Letter to the family:
This has been a
pretty difficult week for Elder Manicdo and I too get lessons.
Everyone seems to be gone or busy when we arrive. But on the bright
spot of teaching, yesterday we were teaching a 10 year old boy named JC
(John Carter). Honestly he reminds me a lot of Timothy. From the very
first lesson that I taught him he has refused to pray, and today he said
the closing prayer. It was one of those small miracles that I didn't
take for granted. I just wanted to kindle that spark that had been
started so eventually he will be praying all of the time and reading the
Book of Mormon. This week has consisted of a lot of street contacting
because tracting here is almost nearly impossible. A majority of the
houses are close to the road so it's hard to hear when someone is at the
door. Instead of knocking on doors you stand outside the gate (if they
have one) and yell (Tao Po). Just a little funny side note, I have
started
to eat rice by the cups now. When we eat out at restaurants I get the
main dish and then I get unlimited rice that goes with it. I even eat
more rice then Elder Lam Cheum (he's from Samoa) sometimes.
Our area is one of
the biggest in the mission so after this transfer ends (Oct.7) our area
is being split into a Sister area so we lose over half of our
investigators. It sucks because we lose 2 people that have Baptismal
Goal Dates. And now we have to take a 30 minute Jeep me ride Araw Araw
(everyday) just to get to our area. I guess that just means that
there's a lot of work to be done in Pacol and Carolina. But today for
our district activity we went to Mt. Isarog and went to the falls.
Might I say that it is was gorgeous!!! It felt like I was in a Jurassic
Park movie. Having the jungle just surround me with banana trees and
all sorts of exotic animals made me speechless. Being on a volcano was
pretty astig (awesome). The language is starting to come pretty well at
this point in time, one day I just woke up and Tagalog made sense. The
people are starting to understand me a lot
more so that makes me feel really good. It's not perfect Tagalog but
I'm sure working on it. We don't watch General Conference till the 2nd
Saturday and Sunday so we've still got another week until we get to
watch it. I can't wait to watch it for my very first time as a
missionary. I think I'll be able to listen a lot easier now, especially
when the talks about Missionary Work comes up. Well I love you guys
and I'm grateful for all that you've done for me, it's nice knowing of
how much support I have coming from the home front.
Elder Cole, I just started reading your blog. Half of my ancestry comes from the Bicol Region where you're serving, so I thought I'd look up some mission blogs from the Philippines as a good Sunday activity. Yours was the first to come up. I know you won't read my comments for a while, but I thought I'd write anyway.
ReplyDeleteEven in your first month out in the field, I could see the spirit really guiding you in your language and in your actions. You're beginning to see some small and simple miracles, miracles that require quite a deal of worthiness to receive. That's amazing to me. I'm quite impressed by your humility in your dealings with the people of your mission. Brother Evangelista is a man I definitely would like to meet and thank for being so selflessly caring and generous to the servants of the Lord. You're gonna come back a lot more bulky if you don't keep these new rice portions in check. Haha, I don't know how healthy it is for non-Polynesians to be eating more rice than Samoans that's all I'm saying. ;) I look forward to catching up to actual time and I may decide to send you a hard letter if I get to that point before you return home. God speed, Elder.
Joe