YAY!

so transfers came and i am staying in Jaen with Elder Pajela! we were so happy! we lost about half of our zone tho which is sad... but thats what happens! Well our Baptisms went great 2 Children of Records and 1 from a Part Member family. It was a very cool! they were confirmed on the following sunday and all went well we even had a better then normal attendence.. but we didnt have a single investigator come to church.. soo we are thinking about dropping most of our investigators and start tracting in some new areas we havent been able to go to. This week is to see if they are truly progressing. Well i am still enjoying it out here and all is well i love the members and the people! We had our first zone trip and it was really fun and lot of rock climbing and cave exploring! hahaha we had a lot of fun today even if it was tiring! We said farewell to one of our zone leaders who is heading home he has finished his mission and he is going home to an area that was opened up about a year ago in our mission hahahaha so he isnt to far away! So if anyone gets called to Tarlac you can go on splits with him hahaha We had a lot of laughs about it last night. Welll i really am loving it out here and really doing my best in the language and its improving slowly but surely it gets better each day! anyways i gots to get going! love ya all!

These computers here are really lame and my camera cant be recognized so no pics sorry!

Also i will surely hear about the packages and be prepared to pay for them. i am excited to get them!

hmmmm i dont know what else to say...

1 Month

Well its been a little over one month since i have been in the Philippines and we just got a nice little rain last night and this morning! Nothing, i mean there is nothing, like it being hot out and the rain is falling keeping you cooled off! hahaha! so this has been a good week we have had a good week for teaching we have found a few new investigators that are reallly progressing and a few that just weren't and just started to ask questions and finally getting really interested in and started to read more then a verse or two that we ask them to read! We have also been teaching less actives this week and have gotten a few of them back to church! that is always great to see. Getting investigators to church is harder then before now that church is at 8 am even members that were attending before just say they over slept and decided that they were late and would stay home... the ward clerk who takes care of me and elder pajela when it comes to eating ;) he is asking to move sacrament at the end of the three hour block. We feel we would get more investigators to come to church if that happens! The investigator we are really focused on is Ivy she has a baptism at the end of this week! we are all excited she is awesome we basically ran out of things to give her to read so i asked if she would start reading the BOM from the beginning one chapter a day and then we will answer questions to help her understand. She just made a face like ohhh man from the beginning, but then was like okay i can read a chapter a day! hahahaha Ivy is to be baptized on the 23rd (she almost didnt make it to church on sunday which would have pushed it back another 4 weeks.....) we only had 2 investigators and only 72 show up to sacrament... this whole 8 o clock church is really making it hard... well we have had our ups and downs, great lessons to those who are willing to listen and then when it came to finding those who wouldn't let us teach them, they would just tell us "tomorrow"... which is mainly like "no" around here! Its equal to the door slammed in your face.

Well its that time when transfers are on everyones mind... i dont want to leave Jaen and elder pajela but i dont want to be left in Jaen without him either.. Mainly me and elder pajela see eye to eye on things unless i am questioned something and then he is like "no this how we do it" then i just laugh at him and tell him "sounds good to me!" hahaha its normally when it comes to daily and weekly planning then he gets mad at me cause he doesnt know if i am serious or not hahaha! we have fun annoying each other you will always hear,"ELDER! what are you doing?" coming from our house! hahaha or him just asking me a string of Why questions which we all know i am the master at-- all thanks to Bella asking me "why?" Anyways the mission life is good and its tiring but there is nothing like coming home and going over your day talking about those you taught and what they need to hear next then going to bed and being so tired you just fall right to sleep and you wake up and its time to do it all over. The only thing i love to do more then teaching new investigators the lessons is going and sharing messages with those that are less active or members and having them testify of the things i am shared with them and then get to see them show up at church. Sigh well its that time again where i have run out of things to tell you I hope all is well with everyone! Until next week! Love ya'all!

next monday is transfers don't know about the emailing situation! so who knows when i will get to!

Short Week

Short Week means Short Message! sorry! okay so to start this one off with Church is at 8am.... apparently that is normal around here!! soo that made a low attendance and only one investigator came which was Ivy who is getting baptized on the 23rd and she is 9 and awesome always reads what we ask her to and is always focused in the lessons and even finishes our sentences.. well mainly mine cause i cant think of the words! hahaha anyways its getting hot summer is starting but it gets overcasty towards the end of the day and it feels GREAT! oh that humid air such a delight! (i am actually being serious about that) The work has been good we got a lot of new investigators this week that are really interested so we are looking forward to coming back to teach again! My tagalog is coming along people are always complimenting me but i think they are just being nice!! =P Oh so we were at a members house and i smelled... Linguisa.. but i was like nahhhh not possible... so we were eating at a members house and they were like Elder Grow "here is some sausage" and i was like "okay" and i was eating it and was like "this tastes like linguisa... is that possible"?? then we ate at a members cantina and she had that sausage and Elder Pajela was like "Oh sweet! Linguisa" (pronounced Lengaesa) and i stated "you mean linguisa... is that what we ate last night?" and he said yes and i was like "i thought so!" soooooooo i told him all about how we eat this at Christmas time and its amazing and that we will need to get some and he was like "oh its super cheap!" hahahaha and might i say its Dees Meat quality (maybe better) ;P hahahaha okay we need to get going back to our area it takes about an hour love ya lots stay alive dont freeze to death over there! hahaha! Talk to ya next week!

Jan 3, 2010

yeah i figured they put my face on the mini casey it was funny to see! the [atm] transactions were for food cause we were assigned to bring snacks for that night [Dec 31 at the Zone Leaders house] i will probably get more money out so that we can spend a little extra on MEAT hahaha we found the butcher place and will get pork tonight! tell those that have donated money thanks! Elder Pajela is enjoying me as a companion cause i have everything he asks for in my suit case.. haha he has lost about 4 of those cheap pens you bought me! I dont let him touch the zebras!! [brand of pen] so what to send... The Gatorade powder!! Kool aid.. Ice cube tray.. i can probably get that here! acne stuff or face wash.. look at that email that i wrote down stuff on.

Yes i can print stuff out if i need to i just have to ask the people and they will charge me

`

End of Week 2

okay so this end of week two was really good we had 11 investigators come to church! Fast & Testimony meeting was really good as well! We have a lot of new investigators that we have to follow up on as well and we have 6 people preparing to be baptized on the 23rd and 30th. I do a lot of teaching even tho i can only speak simply i try my best and aside of the giggling of the children I really try not to speak in english while teaching, because i was called to teach in tagalog and if i can only teach in tagalog so be it! hahaha i am having a lot of fun out here even tho its hot and me and elder pajela walk every where cause we save our money for food instead of spending it on trikes! hahahaha So when we are following up on investigators and just want to see how they are doing we share a simple message which means elder pajela just goes my companion elder grow will share a message with you and then i have to find something and try to explain it in tagalog... which i normally can do then elder pajela finishes it up for me. So we have this investigator Pablo Gatos he is about 65 i think and he is a leader of one of the churchs here in Jaen.. he was an investigator Elder Pajela started teaching a week before i came. He is really nice and lets us come and teach. But he just never shows progress and in our last weekly planning we felt that we should consider dropping him. So on our next visit we wanted to know how his comments were coming. And same old same old, but he had questions like "you believe Jesus was born in April right?" so i found the D&C Revelation Joseph Smith had and we introduced D&C to him and talked about how here are modern revelations from God to a prophet and he was more interested then we had seen him before. and the last time we taught he has a daughter probably about 16 and she doesnt really sit around as we teach she leaves well she came inside the first time i taught to him and she was just grabbing something and i began to bear my testimony about praying to know in tagalog and she made the comment, wait do you even speak english?? and then just listened and after i finished left. well this time me and elder pajela was telling brother gatos the importance of the book of mormon and she sat down next to him and we picked the book of mormon off his shelve which was under two other books and handed it to him and i was testifying that he has to read to know if its true or not and pray about it sincerely and he finally understood and just then his daughter just takes the book of mormon out of his hands and begins to read what we asked him to... and he said a closing prayer and just hear pages flipping as we prayed and as we left she pops out and yells "Hey Ano ang pangalan ninyo!?!" (What's your names!?!) as we told her we left and just were like okay that was different today then the other days we cant drop him and now we have his daughter to teach to, but through Brother Gatos.. it was a really cool experience that got me and elder pajela excited for the day cause it was a tough start no one was home and we were turned down by 6 people cause they were busy. Missionary life is tough but it makes it all worth it when you get experiences like that one. We also teach a girl named ivy she is 12 i believe and her mom is a member but less active so as ivy is preparing to be baptized we are getting the mom more active as well. When ever we teach ivy she just starts to finish our sentences! its awesome to teach her cause we just get to start and she finishes and we testify to her and ask her questions and she answers them right away! well thats it for this week other than the new years sooo fireworks are cheap they are big and loud and cheap so everyone owns them and we spent new years eve just hearing booms and bangs all night then at 12 the sky was BRIGHT! the big fireworks came out and we went up to the balcony and just watched them from every direction they were going off! then after 30 minutes it was boring and i went back to sleep! hahaha we also watched "Up" that night i fell asleep towards the end.. it was a funny movie up until that point! hahaha sooo i am off to get back to work! Love ya All!