A lot has happened in the last week, so I'll give you the load down.
Last Wednesday I found out that I was transferring at our last zone basketball game. My district all had new matching jerseys, so that was fun. Thursday I picked up some shells that I got specially made by an investigator there. They were supposed to have the temple on them with "Philippines Cebu Temple" printed underneath. Well they though I wanted my name on there too, so in nice big bold letters they wrote "Elder Schen's" on all of them. So I am getting the name removed and I'll pick them up from Elder Casio when I see him this Friday at zone conference. Friday was transfer day and I woke up sick with a sinus infection. I talked to Sister Schmutz there and she said to pick up some amoxicillin. It was a great meeting. The talks focused on loving your companion and being obedient. Then we had the 4 hour bus ride to Bogo. My companion, Elder Laboson, didn't come because he didn't have an extra 300 pesos to get there and back. I got a blessing that night from my companion and just like sinus infections don't do, it just went away. That was a great blessing. I was still really tired though and not all the way better, so on Saturday we had weekly planning, and I slept quite a bit of the rest of the day. Sunday I met the branch, all 28 of them. We meet in the Bogo church building that is only about 15 min away, but it is too expensive for most members. There used to be a meeting house in Polambato (It is just one street going from the highway to the ocean), and the plan was to renovate another building and got to church there, but somewhere something fell through and nobody knows what is happening, but nobody has started working on the new meeting house. As the result many members went inactive. There used to be 100 who attended. I absolutely love the area. My companion is great. He is quite a joker so we laugh a lot. He is from Manila and has been out almost a year. The Polambato area is bigger than my last area, but there are a lot less people. There is a lot of sugar cane though. It’s everywhere! Sometimes as far as the eye can see in all directions. The people are all really poor. In my last area, if someone died, they would rent big tents and gamble and drink under them for a week, and then have a big feast at the funeral. We went to the funeral of the wife of one of our members on Monday and all they could do was give out 2 peso muffins for a snack with a little bit of juice. Everyone is so poor. I love it though. Yesterday we went to visit a recent convert and had to walk down a muddy path through the woods, and sometimes you had to walk right through the water. My pants were so muddy by the time we got home. It is like going on a hike just to get to their house. It’s fun. The mud here is really sticky. It’s more like clay than mud. The mud builds up until each foot weighs about 10 pounds. It’s fun. I am going to be washing a lot of pants by hand here. But it is worth it because the people are amazing! Everyone is so kind. We have 3 investigators committed for baptism and another 4 who know the church is true and for one reason or another, sometimes social, sometimes financial, they don't want to join the church yet. There is no real town or city center or location where you can say "this is it", there are just some little stores here and there and little places where you can eat. Right by our house is probably the largest place. It is a store full of canned food about the size of our kitchen. But it is enough.
I am so glad to be assigned here. I have so much I can learn. In my last area I was the most obedient missionary in the entire district. We had district meeting here on Monday and I felt like I was one of the most disobedient. It was such a great feeling to be surrounded by so many great spiritual people. I have never seen this much faith in a district before. I am so excited! Both the zone leaders and the district leader are amazing missionaries. It is going to be a great transfer.
So to wrap it all up, I love my life. It is great here. I thought the city was great, but being out of the city is way better!
Love you all,
Elder Schenk
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