Philippines Cauayan Mission

Monday, January 14, 2013

14 January 2013


Magandang Hapon po!
Kamusta!
I can't even imagine having a "high" of 5 degrees and that much snow. Its a good thing I am going home in the middle of summer because I would probably turn into an ice cube if I went home to that. Although it has been rather chilly here the last couple of days. It rained for almost a day straight and luckily it didn't flood the little bridge going to the city so we didn't have to spend twice as much time and money going to church by going the long way. I feel like if it were to rain a couple more drops it would be enough to flood the bridge because it is only a couple feet away from it. Makes it pretty intense crossing it because there is no guardrails or anything to stop you from tumbling off, just a tiny curb. Yesterday it was super cool and windy, which made for a real awesome night sleep and reminded me of the canyon winds back home.
Last Saturday was a pretty fun day because we were so busy traveling and conducting baptism interviews. We happened to interview 3 kids- one year old and two 10 year olds. In general, we try to avoid baptizing kids that young unless they have obvious support from family/friends so they won't become inactive immediately. During all their interviews, it was exciting to see how much they knew and how strong their faith was for being such a young age. Their strong desire to become a member was evident because they were obviously nervous about being able to pass the interview, not knowing that there really is no wrong answer to any of the questions. We were told that one of the girls we interviewed even had a hard time sleeping the night before, anticipating the interview. She was a super cute girl and after the interview, I gave her one of the CTR rings you sent and put it on her and her face beamed. We are also excited because when there are baptism interviews, there are baptisms the next week! The last baptism we attended of a little girl was a super awesome experience because after her baptism she bore her testimony and could barely talk because of how emotional she was, bearing a very powerful testimony that she knew the church was true and she had been wanting to be baptized for sometime now. 
After the busy day of interviews, we attended the Philippines Area Broadcast and they released the goals for 2013. They are keeping all the same as last year, but tweaking a few different approaches to accomplish them. The main focus is still on rescuing those who have fallen away from activity, and missionaries and wards/branches have to coordinate even better to bring better results. It is a great privilege to be part of the search and rescue team. 
I also gave the stake president his mini PMG and oil vial and he was thrilled and said thank you. So thank you! We have also been having fun seeing how many of the nerf darts we can get to stick to our ceiling. :)
Well, try not to freeze to death over there. Ingat!
Mahal ko kayo, 
Elder Nay


Monday, January 7, 2013

7 January 2013


Magandang Hapon po!
Kamusta!
Hopefully everyone is doing well and enjoying your head colds and flu season. I had my share of it last week too, but fortunately not anything bad enough to keep me from working. It just made it really fun when sitting in the middle of the lesson and then my eyes got really watery and itchy then snot coming gushing out of my nose without warning. Good times.
Last week we had a training meeting in Ilagan (which just like every other training by Pres Carlos, was amazing), and Pres. Carlos told me he wants me to stay until July 31. Which means start planning all of the cool and fun summer vacations for sometime after that so I can join too! Haha. It will be nicer that way so I don't have so much down time before school starts at the end of August. I will be one of the lucky ones to say I had a 25 month mission! It is crazy that it is already time to start planning around when to go home. I'd rather just not think about it because I'm loving it over here and being able to help the church get more established in this part of the world. On saturday we had a stake training meeting that all members of the ward/branch council from the stake were invited to attend because Elder Gottfredson (one of the couple missionaries) came up to give an awesome 2 and half hour training workshop. All of the missionaries from the zone were also invited so we could learn how to better work with the ward council. Being a bishop, stake president, mission president, patriarch, and this being his 4th mission, Elder Gottfredson definitely had some good experience to share. He also came bearing gifts-my packages finally came! I didn't know you sent 2, but thanks! Everything made it safe except for one of the eggnog cartons. Unfortunately, it somehow got a hole punctured on the top, but luckily it didn't get all over everything. When I gave it a squeeze test over the sink and saw curdled chunks come out, I thought it was best to give it a toss. Such a shame. At least there are a couple more. 
We had an interesting experience with one of our progressing investigators. As we were teaching her about Christ’s church and Apostasy, it was clear she understood everything and things started clicking for her as to why there are so many churches throughout the world, but it honestly didn't feel like one of those “wow” lessons that the spirit was super strong. Towards the end of the lesson, we asked her if she had received an answer to her prayer about if what we had been sharing is true, to which she replied yes. She was a little hesitant to reply what her answer was, then the spirit started to fill the room and the noisy distractions around us seemed to go quiet. Seconds later, tears were running down her cheeks and she couldn’t talk clearly. She explained that she knew she had found the true church and wished her family could join too. We had no intentions of giving her a baptism date because weeks earlier when we did so she said she needed to think about it first, but before I knew it the baptism commitment was spilling out of my mouth. Without hesitation she agreed to being baptized in a month.  That is the power of God working in his own due time to answer people’s prayers.  
Well, Maraming salamat po for your support and yummy treats in the package. May God be with you til we write again!     
Mahal ko kayo,
Elder Nay


Saturday, January 5, 2013

31 December 2012


Magandang Hapon po!

Kamusta!
Parang kailan lang nagkita tayo! Haha it was fun to see all of you and be able to have a miniature family reunion for a few minutes (or hours...). I still can't get over seeing Gracie and Jenna walking and talking. I leave for a couple months and see what happens! It will also be super weird to go home and see snow again. Hopefully that will make for some good New Years fun for all of you. It should be a fun New Years Eve here because we can't be outside after 6pm. To help time pass by, we have 2 other companionships coming over for a sleepover and going to watch a few Disney movies. And of course, there will be plenty of good food involved. At night, we are going to climb to the roof of our apartment and watch the fireworks. Hopefully we will have a decent view because our apartment is supposed to be a 3 story house, but it isn't finished yet so we have a 3rd floor cement platform as our roof. When we told President Carlos about our plans, he said it was a great idea. He truly is the best ever. The only hard part will be waking up early and going to District Meeting in the morning. Everybody here is already going party crazy for New Years, and random fireworks have been going off for a couple of days and it seems like everybody and their dog has some sort of annoying horn or noise maker. Just last night, our neighbor across the street threw an all day party with karaoke. We know it was an all day party because it was almost impossible to focus during our studies after lunch, and when we got back at night we could tell by the way they were singing that the booze had been brought out. At first it was funny to listen to them try to sing, but it got pretty old when it was about 1:30am and they were still blasting loud music and we couldn't sleep. We can only hope there will be more parties like that later tonight... 
We had a great breakthrough experience with a less active last week. He served a mission over 20 years ago and is married to another RM and has a couple kids, but over the last couple months he has become inactive for an unknown reason. We went to visit him and his family that live in a very small cinder block home with no chairs, and didn't really do anything other than talk to him and build a relationship with him, partially because they only had one small light bulb and it was being used to help them prepare food and not in the room where we could sit on the concrete to share a lesson. After several minutes of talk, we asked him when he had time that he could work with us and he hesitated for a moment and said he wasn't sure if he was able to because he wasn't currently active in the church. He further said that when he went home teaching a few weeks ago, he felt really awkward and that the spirit couldn't work well with him as he was teaching because he wasn't active himself. (To ourselves we were thinking, "Duh! There is an easy solution to that problem..."). Knowing it would be a good experience for him and help re-kindle his testimony and memories of when he was a missionary, we encouraged him that it would be okay just as long as he was with us, and he scheduled a time with us. When we met him, Elder Lasay and I were surprised when he walked out of his home all dressed in a white shirt, tie, slacks, and even carrying his set of scriptures. Several times throughout the day while he was with us, he mentioned how good it felt to be a missionary again. We gave him a couple opportunities to take part in the lessons, and we could see that every time he bore testimony it was like he was teaching himself. Before he went home, he said, "I think I should go to church tomorrow". That is the power of bearing your own testimony-the more you share it, the more it grows. There is something ironic about having somebody inactive help us fellowship and teach to others, but it proved to be effective when he showed up at church with his family in his Sunday attire. We were also happy because for the first time ever, we were able to teach to some people we had been wanting to teach for months now but have not been able to do so due to nobody ever working with us. 
I'm glad Bill enjoyed his Christmas pig, and I noticed lots of similarities between Bill and the pig based from the picture he sent:) 
Thanks for everything you do, you are the best family ever!
Mahal ko kayo, 
Elder Nay