Mindoro - Island Life!

Week 20

13 April 2015

General Conference was great! All Saturday and all Sunday I was at Victoria District Center watching it. Us, the Naujan Elders and the Baco Elders were all kicking it together all weekend. 

My favourite talk was the talk about The Music of the Gospel by Elder Wilford W. Anderson. It was about feeling the music and enjoying the dance more...  The music of the gospel is the joyful spiritual feeling that comes from the Holy Ghost.  

I won't even lie...I did catch up on some sleep during General Conference. I guess some things never change!

On Wednesday we had our Zone Training Meeting in Victoria, and we were setting goals as a zone because every companionship in the whole zone has a new missionary, except Victoria, because both of them are new. We also were talking about an Easter initiative, even though it's past, and how we can apply the Atonement in every aspect of our missionary work here in Mindoro. "Because He Lives."

This week we've just eaten out a lot at a local eatery for like 30 pesos, which is pretty cheap price. I'm eating lots, so maybe I'm sustaining a constant weight. I'm not feeling any lighter, or any heavier. But, it's hard to put weight on in an area like mine where there is like jack-all food and you walk in the sun, up and down hills all day.  

Here is a lot different to Australia. There is almost no shops here and all that is sold is in tin cans, and everything in my area closes before 7pm. I survive off bakeries and eateries. We try and get out of Pola whenever we can, so we can eat a proper meal.

Our Branch is doing okay, it's not quite as organised as at home but I'm not going to complain about it. We read Jacob 5 in our Zone Meeting on Wednesday, and it changed how I see areas that are very hard to work in. 

The families in this area are good, though we haven't met too many of the members here and we haven't had any dinner appointments either.

We tried to do visits this week but people weren't home.  We are in a very poor area... some houses have no power so they use candles at night.  Most don't even have doors to knock on!  We usually just yell out that we're there and they answer.

Today we just stayed in Calapan and played basketball in the morning. Today is also our Zone Leader, Elder Wooden's 20th birthday, so we went to Calapan to play basketball, then we had another big MacDonald's feed to celebrate his birthday. We then went to the mall, and had a little look around, nothing too flash.

Tomorrow we head back to our area - Pola ... will take us about 2.5 hours to get there.

Hey, no photos this week, I can't get hold of a card reader..... I will try and get one for next week.