March 1, 2011

Mom,
How ya'll doin' up yonder in the snowy country? I miss that white fluffy stuff. This week is transfers, and for the first time in 6 transfers, I am not going to transfer meeting because both Elder Mera and I are staying in Carcar! We just moved into a new apartment on Monday because our contract had run out in our last one and the owner wanted to do some repairs. So we got to talk the new owner through the contract and get him checks and so forth. That was interesting. Usually Zone Leaders take care of that, but they live an hour away and can’t come down to Carcar multiple times in a week. I learned a lot. Our new apartment is in an actual apartment complex and is new. The problem is that it is right on a main road and there are noisy motorcycles going by all the time. And there are lots and lots of ants that come out of the walls by the hundreds if you leave out food. We have a great bug killer that the mission provides. I don't foresee any more problems. The new apartment does have a great shower! I like that. I haven’t used a shower for almost 5 months. We just throw a bucket of water over our heads and call it good.

The work here is going great. Philip and Kesha Lana were confirmed on Sunday. We have two baptismal interviews this Saturday for Angel Diapera and her friend Jocelyn Ferando. Their baptism is scheduled for the following Saturday. Angels mom was inactive for a long time, and with the help of the ward we reactivated her two months ago. She started bringing her daughter to church (the building is less than a block away) and one Sunday they brought Jocelyn who had been taught by the missionaries before and was super enthusiastic about the gospel and wanted to be baptized. It is like a competition in our lessons between the two of them to see who knows the assignments better. They want to know more about the gospel than the other. It is great to see the work spreading here. We also have 3 other good investigators with baptismal dates, but because they haven’t been coming to church, their baptisms have been postponed. They are really good investigators though and all want to be baptized. I am excited for this next transfer!

I don’t really miss driving. Gasoline here is even more expensive than in the states. It has been over $4 for a long time.

I have just about filled up an sd card, so I’ll probably load it onto a cd. The problem in Carcar is that there are no new good machines to do it on like where Sister Robison was. She was in downtown Cebu and had the two biggest malls in the Visayas in her area. I’ll try to have a member help me out so I can send some home. Sorry, so many computers here have viruses and I don’t want to lose 9 months of pictures.
Thanks for everything. I sure love you all! Take care in Wisconsin!

Love,
Elder Schenk