transfer day ba?

     Hey well as you guys know normal is totally boring so to spice things up a little I am getting transferred Tuesday. Crazy right? It was totally unexpected. The Zone leaders called us Saturday night to tell us the news. Of course they didn't call until after 10:30 so I was already asleep. It was probably the most confusing phone call of my life because I had no idea what was happening I was just woken up and given the phone. I honestly didn't even know what day it was. but that has been super exciting for me. I'm going out to a place called Pasacao. I have no idea what it is like or anything except I'm pretty sure it is rural but I am pretty pumped cause I'm headed out to the beach!  My new comp, Elder Mafi,  is super cool. he is my batch so I know him pretty well. He is a Polynesian.  I am gonna miss the food in Naga, but I can cook a bit now. I make a great sweet and sour fish  Anyways that was basically the main focus of the last couple of days for me. Before that it was just a normal week. I'm trying to think of anything really exciting that happened but nothing is really coming to mind. We did find a huge new part of Camaligan that is across a river. the town over there is called San Francisco so I guess I could say that I spent the whole day in Frisco. While we were there we met this super nice family that was having a party for the death anniversary of their dad. They let us teach all these super cute little kids and then fed us a ton of spaghetti.  It is now summer here so it has been deathly hot. there was at least once or twice I honestly thought I would just die of heat on the side of the road. Thankfully I lived.  My landlords wife really likes me by the way and she said she is really sad I am leaving and that I need to come back and visit. She says she wants to meet you and wants us to stay at her house. 

I love you all and hope you have an awesome week!! 

LATE

hey I'm sorry it is so late today. I would hope you are asleep so this should just make for a great Monday surprise. This week was pretty alright for us. We have really just been trying to find some people to teach. And even though I haven't found any super awesome people yet I did see two beautiful sunsets so you gotta take what you can get. We had exchanges last Friday. That was a blast. I got to work with Elder Gamas. He is freakin funny and he also said my Tagalog is not really that bad so that made me pumped. Also while I was working with him we found this cool cafe that had a wall full of dream catchers. We went to get a pic and while we were sitting at the table they brought us water and menus. The awkward bit was we were both completely broke so we couldn't even afford to buy a lemonade.... We just sat there for a bit, snuck a pic of the wall, and then elder Gamas pretended to get an "Emergency" call so we left really fast. He is a pretty good actor it turns out and we had a pretty good laugh about it. Today we had a district activity and that was a blast. I made some no bake cookies and they tasted freakin amazing so I will for sure be making that again because I can buy the stuff for pretty cheap (except peanut butter but whatever). A lot of our week was just spent walking and talking to people. We found this weird abandoned swimming pool out in the middle of these rice fields and while we were admiring it like 5 kids came and started talking to us. They were all pretty chill and want us to come back and teach them so that will hopefully be great and work out for us. Also on Tuesday we went down this skinny road and all these kids probably like 6-12 started surrounding us and talking to us. So we taught them all in one of their houses. The only problem was the house would comfortably fit about 6 people and there were probably about 25 of us. Two of them followed us for like 2 hours after that and just made all these people talk to us. It was pretty cool and the kids said some funny stuff so that wasn't a bad way to spend some time. Brother Reyes told me that after him and his gf get married they want to visit utah so I told him he has to wait until I get home and then I can show him around and he was pretty happy about that. I hope he really does. I would love for you all to meet him although I don't know how much he speaks english so you all better start to practice now. 

 

I love you all tons and hope you have an awesome week!!! 

April 8, 2018

     Hey so I finally got to watch General Conference and dang it was super good. I'm sure part of it is the fact I actually take notes now and watch it in church clothes so I'm not as comfortable but General Conference is super awesome. I was looking forward to it the whole week honestly. I had to say goodbye to elder Ogzewalla this week and that was really sad. I have gotten so dang close with him I didn't really want to see him leave. I also am starting to understand Dad's hate of packing. Just helping Ogzewalla pack made me want to die. There is no way I will survive when I have to pack up. My new comp is elder Chadburn from Ogden. He is a pretty interesting guy. The nice thing is he cooks. even if it is just the exact same meal every day for lunch and dinner at least I don't have to cook it. The area is still the same though. My walking to teaching lessons ratio was a little bit better this week but not nearly as good as I would like it to be. But it's all good. We did have one cool experience this week. We taught a lady and the lesson went okay. We asked her to pray and during the prayer she just started to cry. When she ended the prayer we asked what was wrong. She said she just has all these problems in her life right now and it's just pretty hard for her. One of the things that has been tough for her is that her sister is really sick and keeps saying she is gonna die. Well we got the chance to talk to her and it's true she is really sick. But within like 4 seconds of talking to her I felt very strongly that we needed to give her a blessing. To be honest I was kinda scary because we had never been in the house before today and all we knew about this lady is that she was a missionary for a baptist church. But as she kept talking her faith in Christ became very clear to me. Elder Chadburn told her that we needed to leave and we went into the other room to get our stuff. as soon as we were in the other room I said that we needed to give her a blessing. We went back in and gave her a blessing and it was a pretty spiritual experience. I would love to tell you she is totally better now but we haven't been able to go back so I have no idea. But later that night we watched the priesthood session and as you know there President Nelson calls the men of the priesthood to step it up basically. It made  me so glad that I didn't wimp out in giving the lady a blessing. 

I love you all so much and hope you have a great week!! 

Holy Week

     Well I'm sure all you Mormons aren't even aware but it was holy week this week. In case you aren't sure what that is, it is when everybody in pretty much all of Naga that is Catholic is active in their religion. The whole week they were doing parades and stuff with their saints (statues of people) Apparently there are even people that whip and crucify themselves but I didn't see any of that. We even got trapped at a members house for about 30 minutes because a huge parade was going on and they had filled up the entire street. I was just super glad we made it to the members house because it would have been super scary to walk out in the middle of that. Sadly I don't get to see any of general conference until next week but I am super excited. Because it was holy week not a whole ton of people were super pumped to listen to us but I was super happy because we did find some. We had exchanges with the ZLs again because they learned some new stuff about teaching and finding and wanted to share it with us. I got to work with Elder Gregory and it was super fun we had a blast. I am going to have a new comp tomorrow because elder Ogzewalla is going to be a ZL in Iriga. My new comp is named Elder Chadburn. So very surprisingly I have another American comp. I don't know anything about him really but I am sure we will have a grand old time together. 

I love you all and I hope you had an awesome easter. have a great week!!