Start out on Monday night last week. We had FHE with the Cordova
family again. They love having us over for FHE. They also LOVE playing
Uno so we end up playing a lot of Uno with them. It's kinda funny
though. If they know we're coming to their house, they set up the chairs
and table before we even get there so that when we arrive we can start
playing right away. So we played some Uno, shared a message then ate
dinner with them.
Tuesday we had our last interviews with President and Sister Rahlf.
We got to the church early and made sure there was two rooms with air
con for the interviews. We open up both the offices and both of them had
an insect that had died and was getting eaten by a ton of ants. We
cleaned them up and for the most part all the ants went away. When
President and Sister Rahlf got there, we opened up the first office and
it was still clean. When we opened up the second one for President Rahlf
some of the ants had returned and were running all over the place. So
President found my Branch Presidents cologne and sprayed it all over the
place in his office to kill the ants. It was kinda funny and sure made
his office smell good! Interviews went well. I feel like there is always
so many things I want to talk to President about but when it comes to
interviews, nothing comes to my mind. It was still a good interview
though. Talked about attributes of Jesus Christ and he advised to always
have a continuous study about Him. We then moved on to district
meeting, ate lunch and went out to work. At work one of the people we
were able to teach was Tatay Dannug. He's less active but his family is
active. His son was considered returned this last Sunday since he had
been there 4 weeks in a row now. Tatay was also there yesterday and when
we visited them after church he was very happy. We asked him how
attending church was and he said, "Happy! Very happy!" So that's good!
Not really sure why or what happened but we were happy for him.
Wednesday we got up and went straight to Cauayan. Attended MLC the whole
day. Meeting was good and the food was great! :) Also got to see again a
lot of my friends that are in far zones. President and Sister Rahlf
also talked a lot about how the transition is going to work with getting
a new mission president. I remember thinking that the time we get a new
mission president was still so far away but it's come so quick!
President and Sister Rahlf have talked and Skyped a lot with President
Hiatt and his wife. From what we've heard, they seem very excited to
come to the mission. We didn't get home till around 7:30 so that took
our entire day.
Thursday we had did service at the school. School starts on the
13th and what they do here every year is about 2 weeks before school
starts, they have community service at the schools to clean it all up
and get it ready for the school year. The schools are basically
abandoned when school is not in session. Weeds grow like crazy and
everything becomes a mess. Our branch president told us we HAD to
participate at least once. So we called a couple other missionaries and
they came with us. He was supposed to be there as well to show us what
to do but the night before he said he couldn't come. So we basically
just showed up at the school and said, "What can we do?" They gave us
some tools and we basically just swept up a ton of leaves and put them
in piles. At least they gave us a free snack! We still had some fun
though. Played baseball with the broom stick and some mangoes. After
that we went home and got ready for the day. We had another elder come
home this last week, Elder Cordova. When he left only one other member
of his family was a member and now they are all members and really
really active. One of the families that are helping this branch stay
alive! But he worked with us on Thursday since he hadn't been released
yet. He had like a really hard time speaking Tagalog since it's been two
years since he has spoken it. Even I had to help and correct his
Tagalog. But that just means he served well in his mission. We decided
to contact some nice houses on Thursday. We got a few but were only able
to set return appointments. Finally we found one where they were
outside so we went up and introduced ourselves. Apparently all the
people that were there weren't the owner of the house but just the
helpers that keep it clean and stuff. We were able to teach one of them
though, her name is Jessie. She has one daughter that we also met but we
haven't met her husband. She didn't show a lot of interest but we'll
have to see how she's doing when we go back this week. We also had three
baptism interviews to do on Thursday. I did two interviews and my
companion did the other one. All the interviews were successful and I
had the chance to baptize two of them on Saturday.
Friday we had another csp at a different school right next to our
apartment. We helped clean and fix Brother Roland's kitchen again. This
time we focused more on the outside. I dug a path for the rain water
since it was going right into the kitchen then made a hole in the cement
wall for the water to go out. We're going back this week on Wednesday
to finish it all up since school starts next week. Apparently my ditch
didn't work though. We talked yesterday and he said the rain still got
in the other night so looks like I know what I'll be doing Wednesday
morning! For lunch we went to a birthday party and they had a ton of
food which was great. There were a lot of other members there as well.
Had a fun time talking to them all and once again, played a couple games
of Uno. It was Rex Cordova's birthday so that's why we played some Uno
as well. They are literally in love with that game. We just worked in
Cullalabo on Friday. We taught Nanay DelaCruz again. She is such a fast
reader. She's reading faster than we are teaching. She says she always
wakes up in the middle of the night and uses a flash light to read.
Probably the most diligent scripture reader I know here and she loves it
as well. Also got to teach Sister Clarita. She is less active that is
from Caliguian branch but she works at a house that is in our area so we
visit her every once in a while. We haven't been able to teach her
since Elder Dialino has been here so it was good we were finally able to
leave a message with her. We committed her to coming to church and she
promised she'd be there but it didn't end up happening so we'll follow
up this week.
Saturday we had a baptism in the morning we attended. Like I said
earlier I had the opportunity to baptize Angelica and Kylene. The water
was pretty shallow so when I baptized Kylene her feet came up. I ended
up doing what Dad did to me when I was a little kid and stepped on her
toes for the second one. Everything was good after that. Rest of the
baptism went really well. Speakers gave good short messages and
everything went smoothly. Best part of Saturday though was teaching
Nanay Luce. First time we got to teach her all week and I was looking
forward to it so much. We followed up her prayer and had a better
discussion about the Holy Ghost. She said she is searching and really
thinking right now about which is the true church. Our lesson was great
and we tried committing her to baptism but she said she is still
thinking . She explained her answer and we respected it but we told her
that she needs to come to church to really get a better understanding of
what our church is like. She said she'll pray about coming to church.
The next day she still didn't end up coming. Too bad because this
was one of the best Sundays we've had. There were a lot of members there
and we had good classes as well. That was the most full I've seen the
sacrament meeting since I have been here. The testimonies that were
shared were really good. There was actually more that spoke Tagalog than
Ilocano so we were able to understand them. We did have one
investigator there, Sister Florence. We haven't focused a lot on her
since she hasn't been here lately but it looks like she's back so we'll
start teaching her again. Something else that was really good was we had
8 less actives at church that we are teaching. Three are now returned
and the others are progressing. Two that really had good experiences
were Tatay Pinon and Tatay Dannug. I mentioned Tatay Dannug earlier.
Tatay Pinon even gave the opening prayer in sacrament meeting. We are
planning on visiting the Pinon family later tonight so we'll talk more
about church.
Over all we had a very busy week but still finished off strong with
a lot of members attending church. Hopefully we'll be able to have the
same this week but also with some investigators! Hope you all have a
great week!
Love Elder Haacke
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