Week ~ 35

Merry Christmas all! I hope you’re all freezing it up while I am
partying it up here in paradise ;) it was a very tropical Christmas
here! Great week though, a little frustrating but still good. We
planned to go caroling with the branch on Tuesday and visit some of
the LA to invite them to the Christmas party. We all got to the church
(all the members) and were ready to go! We started practicing and
waited for the branch president. We practiced and waited for a solid
hour, and then President came and told us that it was
cancelled/postponed until Wednesday. That was frustrating for us
because it killed our work! So Wednesday, same thing we all went to
the church and practiced and waited and practiced and waited and
President came and cancelled. Another day of work almost gone. So
frustrating for us. The party was a success though! Lots of LA(less active)
and lots of investigators came to the party.  The food was great as well,
lots of litson for us all! It was a good time. 

Filipino Christmas parties are WAY different than in the states. The music was so loud I
couldn’t even hear myself think. It was fun though! If anyone wants to
know, karaoke is HUGE here in the Philippines. Not a single soul has a
problem with singing in front of everyone with music playing aha. So
lots of karaoke and singing and dancing, it was fun though! I have
tons of videos I can show all y’all in like, 15 months haha. It was a
good day though. Also skyping to the family was a dream! That was
awesome to see everyone and talk to everyone even if the connection
struggled. It was nice to hear everyone’s voice. I don’t have much to
say, this week besides I really got to see what it’s like to really
not have Santa Clause come here in Rizal. The people don’t care too
much about temporal things. I spent lots of time reflecting on all the
things I got for Christmas, and seeing everyday all these people with
hardly anything! It was a nice reminder that it doesn’t matter about
the temporal things, it matters about family and Jesus Christ. These
people have close to nothing, but still happy. They aren't temporally
blessed but they are spiritually. It is such a testimony builder for
me. Anyways. 

Christmas was a good time though, Christmas day we made
the emergency trip to Quezon so that we could Skype, so that was 2
hours of relax and sleep and then lots of time tracking down a laptop.
So that was good. I guess. Not too much to report on here. We are
really thinking about dropping Riza because of the lack of desire. We
just don't really have anyone who is REALLY progressing here in Rizal,
its a little tough, but we are doing our best here. There just are
hardly any people! Maybe we aren't seeing much success with
investigators, but the branch is building itself. We have more members
involved in missionary work, which is awesome. Every Sunday we go on
splits and I have like 5 members work with me and Elder Garol has
about the same! So that's awesome, makes it more fun and we can visit
more people. That's about it for this week. 

Last P-day we went to the white sands beach! It was GORGEOUS. We had some members with us, and of course got lots of pictures. We saw some foreigners too! I think
they were from Europe, I didn't get a chance to talk to them. But we
had an AWESOME time seeing all of the cool rocks and the water and all
of that! Also, one of the big things here in the Philippines this week
is the Miss Universe Pageant! For those of you who heard, Miss
Philippines won the pageant on a huge mess up, its a big deal! But I
wanna give a S/O (shout out)to Elder Edwards in Colombia! You guys lost bro (;
hahaha nah jokes! Better luck next year(; Philippines is where it's at!

I love you all. Church is true.

PS This is my last pic of Bro. Job and our Christmas Dinner!

-- 
Elder Lambert

Philippines, Manila Mission, Earth