Easter

Week 19

06 April 2015

Happy Easter to you all!

I totally forgot it was Easter around this time of the year, but I was painfully reminded on Good Friday! Here in my area, there were a tonne of men who were making themselves bleed to re-enact something like the Atonement of Jesus Christ. They stood around hitting themselves with these sticks that had small, sharp ends to make them bleed. They did it like all day!

Then they had a march, and then somewhere in the town they re-enacted the crucifixion. It was kinda gross haha, almost threw up at how sickening it was. My mind was tortured too, to think that these people believed that they had to re-enact these sorts of things, when the Saviour went through all this so we didn't have to go through it.

The storm didn't come anywhere Mindoro this time around. I was too busy sweating like a pig out in my area, slogging away in a white shirt and long pants, I'm grateful it didn't come this time around, but I won't be surprised if I do get stuck in one sometime in my mission. Part of being a missionary in the Philippines I guess, like the saying goes around here, "It's more fun in the Philippines."

The week was good, we visited some investigators and some less-actives. We have one investigator working towards her baptismal date of May 9. She is only young but she reads the Book of Mormon every day, and when we teach, we ask a lot of questions to make sure she understands, and she answers well, and understands everything we teach her.

Mindoro is great... My area is called Pola. The area is really an island area. We have no commercial shops, and no take-out places. There is an abundance of banana trees, and coconut trees too, and farm animals running around everywhere. I can only assume that this is what the villages in Samoa look like! We also have the ocean right there, which is so tempting! Every day we walk up this big as hill and we can see the crystal clear ocean from the top.

My Tagalog is getting much better, I speak lots more Tagalog now than I do English.

We came to Pinamalayan to have P-Day with the Elders from Socorro. I found myself talking Tagalog to Elder Nikau... then we had a good laugh when we remembered we could speak English to each other!!

Our branch is very small, maybe 50 members at church each week. We don't have a chapel - just a small meeting house.

This week we have a Zone Training Meeting, and then General Conference videos on Saturday and Sunday. This will be my first time in my life going to all 4 sessions, as well as the other sessions they do. It is my first videos on the mission, and I am excited to hear what the General Authority have to say.