6.30.2008

well its yet another day in sunny manila

well hello there! all is well here in Manila. elder sorensen and i continue to experience things in this area that he hasn't experienced in his whole mission! ok, lets get to the interesting stuff first. so exceptional news, we have an investigator with a baptismal date!!!!!!!! he's pretty much perfect. he accepts everything we teach him and ask questions that indicate to us that he truly wants to know the truth! its way exciting. his name is Dondon and he's 19. we hope to baptize him on 7/26 before elder sorensen heads home.
ok, so some of the other interesting stuff. so on thursday night we were doing planning and i look behind me and there's a rat about the size of a big potato in our apartment. i turn to e sorensen and it has already gotten into our room and onto my bed and pillow. we tried to catch it with two halves of a fan but it evaded us and made it outside.
on friday night we were heading into part of our area to go see some investigators and tract, when this big korean looking dude stops us in the middle of the street and asks us what we are doing there. we tell him, well actually elder sorensen tells him, that we're missionaries and long story short this guy is a pastor for some born again church and he bawaled(forbid) us to go in there. we kinda told him we're not out to change peoples beliefs, we just want to share a message. we asked if that was alright and he didn't answer so we just walked away, it was pretty funny. latter that night we were planning again and i feel something run across my toes. so i freak out and that freaks sorensen out, turns out to be a cockroach. so we sprayed some alak(alcohol) on it and it died. so those are kind of the fun things that happen here in the philippines! don't you wish you were here?
anyway for my general well being im doing well. im still not a big fan of rice, so i don't eat to much. its ridiculously hot here all the time and sweating is a constant activity. one night this week we didn't have a fan in our room because we gave it to the teaching assistants that stayed at our apartment that night. so that was one of the worst nights ever. i wake up at like 3am and look at my clock that has the temperature its like 97* in our apartment!
anyway, enough of my complaining. it was a pretty good week none the less. we taught 33 lessons this week and had 1 person at sacrament meeting. we're having real trouble having investigators keep commitments and come to church. but that should improve this week because the ward is going to really step it up and help us! what a difference going to church makes! we didn't go last week because of the typhoon. but we've got excellent members that are really willing and ready to help. they've already talked to us about teaching their friends. so hopefully that'll increase baptisms. but nevertheless we continue to work hard. we keep trying to find and teach; we've got high hopes for some. but even we've got those high hopes, we sometimes are disappointed. what we've been hoping to do is make daily contact with our investigators and by doing so they drop themselves rather than us having to do it. its kinda disheartening when that happens, but the work moves on.
i gave a talk yesterday in sacrament meeting. if you've been complaining about giving a talk, try giving one in another language thats all kinds of awesome. anyway i gave the joseph smith story and told them that we need to know that joseph smith is a prophet of god and once we know that we should share that knowledge with others. hopefully they understood, elder sorensen said it was good, but he understands what im getting at so im not sure how it was. so thats all the excitement for now. talk to you next week!
mahal ko kayo
elder b

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