Monday, October 31, 2016

October 10, 2016

Well I finally have found out that I am a city boy. I have officially decided. I am not a fan of the rural area. My shoes have never been more muddy in my life. There is almost no point in cleaning them before I leave the apartment. They will just get dirty again right when I walk outside. But it is really quiet that is a bonus but there is a lot less people here which makes it harder to find people to teach but that is all good. I like this area, I am still so new so it will take me a few weeks to adjust. This is one of the biggest changes in my mission so far. My whole entire mission I have had "kabahays" or roommates in english. So that has been cool because you always have people to talk to and its not so awkward in the house. But now it is just me and my comp and its weird haha. He is a cool guy. He is a filipino and he is really quiet haha and sometimes I just dont know what to talk about so its just quiet in the house haha. We are also really far away from other missionaries and stuff so its just us. But that is okay, it gives me more time to just focus on whats going on here. So before in this area there was 2 sets of missionaries in one ward that was split into two areas. But now its only 1 set of missionaries just the 2 of us so our area is really really big and we dont know anything about the other area. But the other area I think has more potential and its the closest to the chapel so we are kind of on an exploration. One thing that I have found out about the more rural area and kind of just the philippines in general is that they love to have kids early. I have met at least 5 young girls here from the age of 16-19 with kids. I am just shocked when I see this haha I just dont get it, and they cant even get married because they dont meet the age requirement here in the Philippines so its just I dont know, strange I guess. I am really trying to find families that are married and ready to hear the gospel but it is a challenge here. Most people that we meet are families and they are not married and they just cant get married because it is so complicated here so its almost impossible to baptize them because they are not married, so that is a big challenge here but we arent losing hope. 

A big thing that I am learning that in order to be successful you really have to just forget yourself and love everyone and do all you can to help them. I am grateful for this because I really need to learn that. I am slowly purging away my strong selfishness that I have had my whole life, I am really trying to learn to just stop worrying about myself. "put off the natural man" But it is hard haha it is really hard but I am grateful that I know I need to work on it because that is a strong quality to have. I honestly get scared when I think about how close I am to going home because I have SO MUCH I need to work on. I am not ready. Yes of course I can improve after my mission but what better place to improve than on your mission? So I need to hurry up. I only have 8 months left... Time goes fast. I only have 6 transfers left. Please pray for me to reach my potential that God has set for me:)

I also got to watch general conference this last week and that was great. I went into it with some questions and I learned a lot. I dont have a ton to say about it but one thing that stuck out to me that I learned is what Todd D Christopherson said about the judgement. He said that the judgement is not just list of the good or bad things that we have done but rather it is a measurement of our improvement and who he have become. I never really thought about that. That brought peace to my soul and I was happy to hear that because I have done a lot of bad things haha but the thing that counts is what you have become.

I am excited for this week. A lot of experiences await me and I will be happy to share them next week:) 

I love you all:)

By the way yes I know my stance looks gay in that picture but I was standing on rocks because everywhere else was mud... 


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