I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face

Hello! So yeah, sorry for not writing an email in over a month haha, but it has been a good one. In the last few weeks of May, we covered both the Bambang 2nd branch and the Almaguer branch until the new Elders arrived there, and after they arrived, we also had exchanges with them in Almaguer to help them out as they open the area back up, so it was fun to see the people I met and came to love a year ago. During this time, we were also preparing Aristotle for baptism, and on the first week of June, he and his son, Kiel, got baptized together, which was a super sweet moment, especially since his wife's boss let her come home for the week of their baptism before heading back abroad (she's a member of the Church, and she works abroad in a different country). It was originally just supposed to be her son getting baptized on that day since he turned 8 years old, but once we met the family, we taught Aristotle over the few months that his wife was working abroad so that he too would be baptized alongside his son, which was a pleasant surprise to her once she found that out haha. Now we're just helping Aristotle prepare to receive the priesthood and their whole family to prepare to enter the temple to be sealed together as a family for time and all eternity. We've also been working with a woman named Marieta. Her husband and her kids/grandchildren are members (two of her kids live with her in Bambang 2nd, and another is the branch president of Bambang 1st branch, he actually lives right next to our apartment), but she has never been baptized nor gone to church for many years...until three weeks ago when she attended church for the first time! It was pretty exciting, and she's been coming to church every week since then, and she accepted an invitation to be baptized on July 22, so I'll be excited to hear about that while I'm at home. We've also met the girlfriend (Lorna) of an older member (Fernando), who really wants to be baptized, but some complicated personal issues are keeping her from being baptized. We're continuing to work with them and encouraging to keep doing all they can to prepare her for baptism until those situations are resolved, but they can use some prayers. We continue to visit and meet lots of people as we do our best to help this branch, especially since we already know that I'll be transferred home soon, so I'm trying to leave this area as best as I can for Elder Gella and whoever his new companion will be. Two of those people that we've found lately are Danny and Rosemary. They live in one of the further parts of our area, close to a less active member family in that area. They're not members of the Church, but missionaries have visited them before in the past, and their granddaughter actually joined the Church a while ago when she met her husband, they go to the Bambang 1st branch. We've been meeting with them about once each week the past few weeks since they live so far away, but they're reading the Book of Mormon and praying about it, and yesterday, we were pleasantly surprised to see Danny show up at church haha. Rosemary was left at home to take care of the newborn goats that they have, but it was still exciting to see Danny at church, we're excited to continue working with them. As far as other updates go, this will be my last week in Bambang, so sad haha. Next Monday, I'll be heading up to Cauayan with the other missionaries who are returning home, and I'll be staying there as we prepare for my flights and everything that will begin on next Thursday, and then next Friday July 7, I make my way home back to Utah haha, it's all going by so fast. Going to give it all I got during this last week in Bambang, I've been so grateful to be here (and on the mission as a whole) and for this amazing opportunity to help others come unto Christ and to come unto Him myself along the way. Talk to you all next week (if I don't forget to write an email again haha), see you soon! Elder Enger 1-3 - My last district 4 - Aristotle's and Kiel's baptism 5 - Exchanges with the Almaguer Elders 6 - My last zone conference 7 - Aristotle's dog 8 - Alyssa's dog and baby duck 9 - Dragonfruit flower 10 - Trying on Elder Gella's shades 11 - Eating and drinking a coconut 12 - Piglets that were two hours old 13 - Elder Gella teaching me how to give a kid a haircut haha 14-15 - My last Technology Council

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