TEACHING THE WHOLE PUROK, TIE HUNTING AT GIANT THRIFT STORES & SACRIFICE IS POWER

A cooky kid in Beleng and getting into the fun parts of my area can be a little awe inspiring sometimes! The jungley type photo is my favorite part of our area, purok Beleng. 

Hello there family and friends!

This week has been great fun and challenging to boot. I'll separate the spiritual and the temporal.

Spiritual:

Many of our investigators who had a baptismal date had to have their baptism postponed, for varying reasons. It's been a little bit hard, but it's absolutely essential that they are ready. No one should ever be baptized if they haven't really repented, felt the Spirit or received an answer. BUT! We're very excited because Sister Rizal, who is beyond ready for baptism, is taking us to her entire family! In my area, and a lot of the Philippines, there are communities called puroks. Purok's are often just a really big extended family. It would be like you living in a three mile radius with everyone to whom your are related. So, now that Sister Rizal has such an amazing testimony, she's been taking us to her family! We're basically teaching the whole purok! Very exciting stuff!

I've also been beginning to recognize very strongly here in the mission, sacrifice is power. The more me and my companion sacrifice what we want and need to what Heavenly Father expects and needs, the more powerfully we teach, find, testify, discern, the whole thing. The more we serve ourselves rather than the Lord, the more the heavens withdraw themselves. I also have a new favorite Book of Mormon verse! 1st Nephi 25:26

A small glimpse of Baguio

Temporal:

My new favorite p-day activity is tie hunting! I love this country so much! Here in Baguio, they have GIANT thrift stores called sari-sari's, ukay-ukay's, or wag-wag's depending on who you are talking to, haha. Me and my companion take an hour to go through them on p-day to find the one golden tie among the five hundred or so totally pangit (ugly) ones! The best part, after the treasure hunt of finding one and the exchange rate of piso to American dollar, each tie is less than a dollar! I found six ASTIG (amazing) ties today! So much fun!

Picture at right is a view of my apartment from the outside. We live in the basement though, so no view until we get outside and work, haha. Two pictures at left is a bit of what my area looks like. It's basically a looooong road called Itogon Highway with puroks on either side. The purok's range from high class to low class quite quickly. 

Also, me and my companion were walking to a jeepney station after a district meeting and smack dab in the middle of a public type area is a boxing ring that's been set up. Then teams from Morocco, the Philippines and Vietnam showed up! We got to watch boxing for free! And they were fierce, let me tell you. However, our conscience as missionaries only let us stay for one match, haha.

This is what a jeepney looks like on the inside. Kind of like an oldtimey, post WWII limo, haha.
I took this picture on the rare occasion that it was just us. They are usually packed.

A random boxing tournament... ding ding.

That's all for this week!

Alam ko po na tagapagligtas ni jesucristo. Alam ko po na totoo and simbahan ni jesucristo ng mga banal sa mga huling araw. Mahal kong maging ang tagapagsilbi ng diyos. Nagpapasalamat ako para sa mga magulang, mg kaibigan, at pamilya ko. Sa pangalan ni jesucristo, amen.

Ingat!