Workout

Today was a real workout. We met Paddocks in Naic where we purchased a lot of stuff for new apartments and then met Forinashes in Manila where we stocked 2 new apartments. Forinashes had a load of bunkbeds which we set up but were not made that well so we had some trouble getting them to fit together and on some even had to get out a hammer and chisel to make them fit. One apartment was up 8 flights of stairs and the missionaries weren't there to help so it was a lot of work. We finally hired a couple of young guys off the street to help us. I'm 12 years younger than Paddock and about 8 years younger than Forinash so they both have a pretty hard time hauling stuff up stairs and my bum knee slows me down a bit so a couple hundred pesos (5 bucks) was well worth it. It was about 90 degrees out and time we were done I was totally soaked. It actually felt kinda good though to do some physical labour. We hurried home afterwards to try to make some teaching appointments but they both fell through so that was too bad.

Transfer Day

We lost two of  "our" missionaries to transfers today. Elder Belnap went to Palawan and Elder Pugmire to Ternate. We will sure miss them; they are both really good missionaries. Elder Belnap really didn't want to go because we have a lot of really promising investigators and he really liked it here. That's the way it goes I guess. Elder Burgos is now the district leader and his new companion is Elder Sanchez from Gilbert, Arizona. Elder Stephens is already a senior companion to Elder Acosta, a Filipino Elder from Mindinao. They both seem like really good missionaries so we excited about that. It seems the next ones could never be as good as the ones that just left but they are! We had to go do more apartment stuff after taking a load of missionaries in to Manila and got home too late to go out. We hate missing out on the chances to do real missionary work.

Going home Missionaries

This evening we got to go to the going home missionary's dinner and testimony meeting.That is always a special experience to witness the tremendous growth and spiritual maturity that these missionaries attain on their missions. Elder Spencer was one of them and he is kinda special to us because he was like our trainer. He was one of the missionaries here when we first got here and he was a great help to us. We had a lot of great teaching experiences together. He really likes it here and says he wants to come back here to live.We'll see. Anyway it truly is an amazing experience for these young people to serve missions. This truly is the Lord's work. There is such a need for more missionaries, especially couples and we strongly encourage everyone to take the opportunity to serve a mission; it's the best!!

New Apartments & FHE

Went today and looked at apartments to rent for Missionaries.Spent most of the day in Manila doing that. Got home in time to go to The Gumazan family and have family home evening. The father hasn't been to church for years as he works on Sundays. But he is a great man! He hasn't let missionaries come and teach  before, but he has let us and the Elders come for 3 weeks. The spirit is always strong and we can witness the change in his heart. He has his own business as we mentioned before; but I think as his heart softens he will return to church and not work on Sundays. His son who is on a mission is also encouraging him to return also. That is part of the reason he is working on Sunday is to help his son on his mission. But I think he could manage with out working on Sunday as the Lord would bless him for keeping his Sabbath Day Holy.

Love the Sabbath

Sundays are always good! Always good to go and partake of the Sacrament and renew our covenants each week. The Branch President Pres. Balldarama is our new District Pres., like we mentioned. But a new Branch Pres. hasn't been called yet so he talked on Sunday. He talked about becoming a Stake in the next year and a half and what we need to do to become a Stake . It was very inspiring and the members were all nodding their heads in agreement. Its always wonderful when spirit speaks to spirit. As the Prophet Isaiah promised, "Thine ears shall hear a word......Saying, This is the way,walk ye in it"     Isaiah 30:21  We have learned to rely on the Holy Ghost daily on our Mission, the Holy Ghost is the true converter we can testify of that!
  Later John went to Naic for District Meetings with District Presidency for all Branch Presidencies and Elders Quorm Presidents. He didn't get home till 8:30p.m. so that was our day.

Baptism

Reymart Moncada was baptized this evening! He is a great 17 year-old young man who the elders have been teaching and we also have helped teach him some. His older brother is a member but hasn't been active because he was working every Sunday but Reymart asked him one day if he would teach him about his church so he decided to quit his job and take his brother to church and so the elders started teaching him and he is just on fire. he already has gone with the missionaries teaching several times and can't wait til he can go on a mission. He bears a really strong testimony and just loves the gospel! So good! He wanted to be baptized last week but came down with Dengay fever and was really sick.

Elder Belnap, Reymart Moncada, Elder Burgos and us. 

He can hardly wait til he can go on a mission!

Punta Branch Members.Pres Mendoza is next to me and Bro. Base, the 1st councilor is next to Elder Belnap with his wife and baby.

Great Family

We've been teaching a wonderful young couple for the last couple of months and progress has been a little bit slow but we had a great meeting with them tonight and they committed to be baptized! Sometimes it's almost better when it takes a little longer especially when it's because they really want to know if it's true and they ask lot's of questions and don't always accept things right away. That's the way this family is; she's really golden but he's kinda come kicking and screaming and been careful about it all but he's coming along now and it's just wonderful. He's got great leadership potential and is a really good guy.We are so excited! they are going to be a great addition to this branch.The Spirit was really strong there tonight and bore powerful witness of the truth to them. The gospel changes lives and it's so wonderful to see how it blesses people!

Lots of Missionary Work

We had more appointments today than we could get to so had to postpone some that we had with members.The bad thing was that then some of the appointments didn't hold so we could have kept them but you just never know. However we still kept busy and had some good meetings. Bit of a teary session with a less active sister who has lived with a man, who was married before, for over thirty years. In the Philippines divorce is illegal so you run into this lots. Anyway she's not been happy but stuck with him for the children's sake and hoping something would change but he smokes and drinks and won't get a job and so she finally has decided that she wants to repent and go to the temple so she is leaving him. It's tough.

Tondo

Not much to say about p-day yesterday but today we went with the Forinashes to Tondo, Santa Cruz and San Juan to check apartments. These areas are all in downtown Manila. Bit of an eye-opener to see what life is like in the inner city.We thought it was tough out where we live! One of the apartments has to go; it's just not up to standard so we encouraged them to look for a new place. The traffic in the city is crazy! We left at 5:30 this morning and only got to 3 apartments and looked at 1 new one in Pasay and didn't get home til 4:00 this afternoon. We would have done more but Sister Forinash was sick and had had enough. This evening we went to Eric and Barbie's. They are really getting excited about getting baptized but tonight they were mostly excited about getting married and wanted to make plans for that. It is so fun to see the light of the gospel start to shine in peoples eyes as they feel the hope and joy the gospel brings. Quite the contrast to come from the hopelessness of the inner city and then see how the gospel of Jesus Christ makes a difference in people's lives and gives them hope! We also went to a FHE tonight with a family that we've been doing that with every Tuesday for a few weeks, Last week we didn't go because the elders challenged them to do it on their own and they actually did! The mother is a widow and has to work everyday except Tuesdays. Tonight the older brother actually joined us for the first time!

District Conference

What a great conference! The place was packed! I guess everyone decided to save their money so they could all come on Sunday because it was standing room only. We did help arrange for a bus to help get our members from Punta branch there and it helped because a lot came. Carrissa branch came in the back of a truck one of the members uses for hauling garbage for their recycling business. We have pictures of that that we'll have to post sometime. Another branch came on the back of another flat deck truck of one of the members. Reminds us of some of the ways we used to get to church back in the day. The district presidency was released and President Balderama, Branch President of Carrissa Branch ( one of our branches) was called as District President.That's pretty exciting! He's a really great man! The talks were all really good and one of our recently returned members was ordained an elder so we are really happy for him. We took our guy with the wheel chair with us and he really enjoyed it and then this afternoon we went and taught him again. He wants to get baptized. His wife couldn't come to conference but she was there this afternoon and she wants to get baptized as well.They need to get married first so we also talked about wedding plans. Lily was all over that!

District Conference- Saturday

Today we had the Saturday sessions of district conference and it was really good. I was disappointed in the turn out from our branch for the meetings though.Only the clerk and branch President came and the president was late. Good meetings though. Elder Augustine, an Area Authority Seventy, presided and he gave some very good training on the roles of Branch Presidencies, Young Men Presidencies and Quorum Presidencies in the Aaronic Priesthood. The talks in the adult session were also very good. They are really encouraging the young single adults to not put off getting married and be sure they marry in the temple. Many are afraid to get married because their financial situations are so difficult but they are being counselled to go forward with faith. When we see some of the living conditions here it is hard for us to have the faith but its heartwarming and inspiring to see many young people going forward with amazing faith and then see how the Lord blesses them and opens doors of opportunity for them.

Work Goes on

We had quite a few teaching appointments today. Nothing really outstanding to say except that we have quite a few people who are progressing but it's to early to tell if they are going to keep coming along. Sure do hope so there are some great people that we are teaching and it sure is easy to fall in love with them and you hope so much that they will be able to keep their commitments and get an answer to their prayers. It's sometimes hard to get people read the Book of Mormon and pray. If they do they get answers; if they don't then no matter what you do they just don't get the testimony they need to move forward.

Zone Conference and R.M.

Today we got to go to zone conference! We are blessed to have a wonderful mission president who gave us inspired council and direction. He is very concerned because in January we only had 55 baptisms; which is the lowest we've had for a long time. So he taught a lot about having faith in Jesus Christ and how through exercising we can find more people to teach and bring to the waters of baptism. We, as a mission, also have been perhaps focusing so much on rescuing the less active that we've forgotten that our primary purpose is to people to teach and baptize. Anyway hopefully this was just a blip and we can do better next month. After zone conference we went up to the temple and picked up Elder Jamboy who just returned from the Cagayen de Oro mission and lives in our branch. We took him to Pres. Stucki's house to get released and then took him home. He is the only member of his family and they are Jehovah's Witnesses and were not at all happy with him joining the church and then going on a mission. Kinda sad; he never got one letter from them his whole mission. He was excited to see them but wasn't sure if he even had a place to sleep. His really strong though and was a great missionary so hope he'll be alright. We were grateful for the chance to pick him up and get to know him.We are so inspired by his faith and dedication to the gospel!

John's Birthday

We had to get up really early this morning and meet the Forinashes so we could go with them and start learning our new assignment to check apartments.Spent almost all day in Manila checking the Makati East zone and also signed a contract for a new apartment there. Lucky elders that get to live there;they will live on the top floor with no elevator but its only the 8th floor. Got our work out! Glad we only have one flight of stairs to get to our apartment. There is always some thing to be grateful for and we never need to look very far. The elders came over for cake and ice cream after work. We love our elders!

Pre-Birthday

Another P-Day! Was very busy as we had to wash all the walls and windows in our house;because we had an air conditioner installed and they had to drill a hole in the cement so that fine dust spread all over everything. John went with the Elders and did a service project for some investigators, (Eric) man in the wheel chair, and when he came home he washed the three windows for me! He's quite good at that since we owned the glass shop. I think I'll always let him have that job in fact since he's so good at it now. So since it was P-day we invited the Paddocks over. They picked up a Birthday cake and we had fried chicken,mashed potato,gravy,corn and home made buns. Then later the cake and ice cream. We don't get ice cream very often over here, so it was a treat. Funny how John keeps getting older but he never catches up to me. Later in the evening we went to Gamazon Family .The mother and daughter are very active but he hasn't come for years as he sells fish for a living. He gets up at 2a.m. every morning and goes to a near by town to buy his fish. He gets back here and sets his little shop up by 6a.m. . He takes 2 hours off in the afternoon when it's so hot here for a nap; then works till 8:30 p.m. His busiest day is Sunday he makes about twice as much as he does the rest of the week so he just can't afford to not work on Sunday. He has a son on a mission and supporting his daughter in university! Anyway really a neat man. We will work with and teach him.

Win some Lose some

The Punta branch elders have been kinda frustrated lately because quite a few of  what seemed like really good investigators have been not holding appointments and seem to be avoiding them.Today though a lady came to church who they just met; hadn't taught her yet, just invited her to church and she came! On the other hand the Carrissa elders who had been experiencing a lot of that also lately received word yesterday that our young man in the wheel chair who had been shot wants to be taught again. His father had told him as long as he was living in his house the missionaries couldn't come. Eric had told them that as soon as he could get his own place he would have them back but that didn't look real promising so they thought  they'd lost him. However the very day he was moving into his new place he talked to some members who are his new neighbours and told them to tell the missionaries they could come. So we went there today and it was great and he still wants to be baptized! His wife, who has to do most of the work because he is crippled, was busy trying to get things liveable ( not a very liveable place), couldn't join us but said she would next time.We're excited!

Baptism

Regie Tahor was baptized today! It was a really nice service and he was so excited and happy! He has wanted to be baptized ever since we started teaching him; one of those really golden investigators. The other young man that was planning to be baptized couldn't because he is really sick. His symptoms lead us to believe he has Dengay fever which is a serious disease carried by mosquitos. It seems like a bad flu at first but then you also break out in a rash.There really is no treatment but doctors will watch the patients white blood cell count and if it gets to low they will give a blood transfusion. Reymart can't afford to go to the doctor so it's kind of wait and see but he does seem to be on the mend now so hopefully he'll be alright.

Regie is President Mendoza's nephew. He was so excited and happy to be baptized!

Invitation

Had another investigator accept an invitation to be baptized when we taught her today.She is a sister of one of the brethren here in the branch and is a really nice lady. It is so much fun to share the gospel!

Training

Today we went with the Pugsleys to the training meeting for our new assignments as apartment checkers. I drove  their car so I could show them how to get to the various places we needed to go and also get them a little more used to the traffic over here. Lily and I are kind of in charge and will do most of the purchasing of all the household stuff for any new apartments that we get as well as ongoing supplies and then we have 4 zones of apartments to inspect every 6 weeks.We also will take care of setting up rental contracts with potential landlords.With our mission complement of  missionaries going from 180 to 250 in the next 6 months we are going to need quite a few new apartments. Paddocks and Pugsleys each have 4 zones to look after as well. After our training meeting we had dinner at the mission home with all the couples in the mission including the Crafts,who just got here from Idaho Falls, that I talked about last night; and the Burts and Wests who came over from Palawan. It was fun. We all got to sharing our experiences with spiders, rats,snakes and other exciting stuff and had some good laughs. After dinner Pres. Stucki asked the Pugsleys and the Crafts to share their testimonies as the new couples and then the Forinashes who are going home in March. It was nice.What a privelege it is to serve as a missionary1

Plan B

One of the biggest challenges of missionary work is when things don't go as planned.We were supposed to go to Manila for some training on our new assignment today but they changed it to tomorrow because we have a new couple coming in late tonight and they wanted to get us all together.They won't be helping with apartments because their assignment is CES. They are actually looking at getting a new program going here that will be similar to the Pathways program from BYU-I but it is connected with BYU-H. Sounds interesting. Any way we  went to plan b and went around and told everyone that the meetings for tomorrow were cancelled(pec & bp) and then we met up with the missionaries but most of their appointments had also cancelled. That can get frustrating but we were able to teach a few people.They had asked Zeus Madalang-awa to go with them. It is so wonderful to see the change he has made in the past few months. We started working with him when we first got here and now  he has gone from  inactive and unhappy to sharing his testimony and wearing a white shirt and tie. After our last appointment we then had a teaching appointment with him and taught about the oath and covenant of the priesthood. It was good; missionary work is the best!

Manila Again

Sister Paddock had to go to a doctor in Manila today so we went along because they have a pickup and we needed to get a new air conditioner for our apartment.Not really much else to say about that. This evening we went to a F.H.E. with another family that is less active that we're working with. The mother is a widow and her only day off is Tuesday so we have been holding a family home evening with her and her daughters every Tuesday night.

Just Another P-day

Washed clothes, cleaned house, shopped, etc. Not much else to say today except we had a nice F.H.E with the Pessimo family this evening. They've been coming back to church and are a great family.

So Many at Church....!

It was awesome! We had so many people at church in Punta branch we ran out of  sacrament and had to refill the water trays. 135 people; the most since we've been here! There were lot's of our less active members there and several investigators so it was great. We also had a good meeting this afternoon with a new family we met a few weeks when we were out for our morning walk. We brought the R.S. President with us and it turned out that her husband and the father of the family are first cousins! We had no idea! Hopefully they come along they did say they would come to church on Sunday. Most of our other appointments fell through today but I did go with the branch presidency and visited a family and tried another but they weren't home.

New Job

Went with Elder & Sister Forinash all day Saturday; helping them furnish a new apartment in Indang for Elders as they are going to open up that area. That is where the new couple, Elder & Sister Pugsley, are also. Forinash's are going home in March so President Stucki has assigned all the Senior Couples four Zones each to take care of. We have been assigned to go into Manila because we are the youngest. Also we are assigned to take care of all the new apartments, help find,do the contracts,and also buy and set up all the furnishings for the apartment. Unfortunately we won't be able to teach as much as we have in the past so we have been a bit sad about that. But we said we would go and do what was asked of us ;so we will.When we got back home the Paddocks came over and visited for awhile. We talked about our new apartment assignments and how we can accomplish that work as well as do missionary work. I think it'll be alright, we'll find ways to make it work.

Good Day

After feeding the missionaries a dinner of turkey, ham, potatoes and gravy we had our weekly planning meeting and then went out with Elders Burgos and Belnap for the evening. We went to the Rosales family and after showing them the video "Only a Stone Cutter" brother Rosales I asked brother Rosales if his sister wanted to be taught ( he had mentioned her the other day) he said "wait here I'll go see". He came back a few minutes later and said " come on" so we went and taught her. It went well, he is really excited about the Gospel right now. We also went to Sister Cantilleps and her daughter was there and said we could come and see her husband next week. We then went to another really good young couple and taught them the Plan of Salvation and it went really well so we had another really good day!