September 21, 2010

September 21, 2010

Mom,
I am doing great. I have lots of news too!
I transferred last week. I am now in Carmen, about an hour and a half north right on the coast. The two cities directly to the north and south of it are in my area too. I got your dear elder. There were 11 areas in my zone, only one in my ward. My new companion is Elder Agbayani. He is a Filipino. We eat out a lot at the little places on the side of the road. I plan to get a whole lot of food soon so I can put a few more inches back on. This last week has left my already too big pants dangling. I went to McDonalds today to make up for it. It costs about the price of 3 other meals, but still cheaper than the US. I am in a small branch now. My area has been struggling. It just needs a little tlc. Faith and obedience brings blessings from the Lord. Carmon hasn't had a convert baptism since February, but the President promised that if we keep the mission standards we will have an average of 3 per month. Why deny the blessings. So to start off with a bang, the day after I got there we committed someone to baptism on Oct 9. Two days later we committed two more for the 26th. So I think things will start looking up here. I am in Cebu again today. Because of where I transferred I got to go to the temple two weeks in a row. Today was one of them. We also need to get a new fan for the apartment. We are down to just one, and that isn’t going to do. It'll take a few weeks, but soon the apartment will be clean and looking nice. I get to wash my clothes by hand now! Yippie! Now I will have absolutely no free time, not that I had any before. I am excited for this Saturday though! I get to come back to Cebu again and baptize Ritchie! I am so excited! Irene is being baptized as well.

I sent you an envelope with some pictures in it. Hopefully you get it in about a week. That is a different waterfall. Yours looks better, but mine is taller. I don’t know where I am going to do email anymore. It costs 10-15 pesos an hour. You can probably print off the emails, but I never had. Just more money. We do have an oven! Just right for two slices of bread. About half the size of the toaster oven I brought to college. None of the apartments have an oven but the first one I lived in for a week next to the AP's. That one had hot water too. That’s living the life! We have zone conference next week so I get to meet with the president then. We have one once every two transfers. The Church came out with more preach my gospel material for missionaries. We are being much more efficient now. We commit to baptism in almost every lesson. It is super helpful in finding people who the Lord has already prepared, and not just people willing to listen. We were doing that in Cebu and every one of our progressing investigators was willing to be baptized if it was true. Amazing! Missionary work has come so far! I teach a lot of the first lesson now. I don’t do a whole lot of the others, but I still try. There is still a lot of vocab I don’t know. It’s hard to teach because when I ask questions usually I miss the main point of the answer. That makes it hard to fit the lesson to the investigator. But for the time being, that is what my companion is for. And no, no machetes yet. I’ll try to keep it that way.

Tell everyone I love them. Thank them for their prayers. I can really feel the Lord blessing me in my work. Tell Katie I am excited to be an uncle. Tell Diane the same. :)
Sure love you!
Elder Schenk