Conferences with Elder Schwitzer

Last week of the cycle already! Just a four week cycle so that's why it went so fast! Next cycle is 8 weeks so it will be a while before I say this again. Of course, Elder Arorong is going home now so I will be getting a new companion on Wednesday. Don't really have an idea who it could be so should be interesting. Elder Arorong leaves tomorrow morning and goes to Cauayan for the day then will sleep there so I will be with the other 2 elders in my apartment for the day. I'm not complaining though since they have a lunch and dinner appointment tomorrow and we don't have any!

The week this week was pretty good. We were blessed this week to be able to have Elder Schwitzer and his wife visit the mission this week. They are awesome people! Very approachable and he had lots of jokes while he taught. Elder Bowen was a little scary to approach sometimes when he was here but it felt totally different with Elder Schwitzer. On Wednesday, we had MLC with him and his wife from 2:30 to 6:30. First MLC in the mission. I guess the new ones in MLC get to sing the first line of a song in front of everybody. Since it is the 'ber' months, the topic was Christmas. I sang the first line of Jingle Bells since that was the only thing that came to mind. You could say I completely destroyed it. Yeah, never was a singer. But after I totally got rid of the spirit with my singing voice, we still managed to have a great meeting. Being in MLC is alright. It's nice to get a voice on something if you want. That's what we started out with. They choose a topic then every one voices their opinions of what they think about it. That part was okay. For the most part the opinions were pretty good but every now and again there was an opinion that I thought was pointless. President and Sister Rahlf taught us about having a vision. Then we reviewed the vision that we have right now for the mission. We will be making a new standard of excellence in December so we are starting to talk about it now. Then Elder Schwitzer taught us about qualities of a good leader that he has seen as a member of the seventy. It was cool because from each trait or quality, he would tell us from who he got it. Most of them were from members of the Quorum of the Twelve. It was a great meeting and awesome listening to him share to us. We then ate dinner in the mission home then the AP's brought us back to Alicia. Got to hang out with my friend Elder Teikauea as well since he was called as a zone leader the same time I was. I hope I can be comps with him one day. That would be awesome.

We finally got home that night and went straight to bed since the next morning we woke up at 3, got ready, and took off to Solano for zone conference. It was supposed to take like 3 hours or so to get there. We aren't supposed to be there till 8:30 but we CAN'T be late. Anyway, it only ended up taking like 1 1/2 hours to get there so we got there super early. Ended up just walking around with nothing to do. Did end up going to eat at McDonald's then President and Elder Schwitzer showed up there as well to eat. Conference was great. Learned about ways to contact people, how to use the scriptures, then Elder Schwitzer's main lesson was about repentance related to the plan of salvation. Over all, it was a great day!

Gonna jump to Saturday since I am running out of time. We had a baptism this last Saturday. Went great! Nanay and Alyssa Ballad were baptized along with Aaron. They were all very happy and had a great time at their baptism. The whole zone put together there was 10 baptisms on Saturday which was great to help us get a lot closer to the zone goal.

Sunday was good. Great fast and testimony meeting. Not a whole lot of people were able to testify since the ones that did share shared for like 10 minutes each. Plus we conferred the Holy Ghost to them that were baptized which we were able to assist in so that was cool. Rest of church went pretty well. Priesthood was the usual...plan the activities they want to do this month. Next week the lesson will probably be reviewing the activity and making changes to it. I think it's kinda funny.

That's pretty much it for the week. We went to Robinsons today, the mall in Santiago. That's why I'm netting later than we usually do and don't have any more time. At Robinsons, Elder Carrington and I each bought our own pizza and tried to finish it. 

Last time I'm doing that. Never felt so sick in my life! But it was still a good time! Hope everyone has a great week! Tell you all about the new companion and the changes in the zone next week!

Love Elder Haacke