My New Area

Week 66

29th February 2016

My travel to my new area on Thursday was long as! It didn't help that I wasn't able to leave on time. I had to wait in Atimonan port for some other Elders until 12PM, and then I didn't get into Batangas Terminal until just after 8PM. I was pretty annoyed, and the whole mission was on a search for me because some Zone Leaders weren't where they were supposed to be, and I was stranded for over an hour not knowing what to do. No phone, so I had to borrow one to call the Zone Leaders of that area, and I was told to go to them. Then the Zone Leaders weren't even at the place where I was supposed to meet them! Oh well, I guess these things happen. 

We got into our area on Friday around 12PM. My area is so far from the rest of the zone. From Batangas City, we had to travel another 3 1/2 hours! As if I wasn't sick of travel already, and then this 3 1/2 hour travel. We went out to work as quick as we could so I could get out and meet some people, and it was good.

Saturday night we had a branch activity, and we rocked up at 7PM to eat some dinner. I rock up and look in, and I see some members from Gumaca Ward who had moved out to Nasugbu in January, and they were shocked when they saw me. I had told everyone in Gumaca to not say anything about me being transferred to their new ward, and they were really surprised. 

During Saturday though, we were visiting members, and we pranked them, pretending that I was new in the mission and couldn't speak Tagalog. The members were trying so hard to speak English, and when I finally started speaking Tagalog the reactions they had were hilarious!

Sunday I bore my testimony, and the Branch Presidency wanted me to use up 7 minutes! I just told some stories, told some jokes, and mixed it up between English and Tagalog to make sure that they were listening to me. It was a good Sunday, and there is tonnes of people in the branch that attend every Sunday. There must've been at least 150 people at church. The branch is also really good with the organization and missionary work, so it's a real blessing that I've finally been sent to an area where the branch runs smoothly.

A miracle, or a few miracles that I have seen in the first 4 days here in Nasugbu, is the amount of referrals we receive. We visited a few members, and nearly all of them had referrals for us, and we didn't even ask for them! The members are going to prepare them more, so they can be prepared to hear the gospel. At church, we got tonnes of referrals that were already prepared, so we will have a lot to do here in Nasugbu for the next transfer, luckily this transfer has 8 weeks.

This week will kick off the new transfer, and we are just gonna dive straight into the work, I'm looking forward to it, but the only problem I have is that it's super hot here. I hopefully will get a bit darker, and I also could get a lot heavier, as the members here feed the missionaries a lot. My first day here which was Friday, we had 2 dinner appointments, and they kept feeding me until I couldn't walk.

On a side note, I am now rolling with a shaved head. I was cutting my hair on Saturday, and one of my clipper attachments is broken, but I needed to use it so I continued. Yep, the attachment fell off and left me with a big bald patch on the back of my head, so I just shaved my whole head so it was even. You won't be getting photos for a few weeks until it grows back. 

I miss Gumaca, but I guess I gotta move on. Life as a missionary can be hard, especially the part where I have to leave an area that I have come to love so much. But, gotta move on.

The flat is really nice too, it used to be a 4-way flat, but now there's only 2 missionaries, so it's big. I think our Chapel is the District Centre too, because they have air conditioning.