2 Months

Well its been a good week this week We had a lot of really good lessons and we had one of our families come to church this time! we were so excited for them and we introduced them to members and did our best to show to them how important church is. We have been doing a lot of walking and even though its Summer now and its HOT its all worth it to see that family and the inactive families we have come back to church. That is really all that matters out here... its not about you and how tired or sick you are... you just get up, put on a white shirt and tie, grab your bag and get to work cause you have no idea what is going to happen You might run into someone that has been waiting to hear your message and they just happened to be home at the right time and felt like listening this time. That's really what i have learned out here. Missionary work isn't about you at all. You just get to introduce The Gospel to them. The Gospel just does the rest. As a Missionary you just need to learn what to teach to your investigator and in return you end up learning just as much as them. hahaha That's about it... you don't need a name tag that reminds you who you are every day because as Members of the Church you have the name of Jesus Christ imprinted on your heart and you can choose if you are going to let the name be shown on the outside with your actions or the inside. That is something me and Elder Pajela have taught to our ward here about missionary work and how all members of the church are and should be missionaries. That reminded me of Elder Costa's talk about being a missionary everyday of his life now and how he talks to everyone about the church and he just asks after introducing himself (as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) and saying "Are you a member?" they reply "No" and he just asks "Well Why not?" hahaha soo simple yet so hard to do. Unless you have a name tag ;) hahaha well sorry if that all sounded preachy but thats really about it this week nothing crazy happened... oh wait Elder Pajela thought a BIG dog was going to bite him and he started to swing his back pack at it and well the dog was just going to sniff him but after the back pack swinging the dog was going to bite him... i just laughed at him and kept walking hahahaha the dog eventually just ran away... hahahahaha oh the joy of random dogs barking at you and following you! hahahaha well love ya all! hope you are all staying alive!

Blog

yeah sooo i really dont have much to say... last week was rather dull and unexciting just work work work so if you have questions to ask that would be helpful in writing =P

How is Ivy doing? Is her family members? Do you have any investigators that seem serious?

Ivy's mom is less active and Ivy comes to church and been reading the book of mormon from the beginning one chapter a day. she is the oldest in her family too. We have investigators who ask a lot of questions that we answer but wont come to church because its too early yet they continue to read and listen. we have one investigator that was a previous investigator a year ago and she is 30-32 i think and has 3 kids and her mom is listening and even made her friends come listen to us who have families of their own one of them after listening to us teach Aye Montepolka (the previous investigator) about the BOM and praying to know, said to us that she is 53 years old and never ever let or wanted to hear what the missionaries had to say to her.. but now she wants to hear. so we teach them all together the Nanay's we call them which means Mom's so the three Mom's are all friends and we teach them all together because one its fun they have some of the funnest questions and comments and two because they are all close friends and will encourage each other to go to church and such ( gots to love peer pressure ) yeah so thats really our main investigator because the others are not taking that step of sacrificing their time to go to church. There has been a lot of changes in teaching around here as well and how to be more effective we have been changing up the way the mission field works here in the Angeles Mission. So we are still working out the kinks and what not how to manage time and teach to people. And focusing on Less Actives. Which is the main thing here in Jaen because there are 609 members in our ward 331 member households (but the records are messed up i noticed and need to be fixed soo probably about 250 member households) and yet 82 average attendance in sacrament and we counted the most active members on our fingers last night.. we came up with 11 active families... We have been focusing on activating less actives and we had a lot come yesterday even one we stopped teaching for the last 3 weeks and he is an RM and used to be a ward missionary he came to church we asked him to come work with us and come to PEC meeting and Coordination meeting and he came back later and shaved and cleaned up and worked with us and really had fun with us and started to ask us to come teach his family. so yeah thats about the highlights of the week!

Was Sacrament Meeting switched to the end of the 3 hour block? Also, did you buy a watch?

nope we still have 8am and its really not helping anyone...
and nope no watch we dont really use it cause we have such a set schedule that it doesnt matter its not like we are going to skip teaching someone if we are late we still stop by cause we have to walk by their house hahaha

the juices are getting used up fast! oh the slushy things dont really work... hahaha but thats fine i just like the juice and kool aids and the gatorade was gone in 3 days.... =D
Can you buy the juices there?

not really sure... we dont have real supermarkets and the juices around here are like Mango weird fruit things or Tang
but i have plenty [of] kool aid even tho the ones [powdered juices] in the tube are WAY good and no sugar - i was shocked! well only the cherry and fruit punch is what i like

Letter!

So i am glad you liked the pictures! well we went back to that place for p day so the pics are the same just different elders! hahaha well nothing really new has happened... just been teaching and watching our investigators not go to church! grrr but thats just how it goes i guess! You can bring the horse to the water but you can't force him to drink! Me and Elder Pajela are still having fun annoying each other and i have just been working on learning and teaching in the language. I should probably talk a lot more to elder pajela in tagalog... people are starting to say he sounds american a lot more then he ever has! hahahaha yeah his english has gotten a lot better! I still have to proof read his letter to the mission president for all the bad grammar mistakes that for some reason Word doesnt think is wrong! hahaha but who knows if i am even right cause if it sounds right to me, then its good enough! hahahaha =P soo its getting reallllly hot in the day but reallllly cold at night! sooo a lot of sweating has been going on and a lot of "WOW Mainit Talaga!" being said! ("Wow it's really hot") so yeah, i am a live, i am healthy and i love to eat ice cream! hahahaha that is really one of the great pleasures... i have really enjoyed coming home and being all hot and eating a big bowl of ice cream! hahaha well thats about all i gots for you Oh, Elder Pajela thought he was going to get eaten by a dog the other day and freaked out and scared the dog... then the dog was really going to bite him cause he was swingin his back pack at it! hahahaha oh i just kept walking laughing at him! hahahaha well i hope everyone is having a good time in the states! love ya!

Hey Hey

well, we got to computering today late and have to finish early so short letters today soorry!

i have been working on my letter to the president... there might not be a letter to you just maybe some pics... sorry

okay so here are pics i put some descriptions here for ya! okay well gots to go bye!

The P-Day of Rock Climbing (Sorta) and cave exploring

Baptisms - Ivy is in center, Elder Pajela on left

You Can Take The BBQ Away From The Boy… But He Will Find Another WAY!!

FHE Nights

During games if you fail or lose you get a punishment normally lipstick on the face or charcoal or ….bandaids…

Well thats whats been going on i hope you enjoyed the pics and i will continue to take more for ya and do my best sending them home!

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!

Pictures

Me & Elder Pajela Activity Night

Trike

a taste of the philippines

Two Weeks

Well this week was just busy with Mission Conference and Ward Christmas Party and Exchanges. So we didnt meet a lot of our weekly goals and that was a big disappointment. It was also a tough week for finding cause of the whole Christmas excitement! This week nothing really exciting happened just a busy week a lot of walking. Then come new years its realllllly unsafe around here so we all have to stay at the zone leaders house.

Well i solved my cold shower problem! hahaha i boil water while Elder Pajela is showering so that when he finishes i fill the bucket with the normal water then pour in the hot water and get a warm water shower! hahaha its nice not gonna lie. I lost the broke alarm clock i had the other day so i had to get the new one out. The boots are nice but they hurt my feet cause my socks are thick enough so yeah i will have to do something about that socks are cheap or find some inserts. Hmm i dont have much else to tell you cause i talked all about it at christmas so yeah The work is going okay just that this was a hard week and my tagalog is okay people are still like amazed by it tho.. but thats only cause Elder Hudson who was new here never spoke tagalog so they just think i am amazing! then they think they can just speak tagalog to me and i am like Ano? and they just smile and laugh. We are trying to start a home teaching and visiting teaching program in our ward with the bishop and try to help him with sacrament meeting cause its really bad here anytime there is a lull in the service everyone just starts to talk to each other and it makes it hard to maintain the spirit after the sacrament is passed. So we are going to try and help with bishop with some little things that might help him out. I am going to work on getting pictures sent we are asking our mission president if there is a website we can use to upload pictures to so that we can just send the link to our parents and then they can download them. Well hopefully this week will be filled with more things to talk about! love ya lots!

First Week

minding my own business as we went through these house and bam BLACK dog out of the bushes starts chasing the Trike and is like trying to get me!! i was like GO GO GO! and then we got away! well we taught for like 15 minutes and went back the same way and i was like okay the dog came out the other side so it will get elder pajela in the cart and here i am minding my own business again and BAM out of the bushes on my side again BLACK dog JUMPING to get my feet i was like HOY GRABE!! HINDI ULIT! (not again!) and then we sped off and i was safe but yeah that dog was evil for no reason!! Anyways sunday was fun cause the ward really likes me cause i am always talking to people and trying to understand them and responding to them the bishop really likes me cause he kept picking on me to do stuff like lead in singing and prayers and i just go "okay po" (po = when talking to older people or to add respect) so yeah i just do whatever he asks and he just laughs. Yeah people really think i have been out in the mission for at least a transfer cause i am too happy and dont believe Elder Pajela when he says i have been here for like 5 days and when they talk to him about me and i turn around and answer there questions and they get all embarrassed cause i understood them hahahaha yeah its reallly fun out here not going to lie

today was a little hectic cause of all the christmas parties and what not going on but yeah its like the best week to be here for a first week a lot of fun activities! i love it out here and the people are so amazing i like to mimic my companion to be more like a Filipino and he just goes yeah thats how we do it! hahahaha yeah eating with your hands is pretty fun something i am really used to actually you eat a lot faster hahaha well i am running out of time we have a lot of things to get done for the rest of the week!

So yeah that is the stuff you can put in the blog and send out to others (i.e. MTC Teachers) the rest here is for you.