JANUARY 4

So these pictures are taken during tracting. There is a bunch of bukid(mountain) behind my house and so we get to tract or proselyte in the mountains and get amazing views, and i mean amazing. The camera doesn't even capture even close to how beautiful it is, but it still looks pretty sweet.

                                   

 We found two people to teach the other day, two families. One house was up this little cliff with stairs carved into the rock to get up top. We taught the people there, and most of them were catholic but one lady was Englesias ni kristo.  They were formed in the Philippines a long time ago by a returned Mormon missionary. This missionary wanted to be an apostle so went to Utah and asked to be one and that he should and then of course he was kindly rejected, so he got super mad and started his own church in the Philippines. It does not have a nice feeling about it and the people in it are very hard hearted most of the time and really like to bible bash. 

We then kept going and found a father and grandpa with some kids at home. We introduced ourselves and asked to teach them. They let us in, and there house was a room the size or Kaden's old room in Lethbridge. The stairs going up were quite scary too, and that is because there was a tiny wooden later made of sticks and I weigh 170 pounds so i felt like i was gonna break them. Inside wasn't much better, it was a bamboo floor and you could see through the floor to the ground below. I only stepped where i saw extra support through the cracks. They were pretty good, lots of people here just listen mostly, but we will follow them up. 

So this is a picture of my Christmas that I made at my desk. It was my own little Christmas tree made out of wrapping paper. 

This is an area where a less active lives and the cement bridge was flooding. 

Brother Willy

This is brother Willy, he is a ward missionary and recent convert. He is great!  

And then this is a goat and a pig we found tracting one day. 

So i was thinking, do you remember the Jason Born movies. Well, remember when he is running through houses and over roofs and stuff, that is a lot like it is here. Oh and this last couple weeks the dogs here have broke my heart. All the dogs here are treated like dirt. Literally. They are always super dirty and so dirty and gross that they scratch and are mostly rat dogs. They have patches of hair and scabs all over. It is quite tough to see, and lately i have seen three dead dogs. One, I moved off the road so it wouldn't get destroyed all over the pavement, and then there was lots of rain and a flooded river. It came over a cement bridge super fast and on the other side was like rapids and it trapped wood and coconuts. Well a big dead dog came floating and got stuck in it, it sorta made me sick to see, not the body but the fact that it was dead and trapped being beaten by debris it water. Then this morning actually, we got up to leave to Danao and came outside. Two steps in front of our apartment a dog was dead, and it had guts behind it that exploded out of its backside, it was super sad, its eyes were glazed looking into the distance. It still looked alive almost. Anyway, the animals here break my heart, there are always little puppies everywhere, and they are so dirty and treated terribly. We were walking and then I looked up and saw a little puppy like a week old with it’s cute little eyes looking up at us.  It was sitting on the cement, dirty and alone. It broke my heart...but its truly sad. 

This is the flood, and where the dog was stuck.

 So what else to tell, well I am loving the mission so much. I can honestly say that satan is super clever. He is so frustrating. There are so many people here, less actives and investigators right now that satan seems just how to effect. I have really had my eyes open to the importance of the gospel. So many people don't see the importance of the scriptures, church. It is so frustrating. We can tell when people aren't doing what they should be by how they live there lives. We can tell if someone is not coming to church but then they tell us they are reading and praying and we know they are not. It is so tough too, especially when investigators get anti Mormon doctrine. There will be times when they are such awesome investigators, then all of a sudden the next lesson you can feel the spirit literally leave and the investigator pull out these questions and you feel the tension. It is so hard because lots of times they get thoughts or get told we are just wanting to baptise them, or stuff like that.  Of course we want to but its more than that. We really come to love these people and its hard. Members are frustrating sometimes too. I don't remember if I said this but back in Balilihan, but there was members who smoked and did other things they were not supposed too. Well when we were teaching people, they would say there is no point in changing religions and use those members as examples because they were doing stuff too and they were members. I have really began to see the potential in people and its just tough when they turn away. I can only imagine how hard it is for Heavenly Father. 

That is our ward right now too

This is a cave we found. And the floods from the rivers turn the ocean partly brown.

So on New Years Eve the mission was able to watch two movies. We got to watch how to train your dragon two, but then after that we were gonna watch Brave but we had no time left because it took a while to get everything started. But it was a real treat, and a great movie. We also got fed on New Years Eve which was nice. I really am shocked I am not sick of rice yet, I try to eat it only once a day, but everyone here eats it every meal. Its crazy, and I gain weight eating it and everyone here loses weight. It is definitely an adventure in every aspect. 

Love you all

Branden

DECEMBER 29

My companion is a great guy, and pretty funny at times too. The Christmas part was great. The party was really funny.  After we chatted we went to the party. People slowly showed up all day and then at 4 it actually started. I couldn't believe they spent the entire Christmas day at the church though, as much as I have loved my wards and all, that is quite a lot. Well the party started and it was basically a giant talent show of all the different people in the ward. Everyone either danced and sang, and the best part was the elders quorum. They all got up and did this choreographed dance and they all looked sooo funny doing it, I got a good laugh and I recorded it too.

Lots of people sang too, and lots of them were really bad, but it was great because people just do it anyway and have a great time. That’s another thing here, karaoke is huge, every day you here it. People hook up giant speakers to there tv and sing karaoke all day, and they are not even that good, some are soooo brutal! But no one cares unless you go to a real professional popular place.  This is rare but one guy sang a song bad a month ago ish and he was murdered after. That happened up in manila...they took it super seriously. Well we have a typhoon right now, a small one, but it has been frustrating because there was no power all day, and literally it is not even as bad as a thunderstorm back home. 

That's awesome about Christmas. Speaking of magic tricks, I have got some pretty cool magic tricks mastered now myself. Coin tricks, slight of hand, and card tricks too...and I think I got a little to good at one because I had to explain to one guy it wasn't sorcery, lol.  He asked if it was sorcery and I was like no no no no, definitely not, here I will show you...and I showed him the trick, haha, but it is so awesome.  It makes everybody like me more than just because I am white. And the Filipino's faces, oh boy they are priceless. 

That is a great topic for your talk. Temple is awesome. I have been to the temple i think 8 or 9 times already. I got some talks from Elder Albar who are given by a guy who served a senior mission here. He knew so much, and he taught classes each week to the people here and recorded them, and he has a website and he talks super in depth on everything. Angels, the second coming, literally everything. It is so good, his last name is Strout... I would try and look him up on the Internet. But I bet your talk went awesome, it sounds like it would have been a great talk. And if you were not nervous, then you nailed it. 

Of course I am excited for the baptism, but I haven't thought of it a whole ton, I mostly just think what am I teaching today...but it should be good, I hope she is ready. As for my area, I am starting to really love the people here again, but the area itself i would say I miss Bohol, this area is all jumbled and feels a bit disorganised at the moment. I am trying to work out the bugs. 

NOVEMBER 14, 21,

I am in a new area!  I am in a town called Carmen.  My new companion is great. His English is good to, however he is tough sometimes to understand still. He is a great teacher though.  He is from up by Manila. My new area is still very bukid, it feels very disorganised.  There is not as much stuff here as my last area sadly, but oh well, I will get by. The typhoon was actually very lame, it missed us, so we just got wind, not even that much rain. There are downed trees in some spots but as service goes, there really isn’t much anywhere around me. So ya, that about it. 

We have one investigator named Joel. He is a sweet guy, he is 40s i think. Anyways he aways calls us brud and is always super happy to see us. He has agreed to baptism, but his wife doesn't live at home, she works somewhere else and isn't ever home so he is waiting to decide if they should get baptised for her permission too. I hope so. So another family we visit is a single mom and her daughter. She is 9, and her name is Rhea mae. The mom is a recent convert, and now we have been teaching Rhea Mae so she can be baptised too. She is so sweet, and so shy too. I feel like she is sorta my sister. We were talking with her about school then she totally opened up about being bullied by a girl and boy, and i totally was ready to go beat up that boy, lol, we sorta joked i would go get him, hahaha. She is so shy though, so it was super unexpected. During lessons she is quite hard to get her to answer because she is so shy, and she is still quite young. She is getting more comfortable every time though, and she is scheduled to be baptised on January 10. So that will be good. So those are a couple of our focuses right now. We see them about 3 times a week. 

So did I mention about how i see out into the ocean several times a day, from our apartment. You cross the road, walk 20 steps around some houses and then you are on beach. There are a bunch of resorts around here too, but they are all fenced off so you can’t see into them. Maybe one day i will stay at them. Oh, and i don't know if i have told you this yet but I am called gwapo, or handsome/good looking  every single day all the time. My investigators call me it, workers at stores tell me it in check out, people always stare at me, I am always being told people like me.  It is quite the experience. Whenever I get called joe or americano by guys or little kids, I say, "wala, filipino ko" or no, I'm a filipino. Haha, it is always super crazy mind blowing to so many people i can speak the language, or a bit of it. But ya, its an interesting experience. I was talking with Elder Albar today about how literally everything I know is different here. Climate, people, culture, food, money, literally everything, even the time of day, is different than Canada. 

So beautiful here!