February 19, 2017

Hoooooollllyyyy cow it was cold in the Philippines last week. I dont know if it was on the news, maybe not actually. I didint actually realize how adjusted I was to the Philippines heat. We got down to about 65 degrees and I was freezing... Literally was cold. I slept in those clothes you see in the picture with a blanket.... I actually got pretty sick because I got so cold. It was strange. I am just now getting over my cold, and it has warmed up a bit and I am enjoying the weather now. 

The area is struggling a bit right now. To be all honest I didint try my best last week which I regret. I didint really give it my all, I just felt overwhelmed for a few days because of my illness, the new area, the "greenieness" of my companion, and just not really knowing what to do. But I wont let it happen again this week. I have just been going through a big adjustment stage. But we had a good day yesterday at church. I went in just wanting to become closer with some of the members so I went around talking to them and we had a meeting with our Ward Mission Leader who is a cool guy, and we also met with our bishop who gave us a couple of assignments which we will go and accomplish this week. The area is just honestly pretty dead and we need to bring it back to life. Most of the past missionaries didint work too hard and we were pretty disobedient so there isn too much in the area. But I hope that this week and the rest of the weeks in this transfer we can turn stuff around so we can have a more enjoyable less stressful last 2 transfers.   

I am excited because this upcoming thursday we get to listen to David A Bednar speak. IT will be such an amazing once in a lifetime opportunity. He is one of my favorite speakers and I know it will be a great experience. 

Sorry not too much to write, I love you all! Keep it real this week

February 12, 2017

Well here I am now in my new area of San Jose Del Monte, SJDM zone. I never thought I would make it out here but I am here. This zone used to be called the "promised land" back in the day when I was new. I used to always wish I would come here and even better to have it as my last area, and it has happened. Upon arrival it is actually not too much of a promised land after all hahaha. But it is still great. The area just needs a lot of work and some help. It seems like thats what my President is doing, he just tossing me into areas that need help. Well hopefully we can do some good things here. My new companion is Elder Miranda! He is way awesome hahaha. He is super funny. Most of my other Filipino companions have been a lil awkward or quiet. But me and Elder Miranda have got along really well already. He is new, so I am following up his training. Elder Miranda is actually assigned to the Gilbert, Arizona mission so he is just waiting it out here to get his visa, he will most likely leave in about may. The area is kinda in a rut right now and it is kind of a struggle because we only have a meeting house and the church is far from where most of the members are and so its hard to find investigators that can make it to church. But everything is going to get better from here. I dont like being new in an area but it is also fun. This mission is cool because EVERY area is different in some way. Different, lay out, different people. different style of living, and even a different way of speaking sometimes. So it is cool to explore a new part of the mission. This will most likely be my last area. Most of the time a missionary will stay in an area for about 4 months and the longest is usually 6 or 7 but since I only have about 4 months left I will most likely finish off here. My experience at church yesterday was quite interesting. The meeting house is on the second floor building on top of a hardware store right next to a main road so it is kind of noisy. We are still a ward so a lot of people go to church but you can barely here the speakers because the inside is so loud with people being kind of disrespectful and talking and the normal occasional kid running around and being loud. We didint have any investigators at church yesterday but I got news from my last area and we had 8 there! So it makes me happy to know that I left that area in a good spot, now I have to do the same here.  

I am kinda running out of time but I love you all! Thanks for being the best:)

February 6, 2017

So this week was a good week, I have made some awesome friends here in the mission from missionaries, members, and investigators. I have had a lot of fun being with Elder Feiloaki, Elder Peterson, and Elder Kirifi. Some awesome friends that I will never forget. I will be transfering tomorrow to most likely my last area:) I have met so many great people in my area here in Bocaue. It has been difficult but I can confidently say that I have left the area better than when I found it. That is one way you can measure success as a missionary, not by baptisms, or by how many people to teach but just by helping the people and building them up. (then all the baptisms and such follows) I didint have too many baptisms my 4.5 months here but we mostly definitely set up a lot that will come this month and in March. Hopefully about 6. One of them being a family that I have come to really love teaching. They are very sincere family and want to know the truth. But they basically have all of the barriers of being baptized they are not yet married, they smoke, drink alcohol and coffee. But we knew that they could over come them. So we just kept teaching them the basic lessons Restoration, and Plan of Salvation and they have been reading the Book of Mormon and building their faith. Then yesterday we dropped the word of wisdom on them. BUt it was a great lesson. They were pretty surprised when we named off all of the things that are not allowed. But as we went on and told them how it was a commandment coming from GOd and that we need to live this in order to return back to God and they understood and accepted to live the word of wisdom in their own individual lives. Who would of thought that a white american 19 year old with a tongan 19 year old would go knock on these random peoples doors enter their home and then return about 3 times a week and ask them to change their lives. Well it definitely is not us because that is not possible but it is God the Holy Ghost working through us. You may not always feel the Holy Ghost super strong with you and feel like speaking for you, but he is there. There is no way two 19 year olds could just go and do that, it doesnt make sense. It is the Spirit of the Lord. Just look back on your life and dont focus so much on "why am I not feeling the spirit, why dont I feel like them" Just look at all the miracles and changes in you then you will know that God is in your life. We met this other huge family the other week, we went knocking on doors and found this whole extended family that wanted to listen to us Grandma, daughters, sons, grandchildren, aunts. THere was like 12 of them. So we taught them and went back a few more times. I was shocked because they listened so well during the lesson even though it was a lot of them. Then as we kept going back man I was so shocked, the little girls ages 10, 11, and 12 are reading the Book of Mormon like crazy. We asked them to read 1nephi chapter 1-3 and they laughed at us and told us that they were already on chapter 8 hahah. I was so surprised. They really wanted to go to church the other day as well, but sadly we had stake conference and it was way to far for them all to go, but this upcoming sunday I expect them there:) I have had so many cool experiences here and just feel bad sometimes because I think I took it for granted. But God really just did bless us and me so much and I am very grateful. I will be leaving tomorrow morning for my new area in San Jose Del Monte. Which used to be back in the day the best place in the mission. They called it the "promised land" It has since then kinda gone down but I am excited to go there and hopefully help it come back to being the promised land again. I need to do all I can this next next area I only have 4 months left and its scary, I hope I will become the person that Heavenly Father expected me to become. I need to finish off my conversion as a misisonary, help others become more converted, I need to love others more than myself, I need to leave it all on the table. I love you all. Thank you for all your amazing words and pictures. Have a good week:))) 

January 29, 2017

So we have some big stuff going on in the mission. I am so excited to say that David A Bednar is coming to speak to our mission on February 23! What an awesome experience. I was so blessed to have Russell M Nelson come last year and now my 2nd favorite apostle David A Bednar (first being Holland) It will be awesome to hear him speak and meet him personally. Also there are some big changes happening with our schedule and rules. Missionaries are now allowed to go swimming! Just kidding that is not happening. But yeah so here in the Philippines we always had to be home at 9 to do 30 minutes planning and then in the morning we have personal, companionship, and language study then we leave the house at 12. But now the whole world is changing it to where there is no more 30 minutes planning at night it will be in the morning (which I love) and now we have more flexibility in choosing how we do our work and taking lunch breaks. So I am excited for the new schedule.

This last week has been pretty good. We had our zone conference last friday. It was a good meeting. It was focused on how to get investigators to come to church, how to give better commitments, and also about teaching the people and not just teaching the lessons. I gave the workshop on teaching the people not lessons. It was alright I think. I talked about how listening is a huge part. We have to listen to the investigator and not just let our minds wander. Which is one of my biggest weaknesses sometimes is that I have a hard time just focusing completely. But when you have the spirit in the lesson everything gets easier, that is why it is so important to have the spirit in the lesson. So Brother Fedi came to church yesterday. He came by himself because all 3 of his kids have chicken pox right now. But he knew it was important to come so he came and he is making some awesome progress. We also have this family that we found. Well they arent married yet but they live to gether and they have 2 kids. We teach them every tuesday, thursday, and saturday at 4pm. They are pretty awesome and they love the lessons and they are making good progress. We had a great lesson with them last saturday about Plan of Salvation and they said they would FORSURE come to church the next day. But Brother has a tough schedule because he works the night shift at his job. So he is super tired in the morning around when church is but he said that he would force himself to go. So we told them we would wait outside the church for them on sunday morning. So we got to church at 8:40 and waited and waited but they didint come:( It was disappointing but its all good I bet they will come next week. 

I have been doing some personal reflecting and I want to learn more about love and patience before I head home. I want to be the most loving to others that I can be, but I am not the best at it. So I have started doing some scripture study on it. But if any of you have any scriptures or talks that you wanna share with me about loving others I would love it.

So this could be potentially my last week in this area and that means that I will be heading off to my last area next week!! Crazy stuff. But we will see it is not for sure yet.

I had a cool study earlier this week. I have been looking into the Atonement on how important it is as an event in the whole plan. So I was reading in Mormon 9: 11-14 and I realized how important the Creation and the Fall is to the Atonement. If there was no creation, there would be no fall, if there was no fall there would be no need for atonement and that means we wouldnt be resurrected and we wouldnt be able to be judged and exalted at the last day. The fall happened because Adam and Eve transgressed. If they did not transgress then there would be no sin and Jesus Christ wouldnt be apart of the plan. So that is a little something that is becoming more clear to me.

I love you all! Thanks for being awesome!

January 22, 2017

Things don't always go as planned...


Last week ended off really well. Elder Feiloaki and I really endured to the end of the week to reach our goals. We hit all of our goals that we had sent. It was a good week and we ended it with a lot of new people to teach. We have been blessed a lot with people to teach, lots of people that are interested in hearing about the gospel. But there are never too many people to teach. So after of the week Elder Feiloaki and were just beat from the hard work, we did so much finding, knocked on so many doors. On saturday we had a good day planned but everything just kinda fell through and we ended up having to do more finding for about 3 hours. It was discouraging to be honest. But we didint give up, even though it was dark, and no one wants to listen we kept knocking. We had a goal to get 8 investigators at church yesterday, lots of people made promises. We were confident because of our last week attendance of 6. So we went to church and we waited and waited and only 1 of our investigators showed up. We were very happy to have her there, and she is making great progression, but still it was sad to have all the promises and they didint come through. But that is how it goes so there is no need to get down on it. We will keep trying and following up with those investigators that we teach. We have been teaching a great investigator who is very receptive. Ferdinand is his name he is about 50. He said he was going to church but he texted us Saturday night and said that he doesnt think its the right time because his family is hounding on him a bit because they are all pretty die hard baptists. Here in the Philippines people really want to be people pleasers and not make you upset so they will do whatever so no one is mad. Even if you are a 50 year old man with children they dont really make their own decisions for themselves. They just want to make others happy. Which is not always a bad thing but sometimes it is taken too far. I was mostly upset when our investigator Brother Fedi didint come to church with his family. We have been teaching them for a few weeks now and he is making great progress and he came to church once before with his son. We taught him last saturday and introduced him to some more members and then when Sunday came around he didint come :( We are going over there later tonight so we will see what happened. But he is making great progress and applying the things we teach in his life. We also found another great family. It is actually kind of a cool story. So one night last week my comp and I were knocking on doors. We were walking down this street we have been on hundreds of times and one night we walked past this alley type thing covered by a big gate, it was opened so we went down it and found lots of houses. We talked to the first guy we saw and he invited us in to teach it was a great lessons and we have had a few more with him and his wife, after that I went to the apartment next to his house and we knocked on the door and this lady came out about 30 years old with 2 kids. I introduced ourselves and she said oh yeah I met some of you back in my province, then she grabbed a lesson 1 pamphlet and a book of mormon from her house! Hahah she had been taught years about, about 6 years ago. So we set a time to come back because there was no male present. So we came back and taught her with a member and had a great lesson, then she said come back next time and teach my husband as well so we did and we taught them both and they are both super interested and we will be going back to them tomorrow.

Even though things dont always go to plan, there are always some sort of blessings you just have to find them.

I love you all! Thanks for being the best:)

Mckinley teaching at Zone Conference.

January 15, 2017

We went swimming

just kidding

So this transfer so far has been going really well so far. The work gets better each and every week. We are seeing the improvement in the area which is what I have been praying and asking for is that the area will just improve. We are starting to work with the ward more and were getting some great new people to teach. The first sunday this transfer we had 2 investigators then 2nd we had 4 then yesterday we had 6:) So some good things are happening. We will see next week if we can get 8:) But we had a fun time working this last week. We did A LOT of tracting. We kinda have to because there just is not that many members or less actives around that can be taught often so we just have to find find find. I can definitely tell a difference in my finding now compared to about a year or so ago. I feel like now I have a better idea on how to do it more effectively and how to find better people and not just wasting time to people who dont want to hear about the message. I have shared The Restoration over 1000 times. I love that message but you want to get deeper into the lessons and share more of the other great lessons we have. 

Now that the rainy seasons is not here I have not been carrying an umbrella around with me but there are still those occasional light rain days. The other day we went out to work and it started doing some light rain, it light rained alllll day. Elder Feiloaki and I really enjoyed it from about 1pm-5pm. People were just shocked we were out walking around still working even though it was raining. But once it hit 5pm the sun went down and it started to get cold... and we were very wet.. Then it didint get so fun haha.

The other day we did a lot of finding. We are really trying to stay close to the chapel so that investigators will not have any hard time coming to church. But the area around our church is pretty difficult. There are 3 huge catholic churches in that area so there are a lot of solid catholic people. Haha its kinda annoying when we talk to people and try to introduce our message and they just say "yeah yeah yeah, were catholoc". The other day we approached this guy in his late 30s probably washing his car, in the Philippines the priesthood is pretty weak so we didint miss the opportunity to talk to this guy. So we did a pretty simple approach, "Hello, we are missionaries from the church of jesus christ of latter day saints" He then says that he knows about us and tells us he is closed catholic. which basically means "go away". So i said "oh that is great! Well I have a question for you, and I asked him if he believed that we had to be baptized in order to enter the kingdom of god and he said yea, then I asked him what about those that have died that didint have the chance to baptized. Then we just straight up ignored us haha he wouldnt even look at us, then my companion tried to continue talking and he wanted nothing to do with us, so then we walked away and said okay thanks, and he just laughed and said yeah, maybe next time! But life goes on.  

We have this new investigator her name is Zosima. She is 65 haha. It is the oldest investigator I have ever taught. She is a best friend of another member. But she is super interested and really wants to be baptized but its kinda hard for us to teach her the lessons because she doesnt understand very much very quickly and she has a hard time reading but she will eventually get it. We have been teaching our other investigator as well Freddy. Sadly he couldnt come to church yesterday because he had work but he is still making great progress. We taught him the Word of Wisdom the other day and he agreed to live it so he is definetley making steps of repentance in his life and coming closer to the Savior.

I have been trying to increase my scripture study this new year and really try to get more out of it and build my testimony about Christ and learn more about the scriptures. So the other day I was studying about a topic that I never really understood before and that kinda caught my attention. I studied about Jesus Chris about being our advocate. I really liked this because it helped me better understand that Jesus Christ really wants us to succeed and return to live there. He will plead our cause with Father.

I love you all and hope you have a great week:))

January 8, 2017

So this week was pretty great, we finally convinced this guy preparing a mission to come out and work with us and it was a good time. I am actually shocked at the dedication of the young men and SA here in the Philippines they will honestly walk with you and work all day with in the heat and do a good job as well. It kinda makes me feel bad on how bad I was at going with the missionaries before my mission. I didint really get how helpful it is for the Elders. Try and get noah to work with them. But yeah we have been blessed with a few great new investigators, also "blessed" with a lot of open time not really knowing where to go. Those are the hardest parts when you just honestly have no one to go to but thats when you toughen up your knuckles and go knock on doors. Well in the Philippines I guess we dont really knock we just stand outside their house or gate and yell "Tao po" 

We had a pretty solid experience last monday. So both my comp and I needed to get a hair cut and usually go to this place right outside our subdivision but there were so many people waiting for a hair cut and we decided it wasnt worth the wait so we decided to catch a jeep going up more into our area to go to another place. But when we arrived there it was closed. So then as we were leaving wondering where to go I remembered this other place kind of by some houses in our area close to where we were and when we work I always saw a sign there that said "Barber, this way" So we decided to go there. We walked down the alley and saw a happy guy just there cutting hair. So we got our hair cut there and while he was cutting my hair I was talking to him about the gospel. He said that we could come back sometime and go teach his whole family. So later on that night when we went out to work we went back and taught his whole family of 5. It was awesome. They now have a Book of Mormon and are reading it. I realized how important it is even to stay focused on Preparation day because the Lord is always preparing people for you.

I havent been eating too healthy lately... My comps parents sent him a huge package of food from New Zealand. Chips, cookies, canned foods, and heaps of chocolate. Soooo we have been pigging out on cookies and chips these past few days. Its hard to eat healthy here in the Philippines and stay in the budget. But this week I am going to start doing some more cooking. I have been getting okay at cooking I have learned to make a few Filipino dishes. I have gotten used to eating rice with basically everything. I really like it. It is going to be really weird to go home and not have rice with the food.

I love you all and hope you have a good week:)