Magandang Hapon!
Kamusta po sa inyong lahat!
Well, I did have
about an hour worth of message typed until some little teenager switched
off the power box to my computer in an effort for him to play his computer game
faster. Kids are addicted to computer games here in a way I didn't think was possible.
But, I guess worse things have happened.
This week has been
pretty intense trying to find an apartment for a new set of missionaries. On
Saturday, it came down to me and Elder Reyes wandering around and looking for
the nice houses and buildings, then asking if we could rent. With help from
above, we finally found one available because the person living there moved out
the night before. Talk about perfect timing! It was interesting on Sunday
because President and Sister Carlos came to our sacrament meeting. Of all the
possible other branches and wards to go to within the mission, they chose ours
which is a 2 hour drive for them. Of course they were asked to speak and they
gave great talks. Afterwards they looked at the apartment we found and signed
the papers to have it rented out. Today we had to help the owner move and
arrange her stuff to make room for the mission stuff. She is an old lady so it
was fun because everything was a much bigger deal than it had to be and
worrying about everything. Haha. Can't wait to be old... Tomorrow the
Shaners are coming to deliver all the stuff and on Thursday, our area will
officially be split. Not any time to waste! I honestly don't really know what
to expect for transfer day because of the new areas being opened and such, so I
may or may not stay. Guess I'll find out later this week!
That is crazy that
there are 146 stakes just in Utah County and it is to a point of just watching
a broadcast for stake conference. I can't even imagine what 146 stakes would be
like in that small of an area. I think there are 5 stakes in the whole mission,
except the typical wards here have an average attendance of 120-150. Anything
much more than that, and it gets split. And there are only about 6-7 units in
each stake. It will be weird to see Church back home.
It was interesting to
return back to Cabagan this week to work for a day. Not only was it great to
return to my first area to work for a day, it was great to be with Elder
Landeen for a day. It was especially exciting teaching to one less active
family. I first met them back in January or February after being punted from an
appointment and decided to just do an OYM (open your mouth=talking to someone
random) instead. It turns out the whole family are members of the church! They
just havn't been to church in many years. At first, the only one that would
talk to us was one of their kids about 22 years old. Nanay and Tatay would
always run away from us because Tatay had a serious addiction to cigarettes and
alcohol. After finally being able to talk to Nanay and teach her a few times,
she said she has wanted to come back to the church for a while but just felt
too embarrassed because of her husband. Back when I was there, they
kept few commitments and never came to church. When Elder Landeen
said we were going to not only teach to them as a whole family, but they were
going to feed us lunch as well, I was shocked and had to make sure we were
talking about the same family. I asked Elder Landeen what he did to get Tatay
to stop running away from missionaries and actually sit down for a lesson and
he said they happened to catch him outside working in his garden one day and
when he said he was "busy" and couldn't listen, they said they would
be "busy" with him and started pulling weeds out of his garden for
him, to which he finally caved in to let them talk. Haha. We had planned a
lesson to get Tatay committed to asking his boss for sunday off of work so he
could go to church with his wife and kids (which finally started coming a few
weeks ago), and during the lesson we could feel the spirit very
strong as we saw Tatay thinking of what we were saying. Towards the end, he was
the one committing himself to our committment. He said, "I remember the
days of when we went to church as a family. We were always happy and it was
fun. It has been a long time since that has happened. I need to talk to my boss
tomorrow to ask Sunday off of work. After all, he isn't my boss because God is
our ultimate boss and he is saying go to church." Wow! Couldn't have said it
better myself. What a cool change to see in someone that wanted absolutely
nothing to do with us about 9 months ago. Being persistent pays off.
It was also fun to look back on the days that we couldn't speak any Tagalog and
think about where we are a year later.
Well, thanks for
everything you do! Ingat po kayo,
Mahal Kita,
Elder Nay
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