A biking area with no bikes...

This week was awesome! I had my 8 week followup. I am now 2/3 the way through my training which is crazy. I love every bit of it.

This week, my companions bike broke a few times. We fixed it twice, but finally on the third time, we just decided that we would walk. On Sunday, we walked 6 miles out to the far end of our area. It was actually awesome. We talked to so many people. 

And we found a couple of drunk guys along the way. They are super funny to talk to because when they are drunk and they see white guys, they start talking in English, even though they are horrible at it. One guy kept apologizing to us saying that he was sorry that his friend was drunk. They were both drunk out of their minds, but they really wanted us to come back and teach them because they said they wanted to change their lives. Maybe we will go back some time when they are sober and tell them about how they said they wanted to change their lives haha. 

After that, we taught two of the best lessons ever. One was to a family (with 3 kids). They are super receptive and can't wait to start reading the Book of Mormon as a family. The other was to the man that we found a few weeks ago. He is soo prepared and loves the Book of Mormon. We got to his house super late because we didn't have bikes and we had to walk. But, because of that, we were able to teach his wife who was finally home from work. The Lord really does work in mysterious ways. Then we made the six miles back to our house. 

It is super windy here right now. Another storm is expected to make landfall here tomorrow. I am not getting evacuated, but we are not allowed to proselyte tomorrow. Kind of sad because we have a lot of work to do here. We have 11 investigators with baptismal dates and lots of them are progressing well. 

I love the mission and all the comes with it. The good and the bad. I love the gospel and the chance that I have to share it here in the Philipipines for a short 2 years. I love you all and send lots of prayers your way from the Philippines. 

Love Elder Thomas

Pictures:

-We found "Joe" painted on the side of a house. This is what everyone yells at us when they see two white kids walking down the road

 -We got locked out of the fence that leads to our house. So, we had to jump the fence. But, It was a lot higher than my comp thought. So, he "died" for a second when he landed

-We found a bucket of tar on the side of the road and decided to leave a message for when the workers came back

 -We saved a star fish

Stoned, Spit Upon and Cast Out...

Well... we have officially experienced it all. We were spit on. We had rocks thrown at us. And we we were chased out. ......... by a 6 year old. It was wild. haha

This week we got to go to a resort way up in the mountains. We got permission to go with the YSA in our ward to their activity. It was beautiful. We drove for like an hour way up this canyon. I had a giant river running through it. It reminded me of kind of a slot canyon in southern Utah, except that it was super green. The resort was just full of all sorts of little bamboo huts and pools. Our ward had the place rented out, but we could only watch :(

The highlight this week was yesterday. We taught a family which was awesome. The mom had been given a Book of Mormon from a friend that she met abroad. We taught them and they were all super interested. It will be fun to go back there for follow up visits. 

We also taught the man that we found last week while tracting. He is sooo prepared to hear the gospel. He loves the book of Mormon and asked us if we would be able to come back more times each week so that we can teach him more often. 

This week, the AP's were in our area on splits. One of them told me that there is a "really good chance that I will train as soon as I finish my training." I finish training in 4 weeks. I will likely be training before I even finish 3 months in the field. It is crazy. Me and my trainee will probably be lost for a few weeks haha. But, I know that the Lord will prepare a way. I love the mission and all that comes because of it. The days are extra long, but, there is nothing so rewarding. I love you all. 

Love Elder Thomas

Pictures:

The house we built last month survived the storms

Changing our TC cards to the proper name of the church

Bishop's family

The Resort

Merry Conference

The highlight this week was definitely conference. I know that I am a week behind all of you guys, but Conference was incredible. I felt like all the talks were about missionary work. The leaders are soo inspired and the work is progressing like never before. I love it here.

We had an awesome experience this week. We were biking out to find a referral that we had been given. My companion was feeling a little bit sick and wanted to stop at a tindihan (little shop) to get a drink so that he could take a pill. For whatever reason, we passed like 15 tindihans. Neither of us really knew why, but we just kept biking. We finally stopped at one. We got drinks and sat there for like 5 minutes.

 Finally, I asked the guy there if he knew the girl that we were looking for. He kind of pointed us in the right direction, but we just stayed and talked to him. We talked for like 40 minutes. He told us that he had completely turned his life around. He used to drink and smoke and do all sorts of drugs. But, one day he felt that his life was soo wrong. He stopped drinking and smoking and even stopped drinking coffee. He basically keeps the word of wisdom, he just doesn't know it. Then he told all his friends that they can't drink or smoke near his tindihan because he doesn't want that kind of influence by his kids. 

He also has lots of problems with the catholic church. He doesn't know why they worship marry, and why only the priests get the water when they take the sacrament. Questions like this are awesome because it means that he is thinking about things and he is willing to change. We went back to him yesterday and had an awesome L1. 

It was incredible to really see someone that was prepared to hear the message that we have to share. The Lord really does prepare people. We just have to find them. 

The mission is awesome. It is by far the hardest thing that I have ever done. But I love every second of it. I love you all and send lots of prayers your way from the Philippines. 

Love Elder Thomas

Pictures: Water Buffalo

We fit 6 of us on a trike. 2 Elders are on the back of the dudes motorcycle

Our attempt at making Filipino food haha

 

Transfers? Nah

Transfers came and went yesterday. Me and my companion are both staying here in Santiago to finish out my training. We are both super exciting about that. It is hard to believe that I already finished a transfer in the mission field. It is still the very beginning, but I know that it will fly by.

The funniest part of this week was not even Joel. We didn't see much of him this week. It was a guy up the road from our house that we call "the babbler." He just walks up the road all day and says random things. We always stop and try to get him to say something funny. He looks at us for a second and then puts his finger up and says something like "NASA owns the Mormons" or "Jesus Christ heals all the people through the blue flowers" or "ten thousand Russians plus one billion astronomers equals the end of the the CSI medication." I am not sure what most of this means, but I always get a kick out of this guy. And he lives in this massive house by us. So, he is pretty rich and he just spends his days walking up and down the road saying things. It is something that I look forward to every day as we leave the house.

The work here is awesome. We had over 100 people in our sacrament meeting yesterday which is more than we have ever had. We had 4 of our progressing investigators there which is super exciting. The ward here is super welcoming and so we hardly had the chance to talk to our investigators while they were at church. It is awesome. 

Our WML is obsessed with playing basketball. He is always trying to set up times for us to get less active members and young single adults together to play basketball. So, of course, we had to get a jersey made. One of the pictures here is of me in my "full pross." Ready to play basketball and teach the gospel haha. 

It seems like the weeks are just going faster and faster. I love it here.  I recognize more and more how much the gospel really does for our lives.

Joel *almost* strikes again

Funny story this week. I don't know many of you remember me talking about Joel a few weeks ago. Anyway, he is this crazy homeless guy who lives just outside of our house in this little hut. He is probably in his 40's but he doesn't really do anything. He just kind of lives there. A few weeks ago, we left out back door open and he got in a stole a half loaf of bread, 2 spoons, a bowl, half a jar of peanut butter, half a jar of jam, 2 packs of noodles, and some sugar. Since then, we double and triple check the back door to make sure that it is locked. So, this week, we went to teach an investigator who lives close to our house. Joel saw us leave. Then like an hour later, we came back, but he didn't see us come back. Like 5 minutes later, we were sitting in the kitchen making dinner when we saw his shadow coming towards the door. We quickly hid behind the door. Then, we saw the door knob turn. The door kind of shook as he tried to open it, but it was dead-bolted. It was kind of creepy because we were on the other side of the door of this dude who was trying to get into our house. So, we went out to his house and yelled "Joel, huwag na pumasok sa bahay namin" which means don't go into our house. He kind of agreed, but we are pretty sure that he tries to get into our house every time that we leave. It is just part of life here in Santiago.

Santiago is awesome and the work here is really progressing. I want to tell you about just a few of our investigators:

Chrizelle: She is the wife of our WML which is awesome. He was super inactive for a while. But, she is really catholic. She has tons of questions and is progressing slowly. But, she really gets it, and should be baptized the first week of November

John Clark: the brother of Jerry (our last baptism). His dad is a drunk, but his mom is pretty actuve. He has never attended church with his mom, but is now starting. 

Sister Paquing: She is totally ready, and loves church. She has had all the lessons, but she is not married to her husband. But, they have lived together for like 15 years. So, she just needs a "cenomar" (certificate of no marriage) and then she can get baptized. Hopefully, then we will teach her husband more.

Those are 3 of my favorites to teach. We have upwards of 10 people that we teach each week that are progressing. It is awesome. The gospel changes lives and it is so fun to be a part of. 

I love you all and send tons of prayers your way from the Philippines. 

Love Elder Thomas

pictures: a stalker pic of Joel

Frog dinner

filipino style pinata 

the kids are obsesses with taking pictures with out cameras and I become a human jungle gym when we are around them