Elder Head in the Philippines week 6 - 1st baptism :)

Hey Everyone! 

So this week we had the baptism of Sister Joana and I had the opportunity to confirm her as a member of the church. It was such an awesome experience. I was so nervous but it turned out okay! I meant to do it in Cebuano, but I accidentally did it all in English cause I was more nervous than I thought, but luckily she knows english and I used simple english for everyone in the congregation. So that was the highlight of the week. The rest of the week was a little tough. Some of the people we've been teaching lately have lost interest and others were more interested in who was teaching rather than what was being taught. Nagingon sila ngadto ilang mga amigo nga mga uyab mi nila. (They were telling their friends that we were their boyfriends, which is dili pwede) So that wasn't good. So we're going to go talk to them and see if they're actually interested or not. I struggled with the language a lot this week. Some days I'm super VisDak and other days I'm basically useless in the language, which is hard but I know that with practice and with help from our Heavenly Father, it'll come. I ate Durian pie this week, yeah. It wasn't good. The people were all like "Oh you'll love it! It's the fruit of the gods! You're so lucky!" Yeah it wasn't good. I ate the whole thing though cause I didn't want to offend but it tasted like foot. So funny story, this week we were tracting out in Cabancalan and we found this family who is super awesome and they're very accepting of us. But they're super devout Catholic. The mom gets up every morning at 2 AM to walk around with their Virgin Mary statue and takes it to the other members of their congregation's houses so they can kiss it and receive blessings... Basta, we were talking with them and they took us to their prayer meeting. It was super weird but we couldn't stay cause we had a dinner appointment but we were just sitting in a room with them with a shrine up to the virgin mary up at the front and we were just talking with them about churches and religion. Then we left before things got too weird for us. It sounds like the start of a joke though. What do you call a room with 10 Catholics and 2 Mormons... I'll let ya'll figure out the ending to that one. Haha. The church is true! Have a good week!

Elder Head

Elder Head in the Philippines -week 5 is a little slow :)

Oh what's up everyone? So this week was kind of slow. Haha. We had Stake Conference on Saturday night so we had the Priesthood session that night and right after we had the adult session. Which were both good. We had Elder Collado come who is some sort of general authority. I'm not sure if he's an area 70 or a member of the second quorum of the 70 or what, but he killed it. He was super adamant about how the Filipino members need to all be full tithe payers which is definitely a good goal, I think. We'll have the baptism of Sister Joana this Saturday! WOOHOO. I'm super stoked. I love Filipino food but on Tuesday we went to eat dinner at the Bailey's house, and man I miss American food. Well, technically Mexican food. The Bailey's are an American family from Utah here on business. They go to the Talamban ward because that's an English ward but they're in our ward boundaries and have the missionaries of this ward over sometimes for fun. They can't have the missionaries in their ward come over because their ward is in the Cebu Mission so their house is out of the mission boundaries, but they cooked enchiladas and it was super good. Well enough trunky stuff. So on Sunday Elder Collado slipped into some Tagalog during his talk and at that time he was talking about following the commandments, and I guess the Tagalog word for follow is like "libong" or something, which sounds JUST like the Cebuano word for "Go poop" so his talk sounded like "Kinahanglan ta sa paglibong sa mga kasugoan" So I was super confused. Like why would we poop on the commandments??? Then Elder Larson told me that it means follow or something in Tagalog. So that happened this week. Haha. We're working hard to find new investigators so hopefully this week we'll be able to tract out in Cabancalan a little more. Sigi. That's about it for this last week! Love you guys! Have a super nindot week! 

Elder Head

Elder Head in the Philippines week 4 - I made it. I did it. I ate balut!!

I made it. I did it. I ate balut. It's official. I'm a filipino now. Jokes lang. But I really did eat balut this week. It wasn't my favorite to be honest, there's this SUPER hard white part inside the egg, which is gross. But I took it like a champ and ate the whole thing. Baby chick and all. Atta boy. Basta, hey guys. So this was a super cool week. We did a lot of tracting out in Tipolo which is a part of our area and we met a whole bunch of people who could potentially become investigators, we're praying for 'em. There's a Tatay named Arthur Pakadin (I call him Tatay Pakadin) in our ward who has been inactive for a few years in our ward that we've been visiting the past few weeks, and this week he came to church for the first time in years and received a big welcome from the ward. So hopefully he'll keep coming back. This ward is so great about missionary work. If the missionaries bring someone to church, they all go and introduce themselves to them and just make them feel so welcome, which helps us out a lot. It makes them feel like church is a welcoming place. A place where they belong. Because we all do belong. :) This past week we challenged some of our investigators to a Book of Mormon reading race, to help them start reading, and I am getting my butt KICKED. They read so fast, it's ridiculous. Haha. Its okay though because the winner gets a coke is all. Which is 7 pesos. Which is like 15 cents. Haha. Anyways. Today we had a Thanksgiving devotional which I spoke at in front of all the missionaries that are in our mission on the main island. It was only a 3 minute talk though, and it was in english. I'm a lightweight. Haha. Basta, it was way cool. So we've been teaching the Alibo family who are a Catholic family a lot this week. They're super eager to learn and I love them. They're the reason I ate balut. So we were almost done with our lesson with them and then this salesmen rode by on his bike and he was selling balut. Then Elder Larson called them over cause I hadn't eaten it yet. So because we were teaching them, I tried balut. It was gross so I tried to be strong and keep a straight face, but I failed. They laughed super hard but it was a good bonding experience for us. Haha. So that's about it. Ang Simbahan ni JesuKristo sa mga Santos sa Ulahing mga Adlaw mao ang simbahan mismo ni JesuKristo. Ang Basahon ni Mormon mao ang pinakatinuod nga basahon diri sa yuta. Si Joseph Smith mao ang usa ka tinuod propeta nga gitawagan sa Dios. Si President Thomas S. Monson mao ang tinuod nga buhing propeta diri sa yuta karon adlawa. Have a good week everyone!

Elder Head

We were emailing back and forth with Mitch last night and it seems that he is really enjoying his time doing "the work".  Cebuano is coming along and he has a great companion/trainer in Elder Larson! Elder Larson takes a lot of pictures which his mom sends to us....awesome! He was looking forward to going to Liloan for the devotional as they were stopping for lunch at MacDo (McDonald's) So he was going to order fried chicken and gravy with rice and a cheeseburger. 

Balut - He did it..he ate the whole thing!

Don't know what this is?? Yummy I'm sure!

Studying so hard he fell asleep??? But his hairdresser mom
only noticed his really short haircut....first one in the Pines!

Kids love the Elders!

Christmas begins whenever a month ends in "ber"!!!

Elder Head in the Philippines :)

Hey Guys! So far so good. I'm not dead. This week went by ridiculously fast. We taught a lot of
people this week! The most progressing investigator that we have is a sister named Sister Joana who
lives in Tipolo. She's been to church the past five weeks but didn't start taking the missionary lessons
until this week. She's already committed to baptism and will be baptized on November 22nd. Malipayyong kalag kalag! Halloween here is like three days. Kalag Kalag (Halloween), followed by All Saints Day, then followed by All Souls day. I don't know much about how they celebrate
besides that they sleep in the cemetery. So this weekend was a little slow but we taught a lot of 
lessons during the week and worked really hard. It was a good week! The kids here are so funny. They love the missionaries. They all call me Elder Ulo cause that's Elder Head sa Cebuanp and they will freak out every time they see Elder Larson and I. So this week I finished 1st Nephi and started 2nd Nephi. I challenged one of our investigatrs named Sister Frances to a race to finish 2nd Nephi. She works at a little tindahan (It's like a lean-to convenience store thing. It's hard to explain) so she has all day to read so I'm PRETTY sure I'm gonna get killed but hey, it'll get her reading, right? Haha. 
Filipino food is the best. Especially Mango floats. I can't really explain them, other than they're the best dessert in the Philippines. We taught the Alibo family the first lesson this week. They're a happy family out in Tipolo which is a part of our area. They're super awesome and ask a lot of questions which we're happy to answer of course. So we went to talk to a less active sister in our ward named Sister Sala who's husband died earlier in the week, except I didn't know she was less active. I thought she was not a member but her husband was. So at the end of the lesson I almost started to extend the baptismal commitment to her... "Buhaton ba nimo mosunod sa ehemplo ni JesuKristo pinaagi pagpabunyag.." But Elder Larson closed our lesson before I got the chance to and walking out I was like "Pastilan, Elder! I was just about to commit her to baptism! Unsa manat oy??" Then he proceeded to tell me about how they were talking about how she and her husband were sealed in the temple and how he's in a better place and I just misunderstood the whole part of that lesson. Awesome, right? So that was a close call. Haha.

Basta, have a good week! Kitakits!

Elder Head