And the fall thereof was exceedingly great

Hello, How are you guys doing? I've now been in Almaguer for a full month now, and the adjustment and the language continues to get better and better, slowly but surely. As the title suggests (bonus points if you know the scripture), there were some exciting events this past week haha, so let's get to it. Tuesday was interesting. We had exchanges with the DL from 8am-6pm, but we had to wait a little while for them to arrive at the bus terminal. The DL came to my area while Elder Sabala went with his trainee to their area, and it went alright. After lunch, we visited Kim Jordan with Seth, Dona and Clace, and John Raven, which weny well. After our lessons, we briefly visited a new member (baptized last year) to schedule a time to teach her and her family since she was busy at that time, and we visited the branch president, President Callangan. As we were biking home to meet up with Elder Sabala to end the exchange, we also passed President Sadueste riding his bike, so that was fun haha. After the exchange, Elder Sabala and I went to a dinner with the Relief Society President, and the ZLs joined us for that too, which went well. Nothing too exciting happened on Wednesday, so I'm just going to skip it for now because I don't have much time right now, but we did run into Shawn (an American we met our first week here) again, and we found out that he'll actually be moving into the apartment right next to ours when his is finished, which is pretty interesting. Thursday was Zone Conference, and unlike in San Jose, where the Zone Conferences where only a few hours (4 at most), this one was essentially an all-day event, partially because of the travel time haha. We woke up at 4am and got in a van to begin the 2+ hour drive to Santiago, where the Zone Conference would be, picking up a few more companionships along the way. With the bumpy/mountainous roads and the crazy drivers here in the Philippines, my carsickness was having a blast lol. Anyways, we got to Zone Conference, and it was pretty good. We had a morning session (in which we discussed Alma 17, 22, and John 15, if you want to study those on your own time; John 15 is a really great chapter that talks about the importance of relying on Christ in all things), a break for lunch, and an afternoon session, and Elder Harrison (my companion in the Manila MTC) was there too, so that was fun haha. We ended around 4:30ish, and we didn't get home until around 7, and I was just absolutely dying on the ride back because of my carsickness haha. After arriving at home, we got some dinner, and everyone passed out while I did some laundry because we were all exhausted lol. Friday was quite the day lol. After lunch, we went to teach Kim Jordan, but he wasn't there, so we were able to teach his friend, Edward, instead. We then waited a while for Ren, the friend of Rizalyn, to arrive at Rizalyn's place so that we could teach her together, and while we were waiting, a caterpillar or a big ant or something like that had either climbed up my neck or had fallen onto me from the tree above us and bit me, so that was nice haha. While we were teaching her and her grandma, a big storm came, and the rain falling on the tin roof made it near impossible to hear anything lol. After the storm passed, we met with John Raven and Jorlie and John Lloyd, which went well. Afterwards, we got some McDonald's, and (here's the fun part) we took it to go so that we could head home and eat while doing some weekly planning, which meant I was biking one handed (which I've done several times before). The bike ride was mostly fine, but right before we got to our apartment, I got distracted by something off the road, which caused me to miss the upcoming speed bump in front of us. I hit the speed bump and went flying; I scraped up my right forearm, got a gash on my right knee, I now have a big bruise on my left knee, and what's even worse is that my coke from McDonald's got totalled as well 😂 oh well, at least the food was still intact lol. Anyways, after I rested for a few seconds, we continued heading to the apartment, and I cleaned/dressed my wound on my knee while the other Elders hung out upstairs, and I was eventually finally able to eat my food and finish up for the night. Saturday was alright. We did some service with the district president's wife repainting some parts of a school, which was good, but the color that I was assigned to paint was only in the areas without shade, everyone else had shade, so I carried an umbrella while I painted lol. Some paint also got in my hair, so I had some aquarmaine frosted tips for some of the day haha. We then had lunch with her family, and we later fixed the bike I'm using because one of brakes also broke yesterday. Afterwards, we travelled to one of the further parts of our areas with a lot of mountains to meet with one of our appointments, just to find out that she forgot about it and wasn't there haha. We tried meeting with a couple others, but they weren't home either, and we ended the nignt with Jorlie/John Lloyd and their cousins (members) before getting McDonald's again. And I didn't fall this time 😂 Sunday was also alright. Only a few people we've been teaching have been attending church lately, so we need to try to address that. After church, we had some lunch with Seth's family, visited Dona Ashley and a couple less active members, and had snacks at a Sister Ana's house (she offers for us to come over each Sunday, which is nice). We then visited one of the recent converts in the branch, and a bunch of other kids were there as well who wanted to listen to us, which was nice. While we were teaching, a thunderstorm was approaching, and the thunder was really loud haha. At one point, as we were biking home, some lightning struck one of the hills in front of us; the thunder followed almost immediately afterwards, and it was the loudest I had ever heard haha, it was pretty sweet. After Elder Sabala took a nap and we did some reporting, we were able to some weekly planning, which went pretty well as we ended up the night. I hope you all are doing fantastic and not falling off your bikes like I am haha. I've attached a couple pictures of the view from a hike today, the school we were working on, and my frosted tips lol. Continue to trust in the Lord and you will find relief from your challenges, even if it is just by one step and one day at a time. See you next week, Elder Enger

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First week of home MTC

Image
To my adoring fans, Well, I survived the first week of the MTC, so that's exciting. It sort of feels like school except that I actually have a good sleep schedule haha. On Monday, I woke up and had a large group meeting from 8 to 9 with all of the incoming missionaries (I think there's over 400 of us), and we just talked about our purpose, gave us an overview of our missionary experience, and got us excited for the work. We had one of these meetings each morning for this first week. My first district class is from 9 to 12, and my second class is from 1:30 to 4:30. There are 4 other Elders in my district, and we were all assigned to different areas of the Philippines. It was during this time when I also met my companions: Elder McClellan and Elder Blauer (with an odd number in our district, my companionship is a trio). They seem like pretty cool guys, and it seems to be going well with us so far. I don't have much to say about the classes; they mainly helped us to get to ...
Read more

My name is a swear word??

Image
Happy Easter! If the title caught your attention, then good, the clickbait worked haha. While we were at one of our member's house for dinner, the young daughter tried saying my first name, but she wasn't pronouncing the "r"s properly (sort of like "pah-keh"), so her older sister and Elder Sabala corrected her and told her not to say it like that because it was a bad word. So there you go, I am a swear word 😂 Anyways, this week has been good, we were able to focus on a lot of people that we're trying to prepare for baptism soon, which has been good for us to taje care of and plan for. On Tuesday, we had district council, which was fun. There were a few birthdays in both districts, so we decided to meet together for birthday potluck for lunch and then split off into separate district councils, which was fun. We then met with Rizalyn and her grandma and few others nearby to talk about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon, which went alright. We got ho...
Read more

Ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost

Image
Hello, This week was pretty good, it was a good week to end my time here in Jones (yes, spoiler alert, I'm being transferred haha). Romarilyn got confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and received the gift of the Holy Ghost, a couple members of the Bulan family accepted an invitation to be baptized, and we met the family of Sister Elaine who are interested in meeting with us, so good things all around. Tuesday was ok. In the morning, we had a zoom companionship study with our zone leaders, which went alright. After some lunch, we visited Monalisa and Violeta, which went pretty well, we talked about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and they seemed at least a bit receptive to it, which is all we can ask for haha. We then walked for a while to briefly visit a less active member, and when we walked all the way back to another member's house to ask where another inactive member lived, they told us that he lived all the way back where we came haha...
Read more