JANUARY 2012

From Januray 2, 2012:
Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!!

It is the craziest thing to me how every day I am SO TIRED when I come home. like, it never feels like I can get enough sleep and I am always exhausted, but at the same time, for some reason, I'm happy! I just don't get it! haha.

Our New Year's was pretty.... uneventful. haha. We weren't allowed to watch Disney movies this year like we did last year, and we had to be in our apartments by 6. Luckily, we had lots of members feeding us and bringing food, but other than that, it was just me and Elder Cre in our apartment watching church movies all night. haha. I can totally see why we needed to be in our house, though. The fireworks are insane here! haha.

It feels really weird to think that this is the same year that I will come home. Time flies! Especially with our investigators here. A few weeks ago, it felt like all of their baptism dates that were being set were WAY far out there, but then yesterday it hit me that they are really close! We are really going to be focusing on those 4 with a date these next few weeks (Brother N., Brother M., Sister D., and Sister J.) to help them better prepare. It is pretty exciting.

Church for us on new years was kind of strange. haha. Bishop decided that it was just going to be sacrament meeting, and it started a few hours later than normal. And when I say just sacrament, I mean JUST sacrament. No speakers, no intermediate hymns, nothing. A prayer, a hymn, a hymn, sacrament, a hymn, and a prayer. It was about 20 minutes total, I think. hahah. It's true, that that IS the reason we go to church, to renew our covenants, but it just felt like something was missing. haha. oh well. It gave us a good opportunity to explain to our investigators more about the sacrament and that it is the most important part of our going to church.

Things are going good being a new zone leader, too. All of the district leaders in our zone are also new district leaders this transfer, so it's good to be able to train them and get a whole fresh look at things.

 

I also wanted to say really quick that this week, I saw a little random kid with a BYU shirt on! Haha. And every once in a while I see a Seahawks or Mariners jersey too. I took pictures of the BYU kid. So crazy! Haha. Maybe I'll be able to send some pictures this week.

Anyways, I think that's about it. I am way excited for another new year and all the things that will happen. I've been thinking a lot about new years resolutions lately and how that relates to the atonement. A new fresh start on things. It really is refreshing. I know that if we stick to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, follow the commandments, and serve others things will work out for the best. I love you all! Have a great rest of the week!! Halong gid, kag palangga ta kamo! Maayong Pasko kag bago nga tuig man! 

-Elder Lee

From January 8, 2012:
Happy Epiphany!
  

This week I met a star. well.... a Filipino star. haha. his name is Coco Martin and apparently he's a famous Filipino actor. everyone says he's like the Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt of the Philippines. haha. He was here in kabankalan for the annual "Sinulog" festival, which apparently is a lot bigger than I thought it was! The festival started on the 6th and goes till the 15th, and the whole city is basically shut down for it. There are people coming from all over the Philippines for it and apparently it gets broadcasted to the rest of the Philippines as well. Our apartment is way close to the plaza, so we hear the tribal drums and fireworks all night every night. It's way bigger than Christmas or New Year's. In a way, it's really hard for missionary work here, but on the other hand, it's really easy to find people to talk to and get referrals for other missions. haha. So right now me and Elder Cre are just focusing on those 4 progressing investigators and getting the "rescue" underway in our ward.

Things are going really well with brother m. and sister d. (surprisingly). They are both preparing themselves really well for baptism. Brother m. should be baptized on the 21st and sister d. should be on the 28th if all goes well. We'll see about the n. family, it seems like they might have to push back their date a few more weeks because different things have come up where they can't go to church or keep all their commitments. They really are progressing spiritually, though. Their baptism should be very soon... :) Jorgette is also keeping her commitments, but we are just going to have to push back her date because we simply don't have time to teach her everything she needs to know by her baptism date. We just can't meet with her enough times a week. We also have a few new prospective investigators that came to church, so that's pretty cool. we'll see how they progress in these next few weeks as well.

The ward has really taken hold of the new focus to re-activate. Well... at least bishop has, but I'm sure the rest of the ward will follow. Later on this week the Philippines area presidency will be holding a broadcast for all ward and stake auxiliary leaders, where they will give instruction and direction on how to go about doing this in each ward. Luckily, the zone leaders were also invited to attend. ;) I'll let you guys know how that goes next week probably. It's really exciting to see things finally get moving and to see the members finally getting active in this work. :) This really is the work of the Lord, but it really depends on our faithfulness how fast it will move. That really is the key. I've realized that if the Lord wanted to, he could make everyone members of his church right away, in the snap of a finger, but instead, he allows us to participate in this work to grow and to learn in the process.

Well I think that's about all I have to report this week. Halong gid, kag palangga ta kamo!

   

-Elder Lee

From January 16, 2012:  

Hey All!! 

It was way funny to hear about David Archuleta coming to the Philippines. That will start a whole 'nuther round of rumors here. haha. When it was announced that he was serving a mission, I can't even tell you how many people asked me if it was true he was coming to Bacolod, and that he was already in the MTC in Manila. hahahah. I also got to sing in sacrament yesterday and tons of people were saying things like, "You sing just like David Archuleta! When he comes to Bacolod maybe you'll be his trainer!" But the sad thing is, they were serious! hahaha. anyways. I just think it's way funny. The Philippines is hilarious. :) 

Anyways, this week has been pretty rough on the work. First off, the Sinulog festival was WAAAAY bigger than I thought it would be. We hardly got to work at all this week, and on Sunday (the festival finale/highlight) we were on lock down in our apartment. Not to scare you, but this was way bigger than new years was and even the masskara festival in Bacolod. I just seem to be hitting all the big festivals at the right time! haha. Sinulog was broadcasted all over the Philippines and there were tons of people visiting from all over. Lots of Americans too, which was pretty weird to see. haha. On Sunday the tradition is that everyone runs around drawing on each other with charcoal (like chickens with their heads cut off), whether you want them to or not. So it was literally like a battlefield getting to church and back that morning, dodging people and taking alternate routes when we saw groups of teenagers. haha. And then DURING church, the parade with all the tribal drums and giant santa ninos decided to go RIGHT by the church. It was deafening loud and so distracting for all the classes and sacrament meeting. so nuts. haha. Most of the members here didn't even GO to church. Most that did were from out of town, visiting for the festival. Needless to say, I am way happy and relieved that it's over. phew! Maybe we can start getting things under control here. 

The other reason we weren't able to work that much this week was because we spent most of our time traveling to the areas in our zone doing interviews, helping missionaries with their problems, and giving trainings. The trainings all went really well, even if I still have no idea what I'm doing. haha. The Lord definitely helps those he calls. We also watched a pretty intense broadcast on Saturday from the Philippines area presidency. It was for all ward/stake leaders. They pretty much introduced the goals for 2012. I am way excited, because it is exactly what this nation needs right now. They started by showing some pretty harsh statistics, which opened everyone's eyes. They said that it was meant to disappoint, but not to discourage, and we can't fix anything if we don't know it's broken. yikes. Then they introduced the plan to begin the rescue of the 500,000 less active members out of 700,000 total members. It is time for change, and like I said, I'm way excited to see this actually happening. :) So that was exciting to watch.

Next week we have our zone conference, and me and Elder Cre are also in charge of training for that so we will see how it goes. After doing mission wide apartment checks, President decided that the theme will be "organize yourselves". haha. Very fitting. :) 

 

Not too much else to report on, besides the fact that brother m. was interviewed yesterday (woo hoo!) and will be baptized on saturday. He'll be a great addition to the ward. With the n. family, we are still waiting for them to take care of a few of the requirements, then they will be good to go. with jorgette, we just need to find time to teach her, and then she will be fine. Sister d. is still learning... she has a testimony, but doesn't understand everything quite yet and wants to be baptized a.s.a.p. we want to make sure she understands what she is doing and has a little more time to figure things out, so we will probably push her baptism date back as well. We'll see! The work of the Lord continues to roll forth, no? :) 

Sige halong! palangga ta guid kamo!!!

-Elder Lee

From January 23, 2012:
WOW!!  Snowmageddon 2012!! and "Happy Disaster Week," eh? I'm really glad to hear everyone is safe and recovering from the killer storms. Phew! I can't even imagine. This week I have been thinking "I sure wish it would snow" but now, I don't think I'm wishing for that anymore. The weather here is always the same. Every week, no matter what season. You either have SUPER killer hot days, or super killer hard rain. I apologize for the entire nation of the Philippines for sending that forecasted moisture over your way. hahaha. Most of the time people don't have electricity over here. Well, it's about 50%. Just depends on the neighborhood. So I've learned a lot about using what you have and surviving on very little. I'm a lot more comfortable now with the idea of living without hot water or electricity.  But like I said, I'm glad everyone is safe. I'm sure it was a wake up call though for people who don't have food storage or emergency supplies. yikes!

 

Well this week was a pretty good one here in Kabankalan. We had the baptism of brother M., so that was pretty exciting. One more family united! :) His testimony is very strong and he will be a great addition to the ward. Bishop and the members were so excited, they ordained him a priest basically right after he was confirmed, so they could put him to work dayon (right away). haha. We have also seen our ward aligning their vision with "the rescue". They had a ward council meeting yesterday (the first in 4 months) and picked names and set plans to visit them and started right after church. I'm pretty sure we will be seeing the results of their efforts very soon. 

Along with that, we realized this week the rest of our investigators are not progressing as well as they should be. It will probably have to be another month before any of them are baptized... sister d. has not been keeping her commitments for some reason, the n. family are still waiting on their marriage, and Jorgette has just not had time to meet with us. We want to have patience with them all, let them work out their own problems, but at the same time we don't want to keep teaching them if they are not progressing. We'll see what happens and then we will have to decide really soon what to do. We have, however, had a lot of unexpected success with finding new investigators that have good potential. None of them came to church, but we will work with them this next week. 

I think that's about all I have to report this week. Things have gotten kinda boring here in Kabankalan, because the Sinulog Festival is over. haha. This next week though we will be going on splits in 2 different areas with our district leaders, so that should be fun.Halong gid, mismo sa mga baguio! Palangga ta kamo, kag nagapangamuyo ako para sa inyo pirme! :) 

-Elder Lee

From January 30, 2012:
Hey Familee!!!       

In all honesty, I can't wait to get back to our home ward and see how everything functions there. In countries where the church isn't completely established yet, the missionaries spend a lot of time working with the ward and stake leaders in about every aspect of the work. Plus this last week we just had my first MCM (Missionary correlation meeting) with the stake president and high counselor over missionary work. So I've just been thinking a lot lately about working with ward and stake leaders. Especially right now with the new focus to rescue the less active. The area presidency has asked missionaries to "no longer be watchers and observers, but to nudge the ward leaders in the right direction". Obviously we can't overstep our bounds, but we are being asked to be more pro-active and aggressive in helping them do things the right way. I have gained a completely new perspective out here about how things are supposed to work and about how much i didn't realize went on in ward and stake leaderships before my mission. I definitely have a greater appreciation. Even just little things, like having fellowshippers for investigators, or working on the CMIS lists on the computers, I never really understood it before the mission. It's probably the same with all missionaries. Basta (anyways) I just can't wait to get back and see how things really work. hahah. 

Well, life is still moving here in kabankalan as well. We went on two sets of splits this week, so that was pretty exhausting traveling back and forth. But the splits went really great and I definitely learned alot. It's always good to do splits, because you are always humbled. haha. Either you get a fresh set of eyes in your area, or you go to another area and see how they are doing things. And with the transfer ending this week, it's good to figure out what to do for next transfer. That being said, I don't really have an idea of what will happen this transfer. Elder Cre goes home in one more transfer, and the office has been asking us to look around for apartments for 2 more elders to be put here, but I don't know if they secured one yet or not. I think we might be staying, but we'll see. Anything could happen. 

The investigators have still been going alright... Jorgette was the only one who came to church on Sunday though, so that was kind of disappointing... haha we have had to move her baptism date back because she has been out of town for the last few weeks, but when she saw us on Saturday (the 28th), she remembered that that was the date we set originally for her baptism. She wanted to set a new date right away, so that's encouraging. haha. Her husband is a less active member and is really doing his best to relearn everything and repent. We haven't been able to follow up on sister d. or brother n. yet, so we don't know why they didn't come to church. We still haven't had a chance to meet with sister d. (2 weeks, now), so we are a little worried, but I think as soon as we can meet with her again she will pull through. The lesson we had with brother n. this week went awesome, they are very excited for their baptism and marriage and have been continuing to read, but then they didn't come to church again... :( However, the less-active work with the ward has been going GREAT. :) We have seen instant changes and the ward is really excited. This is the 2nd week in a row they have gathered the troops to go home and visiting teaching, and this last Sunday we had about 4 or 5 less active families come back. Bishop has requested that we reteach the missionary lessons to the less actives all over again, as if they were investigators, so we have been spending a lot of our time doing that. we really have noticed a huge difference in just that. A lot of less actives say they still have testimonies, but they really have forgotten even the most basic things about the church. 

We'll see what happens this next week, you never know when transfers are close! haha. Halong guid, kag palangga ta kamo!      

-Elder Lee

 "C.T.R. - Cook the Rice" :P