Who Wants Chocolate Covered Meat? - Week 95. Serving in Sarrat

I have the worst sun burn EVER right now! Hurts way bad. All that stuff I said about not getting sun burns in the Philippines doesn't apply I guess, when being out in the fun Laoag summer sun on a beach for three hours. Oh yeah, we went to the beach. We had our Laoag zone activity today and it was great. We played Ultimate Frisbee and one of the rules was that your touchdown didn't count unless you passed it to a sister (of which there are five) to make it fair. It was way fun. Then we played some Filipino games which always include sitting in a circle and having one person lose and mocking them mercilessly - fun too though.  We all brought food and after we ate, we played football on the beach. It was so much fun but too bad our time was limited.

Our week started out with punts - lots of them. We still felt good about the plans we made and about our efforts so it wasn't too bad. On Tuesday we went and watered Tatay R's crops again and got lost in service. Soon we realized we had worked too long and accidentally punted our fellowshipper who had biked to the farthest barangay in the area to work with us. He was pretty upset. We felt awful but it was just pure accident. We committed after that to keep our service to 45 minutes at each visit to the R's so that nothing like that happens again.

On Wednesday we had exchanges with the assistants. I worked with Elder A. He's the filipino elder that was Elder T's companion in Camalaniugan when I was there. I have worked with him tons of times already and it was still fun. He's hilarious. We taught an amazing lesson to a 25 year old guy. he asked amazing questions about the Book of Mormon. He thinks about the stuff we teach and tries to understand. It's marvelous.

 We also went back to this one guy's house that we had tried to contact before but he hadn't been home - only his house help was. This guy has a way nice house ("modern contemporary design") and also a couple of cars. When we walked up to his house that evening, he came out and was so excited to talk with us. He says he is being taught by some other churches and that they all tell him that they are the true church and if he doesn't join then he will be damned. So we went in and shared simply the whole first lesson. We asked, "Do you believe God loves you?"
"Yes", he said. Then we asked, "Do you believe he wants you to return to him?" The answer was yes again.
"Then don't you think that he would TELL you what exactly you must do to get back to him?" Then we shared the restoration and it was awesome. He invited us back. I will always remember sitting there outside his modern contemporary house, a line of bonsai trees behind me, and a nice warm breeze coming in and just feeling so calm and easy with the things we were teaching -  pure fruits of the spirit being manifest. He is such a cool guy too. He does all kinds of things with his son who is 14. They go biking together from here to Vintar, through Laoag and back! It's so great to see a tatay share interests with his son.

We also met a couple from Manila that is staying in Sarrat to help their nanay who is old. They saw us in a jeep a couple of weeks ago after we got some food (from Tacos del Norte, the only "real" Mexican food in the mission!) and were contemplating eating it on the jeep. We opened the styrofoam box and went to eat it but noticed all the people on the jeep watching so we put it away for later. When we met this couple, they were laughing so hard as they told us how it looked from their point of view.

We taught them, and the sister had a book out and was taking notes in the lesson. They gave us some dinuguan which is pigs meat cooked in pigs blood. We ate it last night and it's so good. It looks like chocolate covered meat.

We had a bunch of baptismal interviews this week and were all over the place trying to get to them and also get our own work in. Those interviews are always cool experiences.

Anyway, this was a pretty good week. I learned a lot and feel good about the work though there is not as much progress as I hoped. It would be so cool to show you guys around this place some time in the future and have you try all the awesome foods here. Ninety percent of the stuff that sounds or looks gross is actually awesome. We got two new missionaries in our zone (it's cool that I recognized them from when their profiles came into the office way back). One is a young kid from Utah and on his fourth day in the Philippines he got to go with his whole zone in a rented jeep to a nice beach. That's got to be such a great experience for him. The activity really helped me love our missionaries more - they are really awesome. I get mixed emotions between thinking of me leaving this place on a plane and wanting to cry and getting to the Ottawa airport and seeing you guys and being way happy. But I will be ready. Anyways, love you guys lots.
Elder Dustan