff from Alicia since they learned they will be staying there for a few days. Finally got home Wednesday night back in Echague.

Thursday morning, we packed some stuff and went straight back to Cauayan for splits with the AP's. While we were planning, President asked us to help him in the mission home so we went in and helped him set up the Christmas tree. We went and ate lunch at McDonalds then went out to work. Using a car at work is amazing! I loved getting out of the car, teaching the lesson, getting back in the car and going to the next appointment. I walked more steps in the couple hours of work we had after MLC on Wednesday than I did the whole day of work on Thursday! My companion for splits was Elder Higgins. We are batch so we had a lot to catch up on since I haven't really been around him very much in the mission. Splits were great, learned  things from each other that we are both going to apply to our own work. Friday we did our accounting at the mission office. Talked about our companionship, area, then about Alicia zone. They showed me some KI's of the zone from 3 months ago and we have already progressed a lot in the past few months but there is still a lot of room for improvement. After the accounting, Sister Rahlf asked us to go to the hospital again before we went back to Alicia just to see how the Elders are doing. They had been doing good, as good as you can be sitting in a room all day. The test results had come back on Wednesday and he needs an operation and the operation is scheduled for Saturday. Told him just to keep in touch with us and let us know if he needs anything. 

Finally got back to Echague around lunch time on Friday and went right to work since it had been 2 days with basically no work in the area. Friday, Saturday and Sunday we were on splits with members. I barely taught any lessons at all this week with my companion! But it's great that the members are getting involved in the work. It helps us a lot! Because of the members help, we met 9 new less actives this week which totally paid off because most of them came to church on Sunday! Sunday we had 8 less actives attend church for the first time in a long time! Hopefully it will continue so we can get them returned! One of them even blessed the sacrament and I saw two more willingly paying their tithing. I thought that was awesome. Even though they might be less active, they still have their faith in Heavenly Father that he holds true to his promises as we obey his commandments. We are still struggling a little bit with investigators in the area. They seem to go out as fast as they come in. We do have this one couple that I think can progress. The two elders before me baptized the mom and the daughter. Ibarra family. The mom then left and went to Manila but is now back. Now we are working on bringing them back along with helping the father build his testimony of the gospel. We taught them on Saturday and they committed to church the next day. Then we had a member go by on Sunday morning to remind them about church. Turns out they didn't come and I was pretty bummed about it. Later that day on splits, I went by there to see how they were doing and only nanay was there. Then nanay told us that they left this morning and went to Alicia to go to church at the Mormon church! I don't know if it's true or why they went to Alicia but I hope they were able to attend even if it was in a different ward.

The elder in my zone ended up getting his operation postponed to Sunday morning. He texted us before he went in to operation and said he was really nervous but he made it through and is doing good now. He is still in the hospital but should be able to come back early this week.

In all we had a very busy week but were able to make up for it because of all the splits we went on. We were very happy with the success we had with some less actives this week. Hope everyone has a great week this week and I love you all!

  
Love Elder Haacke