Good end to a Phrustrating Week

Well, we had an extremely unproductive, awful week. Sunday was the only day that we had any success. Probably the hardest week of my entire mission as far as the work is concerned. Sister Tune and I are getting along really well. She’s very kind (makes my bed every morning while I’m exercising and stuff). This week was really hard. We have basically started over with our whole teaching pool because no one was progressing. We have done tracting every single day. A lot of our area is pretty wealthy. Not as many people are as willing to listen. We knocked on almost every single door in a whole barangay one day and didn't even get one potential investigator. It was pretty discouraging.

Yesterday, though, we taught 4 lessons. We finally were able to teach brother D again! June 14 is his new baptism date. His family even listened last time. He has an issue with alcohol that we didn't know about, but he agreed to live the Word of Wisdom. We also have been making progress with a less active family. They committed to come to church and to a ward activity on Saturday. Then, yesterday at church, this less active member randomly showed up. No one told us he was in our area. I had never met him. But he wants to return to church and his fiancé wants to learn about the gospel. So we had a great lesson with them last night. I think there is a lot of potential in the fiancé. So we had a good end to a pretty crappy week.

Baguio is basically like America. Well, I guess it's definitely way closer to America here than it is San Fernando. We have had an extremely hard time finding fellow shippers. The members are just not involved no matter how hard we are trying. It makes it so that we cannot teach men as often as we need to. No one in our mission enforced that rule until a couple transfers ago. Those were some great days of just running around teaching whomever you wanted.

For our zone activity, we had a talent show, played games, and had a water fight. Sister Jackson and I taught kickboxing as our talent. Everyone loved it. Also, we were playing a Filipino game kind of like capture the flag and I was trampled to the ground by a couple large Samoan Elders during a game. I think I’m going to have a pretty big bruise.

We had a ward service activity on Saturday. The women were cleaning and picking up trash and whatnot. Meanwhile, the men were clearing a lot that was pretty much jungle with straight-up machetes. A lady was randomly talking about John Groberg at the activity. So Sister Tune of course pipes in and says I’m related to him. Everyone was just in awe. Pretty funny. All the missionaries are always amazed because I get letters every couple weeks from him (they don't know it's just the family newsletter). haha.

You should write me some dear elders. I feel like I haven't gotten mail in a while. I think things are just slow getting to Baguio. We have an address but it's not like a mailing address. I don't think there's a way to send mail directly to me. I guess Baguio isn’t that close to America afterall.

There are stray dogs literally everywhere here, but you just bring your umbrella to fight them off and you're fine haha.

 

I have to go. Love you lots! Thanks for everything and have a good week. Continue to be a good example to everyone around you. Love you!

[These pictures are from San Fernando]