Happy huwebes p-day! It feels really weird to be having
p-day right now. I feel like we need it though since we have been going saging
(bananas) trying to get things ready for zone conference and running on little
sleep. The week has kind of passed in a blur so I will have to stop and think
what has happened.
Maybe I will just start with most recent. We had zone conference. It was a pretty good one. There were two zone conferences with the mission split into two groups. TONS of people were there. We were the lucky ones assigned to help out with BOTH conferences. We also had dozens of elders sleep in our apartment... so messy.
We got very little teaching in due to running errands for zone conference. I'm proud of Elder K and I though. We managed to get some key lessons in even with all that. Every chance we got we would go out teaching. We had a great lesson with P and his wife, She has kind of stopped progressing. Whenever we would teach, P would just steal the show and go on and on talking in English about deep stuff. S would just look off into space and look bored. Then this past lesson we went over and spoke with P a little bit alone. We said that we wanted to teach S some basic doctrine with no stories or additions, just pure doctrine. We played Jenga to start and they loved it! Then we related it to the apostasy and did the simplest clearest apostasy lesson ever. S was loving it.
For zone conferences we did service at the provincial hospital. It's way more sketchy than the other hospital where that guy died beside us. I wrote up the proposal letter to the hospital and then we went there and did a total of 4 hours between the two groups. We weeded, painted and cleaned. We even got to wear those cool yellow Helping Hands vests that the church has for service projects. While we were there, we met the parents of one of our less actives. They said that their grandson (the less active's son) was just admitted to the hospital with a really high fever. We are teaching the man and his girlfriend to help them get married and for her to be baptized. They asked for help so we went to give a blessing. There is a senior couple here so Elder K asked if the senior elder would like to join us for the blessing. He said he would love to and came with us. Good thing too because we had no oil with us but he did.
The mother and baby were in a room on the far end of the hospital. It looked like a ghetto hospital. The windows were partly smashed in, the washroom was a pit and everything looked filthy. We gave the baby a blessing and we felt really good about it. The mother is pretty cool. Her boyfriend is so nice and loving. She has generally been pretty quiet as we are still kind of new to her so teaching there sometimes feels a little awkward. The last lesson we had there though, was so good. We taught about the Restoration. Usually teaching that lesson here is a little tough because we get so excited about it and most people we teach it to don't really seem to care. I'm still trying to figure it out. So what we did is we drew pictures as we talked and linked it more to why we needed a restoration rather than just telling them that it happened. She really loved it and understood it. She has a baptismal date now and is really excited about it (it's way off in March though, so that they have time to get married).
After service at the hospital we went carolling. We went to the house of the family with the son in jail and the daughter who just gave birth. They are so poor - the poorest I have ever seen. We carolled there with about 20 missionaries. We also brought them a few kilos of rice and some other Christmas foods.
The next thing we did at zone conference was musical presentations by zone. The other zones were really good. Laoag zone (us) did three songs put together into one and they were all reggae songs and sung in a reggae choir style. It was pretty cool. Then President wanted each zone to have special numbers outside of their regular zone presentation. He lent me his guitar (it's a fairly new, well built classical guitar) and told me to play a song because he heard that I can play. I fooled around on the guitar a bit the week before the conference but I still had no idea what to play. So I left it to last minute and ended up playing Redemption Song by Bob Marley (went with our zone theme I guess) as it was one of the only songs I remembered how to play. I got two polynesians to sing with me.
Yesterday we turned left in a place where you aren't supposed to and we got pulled over. Elder M was driving. We all just spoke straight English to the police officer. He tried to speak English and struggled really bad and then got another policeman to come over who was equally bad at it. We were returning chairs to the chapel at the time and were to meet the bishop there. So we told the police that we were in a hurry and needed to bring the chairs to the bishop, at which point they let us go. Drop the word bishop and you can do pretty much anything here. But afterwards we all felt bad so later we went back to where we were pulled over. We were only going to apologize and pay the fine but they seemed scared to see us (especially elder M - I don't think they realized how big he was when he was sitting in the truck the first time) so they kind of started running away. We caught up to one of them and apologized and then asked if we could pay the fine and he said not to worry about it and said we could go (I think he was still scared).
Anyway, that's my week. Thanks for the emails, AND I got your packages! Thanks so much, you are the best - I love you all tons.
Maligayang Pasko
Elder Dustan
ps- I think I will be transferred this time so I am way excited for that! I feel like I am in my teaching and speaking prime right now and it feels great, so I am excited to get more time to do that.
Maybe I will just start with most recent. We had zone conference. It was a pretty good one. There were two zone conferences with the mission split into two groups. TONS of people were there. We were the lucky ones assigned to help out with BOTH conferences. We also had dozens of elders sleep in our apartment... so messy.
We got very little teaching in due to running errands for zone conference. I'm proud of Elder K and I though. We managed to get some key lessons in even with all that. Every chance we got we would go out teaching. We had a great lesson with P and his wife, She has kind of stopped progressing. Whenever we would teach, P would just steal the show and go on and on talking in English about deep stuff. S would just look off into space and look bored. Then this past lesson we went over and spoke with P a little bit alone. We said that we wanted to teach S some basic doctrine with no stories or additions, just pure doctrine. We played Jenga to start and they loved it! Then we related it to the apostasy and did the simplest clearest apostasy lesson ever. S was loving it.
For zone conferences we did service at the provincial hospital. It's way more sketchy than the other hospital where that guy died beside us. I wrote up the proposal letter to the hospital and then we went there and did a total of 4 hours between the two groups. We weeded, painted and cleaned. We even got to wear those cool yellow Helping Hands vests that the church has for service projects. While we were there, we met the parents of one of our less actives. They said that their grandson (the less active's son) was just admitted to the hospital with a really high fever. We are teaching the man and his girlfriend to help them get married and for her to be baptized. They asked for help so we went to give a blessing. There is a senior couple here so Elder K asked if the senior elder would like to join us for the blessing. He said he would love to and came with us. Good thing too because we had no oil with us but he did.
The mother and baby were in a room on the far end of the hospital. It looked like a ghetto hospital. The windows were partly smashed in, the washroom was a pit and everything looked filthy. We gave the baby a blessing and we felt really good about it. The mother is pretty cool. Her boyfriend is so nice and loving. She has generally been pretty quiet as we are still kind of new to her so teaching there sometimes feels a little awkward. The last lesson we had there though, was so good. We taught about the Restoration. Usually teaching that lesson here is a little tough because we get so excited about it and most people we teach it to don't really seem to care. I'm still trying to figure it out. So what we did is we drew pictures as we talked and linked it more to why we needed a restoration rather than just telling them that it happened. She really loved it and understood it. She has a baptismal date now and is really excited about it (it's way off in March though, so that they have time to get married).
After service at the hospital we went carolling. We went to the house of the family with the son in jail and the daughter who just gave birth. They are so poor - the poorest I have ever seen. We carolled there with about 20 missionaries. We also brought them a few kilos of rice and some other Christmas foods.
The next thing we did at zone conference was musical presentations by zone. The other zones were really good. Laoag zone (us) did three songs put together into one and they were all reggae songs and sung in a reggae choir style. It was pretty cool. Then President wanted each zone to have special numbers outside of their regular zone presentation. He lent me his guitar (it's a fairly new, well built classical guitar) and told me to play a song because he heard that I can play. I fooled around on the guitar a bit the week before the conference but I still had no idea what to play. So I left it to last minute and ended up playing Redemption Song by Bob Marley (went with our zone theme I guess) as it was one of the only songs I remembered how to play. I got two polynesians to sing with me.
Yesterday we turned left in a place where you aren't supposed to and we got pulled over. Elder M was driving. We all just spoke straight English to the police officer. He tried to speak English and struggled really bad and then got another policeman to come over who was equally bad at it. We were returning chairs to the chapel at the time and were to meet the bishop there. So we told the police that we were in a hurry and needed to bring the chairs to the bishop, at which point they let us go. Drop the word bishop and you can do pretty much anything here. But afterwards we all felt bad so later we went back to where we were pulled over. We were only going to apologize and pay the fine but they seemed scared to see us (especially elder M - I don't think they realized how big he was when he was sitting in the truck the first time) so they kind of started running away. We caught up to one of them and apologized and then asked if we could pay the fine and he said not to worry about it and said we could go (I think he was still scared).
Anyway, that's my week. Thanks for the emails, AND I got your packages! Thanks so much, you are the best - I love you all tons.
Maligayang Pasko
Elder Dustan
ps- I think I will be transferred this time so I am way excited for that! I feel like I am in my teaching and speaking prime right now and it feels great, so I am excited to get more time to do that.
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