28 August 2016

Well, this week was my chance to take over the area. Elder Eagar left; Elder Talaboc came in. I spent a lot of it just showing him around. Because Elder Eagar was going to Mindoro, an island that you have to fly to get to, he showed us all over on Wednesday. We know the area fairly well already, thankfully.

Unfortunately, there was a stunning lack of availability all through our area- no one was home! That led to lots of walking around, which did help us learn the area extra quickly. Elder Eagar got dropped off on Thursday, and our week started from there. We had weekly planning on Friday, and went out visiting. A member, Edwin, came with us to Tagpos. That ended up being a mistake. All of our plans fell through, and so we asked him to show us some places we didn't know. In his defense, he did. He showed us all the members he knew. All the active members who didn't really need the missionaries to visit. And he talked for a minimum of half an hour with each. That pretty much killed our day. Finally, we had correlation meeting with our Ward Mission Leader, and visited the Gutierrez family.

Saturday was also slow. The highlight was meeting with Mark in the morning. He's been investigating for forever, but is now on date for two weeks from now! We also visited the Adesnas, a part-member family, who promised to come to church, but didn't. The fun part of the day was meeting with Carlos. Oh, Carlos. He loves to talk. And talk. And talk. It's even better than that- he is crazy. Halfway through the lesson, Elder Talaboc leaned over to me and whispered, "We need to report him to the bishop for disciplinary action! He's apostate!" After I explained that people usually aren't excommunicated just for having very strange opinions, we continued listening to the nonstop Tagalog babble, which hadn't paused during our little side conversation. That lasted for roughly 90 minutes, during which time I may have fallen asleep...once or twice. 

Sunday was when things started happening, thankfully. We had church in the morning, where half the ward leadership was reorganized. Edwin has been the Elders Quorum President for 6 years, and was sure that he'd be released and called as the new WML. He was half right- he was called as the WML all right, but they didn't release him as EQP! So, we had a snap correlation after church with him and the ward missionaries. Then, we had a baptismal interview with the zone leaders, and Edwin showed us a new family, the Deguzmans. That was great- they are a part-member family with some kids who need to be baptized. We got them all on date! 

So, story time- Saturday night, when we were going back to the apartment, we met a woman who called us over and handed us a "Missing" poster. Her 9 year old son had vanished two days back. Sunday afternoon, at one member's house, they told us that the child had been found- dead in a river, of unknown causes. Sunday night, at the Gutierrez's, we found out the real cause- someone had mutilated him. We saw some very graphic pictures they had taken. Apparently, their 14 year old son had seen the kid in the river and taken pictures. Ugh. That's pretty scarring. 

That's the news for the week- See ya!