i ate a pineapple

this week was super fast!!! we have started having lots of fhes and its really fun! and they are like the best for missionary work because less actives come and ginatudloans and members and new people and all become friends!!! and we get to eat good food!!! also this week we had 7 interested people at church!!! it was crazy I was honestly a little worried that my area was dying  but we've been able to find a ton of new people with good potential! I also caught 3 massive frogs this week they were really big and Filipinos are afraid they will pee in your eyes and make you go blind. but if you just don't hold them over your eyes then you should be good. we also got to get water and carry it from the spring to her house on top of a mountain this week! if i did that everyday i would get really buff. this week i ate a whole pineapple on monday and tons of bananas because im trying to be healthy. also like 3 people this week told me that i seem like a child, so hopefully that is good. i love you all!! the church is true and i know the lord helps us as we do his will.


!! kitakits 

(He was sent a updated picture of the avocado seed he planted while in the MTC. It’s still there and doing great! Added by Shana)

lots of finding

this week we have been trying to do more finding, so we talk to lots of people. we have found a lot of new people and also a really really old persons dead body!!! they had been dead long enough it was just bones in the cementerio!!  we were going to a return appointment in the cemeteryo and then we saw a bunch of white stuff on top of a grave! turns out it was like half a human skull and some other longer bones! I guess that after a while they take the bodies out of the graves to make room for more since we are on the beach when you need more space your cant dig deeper. so that was kind of cool. other than that it was just lots of normal stuff i learned another children folk song its about a fisherman who sold a fish to buy coconut beer. i gave a talk in church and i think people understood me. on friday i hit my 6 months and also finished the old testament. yall should try to learn a little bit from the old testament because it is so interesting. it connects everything like why we are here and that god really is the same god always. especially as a missionary its so important that we gather scattered israel and try to find our lost brothers and sisters!! i love you all halong mo!!

these are some frogs and the bones we found

Monkeys in a mango nga kahoy

this week was pretty good! on thursday i went to sancarlos and helped my zone leader get people in and out of the terminal while i waited for my new kompanion. it was a long kind of boring day. my companion is elder hansen hes from idaho, and hes been here 18 months almost. since he is from a different part of the island his cebuano is kind of different and he doenst know any ilonggo yet. but he does know some tagalog. on saturday we did a saturday fun day at the church and we played a really fun game!! it was like tag and the ground is lava. so at our church we have a ton of really small baby mango trees about as tall as me and as thick as a soft ball and so if you are hanging in the tree you are safe and cant be tagged but if you touch the ground then you can be tagged!. I think it was really funny to see two big amerikanos hanging on to these tiny trees. but it was like the best game ever. other than that it has been good leading the area. we have been visiting a lot of recent converts this week since we have a ton of them. 

that is about all love you all!!!

these are the spiders pictures from last week i think its called a bayawan or something.

Buotan spiders!! and transfers!!!!

this week I caught a big spider!! and it was really nice it didn't bite me they use them to fight other spiders but I couldn't find any other spider to fight it. also we got transfer calls and im staying in toboso and my companion is going one area over to calatrava!! my new comp will be elder hansen. also something funny happened at church, my 1st councilor bore his testimony on staying safe from coronavirus, then he said he wished adam and eve were chinese because then they would have eaten the snake rather than the apple. because I guess the virus is from eating some weird exotic camel.  haha i guess that there is one reported cause of the virus on my island but it's far away and under control probably. this was a really good week  we did lots of teaching members and eating lots of food! our teaching pool is kind of small but hopefully we will grow it back up. I love you all i know the church is true!! bye bye!!! sorry none of the pictures of the spider will load i'll send them next week.

ZONE CONFERENCE!!!!

this week was really really fast!! we  had interviews thursday then zone conference on friday! it was really cool and now i am going to try to improve my teaching skills. we talked a lot about that at zone conference. also i was thinking about how Christ's apostles were fishermen and then they became fishers of men so they used what they loved doing to help build the kingdom of god maybe kind of? so ive been thinking of that a week. 

      then we helped a member in our ward get engaged so that was crazy!! it was kind of awkward but now they are getting married! then i went on splits to mabini and that was super fun too. a really cool thing that happened this week is that we were able to give a blessing to a man who had been bedridden and unable to eat for two weeks because of his tuberculosis! we havent really been able to teach him in a while but we can still go check on him. he looks like a skeleton! but we checked on him two days later and he was out of bed and said he had eaten a little!!! god has real power! it is amazing he just wants to help us. also we've seen the help that our ward has been able to give him and his family its almost like a city of zion! bringing rice and medicine for his family! i love you all! i know that the church is true and i know that the organizations the church has are from God and that through them we can progress tons!!!. palangga tika halung mo!!!

cacao!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this week a member gave us a bunch of cacao to eat so we took it home and dried it out then ground it into cacao powder!! so we will make brownies!! hopefully. this week did a lot of good missionary stuff and talked to lots of people it was good. we went to a village called salamanca and it was really cool! missionaries hadnt been there in forever!!!  we also found a different village on a hill and it was funny because we walked in and this man came to greet us and he started offering people to us to teach? and it reminded me of ammon being greeted by chief lamoni. we had 3 more baptisms this week!! it was awesome because ive been able to see these peoples whole path and their conversion!! it was really cooool! 

      THis week I saw a real life radshach meshach and abednego story!!! this Sunday was santo nino so everyone skips church to worship this doll. and it got crazier than christmas here! we saw a bunch of people walking around like zombies and the cops showed up! but anyways the teachers here made attending this idolatrous parade a graded assignment!! that's crazy to me!! it was just like king nebuchadnezzar "when the music plays worship my golden image!!" and so the girl named queen that we baptised on Saturday chose to go to church and receive the gift of the holy ghost rather than worship a statue!! we were so proud of her. 

     then we had a moses moment when we came down from the stairs after sacrament and saw half the congregation going straight out to the party outside.

anyways it was a pretty good week really i love you all!! the church is true! adios

trials and blessings

we were walking through a FIELD OF FIRE!!!! 

this week was crazy!! i got sick!! its just like a cold but its is pretty annoying and it makes it difficult for people to understand me cause my voice is weird. but thats okay.

      this week i was also pretty much a trainer! my companion had to travel to cebu for a district leader meeting. so i was left by myself with the  other district leaders companion who is in training. it was pretty crazy because i had to lead everything and teach pretty much the whole lessons. it  was awesome it helped me to see how much i have grown and learned! it also helped me respect my companion because training is hard. and after 3 transfers together we have got the lessons like down we have like super comp unity but with a new companion it was a little more awkward in the lessons.so the lord definetely provides for his servants cause we made it through three days! the gift of tongues is real!!!

  i was only with my companion 3 days this week because i went on splits again yesterday! it was really fun i went to stop aguinaldo its the area that is kind of in the middle of nowhere and no americans are allowed to be assigned there because its dangerous. but its pretty safe really. i like it there and i got to paglubo there. lubo is when you take the dry kernels off the corn cob it was fun i am like a master luboer.

i love you all! and i will eat some mangos soon!! halong!