Birthday Email!!

Hello world,

Another one gone. I can't believe how fast the time is going. I guess I hit 14 months this week, so that was pretty crazy. It is going by pretty fast now. 

Also we had my birthday dinner last Monday! We ate at the Adolfo family, Sister Mericor is the RS president here in the ward. She cooks REALLY well. Reminds me of mom. She made us "Shanghais." They are basically these meat roll things that are fried. We KILLED them. I had like 20 of them and gained a lot of weight probs haha. It was good though! And then after that we were walking home and a member drove by and saw us, then he stopped and took us home but bought me ice cream. So that was the icing on the cake for my birthday.

Tuesday we had interviews with President. I walked in for my interview, and walked out about 8 minutes later. All he really said is that someone will be transferring out of me and Elder Webster, and up to this point we still don't know who. So just a quick follow up on obedience and that was it! So yeah, we got to see some people at the mission office who I haven't seen in awhile, so that was nice. Overall we learned some things from the APs and all that, we learned how to really "set our area on fire." Hopefully we can apply those things and make some good things happen. We also saw Elder Garol! He is assigned in Makati right now. I walked into their district meeting before it started and he like saw me and threw his books and like jumped on me!! hahaha. I love him though and I missed him! So Elder Webster got to meet his brother, so that was cool! 

This week was pretty rough in terms of work. We haven't really had anyone progressing in the past 3 weeks or so. We are just finding and finding, but we just can't seem to find the right people. When that happens, you just keep going! So that's what we have been doing. We have been teaching this lady named Irene, she is kind of crazy, but super nice and super willing to listen. She is just really shy. So long story short, the sisters in our district had a baptism this week and we invited Sister I. She ended up coming and looked like she had a good time! She promised us that she would go to church and said she didn't need to be picked up. I had a baptismal interview before church so I was a little glad we didn't need to pick her up. So anyways, she said she would come, and then didn't end up coming. So this next week, we will FOR SURE be picking her up to go to church. Also, our other investigator Sister M who said she wants to be baptized, went back to the province right as we showed up to the appointment she set for us. So that was rough. 

Now, not all this week was full of letdowns! We found some good new people to teach. We found this guy named Melvin and his wife (who I can't remember her name) that we taught last night. He is a stud. He actually works for HOTWIRE.com haha. All of you should be familiar with that, he works at the call center and answers all the complaints of all of us whiny Americans! He is super cool and is a huge American music fan, so you can say we became friends fast ;). His wife is super shy, and actually half Spanish, but he said he will read and pray about the Book or Mormon. So we will see! Our lesson is actually like 65% English because he is so good. But we will see where that ends up. We found some other people this week, and will be following up with them tomorrow. So yeah! 

Things are good here though. Elder Webster almost got kissed by a drunk guy this week. He like leaned in for a juicy one, but Webby wouldn't let him land it. Sayang. So that was hilarious and that SAME drunk guy is convinced that I am the director of Harry Potter. So that was pretty cool. Super funny! Drunk people make life super fun here. (Oh dear....)

So one of us will be transferring this week, we don't know who. I actually really want to stay here. But we will see. So in preparation, we took some pics with the members yesterday at church. We will see what happens! 

-- 

Elder Lambert

Philippines, Manila Mission, Earth

BiRtHdAy WeEk!!!

Good morning world, I guess its my birthday today? So I guess I'm getting old. But I guess I'm not as old as I look?! Some people still tell me I look 30... So that's always fun haha. I still feel good though! Thank you for all the Happy Birthdays, I really appreciate it! 

Good solid week we had this week! We had a solid 193 new people who we talked to and invited to listen to our message! That was the most that we had in awhile. It feels great talking to that many people! It also helped us finding a new squatter area! A squatter area is basically an area where people are PACKED into small houses. These houses are on top of each other, inside of each other, and like under each other. Its hard to explain other than there are people just packed into a small space! Since our area has lots of rich people, we have a hard time going into those houses cause they don't like us at all. So we try to spend more time in the more humble areas with lots of people to talk to. The problem is, is that they are really small areas and we spend lots of time there. So we tend to see the same people on a daily basis. They all know us and all that. So we were excited to find a new squatter area where we can work and see new people. Lots of these people in this new area have never seen missionaries or let alone 2 white guys walking through an area like theirs. So we did lots of joking in English and then spoke Tagalog to blow their minds and introduce the gospel! That is always fun. People always ask us if we are half Filipino or something, but then they realize how pointy our noses are and then think its impossible. Still fun though to joke with people. That's how you spice up the work a little bit. 

This week was kind of rough in terms of investigators. Sister Maricel and Sister Melh-Jean are both kind of dropped. Both of them are "staying in" at their new jobs. So we haven't seen either one of them in at least 10 days. So we are trying to really find some new people who we can teach and get progressing. We have some new families that we are teaching. One of them is the Arajo family. They are both in their 60's and very very kind. We taught them about the Book of Mormon and then taught a SOLID lesson on the Holy Ghost and kind of His role in conversion. They committed to read and then pray. So we will be following up on that tonight. Other than that, we are kind of "refreshing" our teaching pool. We just weren't really seeing people truly progress, so that's what we are doing. 

Last Sunday, we had our new investigator Sister Irene Evans come to church. She is someone we talked to about 2 weeks ago and we have been teaching her. She didn't come to church this week because she had no one to go with, so we just need to get her a fellowshipper! She is a funny lady. Back in the 1980's, she won the lottery here in the Philippines, I think it was like 15 million pesos? Not sure. But she decided to travel all over Europe and all that. She actually ended up marrying an aircraft engineer from the UK. So she is STILL loaded with cash. Buuuut, he left her and now lives in a different part of the Philippines. So she has a lot of grief from that. We are trying to show her the blessings from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So we just have to be patient with her! Also, the Philippines area presidency changed the standard on going to church for investigators. They have to go to church 4 times still before baptism, but now they are allowed to miss aSunday. But if they miss 2 in a row, it resets their church count to 0. So its a LITTLEEE bit easier to baptize people. So that's a little nicer! 

This week, Elder Leofo randomly called me and said he was outside the apartment and needed to be let in! He had exchanges with Elder Eteaki, so he stayed for a day. That was a blast. We KILLED 6 boxes of Pizza Hut Pizza, so that was super sick. I don't have many pics of this party, cause we were busy doing follow ups and all that with other missionaries. But yeah! It was fun to see him! He goes home next week so I guess i'll see him on the other side of the mission! He actually goes to Utah in July, and I was gonna give him our address so he can meet the fam. That would be cool!

Anyways, it was a great week. I have been reading a GREAT book. Its probably a book that lots of us have heard of, its called Jesus the Christ. It is seriously one of the best (and only books) I have ever read aha. It is written by Elder James E. Talmage of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles. Its super nice. It talks about how Jesus Christ literally spent his WHOLE life, being torn town and smitten and all that stuff. We experience that here in the mission, obviously nothing to the magnitude of his experience, but its still hard. My thought was: is that he is ALWAYS walking beside us, and sometimes even carrying us. I have been carried so many times on my mission, and without the Savior I wouldn't be here. Now that's not just for me, that's for all of us. I love the mission! Don't get me wrong! Its the hardest thing in the world, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Its super fun out here!

I also forgot to give some S/Os to my sisters who are killing it at lacrosse! Congrats to Allie for being 2nd team all state and Mckenna for being a beast of a goalie for leading her team to the semi finals tomorrow! And of course Kelsie for being aggressive on the field just like her brother ;) love you guys! 

Again thank you for the happy birthdays, I wish I could email you all back!

Love you guys! 

PS here's some pizza pics with the big man, Elder E! 

-- 

Elder Lambert

Philippines, Manila Mission, Earth

The Week!!

Yo yo yo peeps. Its been quite the week. Kind of a tough week because we ended up going to the MRC and then we had another appointment on Thursday. So two days of work goneeee. But, we keep moving forward! We are kind of struggling with keeping constant contact with people.

Anyways, so this week we had some interesting experiences. On Friday, we ended up having a member work with us, in an attempt to teach Sister Melh-Jean. We went there, and she wasn't there. No one ever knows where she goes, so we couldn't contact her. This whole week actually, we couldn't contact her. It is super tough to see someone get SO close to being baptized and recieve all of those blessings, but she just can't get over the hump. We also don't know what that hump is sooo. Also, we weren't able to teach to Sister Maricel either. She has been "staying in" at her job in Makati. We had an appointment with her on Saturday, but she wasn't home still. So we prayed and prayed that she would keep her commitment to go to church. So we go to church and she still wasn't there. Last night even, she still wasn't there! So yeah... The struggle hah. We have been trying to keep up with some of these new people we have been teaching. We have 2 new families that we have just started teaching. The one family is very devout "Couples for Christ," which is just another sect of Catholic. They are very "solid" in their faith, but we know that if we keep stopping by they will see how important the message is. Sister didn't want to commit to a time, but we told her we were coming back this next week to share. So hopefully something good happens. We also have this other new family that we taught for the first time last night, who at the beginning wasn't too interested. They are part of the "Dating Daan" religion. That religion is very similar to ours in that the have a prophet and all that. Anyways, so we felt like we should share about the Book of Mormon kasi, I mean come on you can't go wrong with sharing about that. We gave them a copy and told them to read in Moroni and just to pray about it. We will be going back on Thursday to follow up on that. 

So this last Saturday, we taught our most progressing investigator Sister Marlene. She is the maid of one of our members. This member is Brother Rufo Rosario. He is super old but he is of my favorite members to spend time with. Anyways, we taught to her and him on Saturday. She is just barely on the fence for baptism. She wasn't quite sure if she wanted it. Anyways, so she is really reading in the Book of Mormon and committed to come to church. So yesterday we were expecting her to come into church with our member. And we waited... Neither one of them showed up. So we went to see them after church to see what was up. Anyways, they had no driver to drive their car because Brother is 84 and unable to drive. So that was tough. We had some members with us when we went over there. The one member was Brother Henry and the other was Sister Jessa. So we go over there, and Sister Marlene had a story for us. I guess she had prayed the night before, that if the missionaries came by with a member who was a girl, that she would be baptized. So basically she wanted a sign, to know if it was true. So yeah, I guess she saw her sign?! I am not a big fan of all that sign kind of stuff, but I will take it! Sister Marlene and Jessa started hugging and had a tender moment aha. Anyways, she just has to come to church the right amount of times to be baptized. She is doing great though! Keeps all her commitments. 

Also, this last Saturday was national service day here in the Philippines. We sweeped an area over in the Zone Leaders area as a ward. It was a party. We had a big group of us! my companion and I and another member covered like 1/4 of the area that we swept so we killed it! The whole area was MIND BLOWN that 2 white guys were sweeping their area. It was super funny, but a good time. I probably also took my best selfie to date, so ya'll can enjoy that. This next week (the day after my birthday actually) is when we have interviews. So we are planning to really kill it this week in our area. So I look forward to it. 

This weeks funny experience comes from Elder Eteaki. We were hanging out in our room and I hear this super high pitched voice talking. So here's some background: Elder Eteaki is obsessed with BayMax from Big Hero 6, like SUPER obsessed. So he bought this big BayMax balloon and started sucking the helium out of it! It was just super random and funny cause his voice got super super high! He has a super low voice normally so that made it even funnier. 

So this week, we went to a LA family in the area. We actually had no plans about what to share and we ended up just kind of winging it. So we had one of them pick a song to open with, and they chose I Stand All Amazed. So I think its safe to say that we should probably should share about the Atonement. So that's what we went with. We also connected it to Sacrament, because that's the entire reason that we go to church. We were singing that song and I couldn't help but think about the sacrifice that Jesus Christ gave to all of us. And because of that, we can recieve God's mercy. The thing that I have learned in my mission is that mercy and grace aren't some magical thing that we are given. It takes action, and that comes from our inner desire to be better. I have learned so many things in my mission, but having action and the desire to be better is what it takes to make changes in ourselves. Anyways, I know that this church is true. I love you all!

PS theres some selfies from the service project! 

-- 

Elder Lambert

Philippines, Manila Mission, Earth

I got to Skype today!!

Hello world,

I got to Skype today! So that just basically means that I will be writing a shortish email for the sake of time. This week was great! We had that one week mission thing where the youth worked with us like every day and we actually split because of it. So Elder Webster and I took two groups and went to different parts of the area. We taught some good lessons and the youth got to participate. The youth were super super excited to teach and experience missionary work. So that was good for our area. 

This week we also were able to invite 5 new people for baptism! It always helps to have baptismal dates because they know that we are here for a purpose, not just for bible study. That brought our number to 13 baptismal dates, so we are even looking for a few more this week. Our area is catching fire right now. Which sometimes tends to happen when it gets close to transfer day and Elder Lambert may or may not be transferring. I do know that we have turned this area around in the last few months. The Lord has really blessed us here. 

We also had some people at church yesterday. One of our members committed to bring his house help/maid to church. Her name is Marlene. She asked us for a BOM a couple weeks ago and we set an appointment. She has a baptismal date for like June I believe. She came and had a good experience. We will follow her up tomorrow when we visit her. Sister Melh-Jean didn't show up... So if i transfer, I won't be seeing a baptism in this area. But sister Maricel showed up again! We didn't teach her all week because she stays in at her job. She even brought her friend Julie Anne. We have never met her friend, but she came to church. She showed up in a super shirt dress. It was her first time and i think she knows better now. It was kind of funny though. 

That was about it for this week. It is still bloody hot in the Philippines. So thats a joy. Its all good though! I can go swimming in like a year  

I love you all!

-- 

Elder Lambert

Week ~ 57

Hello po world,

Great week! I really think this week went waaaay better than the past few weeks. We changed some things up to improve ourselves as a companionship, and it went well! It is going really well actually. This last week we had 23 new investigators! Which is I think the most I have ever had in a whole week. We also had 5 investigators at sacrament meeting! Sister Melh-Jean made it! As well as her sister and a couple of her friends! So that was a HUGE blessing for us. We finally are starting to teach them on a consistent basis again, and they are starting to progress. We set a very firm May 28th baptismal date for them, so we will make sure that it happens. They just need to go to church, they know most of the lessons they just HAVE to go to church. We have an update on Sis. Maricel, she has been gone for almost 10 days now! We haven't seen her, she was working in Makati and had no communication with her sister or anyone. So we were discussing whether or not we should drop her, but we didn't know what to do because we don't know her status! So anyways, we didn't teach her all last week and then all of the sudden, SHE SHOWS UP TO CHURCH! She randomly walks in during the closing song! So that was a huge surprise and an even bigger blessing. So we had probably the biggest amount of good investigators at church that I have ever had my whole mission! So that was a huge blessing. We are like killing ourselves in this heat, but we are loving it! We worked really hard this week.

So this week, we were told that our schedule is being changed! It will just make it so we won't be out in the hot sun proselyting, so that is super super nice. We will be starting it this next week, because this week is our ward's "One Week Mission." What that is, is basically all of the youth in our ward will be missionaries for a week! That will mean that they will be assigned companions, study just like a missionary, and work with us every day! I am very excited for all of this. We will be studying with the youth every day at the church (where there is air con) and it will just be awesome! I am super excited about it. It will spice up the work and give the youth opportunities to see how missionaries do things. I am really excited for that, and there is free food everyday haha. So even better!

Can't wait to skype this week! Love you allll. 

PS heres a pic of me and my new rubiks cube that is super hard. and heres a selfie with my sleeping roommates ahaha  

-- 

Elder Lambert

Philippines, Manila Mission, Earth

The Real One

Alright, this is the real email. It was a a pretty solid week. We did our best to reestablish contact with some of our investigators like Melh-Jean and Maricel. We talked to Maricel on like Wednesday, but when we talked to her we were without a 3rd member working with us. So we weren't able to teach her. She told us that she was going to work on Thursday at her job in Makati and then coming back on Saturday so that she can go to church. We made her pinky promise to be at church this last week. So we were expecting her to make it. Sunday rolls around, and all the members are asking where she is, we have no idea. We went there last night to see what the deal was and she STILL wasn't there. So that was great. I kind of think she isn't being the most honest with us but we will see what happens in the next few days. Yesterday we FINALLY taught Melh-Jean! We had like 3 members with us so that was really awesome. We kind of went into the lessons not knowing exactly what to teach since we taught them like a month ago. So we went in just intending to follow the spirit. We started asking questions. We started with the "Kumusta po Kayo?" question just to see how they are doing. The answer was "not so good." To start with, they have no power in their house because they are unable to pay their bill, so that was probably one reason to her negative answer. We basically shared about trials, and how they shape us into who we are, with a little bit about how turning to the gospel will ALWAYS help us and give us answers. It was a great lesson, and the spirit was so strong. They actually committed to a day and a time for us to come back, so lets hope that it actually happens. We were also able to teach some LAs that we have never been able to teach. They are the family that had their grandpa die last week. They were super cool, just LA now. The mom used to work with the missionaries every day I guess, but now she won't even go to church. I don't know what her concern is, but we have an appointment this Thursday to find out! We also have been doing better at finding. We have some former investigators from the provinces that we are teaching so maybe we can keep that going. We just kind of have a small teaching pool at the moment so we are trying to work on that. 

So this last week, we starting finally discussing with the ward about the one week mission. The one week mission is basically having all of the youth and the YSA work with us for the whole week. We will be studying with them and basically doing everything we can to help them experience missionary work. We are looking forward to it, and hopefully people will actually participate. It will give us some help in the lessons and really just let the youth know what it is like to be a missionary! That will be May 1-7. I guess the ZL are also trying to get President Ostler to come and speak at it too, so that will be really great if that can happen. 

I can't really think of anything else that happened last week. This week we have about 8 set appointments with new people, LA, and dinner appointments  so I really hope that we can have a great week this week. I know we can do it! The Lord is blessing us with some new people to teach, and we just need to focus on getting them to church. The Lord is also blessing us with great ward leaders who really push the work forward. It is just great to see. 

I included some pics of our whole zone! This is kind of old I just have forgotten to send them. Also the other one is me utilizing my selfie stick at the ward FHE  I love you all! 

-- 

Elder Lambert

Philippines, Manila Mission, Earth

A short one

Hello world. How are you all? I hope ya'll are doing well. This week was transfer week, and guess what happened!? Haha nothing. Elder Webster and I are still together. No problem at all! We have fun together haha. We had a pretty good week though. Last Monday and Tuesday was a little bit crazy but that is okay. We have been doing better at the whole finding thing. We have some new investigators who are actually from other provinces here in the Philippines. We have been focusing on finding men to teach so it is a little easier for us, and they always just like turn into us teaching girls!? Hindi ko alam and problema jan, seguro gwuapo si Elder Webster hahah. So yeah... We are trying to build a teaching pool. Sister Maricel didn't come to church this week. She promised she would... but it turned into her just disappearing again. We don't know where she is, but we are going to teach her this week hopefully. 

So I know my email kind of stinks, I will get back on between tonight and tomorrow, there is some Koreon lady kicking me off to use this computer so yeah. here are some pics of us working with some members. Don't worry, you will all hear from me soon!

-- 

Elder Lambert

Philippines, Manila Mission, Earth