30 October 2011

Hey Family,

Things are going great here on Guimaras! This morning we trek'ed across the deep blue sea (all right, it's only like a 20 minute boat ride) in order to withdraw. They used to let us go to the malls in Iloilo once a month to buy some supplies you can't get here in Guimaras but we can't do that anymore. So now we just ride across, withdraw, and come back. It's cool with me, because I hate going to huge stores and blowing p-day shopping (well, we just blew 3 hours withdrawing, hehe) but we have one problem. Every sunday after church we have a tradition where we make homemade pancakes. The problem is now we have no way to buy SYRUP. I mentioned that my mom used to make like all sorts of fruit syrup like plum syrup and they wanted me to get the recipe from you. I bet we could make some wicked fruit syrups here. ANyway, help me out mom and send me the recipe as quick as you can. We're running low on our syrup.

Oh, by the way, HAPPY HALLOWeen! What are you all going to be? A burrito? Anyway, I don't even have to try to be something else. One of the members here that we visited last week thought I was a Mexican. Elder Reeves thought that was a knee-slapper..

Anyway, things have been way busy lately. It's been a lot we've been trying to handle at once. One, is next month we're getting a senior couple here in GUimaras :D, so we have to prepare for that. Then Elder Reeves and I are just trying to figure out a lot of things for the zone and we just have so much stuff to prepare and so little time. Tomorrow we have Zone Meeting and then Tuesday with have correlation with the stake president, wednesday we have zone leaders council and then next week we have leadership training. The scary thing is this leadership training is that president asked me to give a training. So now I somehow have to prepare a 2-hour training to train leaders of the mission how to train their missionaries. We'll see how it all goes. But things are still going way sweet like cake.

This week we had a blast. To tell you the truth, our teaching pool is still way small right now. We're trying to contact people and find people to teach but we're struggling with appointments falling through and the return appointments we make with our investigators are falling through. But we're still seeing the tender mercies of the Lord in our work.

On Tuesday though I was feeling kind of sick. After district meeting we went home to eat and I couldn't eat anything. Elder Reeves thought I was dehydrated and made me chug a cup of juice. That wasn't too good for me I guess because I felt worse and ran to the door, pinoy squatted, and barfed for the first time on my mission. The barf was nice though. Like it didn't taste bad. I think all that came out was the mango juice I had just consumed. And afterwards I felt a little better and after a little rest we still got out to work, even though I had a massive headache. But that day was good because we saw our baptismal candidates. But we're still struggling with them. One of them is Nelson. I really like him. He's like 30-40 and even when his mouth is closed it looks like he's still smiling just because his teeth stick out. HE's a goofy guy and I enjoy his company. THe problem is he still works on sundays. He's able to get an hour off of work to go to sacrament but we're focusing on helping him keep the sabbath holy. After that he should be good. The other one, Eduardo, is a way nice guy. We had a great lesson with him and he seems to be determined to fix his WOW. He's doing pretty well with it. He's a little slower to understand but we're really focusing on him understanding better his relationship with his father in Heaven. As he does so everything will work itself out.

This week the APs also came down to Guimaras to do exchanges with us and also figure some things out with finding a house and accessories for the senior couple sa December. So I got to work with Elder Misbach. I love that guy, he's such a hilarious guy and I learned a ton from him. He's full of faith. We ended up finding a lot because I wasn't sure where we were because it takes me a while to learn an area. I always get mixed up in the beginning. But at night we had a really good lesson and he really taught me about asking inspired questions and listening to the spirit. It's crazy working with the big dawgs.

I also got to go on exchanges this week with Elder Workman in Sibunag. He's in the most bukid area I've ever been too. (like jungly, spread out, mountainas, I guess) Anyway, he's a really great elder. When he transferred there a lot of Elders told him... well, good luck with that, god speed. Because it's known for being a hard area. But Elder Workman got the first baptism there in over a year and has a couple more coming up. He told me how you always have to have a positive attitude about your area. Basically any area in the mission could be the best area, you just got to believe it's the best area. ANyway, when I worked with him in the morning we did a CSP and just weeded someones house. But afterwards at the Sibunag apartment they have coconut trees. So I climbed up one and got down some coconuts. We cut them open and drank the juice, then with one of them we decided to put tang in the coconut juice. LEt me tell you, best idea.. ever... It was delicious. You could probably sell it at restaurants and no one would know the secret. Anyway, I had a sweet time with Elder Workman. His dad is a motivational speaker so he's really taught me a lot. He wants to be one too. He's just the kind of person that can talk and the entire time you'll be entertained.

On Saturday we taught a muslim. It was cool because we had been working on finding by asking inspired questions and we talked to him and asked why he thought so many churches were on the earth if theres one god. And he said, if you can tell me that, I'll listen to your message. And we could. So we got to share with him. He told me his name was Benjamin Franklin. I'm not sure if that's true. But we'll see. After that we went to the church to set up for the baptism of Jamie. It was really well set up. The Ward Mission Leader sets up everything here. He's really dilligent. Usually it's just the missionaries who do it. Jamie's an 18 year old kid, way nice, I love him, and the Branch President's son baptized him. Anyway, when our Branch President was doing the welcome to the branch a fly was buzzing around and he just grabbed it out of the air and ate it. It was way weird, but... hilarious. After that we had a way successful night and visited a family we had contacted and they welcomed us into their house. We had a member with us so it was a really successful lesson. They committed themselves to go to church next week, so I'm excited to see how they progress.

One night this week we bought bread and the people at the bread shop asked if that was our dinner. Because here in the Philippines they believe all we eat in America is bread and that we don't have any rice. But Elder Chandler (from my apartment) taught me a cool way to counter it. We told them we eat rice all the time and of course as usual they asked the question, "Do you have rice in America?" We told them of course we have rice there, not just bread, but our rice is BLUE. ANyway, that always weirds them out but they believe it or think it's funny at least. Well, I guess that's mostly it for this week. Last monday we played a game called Monopolio that Elder Vennard bought in his last area. I thought it was a disease but I guess it's a spanish version of monopoly. It was all in spanish and then had countries instead of board walk. It was fun. But I got destroyed, first. Anyway, I guess that's mostly it. I love you all.
Elder Burton