Two Trips to Cauayan

First week of February has already come and gone and I am under 6 months left! So as you might know I told myself that when I have 6 months left, I'll start exercising to get back in shape. Well, the day came this week and believe it or not but I exercised! Second day came around and I was up again! Only thing is I jumped rope for about 3 minutes and called it quits. Haven't exercised since! I'll try and give it another go this week though. We'll see.

I mentioned last week that we will be getting our transfer list today. I was totally surprised. I thought there were going to be a ton of missionaries leaving the zone including myself! Well, only 4 are leaving and I'm not one of them. That means Elder Labrador and I will do a third cycle together and I'll do my fourth in the area. Not a bad thing being that Elder Labrador and I get along just fine and work well together. Elder Romo, one of my kabahay (house mates) is transferring so I'll miss him. I've gotten pretty close with him and we've gotten along really well. The sisters here in Echague aren't leaving though. Probably some of my favorite sister missionaries in the mission and we get to stay another cycle here all together. Well as I'm typing this the AP's just called and said it was a mistake and Sister Villa is transferring. So guess we won't all be staying here but it will still be good here in Echague! Everyone in my ward thinks I'm not here anymore and I already gave some neckties away so should be a nice shock when I'm still here next Sunday!

This week went by super fast because of the district meeting in Cauayan on Tuesday then had MLC on Wednesday. Those two meetings in Cauayan were super good and really fun. Woke up early Tuesday morning to get to Cauayan by 9 to start accounting then be ready for the broadcast by 10. Pretty sure we were one of the last missions to watch this but it still was super good. I didn't bring my notes to the net shop but I really did get quite a few good insights from it and can honestly say I listened really really well 98% of the time. Last 5 or so minutes I started to doze off every now and again. But anyway, it was well worth it! Then afterward, they allowed us to go to the mall there in Cauayan to eat lunch. That means I got Macdo! Super good. Then we came home to Echague and got straight punted. We didn't get one single lesson until dinner. At least we were able to share a pretty good message and have a good conversation with them. I led the lesson and shared about Job. Nanay then shared some experiences from her life including the death of her husband that have been trials but she has been able to press forward because of her faith. We were just talking before the dinner about her husband and that the missionaries don't know what happened to him or where he is at. We all learned about it when Nanay started sharing to us. It was a good lesson because of the personal experiences that were shared. This was with the Sandaga family by the way.

Wednesday we got up, got ready and went straight back to Cauayan for MLC. Pretty normal MLC. Finished the new standard of excellence for 2016 that we will present to the mission later this month. We then made some plans for this months zone conference's and how we're going to introduce the new standard of excellence. Not a whole lot on it is changing but the changes that are being made I think will help the mission. Sister Rahlf taught about the Book of Mormon. We will be doing a mission wide power read of the Book of Mormon starting on Valentines Day. Should finish it in 60 days or so. Then President Rahlf taught us about Charity. Great lesson. We really defined the verse Moroni 7:45. I've read that verse so many times but I really noticed on Wednesday that I've never broken it down and thought about what each one of those phrases means. We talked about that one verse for about an hour, maybe even longer. All that along with some great tasting/free lunch made for a great MLC.

The rest of the week started to get a little colder again everyday with it being super cold Saturday evening, all day yesterday and so far today. Everyone is walking around in jackets and stuff. I've been enjoying it so far. Working without sweating bullets has been amazing. Even though it's been nice weather lately, we kinda struggled this week work wise. We did find a Sister's house in our ward that we have had a hard time finding.  Sister Marvilyn Asuncion is an active member but her husband is not along with her two sisters that she is close with. Her two sisters, Clarissa and Jenyvee, live next to each other and also really close to our apartment. We want to help Marvilyn reactivate her husband along with her two sisters. We'll make that one of our goals for this week. We actually taught Sister Jenyvee on Sunday which was my first time. Hopefully we'll be able to work well with them this cycle and help them come back. Both Jenyvee and Clarissa have little babies so that will be something we'll have to work around to help them come to church.

Brother Neo Cuntapay was not in town this week which was too bad after we had a great lesson with him last week. We are really looking forward to following up with him. We'll also have to make it a priority to meet up with him this week.

This week we should be able to hit the work a little harder since we'll only be going to Cauayan once instead of twice this week. I'll be getting a new kabahay this week so I'll let you know about that next week. Also we will be teaching zone meeting this week on Thursday. Should be another great week! Hope you all have a great week as well. Love you all!

Love Elder Haacke

Fell asleep at the Sandaga's house for a little. haha They invited us in then the sisters had something happen so they took like 30 minutes to get there and Nanay was in the back cooking so we had no one to talk to.