Hmmm. Time is going. It just keeps on moving along. I guess I hit my 19 month mark here in the mission. It is seriously just flying along. This week just came and gone like nothing happened. I think that it was a good week this week. Tuesday we had zone meeting and then Friday we had interviews with President Ostler. It was just an all around good week!
Tuesday we had our zone meeting at the Philippines Institute of Religion. That is the Philippines institute building that is also a chapel. So in that area, there are TONS of universities, and students from all over the Philippines come to Manila to study at some of these universities. So since lots of these students are members, it is a good place to have an institute building built. There are like nice classrooms with nice TVs and stuff that we can use for our zone meeting. We learned about baptism, and how it is honestly the REAL focus of our mission. We can help reactivate people, but baptism is our main focus always. We also watched a few really awesome video clips of Elder Holland talking about the Atonement and missionary work. I have seen that before, pero umiyak pa rin ako. We also discussed about developing Christ-like attributes in our missions. I was also reminded that I am far from becoming like Him haha. This life is all about progression though, so what can you expect. After the meeting we went and taught a few lessons, talked to a few people, and then went home for the night.
Thursday Elder Reber and I went on exchanges. I love working with that guy. He lead their area and I went over there with him to work for the day. We were punted for part of the day, but we found some people to teach. We also used our white power to our advantage and had a good amount of OYMs. I like to spice it up a bit, one of the OYMs we had was this like 72 year old tatay. He was speaking English to us, even though I was responding to him in Tagalog. He was so funny. He told us that he ran the 100 meter dash last week and he beat all of the people he raced with. He said he ran it in 16 seconds. We of course laughed at a 72 year old man running a 16 second 100 meter dash. I told him to race me! But I didn't wanna hurt myself ;) He then asked me how old I am. When people ask me how old I am, I always tell them to guess and then they tend to like double my age, pretty normal. Anyways, so I changed it up a bit and told him I was 45. He then says, "Wow! You look like you are 35!" Elder Reber just started laughing hahaha. It was pretty funny. But lets keep in mind that this Tatay is little crazy. So that was a funny OYM. I also threw Elder Reber for a loop during a lesson. I acted like I couldn't speak Tagalog for like half the lesson, and then I went straight Tagalog for the investigator. Pretty funny as well. Stuff like that is what makes life more fun here in the mission. Elder Reber and I finished our day off with some sick American spaghetti. That was awesome.
Friday was interviews with President Ostler as well as Christmas Choir practice. Last Pday, I was excited to find out if I was in the Manila Mission Christmas Choir, because last year I was on Palawan and unable to do that. So yeah, didn't make it. I am pretty sure that they do it geographically meaning the far areas from the mission office probably won't make it. I have been assigned in the 2 farthest areas in the whole mission in a row, so yeah. That was a downer. But its okay! I saw some people that I haven't seen in months at the Christmas choir practice while we had interviews. Elder Eteaki was even there, so that was cool to see him. I miss that guy. So my interview with President went fine, honestly nothing huge happened. He just asked me about my companion and stuff. Asked how I am doing. Nothing special at all. He helped me realize how blessed I am to be in the situation that I am in. With like my family and stuff. He talked about growing up in the church is a a huge blessing, which it is. Some of these Filipino convert missionaries maybe were drunk like 2 or 3 years ago. They had to change a lot. So yeah, gratitude is huge. Sa totoo lang, nothing to really report on there. It was a good day though. Except when we had to find a taxi for like 2 hours. That was kind of a big joke, but we made it to the train station. At the train we packed into it like sardines again. Elder Reber's camera was stolen, but all my stuff is still good. Sayang, he was pretty frustrated about that.
Our investigators are still doing so well! Jahn mae, kristina and Aljan are all doing well. They LOVE the Book of Mormon. They read and do their assignments every single time. They always have good insights, so it makes it easy to just simply follow them up for understanding. We have even found some other LA members in their area, one girl is named Alma. She is a LA who was bapized in the province like 20 years ago. We have an appointment with her tomorrow, so we will see how that goes. Other than that, we are teaching some other people who just kind of aren't willing to come to church and all that stuff. We are doing our best with finding. The Manuel family is doing awesome! We got to church yesterday, and they were already there. Like 45 minutes before the meeting! It is good to see them.
Yesterday at church, I was asked to speak in church, me and Elder Cebuco. I got to choose my topic. I was thinking about some of the more basic beliefs of the church, that some people sometimes still don't understand. I chose to talk about the Godhead. I chose that because there are tons of people, especially here who don't understand what that means. I tried to nicely correct and teach it the best I could. I think my talk was for about like 18 minutes. That wasn't even that bad. Speaking isn't that bad anymore, but that doesn't mean I like to do it ;)
Today after email, we are going to the church to have an Elders only zone activity. I think we are watching Finding Nemo and then we are going to play basketball. We are all pretty excited there. Should be good. I think that is all for this week.
I love you all!
PS I saw a member from Las Pinas at zone meeting. Sister Ivy Bawalan
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