Sige!
Hey Pamilya,
This week was the pinka-best! Like the most best. We had a really good week and Elder P and I felt we worked harder than ever! I'll talk about this morning first though, because earlier we woke up at 5 am to go running up the mountain. It happened because I was talking to Brother Mark and asked him if there is any cool sites here, because I wanted to see before I would leave on a p-day. Because, I told him, I knew there are waterfalls and stuff but I was wondering about our city. Anyway, all he told me here was there's this giant hill with a cross on the top. I knew about it because we can see it from our apartment but we've never gone up there. So we decided to jog up there this morning. It was kind of cool just because of the view, you could see all of our city. But I wanted to talk about something else. Anyway, Pinoy's are kind of superstitious, I guess. Like they always talk about Ghosts and stuff and they really believe in them. Anyway, they also believe in this one disease called "pasmo." I'm not sure what it is, but here's one example of how you get it.. I guess if you're jogging and then you have a whole lot of sweat and then you go home and take a shower right away without waiting like 15 minutes or so. You'll get pasmo. I always used to joke about it like when a companion transfers and people ask where they went you tell them you were jogging and then his sweat was grabe gid, and then he took and shower, and died. Some people think it's funny, and most people believe you, so you have to say straight off, JOKES LANG!! Anyway, as we were running Mark was like, "I'm starting to sweat." So we offered him some water and he's like, "Hey! Don't do that! You shouldn't drink while you are running. My friend did that once, and then when he got to the finish line... he died." We told him ok, and we didn't drink any water. I wonder if it's true, pasmo...
So this week, last week on Sunday I ran into an investigator we found like 5 months ago and stopped teaching because he was never home when we went their like 7 times. Anyway, we talked to him and I asked if we could go back and he said yeah, so on Monday we recontacted him. It was a way good lesson. We weren't exactly sure what to teach, mostly focus on him giving it a shot and really trying to know if the Book of Mormon is true. Anyway, we got there and talked to him a while and about our message we found out he's been way confused about what happens after this life. It was way cool as we taught him because we just kind of skipped forward and taught it and as we shared he was way happy and really understood. Then he asked, "So how can we become sure we can go inside in the kingdom of God?" And we shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he committed to be baptized. We had a couple good lessons this week with him, but he wasn't able to go to church because his work. He's scared if he goes to our church he'll get fired because the owners of the fields and goats and quan he works on are a different religion. So we just have to keep working with him, hopefully everything works out.
We also saw Carlito again this week. Man, he's been having some tough times. His whole family are way strong Born-Again and all of them are saying Sister Javier and us 'woo'ed him into joining our church. He's being persecuted way bad. But he told him, it's not because of the missionaries or sister that I joined the church, it's because when I walked in there I felt something I've never felt before and I know it's true. When we taught him he told us that on Sunday he was going to bear his testimony so that everyone knows that he knows for himself that this is true. And he did. He's standing up for it. He's knows whats right and he follows it. He has no doubt that he's choosing the right and his faith is such an example for all of us. I want to be like him.
There was also one night we saw Mark and Juliet. As we were teaching there was a "brown-out" (I think in america it's called black-out, but here they just say in english, "It's a brown-out!") So anyway, they lit up a bunch of candles and we continued sharing when the lights came back on. Anyway, Mark and Juliet just started yelling, "Hurry! Hurry! Blow out the candle! Go! Go! Go!" So I was kind of surprised they were yelling that at me. So I turned really quickly and blew but the candle didn't go out so I licked my fingers and put it out shrek-style. Anyway, then I realized they weren't yelling at me to blow out the candle but their 2 year old daughter... hehe. SO I was embarrassed. So then they told their daughter to blow out the other candles and the daughter just licked her fingers and reached for the candle... don't worry, we stopped her on time. Anyway, I apologized for my bad example. It was just kind of funny and I guess the moral is that people will see everything you do, so be careful and always be a good example.
We have these 2 15-16 year old kids we've been teaching and they are doing awesome. They are really great kids, Emerson and John-Boy. And then Emerson's little sister always listens too but she always says she'll never read, but we went there yesterday and she actually read! They are neighbors of one of the members and I guess Sister Villanueve talked to the dad and the dad liked the way her kids were and he wanted his kids to listen to the missionaries too and go to church and stuff. Anyway, the dad isn't too interested himself, but we're working on getting his trust. Emerson and John Boy are way good kids though. They are way humble and hard working, but willing to learn too. They always pray every time and are really growing in their faith. It's kind of exciting to teach them because in a couple of years they can go on missions too.
We had some good luck this week finally with finding. On Saturday we were able to find an entire family. It was cool. There was a mom, her name was Juicy. Hehe. Then a man (Jussie's son) and his pregnant wife, they are a new couple, and then their sister Qfeh. Then their godson was in the lesson too. We had a really good lesson with them. We talked to them first for a while and they really liked us. I have a ton of lame jokes and usually I don't get too much but these people were cracking up and it was so easy to talk to them, I really enjoyed it. Anyway, after talking for a while we found out one Jussie's daughters and died like 3 years ago, and she only had like 3 kids total, now 2. (Here in the Philippines most people have a big family, and it's kind of sad if someone only has a couple of kids) So she was really sad about it. We talked to them and all we taught them was about eternal families and how they could be together forever. Then we told them it was possible, but there were some things they need to do. We left them a pamphlet to read and they seemed really excited to do so. I hope they do and are willing to make the changes in their life to have this great gift. I've come to realize on my mission how much I want that, an eternal family, and I'll do my best as I live to be able to obtain that. And I hope that we all can.
Anyway, I have one other funny story. So when Elder P plays basketball all I can always think of is Donkey Kong. Like the way he jumps and shoots and stuff. It's kind of funny to watch, I should try to get some pictures. Like he's not bad at basketball, he just has a donkey kong style. Anyway, here like every where you go people nail basketball rings into everything, trees, they make little backboards and play everywhere. So sometimes when we are walking and little kids are playing they throw us the ball and want us to play with them. So sometimes we shoot around with them a little bit. Anyway, we were doing so with these little 5-8 year old girls on the street and played with them and Elder P got the ball and jumped up and shot it and the little girls just started yelling, "Bakulaw! Bakulaw!" I wasn't sure what that meant and we asked some people and thought it meant something like Monster but we looked it up later and it turned out meaning gorilla. Anyway, it kind of made me smile because those kids also think Elder P plays basketball like donkey kong. I like doing little things like that just because of how happy it makes little kids. The kids here in the Philippines are way cute. I love walking past them because they stare at me and yell, "Kano!" and then I love making weird faces at them because they just laugh and it's way awesome.
The other thing about Elder P is that everyone thinks he is pinoy. When he meets someone he says, "I'm Elder P. I'm Filipino." And they don't really doubt him. It's way funny because his language is still kind of rough because he learned English too here on the mission and Ilonggo for a year and now he's learning Tagalog. So after he speaks for a while they kind of think he's either pinoy and doesn't know how to speak or he's something else. These people we met the other day we're fooled for like 10 minutes and then I told them, hey, he's from Samoa. And then they say, where is that, Mindanao (southern island)? And I have to tell them it's a different country, not in the Philippines. And then they ask him if he is like african, or a black american, someone asked him if he's a mexico before. It's kind of funny because nobody knows what he is. They just think he is a giant pinoy.
Anyway, I guess that's all the happenings this week. I'm way excited for General Conference!!
I love you all,
Elder B
No comments:
Post a Comment