Elder Head in the Philippines - I Stand All Amazed :)

Hey fam!

I Stand All Amazed

As I was sitting before bed this last week, I thought of just how weak I am. I have so many shortcomings as a person, I've made so many mistakes in my life, I've had so much wasted time on things that were of no real worth. I thought of just how selfish I really am. 

I'm so grateful that the Priesthood has been restored to the earth so that worthy males may bless the lives of others around us. That through the priesthood, we may turn out of our own little, one dimensional plane of thought and focus on others. For me, I get caught in the 1st dimensional thinking a little too much. 

Earlier this morning, the sisters in the Lilo-an Stake were gathering here at the Stake Center for a Women's Conference. The Sister missionaries assigned in the stake were also invited to attend. A companionship of Sister missionaries came to the office asked if their investigator could sleep in here while they attended the conference because she wasn't allowed to sleep the night before. The office would be the quietest place for her to be during this and would be the best place for her to rest.

We agreed and waited for probably 5 minutes while the Sisters went to get their investigator. When they returned, in walked the most frail human being I had ever seen in my life. It looked like she hadn't been able to eat a full meal for the past week. She looked exhausted from both lack of food, and lack of sleep. 

We offered her some food and let her sleep on the couch in the front. She stayed there for about an hour with the Sisters stationed right at her sides. After about an hour, she said she couldn't sleep. So one of the sisters asked us if we could give her a blessing. 

I was asked to give her the blessing. First we explained to her about the Priesthood, about priesthood holders, and about blessings. Then we blessed her.

She seemed to be at peace after that. She's still here in the office resting. I'm so grateful for the blessing of the Priesthood. I've seen it bless my life and also the lives of others around me. I've been surrounded with worthy priesthood holders my whole life and am grateful for their examples. The Priesthood is not a status or a title meant to lift us above others, rather it's the means by which we lift others to where we are. Just as the Savior said, "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister", so was man given the Priesthood to bless the lives of others. 

I'm grateful to have been given that opportunity. It was humbling to me to have been given the opportunity to work on behalf of the Lord to bless one of Heavenly Father's children. Even though, we may be weak, we still be a means for good in the lives of others if we just forget ourselves and focus on those who stand in need. If we look, we can find ways to "comfort those who stand in need of comfort" daily. Have a good week. :)

-Elder Mitchell Jeffrey Head

Elder Head in the Philippines - Happy Thanksgiving :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hopefully, you guys will eat lots of turkey and stuff. I'll probably just end up eating some balut to celebrate.

This past week I gave my first district meeting which was super scary, but turned out pretty well. It was based on one of the conference talks from last conference called "Let The Clarion Trumpet Sound" by Elder Gregory A. Schwitzer. We compared it to testifying contacts like how every time we courageously invite people to learn more about our Savior, we are sounding the clarion trumpet. We then discussed about techniques and we practiced. We'll see if it was effective or not when we get back the Key Indicators this week.

Other than that, this week was a whole lot of waiting. We waited on the insurance company to get back to us about whether the van was totaled, or if they can repair it. I'm thinking it'll be totaled because the car was pretty mangled.

Other than that, it was a pretty easy-going week. I'm hoping things will kind of slow down here soon. This past year has gone by so quickly.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for the time I've had here and for the opportunity I've had to come to better know my Savior. To know that He loved us enough to become the way for us to return to our Father again. I'm grateful that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was restored again in it's fullness here on the earth, that through the changing, cleansing effects of the Gospel, we can become clean. I'm grateful for a loving Father in Heaven who created a plan for us to grow, and become as He is. I know They live. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

-Elder Mitchell Jeffrey Head

Mitch the cockroach slayer - no light saber needed :)

Elder Head in the Philippines - "the BUSIEST week of my life" :)

Hey Fam!

Oh man, football playoffs. Tell the kiddies that I'm sad I won't be there for it, but tell them that I'll be there next year. Heh heh heh.

We moved out of that bed bug house, so I don't think I'll have a problem anymore, unless they follow me into the new house. I hope not. In my new house there's some super sketchy make-shift weights that I've been working out with. So we'll see if I can get a little form again these next few months.

So this past week was the absolute BUSIEST week of my life. I'll give you some background information so you can better understand why. In my new assignment here I'm covering mainly 3 aspects of the work: Missionary housing, missionary phones, and missionary vehicles.

Missionary housing: With transfers, there are a lot of people moving into new areas and looking for houses to live in and some find really nice houses for a good price. Then the other missionaries hear about it and now their house is suddenly uninhabitable and they think they have to move as well. Oh, brother.

We also recently found out from one of the landlords here that in her contract made by the old housing and financial secretaries, there was a clause that went a little something like this: We the Philippines Cebu East Mission will buy three (3) air conditioning units for the Lilo-an 3 house. We, the party above mentioned, will give the said three (3) air conditioning units to the lessor for installation. After termination of our contract, the three (3) air conditioning units purchased by the lessee will become the property of the lessor.

Well we didn't know that. So when the new senior couple got here we took one of the three air conditioning units from that house to the house of the new senior couple, thinking that it was our property because we bought it. Right? Wrong. She brought to our attention that clause that we were unaware of. I then brought to her attention the fact that she owes our mission php 20,000 because a default in our contract that she made months before. So now I'm in a wrestling match trying to find even with this landlord. That'll be my focus starting next week because..

Missionary Phones: We started giving out some new phones to the missionaries just because they stopped making the style of phones we were using before. Because the other missionaries are now seeing the new-style phones (which are actually not as good as the style we had before) all their phones seem to be breaking at the same time. Weird. Just kidding. I don't think it's on purpose. I think that the other phones were just old and are going out and it was just timing is all. But we've had to buy a lot of new phones for the missionaries this past week. Also, each transfer there are normally some areas that open, and others that close. So each transfer we have to set up and reset phones, which is super kapoy (Kapoy means tiring, I also sometimes just use it as like time consuming). So that took forever on Thursday, but we got it all done. Speaking of Thursday...

Missionary Vehicles: To better talk about this, I'd like to share small parts of what I wrote in my journal from the past two days.

Thursday, November 5th, 2015. My first official day as the Cebu East vehicle coordinator. One of the cars in our mission was totaled today. No serious injuries to the missionaries and no third party involved. Seems to have just been due to a mechanical failure in the steering wheel. Still waiting on the area to learn the procedures for this.

Friday, November 6th, 2015. More insurance companies, YAY. I got in touch with our insurance broker about the procedure and it's not too crazy, just kinda kapoy and time consuming. Lot's of hoops to jump through. Talked with parents over the phone. Talked with the area over the phone several times. Missionaries are still doing okay.

We've made progress but the past two days were probably two of the most kapoy days of my life. Just coordinating with everyone on trying to get this situation taken care of.

Good news: Heavenly Father spared the lives of those four missionaries because that crash looked REALLY bad and they were fine. They directly exited the car, knelt down and said a prayer of thanksgiving. And, only 7 weeks till Christmas.

I might just make that my letter for this week

But Mom I think yesterday was the absolute most tiring day of my life. I didn't even know where to start. Tender mercy: while cleaning off my desk yesterday morning, wondering what in the world I was gonna do about that, I stumbled upon a printed out paper from May that had the email conversation of the old office couples with the insurance company that had the name and contact information of our insurance broker representative. That started getting me in the right direction. The Lord will truly provide away if you just follow what he says with faith. He will give us the means to accomplish any task that is put in our way. No matter if they all are on your plate at the same time or not. I just realized that little mercy that He showed me yesterday. I know He lives and shows us proof by His tender mercies He daily gives to us.

The only break I get nowadays is when we get to go out and work at night. It's like Heaven. I forget all the missionaries calling me for this and that; I forget all the problems with apartments, cars, and cell phones; and I just focus on inviting people to come unto Christ. It's so nice. It's really my only rest.
I haven't started my application for BYU yet. If you need reasons, please see the writing above. Haha.

Love you. I'm glad you guys have had a relatively low-key week.

Elder Mitchell Jeffrey Head

P.S. Last thing for today, earlier this week I went to KFC for lunch and they were playing the theme from "Christmas Vacation". It totally reminded me of home. Haha. Good times.

Elder Head in the Philippines - Term & Conditions with a healthy dose of bed bugs???

Hey guys!

So good news, my feet are still attached. 10 toes and all. I did, however, get bed bugs this week. Turns out I'm slightly (very) allergic to bed bugs because I woke up in the morning 4 out of 7 days this past week with some pretty huge appendages. Day one, my right hand and left middle finger. Day two, my left hand and my chin. (I kind of wished that day one and two would have been together so that I would have had some nice, numb, boxing glove-looking hands. I would've been like a skinny, allergic Rocky though.) Day 3, my right wrist and tricep and bicep were super swollen (It looked like I started lifting again but quickly went away, awe man.) and Day 4 was the smallest being just my left index finger. We made an assault on my bed, bed sheets, pillow case, and the floor surrounding it with this bug killer called permethrin. It seems to have done the trick because two days have passed and no more swelling or itchiness. 

In other news, this is the lame-duck term here in the office. The trainees are now doing all the work, and the old office workers are just looking for stuff to do. I'll be setting up the receipts and such for the housing payments and reading the contracts made with the landlords to better familiarize myself with the terms and conditions. I never thought I'd actually read a terms and conditions thing in my life. So I'm gonna train my Lawyer-Eyes for these documents. That's about it. We're just about to send another batch of missionaries home on Wednesday and pick up a new one right after. IT'S THE CIRCLE OF LIFE. 

That's about it for this week. I've restarted the Book of Mormon and just finished 1st Nephi. If anyone would like to race me to finish 2nd Nephi, let me know. I'm starting today. 

Keep the faith.

Elder Head

Bed bugs = swollen allergic hand :(

Elder Head in the Philippines - Feet buffet....only $1 ;)

Hey!
So this week I was able to baptize one of my old investigators in Lapu-Lapu because he requested that I would do it. Unfortunately, there were no pictures. But it happened. I'm telling you.

We did some more training this week for Elder McNett. He's doing really well. He seems to get it. Now all that's left is just to teach him about the insurance company, and that should be about it.

I really can't think of much more this week. It's just been a lot of running around and problem solving and training. The usual thing. One cool tender mercy this week was that on Wednesday, we finally went and got a bike fixed that's just been taking up space in the office for months. Five minutes after we got back from the bike shop, we got a call from some missionaries saying that their bike was broken and they needed to switch them out the next day. That was some perfect timing. It's cool that as soon as we got it done, that was then it was needed. I fell blessed that it wasn't needed that time when before it was done. That was a cool thing this week. Just really little, but needed. I hope to better keep my eyes peeled for little tender mercies like that more in life.

That's really it. Other than that earlier, we got our feet messaged by little fish who ate little particles of dead skin off of us earlier. That was cool. It was about the equivalent of $1 as well. I'll keep you posted if my feet start to fall off because of the $1 feet buffet for fish.

Later!

Elder Mitchell Jeffrey Head

Elder Head in the Philippines - Good to hear from Mitch again :)

Hey Momma!

So these past few weeks have been all training! My replacement got here to take my spot as Financial Secretary so I've been showing him the ropes once each time and then letting him do it after. If he needs help, I help him. But if not, I let him do it his way. It's working pretty well and he is catching on really well! His name is Elder McNett from Coalville, Utah. He loves to hike and can fly planes and has a lot of neat stories. He's really fun to talk to.

So we got everything worked out with Aetna the day before Elder and Sister McNett got here which was perfect timing. I'll be showing him how to do that this week.

Conference was last week. Oh man.

I really loved Conference. I enjoyed how they called everyone to just be better, to improve, to progress, and to become who we need to become. I especially noticed a lot of things in myself that I need to change. It all started with self evaluations. I can't wait to work on the things to help me become the person that I have the potential to be. Along with changing myself, conference helped me change the way I like to do planning. In the past, we would just kind of say what we thought that they needed. But because of the talk by Elder Renlund, we've changed our planning to asking ourselves for each person we teach, "What does God want this person to know, feel, or do?" And it's really helped change the way we plan and teach. I'm so grateful that God loves us enough to give us exactly what we need to hear through living prophets and apostles in this day and age whom he called.

We were able to go to the temple this week as well, which always makes the weeks better.

Sorry for the lack of metaphors in this email. I'll try for next week.

Elder Mitchell Jeffrey Head

Elder Head & Elder Saluta

This beautiful photo was taken before they entered the temple.

And when they left a couple of hours later. #philippineweather

Elder Head in the Philippines - Accountability

Hey Momma!

So this week, I've been thinking a lot about accountability. Mainly because this week I've been trying really hard to figure out how to get the mission reimbursed for it's many medical expenses through the church's insurance partner "Aetna". We just got a reading back from Aetna about the Philippines area's usage of Aetna and we found out that we are the ONLY mission that's not getting reimbursed for it's medical bills. The reason is because we just didn't know how to do it. So that's been my week. Trying to figure it out. Haha.

Anywho, accountability. I was reading in the scriptures during personal study yesterday and I received revelation. Now this piece of revelation is not anything new, or earth-shattering, but it just kind of hit me. Every person, will return to the presence of our Savior to be judged of our works: to be held accountable of what we have done with this life. Whether they are ready or not, we will ALL return to his presence. Which is a scary thought. What if we're not doing what we must do? What if we are not living to the fullness of our potential? What if we're just going through the motions of this life and missing out on all the learning opportunities the Lord has put into our path? I then was reading in Preach My Gospel, and confirmed it.

I'm so grateful that we've been given the Atonement of Jesus Christ that we can repent, and truly make the changes we need to make the most of this life. I know that for me, personally, I do not want my return to the presence of Deity to be like this Aetna thing was. I return only to find that I was the ONLY one that didn't improve on my time here, only because I did not know how. I'm also very grateful that the Lord has given us this time to prepare to return to His presence. I'm grateful that He's given us this General Conference to be led by our inspired leaders on how to improve our time here.

I pray that we'll all pay attention, not to just what they say, but to what the Spirit will say to us. What changes we need to make. Where we need to improve. Then I hope we'll have the humility to make those changes. I know that our Father will prepare ways for us to make those needed changes, if we'll just take some time and tell Him what we want to do to be better, to improve, to become. I'm so grateful for repentance, that even the worst of people can change and be refined by the healing touch of the Savior. I'm so grateful for inspired leaders who receive revelation for the church and the Gift of the Holy Ghost that we can receive that revelation personally for ourselves.

Love ya.

Elder Mitchell J. Head