Elder Lambert's Adventures in the Philippines Manila Mission: Week ~ 28

Dear world,

Probably the craziest week of my mission. I am not going to say why, (it would be best not to) but it was good! We actually slept in Quezon on Tuesday! That made it even harder! So busy, we are SO busy here in Rizal. With everything that’s going to be happening between now and New Year’s. At the end of this month, we have District Conference. Which is basically stake conference, but since we aren’t a stake its district conference. Since it is so hard for people here to make money, Rizal Branch has been made the District Choir! The district will pay the fare for most of the members I am pretty sure. The Rizal choir wouldn’t exist, if it wasn’t for the missionaries! So we now have to take time out of work to put that together. We already have so much limited time as it is… Because Elder Garol is training, we have an extra hour of companionship study. That just means 1 hour less of work. On top of that, we go 2 hours one way to Quezon for district meeting. So all the travel time, cuts into work. It is just crazy how little amounts of time we have to work. We are trying to work that out. This week was just crazy for a travel and stuff. This week we go to Narra for Zone meeting! So that means we will sleep in Quezon on Tuesday! That should be great… Less work. Kind of frustrating and stressful but we are managing. I was thinking if I had to pinpoint a skill I have learned on my mission, I can do a rubik's cube in less than a minute and a half ;) hehe jokes (but really though). No I have in a way, learned how to use time wisely and manage stress. It's super weird some of the things I am learning. But I love it.

This week Elder Jones (our district leader) called me and said he had some big news. I was like “Oh boy what do you have for me this time?” Because last time he called me it was last week telling us that we had to go about halfway to Narra at 4 in the morning to give Elder Sacay, (my trainer and now my current Zone Leader) some special sheets for the mission, so I was REALLY excited for this phone call. Elder Jones said that the mission is setting a “Goal,” but not really a goal. Something like a commandment. EVERY companionship in the Manila mission is to have 2 baptisms on December 26, 2015, not on the 19^th or the 12^th, but on the 26^th. They are calling it a “White Christmas” here in the Manila mission. So every companionship has to really step up their game in every aspect of the work to make that happen. I got a little nervous at first, but I know with fervent fasting and prayer we can make it happen.

Right now we have 6 people with baptismal dates, 4 of them being our member referral, Sister Riza and her 5 kids. 2 of them are too young to be baptized. But I extended baptismal dates to the other 2 kids. They all accepted for the 26th of December! Then she asked the question, “Elders, can I be baptized even if I am not married?” my heart dropped, but I knew it was the time to tell her. Her live in partner is in Manila working until like May of next year. We tried to get special permission from President Ostler, but it was a nooo. So, we had to tell her that she can’t, but her kids still can. It was a very intense lesson, one of the most intense I have ever taught. She wants to be baptized so badly. But she has to wait ahhh. So our goal is her 3 kids that have dates and are listening! Her kids are so awesome and polite. It is almost weird because that’s rare here in the Philippines ha-ha. But they are progressing! We will make sure that they hit that date. We also coordinated with the branch, and every family is required to give a referral to us. So hopefully that happens. The branch is really good at planning, but not the best at doing. So yeah, we will have to follow that up. I hope that we will get member help in lessons because that makes everything so much better! We will see what happens.

Update on the rats: 3 days ago I set 3 traps with peanut butter to give it a try. Of course, I heard 1 go off that night with nothing in it. The other 2 didn’t go off, but the bait was gone from all 3 of them, so that was lovely. 2 nights ago, we walked in the house and there was a trap on the floor in front of the door, (remember the other 2 didn’t go off but the bait was gone.) basically what happened, a rat stepped on it with its foot and it got it by the foot! It was dragging the trap to try and hide. The spot it chose OF COURSE had to be inside of MY sandal. Not my companion’s sandal, but MY sandal. So I went into killer mode. I moved him outside to start with. He was chewing his foot, almost all the way off! So I used my killing stick and flipped him on his stomach, put the stick on his neck and stepped on him. I heard the classic “snap” and thought it was over, he was still alive and kept moving! He started bleeding all over the porch so I picked up the trap and threw it across the road! So that was that. They are still very active at night so that’s great. Our landlord came over this week to address some other issues we had at the house, and they said today they were gonna come and seal the rat hole! So that better happen. Oh yeah and we also found a spider that was like 4 inches across INSIDE the house. It had a sac of babies. So that was glorious. We used a rat sticky trap to catch it, and when we caught it, the babies all started spewing out! By this point I was having a heart attack, but we survived! Anyways. That was our week! In a nutshell!i will send pics in a sec.