20 July 2016

Well, Taytay is a lot different than Quezon City. It's only 20 kilometers away, but still somehow has different weather. In Quezon City, it was cloudy and rainy. Here, it's sunny. That's it, hot and sunny. The work is also different- but better. It's really easy to find new investigators! And the view from most of the area is incredible.

So, Wednesday, I went over to Taytay, which was a bit of an adventure. I then had a crazy whirlwind tour of half the area! We went all over. It turns out that nearly everyone here is Tagalog-speaking only. It really gives you an incentive to learn it. 

Thursday, I hit my 18-month mark. We also taught a whole lot of lessons. We started at the edge of our area, and slowly worked our way back to the apartment. We met with basically everyone in the area we hadn't met with Wednesday! That afternoon, we taught an old guy named Roland, who was hilarious. He speaks great English, which was a relief. He also doesn't hesitate to tell you exactly what he is thinking at all times! Thursday night, we found a family of 8, who listened to our message, and invited us back. It was a good day.

Friday was very interesting. We ended up blessing four people, a new room in their house, and their shop. I'll admit, I've never done that before. We also had some weekly planning, and taught a family whose house was up on stilts, in a swamp.

On Saturday, everything fell through. We'd planned about 10 appointments, only 2 of which ended up happening. I saw something interesting, though. Our Elder's Quorum President, Edwin, used to live in this one area, that burned to the ground. We walked through it on the way to an appointment, and it was pretty destroyed.

We started off Sunday with 8 o'clock church, which is really early. I was asked to give the opening prayer at church, and then halfway through, was asked over the pulpit by the bishop, in Tagalog, to come up and bear my testimony. That was fun. After church, we had to go over to our zone leader's area to interview one of their investigators for baptism, then came back. We ended up having 2 meal appointments that day! 

Monday was supposed to be p-day. In the morning, we went out on a mountain walk with a couple of members, which was amazing. You could see for forever from the top of that! When we got back and cleaned up, only then did the zone leaders text, saying it wasn't p-day. That was because we were having a surprise temple day on Wednesday instead. That kind of threw us for a loop, and so we had to replan our whole day. It turned out well, though. Roland, the same one I mentioned early, really opened up during the lesson we taught that day, and really started thinking. That's always good! 

Yesterday was also interesting. Elder Eagar was convinced that we were getting an apartment inspection in the morning, and he was right. We got a "Celestial" rating, the highest possible. We went out to district meeting, then out visiting. There, we found another new family- Jonathan and co.

Today started off at 4:30, with a temple trip. We'd planned an hour and a half for travel, but it ended up taking two and a half instead. We missed the session we'd planned on attending, but made it through in the end. After that, we had lunch, then went right back and emailed. That's been it for the week!