October 25, 2011

Family,
I just wrote a long letter to the mission president so this one will be a little shorter.
This has been a great week. I love my new companion, Elder Sureta. He is a good worker and teacher. We should have a lot of success.
Being able to see Jeffery R. Holland, Tad R. Callister, and Elder Teh was a treat. We had a picture of the entire mission in front of the temple and the three of them joined with their wives! When Elder Holland walked up to us he said, "President Schmutz said you are perfect, and you are!" That was cool to hear. Elder Holland's wife is the cousin of President Schmutz so they already knew each other. I got a picture with him! We also got to shake their hands as we walked in. And as he was walking out I got to shake his hand again because I was sitting in the isle. That was neat! It was like an electric shock of the spirit just brightened your soul! Elder Callister is one of my favorite speakers. I have one of his general conference talks on my iPod and he spoke in the last general conference. He also wrote "The infinite Atonement" which I read a few chapters of before my mission. He talked about ten evidences of the apostasy. That was neat. One of them was that the Bible ended. Most of the epistles were from the leaders of the church to correct errors in doctrine in the church. So why did it end. Either there stopped being doctrinal errors in the church in 100 AD (not likely) or the prophet and apostles died. It was a great talk Elder Holland commented that he had never heard such a talk on the apostasy in a missionary meeting before. He also said that Elder Callister wrote one of the best two books on the apostasy. He is a really smart guy. He gave his entire talk full of scriptures from the Bible with no notes. Elder Callister is the grandson of Legrand Richards, he inherited some good traits.
Elder Holland talked about our responsibility as missionaries. At one point they were trying to find what the icon of the church was. What do people think about when they think of the church. They thought of the Salt Lake Temple and how it is well known, but he thinks a better guess would be a pair of missionaries in white shirts and ties. He said that the members of the church think that we are perfect and that we have no right to do anything to diminish that view. We are to be as the Savior is. That is a high calling. It was great to be able to listen to a prophet of the Lord.
Love you all,
Elder Schenk

October 19, 2011

Family, Today we get to hear from Elder Holland! We are all so excited to hear him speak in about 4 hours, and also the entire mission is going to be here! So we get to see ALL of our friends. That has never happened in Cebu Mission history. We are going to get a picture with all of the missionaries and to top it off Elder Holland agreed to be in the picture! How many people have gotten a picture with him before! I am so excited. Yesterday was zone interviews. President Schmutz is such an amazing man. We were all there early and when he got there 20 min early we started. He taught a great workshop for almost an hour and then took us one by one into the interviews. He doesn't let anything rush him, he just takes as much time as it takes. Elder Windmil, who is now an assistant to the president, who just transferred from my zone said that in Negros they had a boat ticket for 3:00 after their interviews, but at 2:00 he still had 16 interviews to go. So President sent the APs to reimburse the boat ticket and buy him and Sister Hansen an airplane ticket for the next day. As soon as they landed the next day they went straight to Bohol for more interviews. While he interviewed me he said that he had been pondering and praying about some of my concerns for my district. Out of the 150+ missionaries he has taken that much time to think and pray about me. That meant so much to me. It is such an honor to serve under him. He loves me so much. After the interview he gave me a hug. He is a big man, a lot like dad, and for a moment I felt like I was hugging my father. That was so special to me. I haven't been able to hug my father in a long time.
We also found out yesterday that my companion, Elder Laboson, is being emergency transferred today. There is a missionary who has really bad asthma and is being released. There are 4 companionships being shuffled around and we get to be one of them. So today I get a new companion, Elder Sureta. He was assigned in San Remejio, the area next to mine, two and a half transfers ago but had tuberculosis and was isolated in his apartment for a few months and really didn't get much time to work in his area. I was surprised to hear about the transfer, but afterwards felt so peaceful and at ease, I have no doubt that it is the will of the Lord.
About your talk on Sunday, Mom, just make up something to say like a mission is the most important thing I have ever done in my life and I am learning so many lessons each day. I never thought it would affect my life in this magnitude. It does so much more that teach you doctrine. It teaches you in a personal way about the plan of salvation and your part in it. I now know where I want to go and why I want to go there, and I know what I have to do now to get there. You learn so much from the people, your companions, and your leaders. You get put in situations where you have to learn, and afterwards you are so grateful for all that the Lord has taught you. And missions are great because you get to meet apostles! You see the difference between people who are just good people and live some gospel principles and the people who embrace each part of this gospel and learn to love to be obedient and keep the commandments, like Captain Moroni (Alma 48:16). Also the doctrine just gets engrained into you. You learn to look at the different principles of the gospel from different angles and learn more fully what they really mean and how through Christ they are all inner-connected. And if you go to the Philippines Cebu Mission (The best mission in the world!) you get to learn Cebuano! Nindot kaayo pitaw! Hopefully you got something from that to share. Good luck.
Eric you crazy sun of a gun! Good work in your tennis. You got way further than I did. Don’t feel too bad, not everyone can be the best. At least you are still good looking.
Love you guys!
Elder Schenk

October 11, 2011

Mom,
We are here in Cebu again today. This is the second of three weeks in a row. Our next p-day is on Thursday, not Wednesday so that all of the missionaries in the entire mission can come to hear Elder Holland, Elder Calister, and Elder Teh speak. I am way excited for that. This will be the first time in the history of the mission that the entire mission will have gathered.
You can boil bananas with or without the skin. If without the skin they put in sugar and make it a soup. if with the skin it just makes it soft and more sweet. Sometimes they boil the unripe ones so you can eat it, but it just tastes like a boiled potato...like starch. They eat just about every fruit here before it is ripe. They like the bitter.
Being district leader is good. I am learning a lot. It has put more stress on me as I am now learning all of my responsibilities, but I am grateful for the challenge.
Earlier Elder Baley, the office couple, told me that he "had a ball last night" looking at my blog. He had been searching on the internet for information on Bogo where he is going to be moving in two weeks to be a regular senior couple missionary, and my blog came up on the search. He said he really enjoyed reading it and that it is one of the better ones he has seen for missionaries. Nice work mom. I got a dvd made up with all of my pictures on it. I just need to drop it off in the mail.
I haven't gotten your letters yet, hopefully soon.
I thought about my plans after the mission and I want to go back to school in the fall. Try to see if you can get my track changed to fall winter. Right now it is the winter spring track. It would be awesome if I could go with Carson.
I’ll try to get a picture of my shoes. They are a little harder to find now. I got them resoled, but now they are a little small. So I gave them to another elder. He gave them to the ward missionary in another area. But I can probably get it in the next few weeks. I don’t want to send a sd card home because I have heard that too many don’t make it to the states.
Well I am out of time, I wrote a long letter to the president about my district and then there was an error, so I need to shoot him an email quick.
Love you,
Elder Schenk

October 5, 2011

Good afternoon family,
Right now I am in Cebu. My companion had a blood test earlier and has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, so we will be sleeping here tonight. He had some health problems a few transfers ago and they are following up on him.
Good news! President Schmutz said you could come to pick me up. These are his words. "About your parents, I think it would be wonderful for them to come and pick you up from your mission. They need to understand that you will still be on your mission when they visit here. You will not be released. You will be given to them as your companions, and you will still dressed in missionary attire, wearing the missionary name tag. You must be very careful that you share a great and HUMBLE example with the Filipino members and people you have worked with. Sometimes Americans pick up their children and think of it more like a play vacation. But if you remain in the areas of your mission, you will still be a missionary in the eyes of the people you introduce to your parents. So don't do anything that would lessen their feelings for you as a missionary. It is confusing if you or your family don't act in the very best way as member missionaries. I will look forward to meeting your parents if they come. It will be an honor to tell them what a good missionary you have been."

I had a good time teaching my first district meeting on Monday. It was so great to be able to receive added revelation for the district and what I needed to teach. It just came so easily. I enjoyed preparing it. I think I will learn a lot from my new responsibility.
We had a great experience yesterday. We had originally planned to visit nanay Ilanan in the morning at 10:00. We had taught her once about a month ago, and thought nothing would ever come of it, so we didn't return. Every once in a while I would feel like that lesson was meant to be and that it will help open a door for something else. Our plans kept getting changed though, and until yesterday we had not gone back. We had planned to visit Gervasio Daitol on Thursday at 10, but Elder Laboson accidentally told him Tuesday. So we went there first yesterday and ended up talking to his wife for about half an hour. Gervasio wasn't there. After that we went to nanay Ilanan. She wasn’t home either, so we talked to her neighbors for a while. She ended up coming home, but was too busy for us to teach her. She did give us a bunch of bananas though that she had just cooked (they boil bananas here. They are good.) So we took the bananas and left to go home, hoping that we would find some other people to talk to. In that area there are almost no people. There are large fields with little bunches of 3 or 4 houses here or there. Usually nobody is home. While walking I was a little confused. I had felt like we had purpose there, but all we had gotten for our effort was a sack of bananas. Maybe the Lord just wanted us to eat more fruit. As we were walking we saw a man clearing some overgrown weeds and grass out of a field. He looked excited to see us and slowly began walking towards the road where we would cross. I was going to ask him for directions (because the path we took went a different direction than I thought it would) and my companion said "Give him a banana." So we walked over to him and began talking. He asked if we were Mormon missionaries. We said we were. He then asked if we taught from our bible. We said, yes, we teach from the Book of Mormon. He then said "Well let’s start. Shall we pray?" We were startled. We asked him some questions to get to know him a little bit and then offered him a banana. It turns out he gets paid 500 pesos (about $10) a month to clear the land and hadn't eaten breakfast and all he had to eat for lunch was a 1 peso water in a plastic bag that someone had given him! We ended up giving him all of the bananas, as they clearly were not intended for us to eat. He had been taught by missionaries in 2007 and was almost baptized but had stopped coming to church and ended up getting dropped. Before the lesson even started we committed him for baptism and by the end of the lesson had given him a date. He has forgotten almost all of the doctrine of the church, but still believed it was true. We ended up teaching him the first lesson and have an appointment to go back Saturday. That was such an amazing experience. Both Elder Laboson and I were flabbergasted at how many things fell into place so that we could find him at that time and had a bag of bananas to give to him. Only the Lord could have done that.

Take care. It was good to hear from you all this week.
Love,
Elder Schenk