First week of home MTC

 Hello,

How are you all doing? This week was a bit busy and pretty good, and we're continuing to prepare John Lloyd and John Raven for their baptism while helping others progress towards that point. Rizalyn, Jorlie, and Hermie have also been doing great since their baptism, so good things all around.

Tuesday was Zone Conference. We woke up at 4am and left at 5:30am, and thankfully, I wasn't too carsick on the way there or on the way back haha. Zone Conference was pretty good; President and Sister Craig talked about the roles of the Godhead and the importance of continually living the doctrine of Christ (increasing our faith, daily repentance, re-baptism through preparing for and partaking of the sacrament, receiving the Holy Ghost in our everyday lives) in our own lives as His disciples, and a lot of it was stuff I learned and/or experienced while on my mission, which was pretty cool and spiritual. With this being their last Zone Conference, they offered their testimonies after the departing missionary offered his, and we then watched a video introducing us to the new mission president. At the end of Zone Conference, each companionship received a new phone to replace our old one (so still one phone per companionship, but it's a much nicer one), President and Sister Craig gave us each a small gift, and Sister Albano gave me the chromebook she was using. She was the leader of the page I was a part of as a content missionary, but with the page being merged and me being the new social media leader/DFTC (Digital Finding and Teaching Coordinator), the chromebook got handed over to me, which I'm grateful for, it will make a lot of things easier. Anyways, our bus back to Bambang left at 7pm, so we got some dinner before the bus arrived, and we arrived back at Bambang at about 9:30pm, so we were just all pretty exhausted haha.

Wednesday was alright. We did some service in the morning painting the school with Sister Sadueste again; at some point, I accidentally painted an ant yellow lol. After some lunch and starting to familiarize myself with some of my new social media responsibilities, we went to visit Rosalinda, which went alright, before heading even further west in the area with many hills we have to bike over. Unfortunately, the people we wanted to meet were all busy, so we biked alllll the way back to our house to meet some nearby referrals from Sister Sadueste before we had to bike alllll the way back to the western area to have dinner with Hermie's family, it was a lot of biking haha. They were celebrating a birthday, so it was nice, and we had some "pancit cauayan", which is a bamboo pasta, so we were panda bears for the night haha!

Thursday was pretty good. After creating a post for our social media page, we visited John Raven, which went well, before meeting Rizalyn's grandfather. We then visited a couple less active church members with a few YSA (young single adult) members before heading over to John Lloyd and Jorlie. We're mainly reviewing things now and making sure John Lloyd is ready for his baptism (oh, we also moved his and John Raven's baptisms to June 18 by the way), and it was alright. We then met with Christine, Queenie, and Jennie (the part-member/less active family we had an FHE with last week), which also went really well; they seem pretty willing to come to church this Sunday, they're reading the Book of Mormon assignments we give them, and in my mind, I can see them progressing towards baptism pretty soon. Later that night, I finished a couple other social media tasks and coordinated with Sister Craig for a couple upcoming meetings and other tasks before bed.

Friday was also pretty good and pretty Spirit-led. We had only planned on teaching two people, neither of which were actually confirmed, we were just hoping to teach them, but we ended up teaching four people and meeting a lot of new people as well thanks to the guidance of the Spirit. After our studies and weekly planning, we tried to meet Rizalyn's grandparents; they weren't available, but we met her grandfather's sister instead, who seemed receptive to us and was very kind. We also tried to meet Dona and Clace as well, and we instead met Clace's cousin, Mike, who was also pretty receptive to us; he even gave us his number before we even asked haha. Later, we went to visit Edward, and we stumbled upon Rizalyn, Ren, Seth, and their friends, including Edward. As we talked with them, Edward's mom got home from work at that same time, and we were finally able to meet her, which is something we've been trying to do for a while. And she said it would be ok for Edward to come to church with us, which was one of the main hurdles for Edward to continue progressing, so that was awesome. We then had a good lesson with Andrei and his friend that we met, and we were able to ask his neighboring friends/family that are members to help him come to church with them. We tried meeting a few more people that night, but they weren't home or didn't answer, but it was ok, today was still pretty successful, and as I said earlier, we experienced the Spirit's guidance a lot today, especially in how our studies today prepared us for nearly every unexpected/miraculous meeting later on in the day.

Saturday was alright. The first person we had planned to teach was sleeping lol, so we met with some nearby members to ask them to join us in our lesson with Christine's and Queenie's family later that evening. They were an older couple, and while we were talking to her, the wife casually picked up a machete and started chopping up a nearby wooden plank and continued talking to us, so that was random but pretty neat lol. We then met with John Raven later that afternoon, which went well, and we were going to meet with Hermie, but he was out of town, so we just stopped by a few people to see if they were home or if we could come back another time to visit them. We then met with John Lloyd and Jorlie to have a quick lesson with them, and we met with Christine's/Queenie's family, which went alright. It was also Queenie's dad's birthday, so we had some food with them before heading over to our actual dinner appointment with the branch president's family haha. When we got home, we had a zoom meeting with one of the APs to discuss merging the three Facebook pages in our mission into one page; the merge will still take several days to process and be completed, so they aren't merged yet, but so far, the name of the page will probably be "Disciples of Jesus Christ in Cauayan". During our meeting, he also made me an admin of all our Facebook pages, so now I essentially have all power over our social media efforts, which is both exciting and stressful lol.

Sunday was alright. Church was good; we surpassed our sacrament attendance goal for the first time ever, Hermie was able to bless the sacrament for the first time, and we were able to teach a couple people right after church, so good things all around. Unfortunately, Christine's/Queenie's family didn't come, but church was still good. After a good branch mission coordination meeting, we started meeting a lot of people that were suggested to us by the branch mission coordination or were the parents/family of the kids we were teaching, which was good. We then taught Andrei and John Paul before heading back to our house before having dinner and doing our reports and trying to do some social media work/studies.

I hope you all are doing wonderful this week. My new social media responsibilities are starting to take more effect, so I'm guessing I'll be a lot busier in the social media realm and in other meetings to coordinate our efforts, can't wait haha.

See you all next week,

Elder Enger