October 20, 2013

I am fine, nothing has happened to us, or effected us from the earthquake. But this week has been pretty crazy! we have had to do a lot of finding in the area, and a lot of walking, we also got to return back to my old area to help the other elders find their way around, some of the farther away areas. they told me good news of investigators getting closer to baptism, and the good work they have been doing in that area.

Yesterday was pretty fun, Elder Sabado and i had been wondering how to get out less actives and investigators to church. we decided that we had to go and pick them up in the morning. normally i would be ok with this, but the difference here is that our church starts at 7:30 in the morning! so we woke up at 4 in the morning, got ready, and headed out around 5:50. the area is about 20 minutes away including the jeep ride, and walking. we made it to the less actives house about 6:30, and started to wake them up. one of our investigators is their niece. once everyone was awake, we left at 7 and got the the church about 7:25. thankfully church doesn't start on time normally, and they all made it for the sacrament. it was a good experience, and I know that we need to plan to do things, and feel that its what he wants, in order for the Lord to grant us a blessing.

Yesterday a cat broke into our house, and it took the other two elders about an hour and a half to get the cat out of the house! hopefully that keeps it out.

well i hope that everything is going well over there, I am doing fine here, and i love you all.

-Elder Roy

October 14, 2013

Well everything is getting better, i have learned a lot about finding new investigators. i forgot to tell you that last week i did receive the package! and i love the watch! bad news...i found out after i plugged the wall clock in that it only handles 120v, and the outlets here put out 220v... it will make a good paper weight however! i love the pictures! super awesome! the chapstick hasn't been of to much use, the humidity here pretty much does the trick. it sounds like everything is going good over there, i am thankful that Maddy informs me of all the things that wouldn't normally be told to me haha. oh and Maddy thanks for the picture you slipped into all the photo's that were send, i had a good laugh.

      General Conference was super good! this was the first general conference where i actually wrote something down from every talk, from the priesthood session until the pm session on Sunday! super good talks, and very inspirational. one of my goals that i gained is to memorize all of the articles of faith, i have 1-4 memorized so far.

       Our area is pretty small, the only bad thing is we have to take a jeep to get into and out of it every day. its getting a little expensive, but i think we will be ok. we have been doing a lot of finding in our area, and it takes a lot of persistence to get the solid investigators, but as it quotes in the preach my gospel "nothing is done in missionary work until you find someone to teach"

  

      Ahhhh i miss the snow! i have been through about 5 umbrellas in the crazy rain here!  i am on number 6 right now. 

 The ward is always busy and we don't have any solid ward missionaries, its a wealthy area, and everyone works 24/7. and its a bit difficult to get investigators to come to church, for some reason i have had to accept, the leaders were inspired to start church at 7 30 in the morning.

    i did talk to one of the new elders in my old area, he said one of our investigators is getting closer to baptism. me and Elder Sabado are going to go to my old area on Thursday to show them some more parts of the area.

  I will have a mourning for my car later.

For a Christmas present that i can think off... what we do here in our mission is buy USB flash drives and put church music on them, and then use them in our DVD players. it would be cool if you could buy a USB and put church music and Joseph and the technicolor dream coat music on it haha.

Alright i will stick some pictures on here.

this first one is of my cool new watch (thanks)

the second one is of me and Elder Kmetzsch (my mission father) with our new trainee's (mission kids)

this third one is of this awesome place for a public toilet (right outside of one of a church building) i have needed one of these on several occasions while going to appointments.

there isn't enough time in P day anymore! there use to be a law irrevocably decreed under heaven that whoever was training obtained a full day P Day, they have revoked that rule, and now even if training, we have to go back to work at 6. i think i'll make it...

That reminds me of a great letter that the old mission president sent, it was about which way we face as members of the church, if we face forward with the leaders of our church, and accept what they tell us, or if we turn our backs, and question the new things we are told to do. 

Anyway i love you all, and hope you are all doing well, today is my 10 month mark of the mission, only 14 more fast Sundays left haha. 

-Elder Roy

October 6, 2013

this is the official scripture for my plaque. 3 Nephi 5: 13 Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life.

so everything is going, I am getting more familiar with the new area, and we are finding most of the houses of the members. its pretty beautiful here, all the streets have names and such and the roads are neatly made. so its been a pretty long week being sick. but that is all right, its will just be a long transfer. 

For the spiritual experience for the week,  last night we had a family home evening with a less active family, and i was surprised at how many people from our ward actually showed up, and we got a ride home in a car! that almost never happens.

I hope that everything is going good over there for you all, and hopefully the baby is safe. i love you all!

pictures.

these are pictures that a kid from my last area drew for me, he was that one in that blue shirt that is 18 but looks like a little kid. i heard he also stalks my Facebook.

also dad with all my companions that spoke English we would always speak English to each other, but now that i am with a Filipino we always speak Tagalog.

-Elder Roy

September 29, 2013

What a week. i haven't gotten the package yet, hopefully tomorrow. but i did take out some money out of the account.

First item of business, my new companion is Elder Sabado, he is from ordineta, which is somewhere in the Philippines. he speaks Tagalog, and i miss being able to speak English with my old companions! he is a pretty cool guy, still has the fresh from the MTC attitude. 

our area is often called "Amerikina" because the houses here are so giant, and the roads are so clean. we live in a Giant house! and we have a real shower and a toilet that flushes and the shower head is on a tube, so it doubles as a bum washer! its like a dream come true! we live in a community called provident village, and there is a guard that rides around on a bike with a shotgun strapped to himself, its pretty awesome. the only downside is that there is hardly ever anyone outside! not even crazy little kids that want to talk to us and ask us for money, its a little depressing.

we don't have very many investigators, mostly just less  actives right now. we went tracting on Saturday, and it was raining pretty bad, and we tried so many houses and didn't even get into one! but we did have a first where a guy actually swore at us! i had never heard that before. and another guy said that he lives in Utah and is just visiting, but was to busy to let us in.

My birthday was pretty awesome, i bought pizza from pizza hut for lunch, then we went to chowking for dinner, and they bought me a cake after that! it was pretty awesome.

there is one downfall to the ward, we start church at 7:30 in the morning, and then they wonder why they have poor church attendance, i think i counted 30 people at sacrament meeting.

next awesome thing is that there are 2 malls in our area, and 1 right across the street from the boundaries! P days are going to be awesome. 

Marikina is known for their shoes, there is the Sapatos festival going on right now, I am going to see if i can find some awesome shoes.

well for the question concerning you guys coming here to pick me up, as awesome as a new car would be, it would be awesomer if you guys came here and visited to pick me up, i think later on you could coordinate with the mission president or someone about getting plane tickets to go home on the same plane as me and such. 

alright i will try to sent some pictures.

  our house mates are Elder Rakuro from Fiji, and Elder Jones from California. i am pretty glad that Elder Rakuro is from Fiji, Elder Cava transferred to another area as well.

this picture is of our awesome bathroom! its awesome. and the water isn't even close to as cold as it was in the last house.

Birthday Pizza!

my new comp and I

me eating cake

Birthday Cake!

September 23, 2013

Alright so transfers are tomorrow, and i am transferring! also Elder Cava is transferring as well! also another surprise i am training...again! also i am whitewashing Marikina 1st. I am excited, but also i am surprised at how attached you get to the people here. I will write more next week! i am partially depressed.

oh yeah here is a picture of half of the mission (i'm in the top left)

September 17, 2013

Alright so there is a lot to cover this week. first we will start with the different schedule.we are having zone conference this week, so we had temple day/P day today.next item of business, the temple was awesome! we killed a mouse. there have been hold ups by our house, and gun shots. there has been talk of big storms coming in. some crazy stuff happening down south in the Philippines. other then that, we got to give talks at a funeral. pretty fun stuff.

So first i will go into detail on the mouse issue. WARNING GRAPHIC PICTURES. so we found out we had a mouse about a month ago. we decided to let it be. but then it started eating elder cava's stuff! so we named him ralph noo-en, ralph for the mouse from run away ralph/mouse and the motorcycle, noo-en because he was eating Elder Cava's noodles and energen! so we decided to buy some rat traps! we paid a lot so we had to make his death a little more crazy. hence the pictures. we also caught some lizards on our board as well.

 

my next topic will be about death. as you know i have only been to one funeral in my life, so when we were invited to one here i didn't know what to expect. well when they invited elder cava and i to give talks it changed it! so i gave a talk and shared a scripture from Doctrine covenants and it was aboutthe kingdoms of glory. pretty good experience for us both.

we are getting closer and closer to baptisms and such! but i am a little sad because there is a high chance that i will be transferred next Wednesday. but we will see what happens. also P day is going to be on Tuesday next week because of transfers.

other than that i am loving almost every moment that i am here, there are hard times, but the good times work those out.

oh yeah i need to give a shout out to dad his birthday is on Sunday! i feel like we are all getting older and older! he will be 51 i believe and i am coming up on 20! this is mindblowing!

well i love you all, and i will try to send out some more pictures.

-Elder Roy

we ate on this at our district activity, pretty awesome!

September 9, 2013

Alright so i have been a little freaked out since it has already been a year since i opened my mission call! feels like it was yesterday... anyway i  need to give a shout out to mom and cam, because its their birthday's, and a shout out to 9/11. how is cam going to be? like 27? he is getting old...Still trying to calculate the loophole in which mom constantly has a 22nd birthday, her kids are getting older than her! sorry i couldn't write any handwritten things, for one it takes time and such, for the second reason, all my envelopes have been sealed closed by the humidity. to answer dads question, i have not yet had any health problems other than LBM's for as long as i can remember haha. its been raining a lot here, but you can still be sweating at the same time, its quite the phenomenon. the mission work is going pretty good, our ward clerk mentioned to us that he heard from one of our ward missionaries that we "walk hard... i mean work hard."  me and my comp are doing good, but i liked it better when it was just 2 of us in the ward, but i guess it will help the work with 4.

we just got back from our district activity for the transfer, it was nice just to go out and relax, things can get pretty stressful on a mission. i am also going to go get a haircut later tonight. also next item of business, our next transfer day will be on September 25, i will be a little sad if i get transferred out of the area right before my birthday! but we will see what happens.

i am going to be 20 years old...i am getting to old...

oh yeah Maddy we were walking down the street and saw the movie "house at the end of the street, made me think of when we went to see it haha.

aAHH, we are going to the temple on the 17th! i am super excited for that! you Should know Why. also just so you know we go to the temple once a transfer. 

alright ill start seeing if i can upload some pictures from earlier today. 

. the internet here is super slow so i will keep on writting.

so this past week my companion wanted to play volleyball, so on our way to one of our appointments we saw some people at a covered court playing. so i sat down and he went and played. but he now knows that for the most part, volleyball in the Philippines is closely associated with transvestites. good times...

well i am all storied out... hopefully i can send more pictures next time, the internet is too slow here.

 

oh yeah one last good story, we went shopping last week (Sept 2nd) and we heard our first christmas songs! it was a little off because the supermarket is usually playing un-edited rap songs, but it was a good change. I am going to miss the snow, thankfully i come home right in the winter!

-Elder Roy

first i added baby faces to my planner case

two here is one of me sweating.