Book of Mormon Challenge

 December 5th Letter

Hello Family! and Friends!

I am having a great time in Puerto Princessa, I have a big zone and am doing my best to get to know all of the missionaries here. It is hard because 4 of them are on an island where I will not be able to go visit. (The one with zebras and giraffes). I also learned that Palawan in the favorite vacation spot of Brad Pitt, I hopefully will have the opportunity to teach him sometime.

We are working really hard and trying to find those who are prepared to hear the message of the Restoration, we have found a whole lot of people that are ready to listen, but they seem to have trouble acting on what they hear. I have been blessed so much, in the past few months, I will admit I was a little bit bummed to be leaving my last area and my trainee, but I know that I am supposed to be here. I have a lot expected from me in the zone, but I am super excited and going to put my shoulder to the wheel. :)

I am pretty excited with my new apartment, we have a washing machine, which I think sometimes people take for granted.. I know I did back home. It makes laundry pretty easy, but the only problem is that it shocks you, but it does not hurt all that much. It actually reminds me of my last area and our lovely toaster oven...

I have met a lot of people since I arrived here 5 days ago, and I am enjoying getting to know them. I had a sad experience a couple days ago with an investigator. We taught them for the first time (my first time, probably the 5th time overall) and I really love them, I connected with them real well, and they are just really fun to teach. One of them was unmarried and pregnant, she was separated from the babies daddy, and living with her friends in a boarding house. She had come to church and was reading and marking her scriptures. We came back, and things did not feel right, we saw candles lit in the house, and we decided to go and talk to them. Her little baby, was a stillborn and they were preparing for his funeral. I had never seen any person that young dead before. It was hard, we offered a prayer, and told Sister Jane we loved her, and if she needed anything she could always call us and we would be there for her. I do not fully realize what they felt, or what they believe will happen to the child. It makes me even more thankful for the Gospel and the Restored Church, to know that the Plan of Salvation is made perfect and fair. We have been able to give her hope, and will continue to do all we can, so she can gain a full testimony and know for certain the plan that has been prepared for her and her family.

Sometimes life does not seem fair, I realize that some people do face very big trials, and in my life I never really have, I do not fully understand the things that people have to go through. I have come to the knowledge that everything we teach is true, I know for certain that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true church of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I know that everything which we face in this life is for our own good, Heavenly Father does not put obstacles in our way that would keep us from returning back to Him. I know I am weak, and I really am not able to accomplish much on my own, but I find strength in so many things.

I would like to offer a challenge to everyone who reads this letter, and I would challenge you to challenge others to do the same; read The Book of Mormon from cover to cover. With something to mark with, using the color yellow (yellow is best) mark every single reference to the Savior, whether it be pronouns or any reference made to Him. Go through and also mark His words, whether it be from His mouth or in circumstances where the Prophets say "Thus saith the Lord," or in similar instances. You will be amazed, this book as we know testifies of Jesus Christ, but I am guessing, (just a guess) that most of the world does not realize just how much the Book of Mormon testifies of Jesus Christ. I promise you as you do this challenge you will grow in faith, and you will be able to use the Book of Mormon to invite others to come unto Christ. This challenge is for members of the church and non-members. Give away Books of Mormon to those you know, and challenge them to do the same, maybe we could get the whole world taking the challenge. If you start today you will finish around August, if you can keep a 1 chapter per day pace. I know you can do it.

I love you all! Especially my little Devin,

Love Elder Munk

I actually love you the same, but I needed to let Devin know.

November 7th, 14th, 21st, 30th Letters

 November 30th Letter

Hello!
 
Well I have a few stories to tell from the last few days, it will be fun.
 
Where to begin? Alrighty, Tumarbong sounds like a good start. After
church on Sunday we needed to catch a ride home by flagging down a
vehicle, we ended up getting a truck and hopped in the back and sat
down in a safe/unstupid manner. The air re-circulated into the back
and we got dusted so much. The tired ended up going flat and we hopped
out for a bit to wait for them to throw on the spare tire. Out of no
where, (actually out of the truck cab) came a white man named Miles,
as in miles away from home. He was from England and had been living on
Palawan for 20 years. (Which is equal to the lifespan of an Elder
Munk). We talked with him for a little while and he told us great
stories about Volkswagen beetles, Afghanistan, and the Mormon
Tabernacle Choir. (With a little bit of banana farming mixed in). He
used the word see-loo-bree-us which I am not able to spell, he used a
negative marker along with that word to describe the previously
mentioned country.
 
On Saturday I received a call telling me I would be transferring to a
different area, and leaving my companion in Quezon (Trainers/Trainees
are usually together for 2 transfers not one). On Sunday I figured out
I would be going to Puerto, but I was not sure where or if I would
have a specific assignment. I received a call yesterday from President
Stucki who told me I would be assigned as a zone leader with Elder
Hyde (whom I love). I am really excited, and the zone is going to have
a very productive December, and we will do all we can to keep it up. I
also have stores in my area and some restaurants which I will enjoy,
but not too often. My companion has been assigned a follow up trainer
who has been out in the field for only 4 months. That puts their
combined months at a little more than 5. They are both Americans.
President Stucki has a lot of trust in Elder Smith to follow up my
kasama Elder Halterman. I trust him too, they will have great success
down in Quezon.
 
Well, I do not really have many other stories yet, I will send some
pictures soon. I am learning already that I will have a lot of
responsibilities as a Zone Leader, and will even be flying to Manila
every month. I will be sleeping in the mission home, and that means I
get a hot shower! Unless the other Elders use it first. But the
mission home in only for the Palawan Zone Leaders. :)
 
I am super excited for Devin, he will be fending off things just like
his older brother. Devin, I know how you feel.
 
Also Kaity! Happy Birthday! I hope you had a great birthday, and have
fun being old. You can drink as of 1 year from now! And buy handguns.
I know you are not a huge fan of drinking, and you are definitely
(most-likely) afraid of guns.. So I will not worry about you :)
 
Sorry if I forgot to answer your questions, but my time is running
short. Keep me in touch with things that do not really matter! I like
having a big smile on my face, so you should all continue to write me!
 
Love, Elder Munk

November 21st Letter

Hello!

This week has been pretty exciting, we have experienced a lot of miracles and a lot of.. well other things. We had great success in inviting people to be baptized, many of them said yes, and we have close to 20 who say they will get baptized on December 24th. Unfortunately it is a lot easier to say so than to do so. We did see a few of them at church, but most of them chose not to come.

We discovered a few new areas in our area that were formerly undiscovered, we were led in that direction through referrals we had received and we tried to contact them. One of the ladies in named Sister Garcitos, we asked her children, who were playing outside, where their mother was. They when inside and asked her, she told them to say she was not home. The kids came out with smiles on their faces and said she was asleep, we could see her through the hole in the door. We asked if they could tell her we stopped by, they said no, because she was in the bathroom. And one kid just flatout said, she is inside! Than another kid said she was asleep in the bathroom, and knowing Filipino bathrooms, I doubted that anyone would sleep in a place like that. They than started saying she was in Narra (1.5 hours away) and we decided to come back another time, we ended up seeing her later and talking to her for a bit, she did not want to talk with us that much though. As we traveled farther back into that area we came to realize that everyone would hid, and that none of their kids could lie very well. We decided to talk to someone walking down the street and ended up walking back to his home with him, through a "shortcut" up in the mountains. We taught them and gave them a baptismal commitment about 20 minutes after we met his family, they accepted, and we will see what comes of it in the coming weeks.

We also had a successful day on saturday and the Ramos family was baptized, Riza, Sherwin, Rose and Kenneth, along with three individuals Mera-mae, Nilda, and Ronie. All of them made it on time, and were confirmed yesterday at church. The Ramos family is awesome! Brother Ramos was a fisherman, he would work from Monday-Friday being out on the ocean and be home from Friday night to Monday morning and go back out to work. The basically live from hand to mouth (they have enough to buy food for maybe a few weeks with no work.) but Brother Ramos took the whole week off so he could be baptized, because of a storm the ship was delayed and he would not have made it back by Saturday. He was visited by a friend, while his co-workers had already taken off to sea, and he was offered a job on land, which will give him Sundays off, every week, and is a better job. Their family also makes it to church early and sets up the chairs, before most members arrive.

We also visited a waterfall earlier today in the Narra area, because we have a meeting here tomorrow morning, so another day of Preparation away from home, three weeks with no real time to do laundry puts hair on your chest. At least from what I understand. But my understanding is also a bit skewed more often than not.

Also, I am not sure what Alivia did to her knees, but I want to let her know that I love her and wish her a speedy recovery after her surgery. I will tawagin  ang aking kapatid na lalaki to take special care of you.  :) Devin is good at that.

I am also grateful for the responses sent in about the concern I had asked about last week. I will do what I can! I think I will be teaching a pastor this week, I do not plan on arguing with him, if he decides he wants to than I will politefully tell him to stop talking and do something effective with my time. He was one of them throwing dirt on the church before. So I am not exactly sure what to expect from our visit. But I do plan on baptizing a pastor sometime before my mission service in up. Better sooner than later.

I love you all, and am excited to hear from whoever wrote me for Christmas. We do not have snow here, although there was a hailstorm in the Philippines once.. We are still planning on having a white Christmas :) But I will let you know more about that in the coming weeks.

And, no I have not picked out any Palawan Natives to marry yet... I am helping them get married to each other. I figure though, if I can become as good as a missionary as Ammon, sooner or later I will have someone offering one of their daughters... But I will also let you know more in the coming weeks.

Love,

Elder Munk


 November 14th Letter
 Hello!

I do not really remember a lot of what happened in the last week, I am pretty tired and my brain does not seem to be running at full speed but that's alright. It is preparation day, so I get a little bit of time to not but fully with it. I think this is why we have preparation day. I think it is a little bit funny when reading through the Ten Commandments about how we are given 6 days to finish our work and we are required to give one day to the Lord. For 2 years it is the opposite, and I love it. We are going to have a successful week if everything goes well, we will have a baptism this Saturday, of a truly converted family, they are great. The day we found them we talked to a whole lot of people and got rejected flat out by everyone except them. But we could not teach because there was no other males there, so we came back and started teaching, we gave them baptismal dates right away and things have gone well since than. Yesterday they were the first people to church (And some of the only because Manny Paquio had a boxing match) and they set up all the chairs in sacrament. Usually the members should set up the chairs, but we are excited when the investigators do it.


Everything is going really well, I think I am going to end up marrying a Palawan Native.

We are working hard to find new people to teach here. We run into a similar concern with all people, that all churches are true because they all worship Jesus Christ. It seems simple to me that if every church teaches something different than they cannot all be true. That is an obvious truth that is outlined by the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and really Elder Munk's common sense. We teach many things to try and resolve this concern, which most of the time does not lead anywhere. Except in the case of a couple people who we are teaching, who seem to understand. I have developed a twitch every time I hear someone say, "isa lang ang Panginoon natin." Or we only have one Lord. Because I know it will lead directly into this same concern. If you have any insights on a way to clearly address this concern I would like to hear from you. If you have no idea, you can still email and say hi :)

Also, yes Jon Chin, I met Elder/Brother De Guzman, I actually met him at the members house who you mentioned. I do not think they are dating, because she says she is going on a mission.

I am going to be heading down to Rizal in a little bit, with Elder Gillette (my BYU mission prep classmate/MTC buddy) because I get to interview 2 candidates for baptism in Rizal. I hear it has the most beautiful sunset in the whole Philippines, but not every night, so I am hoping for good things tonight. After the 2 hour shuttle ride.

I am also learning how to cook, I am cooking things based on what they look like because I have no recipes. Everything has turned out alright. I also think it is a bit funny we have a bag of pure MSG sitting on top of the fridge... I do not use it though. But I end up eating MSG about everyday, it is in everything here.

When I said I am going to marry a native, I left out a little bit, I am going to help marry a couple, they do not have a marriage license yet. :) Do not worry Mom, I am not getting married at for at least a month after I get home.

I love you Family, I also love who ever else is reading this, and maybe even some people who are not. And I really love the Galbraiths. Give them Hugs and Kisses from me, especially Stew. :)

Byebye!

Elder Munk

 November 7th Letter 

Hello Family! And friends. :)
 
This was an interesting week, we had built up a lot of potential in
the last few weeks and were excited for everything to happen. A lot of
things fell apart in the past few days, due to people being out of
town, moving, and not coming to church.
 
We are still working hard, and doing what we can to find new
potential, and trying to do what we can to keep our current
investigators moving in the right direction. Everything will turn out
alright, we have high hopes and know a lot of good things are in
store.
 
Elder Ardern of the Seventy came to say hello, as well as teach the
missionaries on the wonderful Island of Palawan. He taught many very
good things, and told me to share an experience with my family, so I
think I will reserve it for them :) If you want to know you can ask, I
just do not want to put it up, on my ever so popular missionary blog.
He did ask for Dad's email address so you will probably hear a little
bit from him soon. Or at least once Dad returns from his trip.
 
Going to the meeting involved a three and a half hour drive, with a
three and a half hour return trip, we enjoyed the seven hours in the
shuttle. We talked with a few people, including a very outgoing 5 year
old girl named Hannah Joy. She was really funny. Hinda nga!
 
While we were riding to Tumarbong for sacrament yesterday a lady tried
to secretly take a picture of us, we caught her, and she just lifted
up her cellphone again to take a picture so we threw out some big
smiles and talked to her about the gospel, we left her with a pamphlet
and invited her to church, she read the whole pamphlet in about 10
minutes and said thanks. We tried to get her to come with us to the
Tumarbong sacrament but she was trapped between a "bag of palay and a
really fat man" as my companion explained it, the bag of palay was
there, but the man was pretty skinny, either way she was trapped, so
hopefully we will see her next week.
 
I have a new Cars notebook, I am pretty excited about it.
 
I know missionaries do not use slang, but I do not know another word
for punk, so I guess I won't say anything, but I love the Galbraiths
even if they are a slang work :) I will come visit you someday!
 
I appreciate the emails, and I am glad Devin is wearing my clothes,
the way that I would proudly wear them. Except Devin is way more
muscular than Elder Munk, this rice is slowing me down.
 
I love you Family! I am bummed Daddy is gone, and I am excited to hear
from him soon.
 
Elder Munk
 
PS the pictures may be fuzzier than real life.
 
 

October 19th, 24th, 31st Letters

October 31st letter 

Herro po!
 
I am doing super well! Due to some technicall difficulties we
currently do not have much time to email. I would like to express my
appreciation for the emails and letters I have received, especially
from Rachel! I really appreciated your uplifting email, keep working
hard in school, and eat a lot of rice, maybe you will serve a mission
in the Philippines too :)
 
I would like to address the concern brought up by those who may not
trust in my ability to cook, I have developed the ability to cook
simple dishes by applying the use of my sense of smell, taste, and
natural ability to be unorganized to be able to cook Filipino foods
without a recipe. I have successfully cooked pork adobo and anpalaya
with egg. I plan on making a few more dishes every week, but I may
need to purchase a cookbook first; in Tagalog so I can read it :)
 
I am really tired.
 
I am also having trouble putting my thoughts together.
 
A General Authority is coming to the mission, I have the opportunity
to sit on the stand with him and speak. I thought when I was told I
would speak that it would be makakanervous sa akin, but I am actually
pretty excited, that will be on Friday. He also spoke at General
Conference.
 
The work in our area is going really well, the mission has been
getting about 120 baptisms per month, sometimes higher sometimes
lower. (There are a lot of missionaries here). We have a goal of 300
in December, which is a lot, but we have been preparing to reach that
goal for months, while increasing the number of baptisms in October
and November. The zone I am in was able to baptize more that it has in
the history of forever, which was exciting, part of it was because
this zone used to be where the disobedient missionaries got sent, I
think it was supposed to be a punishment, but now we have a solid
group of missionaries here, and we have a lot of potential.
 
Tasha Alivia and my Mommy all looked very cute in their Halloween
pictures I received, and Devin looked like a man, while Trevor looked
pretty scary, I do not really know when I get home next year, but even
if it is after halloween we will still carve pumpkins :)
 
Well, anywho, I hope you all know I love you, if you do not know you
can ask and I can tell you more personally, kind of like how I often
tell Devin, sometimes it gets pretty personal. I love you Devin! :)
 
Anyways, I hope some of this made sense, bye!
 
Elder Munk
 

October 24th letter 

 "Hello!" - President Thomas S. Monson

I am having a very good 
time and we are working hard, I was outside of my area for a long time 
so we are trying to get new schedules and get reorganized so we can work
 more effectively and teach more. We are putting a strong focus on 
having our investigators share with their families and friends, so far 
it is very effective, and we are not finding a whole lot of people 
ourselves. It is a lot more difficult to find people than it is to ask 
others to find people :) It just depends if they are willing to help us 
or not, and we found a few families that are really helping. 


Elder Munk is training a new missionary named Elder Halterman, you 
can probably tell from his last name that he is not a Filipino, he is 
definitely an American. I thought I would have a difficult time with a 
missionary who was new and not fluent in Tagalog. But I was wrong, it is
 actually really good and we are having no real difficulties. I learned 
this area had Americans before, but they have not been here for a while.
 Now there are two of us. Elder Halterman is from Minnesota and is 6' 3"
 he is pretty good at the language and is a very hard worker. He wants 
to do the best he can to be a good missionary and work hard. Neither of 
us are good at cooking but I will experiment and we will eat what I 
make. :)


I have a story that I think you might not believe... I worked in 
Aborlan for a couple days, we had our Preparation day there and one full
 day of work, on Preparation day we played frisbee on the beach while 
was awesome. We started coming back to teach a family (cause we played 
in white shirts and ties.. at least we were ready to work) and we were 
stopped by a member and we went to teach his wife and pamangkins we 
played frisbee with them and taught a lesson. At the end of the lesson I
 thought to myself, "I sure love frisbee" and felt that I should give 
the three kids my frisbee. I thought for a second, there are no (not 
even one! As far as Elder Munk knows) frisbees to buy in the Philippines
 and I would not be able to play for a full year. That thought passed 
pretty quickly and I gave it to them because that is what I should do. I
 guess I have changed a little bit in the last year, last year nothing 
could pull me apart from my frisbee. I probably will not really hear 
much about that family again, because I was just visiting the area but I
 feel good.


Our branch presidency was reorganized. All of them are now active 
which is nice. The President is from Tumarbong, while the 1st councilor 
is a newly reactivated member and the best member that helps with 
missionary work. The 2nd councilor is 18 years old and will be turning 
in his papers soon to serve a mission. I did not really expect that to 
happen but we are excited to be working with them. 


The food I made is in a picture I am sending, also we had a baptism 
on Saturday and Sunday. And the other picture is the beach in Aborlan!

I
 love you family and friends! Also... I got the letter from the 
Burnhams, thank you Catherine! But Alivia.. you did not answer my 
question, :)


Love, Elder Munk

October 19th letter 

Hello! Again!
 
This last little bit has been a fairly interesting time in my mission,
we have had some good success, we were thinking we might have some
incredibly almost too good to be true success, but there has to be
something that slows you down.
 
There is a church whose name shall not be mentioned, we can use the
codename Voldemort, that has been printing off fliers that are not
exaclty what I would call favorable. They say the Mormons worship a
different Jesus, and they wrote a bunch of other things, I did get a
pretty good laugh at their spelling though (They tried to throw in
some English, they spelled words wrong in Tagalog too) I thought a
little bit about why they would do something like that. My companion
wanted to go down and talk to them, but I figured it would be best
just to keep teaching and hope none of our investigators would get
effected by the persecution coming from other churches in Quezon.
Almost all of our investigators heard about the flier or had seen one,
and all of them grew closer to the church. (Not Voldemort's church).
We even have new investigators from the church that shall not be named
who I think will be very good potential, and it will just make me feel
good if they continue to progress and get baptized. I do not
necessarily think revenge is a good thing, but I like to think of it
more as good prevailing over evil. Besides everyone here calls me
Harry Potter.
 
Elder Oliverio's flight to Manila left about 4 hours ago, I am
currently in Aborlan, I will be picking up my new companion on Friday.
In mission terms Elder Munk is currently pregnant(buntis) and about to
give birth. I will be training a new missionary for hopefully 12
weeks. I need to be here for Christmas so I can accomplish one of my
goals.
 
I have come to realize that I am improving a lot as a missionary, I
have fun everyday and have really gained a knowledge of my purpose as
a missionary and a strong conviction of how important missionary
service is. I have seen many people change and make good decisions and
come closer to Christ. I have seen others make bad decisions and move
farther away from Him. I know the joys of being apart being
nakakatulong sa mga tao, upang gawin ang tama. I have come to love the
language, the people and the food. (I just made some all on my own.) I
realize that I am about 1 year through, because Julie told me so in
her email. I know I could happily serve a 70 year mission and love
every moment. I do not want to believe that the 2nd year goes faster
than the first. Something I believe all missionaries need to know
before they leave on their missions in that missions end. You only
have 2 years to be a full time servant of Heavenly Father.
 
I love you family and/or/and + or friends,
 
Elder Munk

October 10th 2011, Letter

Hello everyone :)

I am having a fantastic week, I have not had a bad week since a couple months before I left on my mission. I have had some very difficult days, and a couple difficult weeks, but never really a bad week, the good always out ways the bad. 

I loved General Conference, I gained a lot from it, but I need to print of some talks and go through with my many colors of pens and scriptures and really tear everything apart. I know it is all true, but not everybody knows. And everybody needs to have the opportunity to accept or deny the messages taught, because either they are true and from God, or they are of the world. It is obvious to me, and to many if not all of you, because of the Spirit we feel while listening to those who have been called of God. 

I really enjoyed a lot of the talks, especially President Uchtdorf's about all of us mattering to our Heavenly Father. We had no video, but we had audio of Elder Robert D. Hales talk, I have seen a picture and he is really struggling with health, his talk was very powerful, I challenge you to listen to it again and just listen to the Spirit testify to you of the truthfulness of the message he shared. 

We had the least number of lessons we have ever had in a week, because Elder Oliverio and I got put in charge of making General Conference available in 4 Branches, which was a good blessing, but it was not easy. We had two mornings of waking up at 3:30am so we could get everything done and sent off on time. And those two mornings were one day after the other. So we are pretty pooped. But we were able to help people watch conference who could not afford to take the trip to the District Center in Narra. 

We had an experience where we were exhausted and went to a members house, we felt like we should, we were not sure if it was the Spirit saying someone is ready there that we need to teach, or if we just were tired and wanted to sit down for a bit. (That does not happen often, actually has not happened yet.) There was no other male there so we could not enter, we say grandma sitting watching TV. She has been taught for a long time, and has always made excuses to not get baptized. She looked out the door and said, "Elders! I am going to get baptized!" We set a date and went off to work the rest of the night. 

The church is growing fast in the Philippines, it has grown the fastest in its first 50 years than any other country. People are ready here, but the are hard to find, I cannot really imagine being in a country where you only get 2 baptisms a year, I guess I have not thought about it a lot and how blessed I am to be here especially in this area. There are times when no one progresses and when you do not see success or baptisms for a few months. But I am just so blessed to be here in the Philippines. I love it here and I love the people, everything is going well.

Elder Munk

October 3rd 2011, Letter

 To see the other photos mentioned look at the September 26th letter. 

Well Hello,
 
To explain the pictures for those who do not understand them, I bought

a new watch, it cost a little less than $5. But it only worked for 5 

days. There is a sign in Manila that reads "If it is made by a Filipino

it must be good." I have determined this statement to be false. But 

they are still good people. The bathroom is in Puerto Prinessa, it is 

at a shuttle Terminal. My shoes are doing okay, one of them has a 

little hole it the bottom, but I am going to try to fix them.
Anyways, those are my revisions/updates from last week.
 
This week turned out to be a very successful week in terms of
fulfilling our purpose as missionaries in the Quezon branch. We are
being heavily blessed in this area and the members (our investigators
are more active in missionary work than our members... but the members
are still good. :) ) are very helpful when it comes to inviting
people.
 
We had an experience a couple weeks ago, it is something that I feel I
should not ipaliwanag kasi sagrado siya, but I will give a brief
outline. We received 7 referrals in one day and contacted all of them,
all except for one family were not willing to listen. But the one 

receptive family invited us back. We taught them and gave them a very 

powerful promised blessing. One of those things you feel nervous 

promising people sometimes because it is something "far-fetched" or 

something that just usually does not happen. But we felt that it would,

and it did. She came to church yesterday walking with her daughter, 

no one went to get them, and no one invited them. (They were not home

the last couple times we tried to visit.)
 
Also, I have a fun story, it is a little gross I guess, but I got sick
again, for the second time on my mission. On Wednesday I got diarrea,
and that has continued on until now, the first day it was bad, I mean
BAD. On Sunday we fasted, in lay man's terms, nothing entered into my
stomach, but everything exited. In the last 5 days I have lost a lot
of weight (my cheek bones are sticking out! haha). I ended up getting
a fever (only 103) and really bad chills. I was shaking so hard at
first I could not walk. I received a blessing at midnight, and took a
cold shower, drank a lot of water, threw up 6 times (I counted)  and
ended up falling asleep at about 3:30 this morning. I woke up
completely exhausted but I felt good at 6:20 this morning. And decided
to lie in bed for a little bit. I taught my district meeting at 8 and
we have been out and about getting things done. We have had so much
success in the last little bit I do not want to get sent to a
different area, and my companion is ready to transfer to a new area,
so he stayed up with me until 3:30 doing what he could to make sure I
stayed here.
 
I am not really sure by the way I tell stories or by my experiences if
it sounds like I have matured at all, but do not worry I have :) I am
improving everyday, I think missionary service is different in the
Philippines than anywhere else in the world. We take everything
seriously and work hard, but Filipinos joke about everything, and
cannot stay serious for more than 7 seconds. (From what I have
experienced)
 
We had a baptism on Saturday which turned out alright, I got to
baptize them, Judeth, Maria Eliza, Priness Ann, and Salvador! I forgot
my camera, but if I remember next week I will send some pictures.
 
Also, I am going to watch General Conference on the 8th and 9th. It
will hopefully be available in my area, if not we have a 1.5 hour
drive to Narra.
 
Dad, there is good and bad here, but not a lot of ugly, well maybe I
am just not noticing it :) Because totoy  (Pronounced Toe Toy, 2 year
old crazy child) broke my glasses on Saturday haha, but they will be
easy to fix..
 
I love yous :)
 
Elder Munk

September 26th, 2011 Letter

Hello!
 
This week was an interesting one, it was different than normal but
still quite enjoyable. We left our area on Friday at 2am and I went to
Puerto Princesa and my Kasama went to Aborlan. We made an exchange
with the Aborlan Elders and took off. I ended up having a new district
leader meeting than we returned to Narra, where I worked with my zone
leader that night. Than the next day I worked with a brand new
missionary. My zone leaders mom is from Rigby Idaho. As well as my
mission president, and of course my Mommy! I thought that was
interesting because no one is from there, but everyone is too. Either
that you the people that do live there have a lot of kids..
 
Our work went well, we taught 3 lessons with brand new investigators
and extended baptismal commitments to 2 of them, one excepted a
specific date, and the other who we taught on the side of the road
told us to come teach his family. The first, Brother Condeza, came to
church yesterday! It can kind of make you nervous commiting people to
be baptized the first time you meet them, but thats what our mission
president has told us so that is what we do, unless we feel like we
should wait. But it seems to be effective so far.
 
One of my goals that I set right went I arrived in this area was that
Jose Belmonte would get baptized. He has been taught by the
missionaries for 17 years (not 22) and has been taught by about 70
different missionaries. We taught him last night, and he said, "You
know what elders? You are the weakest Elders that have ever taught me,
you know that?" He said that about 12 times last night. His wife (a
member) smacked him a couple times, we just laughed, realizing that
compared to other missionaries we probably had no real skills, but we
do our best and follow the spirit. He than told us, "But Elders, you
are the weakest, but you are the ones that got me," he laughed and
said "David and Goliath." We did not convert Tatay Belmonte, we did
not try to sell him anything, we did not even teach anything
spectacular, we were very bold, and really just beat a dead horse, but
we smacked it somewhere that made it think and realize the importance
of knowing things in your heart, not just your mind. Tatay still has a
bit of time because he needs to overcome a few addictions but he is
commited and I firmly believe he will go through with it, I hope I am
still here when he does. He knows a lot about the church, I would say
probably more than the average member, he gave me that pearl and said,
"its just like the pearl of great price. But this one is my pearl." He
is really funny, and loves to talk, He will be a good leader in the
church someday.
 
I feel like there was something else I wanted to say.. but I forgot, I
spent most of my time trying to get the website working to email my
mission president but it appears to be dead. I managed to use all my
time already, even though I only got 2 emails.. :P Hint hint. Anyways,
I love you family and everyone else too.
 
 
Elder Munk
 

September 19th, 2011 Letter

 

 

 

 

Hello,

 

I am having a grand old day. I just got an email that four of my invesigators in Pasay got/ will be baptized, all is going well, and I am excited! :)

 

Earlier today we went on a trip! To Tabon Caves! Which was our zone activity. We got to take a boat to the caves and were excited at the experience to be out on the ocean, we did not swim, because that is not allowed, but the water was so warm, we had to wade through in order to get to shore, because the boats could not make it all the way their. It was a lot of fun, and I hope you enjoy the pictures also :) There was only one injury, which is pretty impressive, and it was not me, which is not that impressive, because I never get hurt. We were pushing the boat out and a huge cloud of blood came out from looked like my foot, and I mean a lot of blood. I think we ran over a poor sea cucumber or something, but it freak out the senior couple missionaries.

 

We are blazing through potential investigators, the youth here are great at inviting friends, and all of their friends want to get baptized, the only problem is that none (not even one.. out of a lot) of their parents will allow them to be baptized. We have a lot of other solid potential, but after October, there is none yet, so we are working on that now.

 

We also bought 20 lbs of fish for our activity, it cost a litle more than $10 we had a specially hookup, and we ate well earlier.

 

I taught my first official district meeting ealier today, it went well, we sang some Christmas songs, well one, and got started, I figured out I actually have the ability to teach in a classroom setting, which I sometimes do struggle with.

 

I do not really remember a whole lot from this week to be honest, I ate a manta ray, saw a hammer head shark, that someone else was going to eat. I got a new pillow. I taught on splits with our Branch President, who used the verse in Jeremiah that I shared last week in my email, but he shared it in a lesson. I was a bit suprised, he taught very direct, which would offend a lot of people, but the couple just laughed and said their Pastor avoids reading those verses in the Bible.

 

Oh yes I spoke in Sacrament along side the Senior couples, I also translated for one of them. I also learned that the Prophet has a specific ward he attends, I always wondered where he went to church when he was not traveling.

 

Also! The family that we partially baptized and are trying to complete came to church! I think that is the first time that Ben Simbron has been to church before with his family. He is a good man, and I am excited for their family!

 

Anyways, all is well in Quezon. Elder Gillette, my fellow district mate knows a lot of my friends at BYU, and even knows my ex-girlfriend! We will not go into detail there but it was fun to talk to him about our good friends at BYU :)

 

I love you! Or if I had a New Zealand accent, I love you's!

 

Have a great day, and week!

 

Elder Munk

September 12th Letter

Hello,
 
I am super excited for this week. I will admit I have a tendency to
pick favorites, which I know is not the best thing to do.  There
should be some good things happening here. I want to start by telling
a story, we have an investigator who really wants to get baptized, we
started teaching them and did not quite reach the law of chastity in
time.. We got to her house and her Mom said some guy came and picked
her up, and they were a couple mountains away. We were hoping that it
was nothing too serious, maybe a date or something.. But thats not
exactly what it was. We saw her a few days later, and she alloped and
it was not a real wedding, no license, they just basically said, hey
wqe are married now. So we talked to her a little bit, and than she
said, well.. Elders, I am probably pregnant by now. We were like
noooooooo! There were a lot more o's in our no's but I dont want to
make you all magulo. Anyways, we were bummed a little bit, and are
going to help them get married, but they do not have birth
certificates so it might be a while. We were shaking it off, and ended
up talking to our new friend Kong, we had never taught him before, but
he made us feel better about our prediciment. Kong is a stud, he does
not know how to read or write, so we are going to start teaching him
in a couple days, along with a group of kids who are not gonig to
school. We taught him about prayer, and we ended our lesson, he looked
at us, and said, Elders, the truth is, I just really want to get
baptized. Than we were like.. "Yessssssssss" except with more S's than
o's (in the no) We were about to start dancing, but it was Sunday and
we refrained. We are trying to get a good amount of people baptized in
Tumarbong, so we can keep it open for church. We currently have two
who I believe will be baptized in October, and a potential for 6 more
who are not really sure yet. It is going to hopefully be a very
successful month.
 
Also, I heard that some people thought I was being very good and
patient with the Pastors in the area, we did lose quite a few
investigators to them, but I read a scripture earlier today that made
me feel a little bit better in Jeremiah:
 
1 Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my
pasture! saith the Lord.
 
Jeremiah lays down the hammer on the Pastors and not in this one
verse. It made me laugh, I am not going to use it against them because
I am not much of a Bible basher.
 
We are working with some of our new converts to get them out and
experiencing being a missionary, Jolly Binas really likes working, and
is a stud. All is going well, and he has a lot of friends he is trying
to introduce to the church.
 
On the darker side of things, while we were emailing last week someone
got shot and killed one street down. I am guessing it does not
normally happen. And I am not sure why.
 
I guess I can give you a little bit of a hint into who Brother
Belmonte is, if you would really like to know. His name is Jose, and
has been taught by the missionaries for 22 years, which is a while, if
you ask me. He has been taught by every missionary that has been
assigned in this area, and is always referred by the branch. He lives
right next to the church and always seems to be busy doing things. He
is a nice guy, but he always gets distracted and tells crazy stories
during lessons. We got him to church the last two weeks. We picked him
up the first week, the second a couple members went over and got him.
We are going to pick him up until he starts coming on his own, even if
it is ever week that I am here. He has a couple problems with smoking
and drinking, which we are going to take care of in the next few
weeks. We are aiming to have him iwasan those things by the 15th of
October.
 
Well, thats about all :) It has been a good week, but it will be
better this week. It is so crazy how fast time goes. Thanks to
everyone who rights me :) I got Sister Tryon's letter from July last
week, it takes a little while for letters to get here haha, but I
should hopefully receive letters again on the 20th, which is pretty
close. :)
 
Love you all!
 
Elder Munk
 
Also Pono! Have you gotten your mission call yet? When, where? Or are
you engaged instead? :) Let me know!
 
 

September 5th, 2011 Letter

 

 

 

 

Hello,

 

If you are guessing, yes I did get a new card reader, and also the T key is struggling on this keyboard, so if you see any words that do not make sense add some T's to it. But I will try to get all of the T's in here even if I have to smash the keyboard with a hammer. Anyways, life is going prety well excep he keyboard is driving me crazy. We had a fairly successful week and I have a couple of stories to tell. 

 

Elder Oliverio and I had worked hard and found a family who was ready to be baptized, they were our only hope for the month of September, because we have high standards for baptisms in he Philippines, because if we had lower standards we would get tons of baptisms who would all go inactive. We had a total of 17 potential, that turned into 4 that turned into 0. Which means we still have high potential in October haha. It is funny how it always turns out like that. But all is well, this week is problem solving week.

 

The area we are working in with our second sacrament has hit a couple problems in the last little bit also. There are four other churches there and the pastors are lying about us, and trying to convince the people that we are there to rob them. Silly Pastors, hindi ako merunong magnakaw. With our good investigators it has not created a problem, but with some they have started avoiding us and not wanting us to teach them.

 

There is good news. We have one invesigaor (keyboard!) named Jose Belmonte, he has been taught by every set (daw(word on the street)) of missionaries, for longer than I have been alive. We have his trust, and got him to Church yeserday. One of my number 1 goals since I got here was o baptize this man, we are hoping for November, also he has a rare skill which I will not say, but I will say I am going to bring my Mommy home a gift :)

 

I am struggling yping wih this keyboard, and I am running ou of ime... So I need o email my mission Presiden :)

 

Love you!

 

Elder Munk

August 29th, 2011 Letter

Hello!

We had a successful week and got everyone baptized and confirmed members of the church that we possibly could under the circumstances. We did not reach our goal, but our goal was a little insane, I will not tell you how close we were but it was just really high. I love setting high goals, even if I do not quite make it, because it makes me stretch, and run as fast as I am able.

We had a pretty successful sacrament meeting this week and are trying to follow the guidance of the spirit the best that we can to set our focus where it should be. So we can do the most good in the limited amount of time that we have.

Some of my goals do not necessarily really matter a ton, but I set them as something that would be fun to achieve. Some examples are to convert a pastor, a rich man, a white man, and to baptize people with the same names as my friends and to baptize Brother Belmonte, but that's a different story. Anyways, last Saturday we had a baptism where a took a chunk out of one of my goals, take a second and see if you can guess which one.....................  Okie dokie, I think this is pretty awesome, but on Saturday a man named Jolly was baptized, and yes that is his first name, I was/am pretty excited. I have a lot still to complete my circle of friends, but that's a start, I have a feeling Terje is next, or at least TJ. That might be easier.

On Sunday we will get our transfer announcements, we both requested to stay, I keep getting told I will train a new missionary, or I am buntis (pregnant... in missionary terms) I just hope my companion is not big and white, because the people here are afraid of me.. I am not sure they could handle two of me.

Also, I almost have my dumbbells made, it is hard to find cans here, but once they are done they will weigh about 45 lbs, and I have gotten week, I am not sure how well I will be able to use those things. Hopefully I stay here so I can use them more than 3 days.

Also again, I got an email from my beloved companion Elder Vail, and my good friend Nilo Prado was just baptized, he was supposed to get baptized before I left, but he needed to find a job because he was running out of money. So we prayed for him to find one, and he found it alright, and was scheduled  for the day and hour of his baptism to work, kind of a bittersweet answer to a prayer, maybe he needed a little more preparation to become a stronger member first, either way I am super excited :)

(Another) Also again, I will hopefully be able to send some pictures! Another missionary is using my card-reader, which I think means it is working now.

We had to wait a while to get computers so we have an appointment soon, so I gotta make like a... Well, I am going to just go to my appointment :) Love you, thanks for those who are emailing and writing, it means a whole lot to me :)

Love,

Elder Munk

August 23rd, 2011 Letter

Hello,
 
I am back to where I usually am everyweek not knowing where to start
ha, I am having a great time but a rough week at the same time. I
guess that is usually how things work out, it is never easy. I know
for myself that it is better for it too be difficult with ups and
downs, excitements and disappointments. We were supposed to have a lot
of baptisms this month, we had scheduled over twice as many as I have
experienced in a month and we were working hard and doing all we could
to have them ready but Murphy's law kicked in this week, and
everything that could go wrong did. Last week we had 53 investigators
at church, and thats quite a few. We had 12 baptismal dates that were
99.99% sure but not 100%... On Sunday we had 13 at church and our
baptismal dates dropped faster than the marines storming a beach
covered with machine gun fire. If that helps you imagine things, :) I
feel trying to put things in perspective in a way that makes you think
is good for you.
 
 
We had a little bit of time where we got down on ourselves waiting for
people to come to church, I have never prayed so hard before, we did
not really know exactly what to do, so we pulled out some hymn books
and sang, at first it lifted up our spirits a bit, than I requested
hymn # 26. Which is my companion's favorite, his face lit up and he
said "dats a great one 'der" in his awesome Filipino accent. We
learned a little bit of what we felt Heavenly Father was trying to
teach us and we both grew closer to Him. Life is not necessarily easy,
but you can make the best out of the not so best and always enjoy
life.
 
I have some great pictures from my area, including a big waterfall and
a couple others, but they are not loading, the computers here are not
the best, but I am making the best out of it haha and just writing...
:)
 
I think I had something that I really wanted to say but I forgot what
it was. Also, this cannot really be proven haha but I believe it to be
true, whenever I have a really rough day I look up and there is always
a shooting star, I think Heaven Father flicks a random ball of ice and
rock across the sky to help lift me up. On Sunday I was having a
particularly rough day, I looked up and I saw three within about 2
seconds and than I saw one other. Coincidence, think what you want. I
have not seen one yet on a great day, (well all days are great.. but
most days do not weigh down on you like that :) )
 
Also we were able to have 3 baptisms on Saturday, we are not allowed
to announce baptisms until after interviews but we do have interviews
later today, so I will keep you updated next week.
 
Also I will try to get you a picture of me and Elder Vail in our
custom made onsies, but thats on his camera.. we will see what we can
do :)
 
Love you(s), :)
 
Elder Munk
 

August 18th 2011 Letter

Hello! Time is short and little Elder Munk is pooped,

We had a rough couple of days that involved me being tired. I do not want to complain just explain a little bit and tell you what I have learned in the past couple of days.

Yesterday we went hiking up in the mountains, we brought extra clothes (but not pants or shoes) because we were not going home afterwards, we hiked up the mountains in church shoes on tracks that are not meant for people :) I had a thick layer of mud on my shoes in my shoes and up to my knees on my pants. It was a ton of fun! (Pictures next week) We taught quite a few lessons but than we had to come off the mountain to catch a ride to Narra for a meeting with our Zone Leaders. We got there early but the latest we could get there because we caught the last shuttle. We were fasting that day, and it was supposed to be the whole zone to invite the spirit for our zone conference. We figured out that no one else was fasting when we got there and they were all eating. That kind of gives it away. They decided to do half a fast because we were going to play basketball later, which we did, the half fast turned into a Elder Oliverio and I fast where everyone else ate before and after basketball and in the morning. At first I was frustrated a little bit, because we had used a bit of physical exertion yesterday and the people who had food were complaining about being hungry still. I was about ready unleash the goat living outside their apartment on them, after covering them in grass. Or some kind of goat hormones. Anyways, sorry I had to get that off my chest, (the zone leaders do have a goat and a rabbit.. I do not know how or why but they do). I realized that when I am frustrated that nothing good really happens, so I decided to make the best of my day and everything went better after that. I had no more urges to turn their goat against them. I never think of myself as better than other people, I usually see the weaknesses in myself a lot easier than in others, and I love all the missionaries in my zone. :)

There is a crazy lady skyping in here, I am not sure who she is talking to but she keeps expressing her love to someone in awkward ways. But thats all I am going to say about that.

I am excited for Chase Baker and Cody Staker :) They are both awesome and I wish them the best.

I am really tired right now, so usually I do not think my emails are quite this bad, so I will try to refocus for a quick second and talk about something good. In Tumarbong we had the very first sacrament meeting up in the mountains at a members home, 54 people attended 37 of them being nonmembers. We have been given a blessing in this area far beyond what we feel we deserve as servants of Jesus Christ, but I cannot really do much else than be thankful and work as hard as I am able. I sometimes feel like I have a bit of weight on my shoulders but when I go out and work and forget about myself it lightens and I am able to be successful. I love the people here and I love this work, I promise my next email will be better and I will be more positive too, I love you all and am grateful for your friendship.

Elder Munk

P.S. Idea: invite people over and have a write Elder Munk party! :) Before November..!

August 8th, 2011 Letter

Herro :)

I am not quite sure where to start, this week for some reason seemed to be missing something, we taught a whole lot of lessons, the spirit was strong in the lessons also, and we received a very great blessing which I will describe in a bit. But there is something that was missing.. I still do not really know what it is. Do you ever get that feeling that something is missing? Anyways, (I love you Devin) I will let you know if I figure it out.

I will start with the most interesting part of my week, and with one other experience that will make you get up and dance around the room, well at least I might have danced a little bit, well here we go:

Alrighty, on Saturday we were supposed to have a baptism, there were two child of record baptisms (children of members :) ) and one convert named Florina. Florina never made it, and no member of the branch presidency came. We were confused for a long time what to do, but we got permission to get started and have one of the adult leaders preside at the meeting. The branch president is out of action because he cannot walk, the first councilor was 3 hours away taking his kid to the hospital, and the second councilor is mad at the first councilor and did not come because he thought the first councilor was coming. So we had a little bit of a laugh, but everything went through and all ended well. Florina's kid Florence was sick so she was baptized on Sunday. We got done with Sacrament meeting and went outside, there was a man with a fork threatening members of the church, there is one member here who reminds me of Brother Litchfield, he walked up close to the guy and he backed off a bit, than they closed the gate (the church has a fence all the way around) and the police came and took the crazy man with a fork away. I met the crazy man a few days ago and shook his hand, he seemed a little bit uneasy and entered his house, I am not quite sure exactly what his problem was, but I am pretty sure he had nothing against me. But we decided to be careful when going near his house. :) So we will be safe (I promise Mommy).

Also this is the part worth dancing for, there is an area about 20 minutes (bus ride) away from our apartment, there are a lot of families interested in the gospel and even though their Tagalog is not great they are able to understand simple teachings of the gospel. Yesterday we got permission to start having sacrament meeting at a members home where they live. Because they cannot afford to come to church, they work hard and are getting taken advantage of making rainmakers which they get paid 50 cents to make, and get sold for $20. It takes a long time to make them also. Through having the sacrament brought to them they will be able to further progress and grow closer to Heavenly Father, without it I believe they would slowly fall further from the truth. They are a very good group of people and I believe in the next 10-15 years they will have a chapel in a more accessible area. Many of them live up in the mountains which also makes me excited, because we will be able to go up into the mga bundok and not have to worry as much about retention or having members fall away and go inactive because of the distance to the church. Within the next few months a few will be able to be baptized and it will pave the way for what will happen in the future.

I really love it here, my Mommy asked me in an email how my adjusting was going, from a densely populated city to the mountains, I love it!!! Ha :) It is so great here, the only thing I miss is having a store nearby with variety, because they only sell things here that Filipinos want, and I am becoming a Filipino, but at the same time they deep fry everything, and almost nothing they eat here is really healthy, except seaweed, which is actually not too bad it is hard to eat in large quantities. I figured that out after I was made fun of for how I was eating it, so I stuffed my mouth full and started chewing, it took a little while but I downed it. :) I would like to let you all know that I lub you, sometimes they have trouble saying F and V sometimes I mess them up too.. :)

Lub you!

Elder Munk

P.S. We have a pet dog named Borge. And I need a haircut.

Florido Family Baptism

August 1st, 2011 letter:

Hello everyone :)
 
I am not really sure where to start, I love this area, I love the
members and the investigators, this one of the most beautiful areas in
the Manila mission, and I love it! Elder Munk currently has 0 pictures
that he has taken here, but  will hopefully have some to send soon. I
do however have the pictures (one picture) from the Florido baptism.
 
Elder Oliverio is my new companion, he is pretty knew, this is his
second transfer, and he is a stud. He works so hard and really knows
why he is out here. And he has set high expectations for himself, and
for his companion, which is Elder Munk. We worked hard these last few
days and even are working through a good part of our P-days because
thats the best thing that we can do. Most of our investigators do not
get home until around 4. And almost everyone is asleep or at least
unwilling to open their doors after 8pm, so we could use as many
4-8pm's as possible. :) The area has done alright in the past here,
but in the last few days we were really blessed. We are in a branch
that usually has about 90-120 that attend. There is a new church
building in our area and it is really nice, but pretty small. On
Sunday we were blessed to have 20 investigators at church, which
before yesterday I did not know that was possible, all of them expect
for 1 want to be taught, about 16 of them are investigators we have
taught before and 2 were new, with one who does not want to be taught
by the missionaries. We texted in our results for the week and our
zone leaders called and told us to be honest when putting in our
results for the number of people at church, Elder Oliverio just
laughed, and was joking about it for the rest of the night. The
difference we have found in the success we have had is in the members
in the branch, they are all willing to help out, by giving referrals
and fellowshipping, the branch is so great.
 
Yesterday we took a bus ride to get to some investigators, they live a
ways away and cannot afford to come to church, but kids ride free with
adults on the buses and shuttles so their kids were able to come to
church on Sunday. We were teaching them and I was speaking and
descibed Faith, and why it is an important attribute to me, than asked
them why it was important to them. They just stared at me and said
what did you say? I was like nooooo! I thought I spoke good Tagalog, I
was a little bit bummed and looked at my companion and gave him the
"alright you take it from here" face. He laughed and took it, I
noticed he spoke very slowly and used very basic simple words. I
eventually figured out this group of people did not speak Tagalog very
well, they are native to Palawan and speak.. you guessed it! Palawan,
oh man, I felt a lot better after that haha. We are trying to get
approved having sacrament meeting over there, at a members home, he is
part of the branch presidency, so hopefully we will be able to get
that going in the next few weeks, because these people will not be
able to afford to go to church, not even monthly. But they are humble
and willing to learn.
 
Life is going super well, the beaches here are probably the biggest
temptation for a missionary haha, I admit I would love to go swimming,
but of course I will not. I will send some pictures soon, once I take
some :) I can only really do that on P-day so I will see what I can do
:)
 
Love you all!  And Trevor is a stud.
 
Elder Munk

July Letters

July 27th, 2011 letter:

Hello!

I have just a couple of things to update you on for this week, they are some huge changes if you ask Elder Munk, some very good things happened, as well as things that are just things :) but either way they happened. :)

I am going to start out with my favorite thing that has happened so far on my mission. That was on saturday night at about 8pm. Ruben and Helen Florido were baptized. I do not mean to be hopeless for the rest of my mission, but I believe they are going to be the most active and strongest members in the church that I will have been able to help accept Jesus Christ fully as their Savior, Ruben often says, "hindi ko kayo tinanggap, tinanggap ko si JesuKristo." I have grown such a strong love for them and their 3 children. Whenever I am with them sharing the gospel I feel like I am at home, I feel like everything is going perfect and a renewed sense of hope and strength. We went to them last night to tell them I will be transfering, and I do not mean to say that my family is less important, but I really felt like when I said bye to them I was leaving home again. It was a bit of a bittersweet feeling.

I received my transfer announcement on Monday, when Elder Smith said where I as going I thought he was joking with me, because there is only one area there that they send white people, and that was the zone leaders area. There have been problems in the past I guess in this area due to different religious groups and rebel armies, I as told this morning that there has never been a white missionary from our church assigned here for those reasons. Things changed I guess, it feels safer here than my last area, and everyone here is really nice but they are really shy for the most part. I am in the area that I wanted to go to from the time I left the MTC, but I was told it would not happen. I have the chance to be here in Palawan, in the Narra area, more specifically in Quezon, I went from the highest densely populated city in the world to a bunch of trees and mountains. So far I really love it here, the closest missionaries are over a 1.5 hour drive away. I took a 1 hour flight and a 4 hour drive to my area, with a sick screaming child and a chicken (who had his noisy moments also).

I really love this work, galing sa mga karanasan ko, wala ibang gawa ganito. It really is the happiest things in the world.

I love you, keep up the good work, especially you Devin, ;) Love you,

Elder Munk

 

 

July 18th, 2011

 

Hello Everyone,

 

I am excited about something in particular that probably will not happen, but I am still excited. A new area is opening up on a small island next to Palawan. They will be sending a few missionaries there to open it up. We will know soon who is going there, but I think that would be so awesome, but I will go where the Lord tells me to go. That island in inhabited by Zebras and Giraffes, which are definitely not native.. but they are still here ha.

 

This will likely be my last P-day in my first area, we spent most of our day cleaning the apartment, at first I felt like I was getting the short end, because I will probably be moving in 9 days to a new very dirty apartment. I never really felt that I was getting taken advantage of at all, and I never felt anything bad, just something I thought about. Once I started scrubbing and working I realized it was really easy and almost relaxing compared to everything else that we do. I have been there 7 months and the walls have not been cleaned yet, I am guessing it has been about 2-3 years since they were cleaned last. Once we finished the spirit had a stronger influence in our apartment. I usually like a being a little bit unorganized and messy because I feel like I am more at home (sorry Mom :) Its only my room that is dirty... My Mom runs a tight ship outside of my room :) ). But there was a difference in the apartment other than it being clean, something that's hard to describe. Walang maduming bagay... :)

 

I have learned a lot this week, Daddy sent me an email to help prepare me for future tasks as a missionary, and I still have to do a lot more to finish my studying, but I find something inspiring that everything my Dad says is able to be cross-referenced with the teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, Daddy knows his stuff :)

 

I have also learned a bit of humility and am getting better at putting other things (especially people) before myself. Elder Vail and I started from scratch in our area in terms of finding new investigators and helping the progress. We have worked hard (I can count the times we have had time for dinner on 1 hand.. in 6 weeks haha) the spirit has been guiding us and leading us to find people who have been prepared to not only listen but accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I came to realize most of them will be baptized after I leave the area. At first I realized by requirements to be baptized it could happen before I leave, but speeding them up to be baptized just so I could be here is not what the spirit would tell me to do. I am learning to do the best I can always and putting the needs of others as the most important thing. Not making myself looks like a great missionary by sending in big numbers. When you put people's needs first your needs will be met and you will be blessed even if others are not aware of it. 

 

Life is so great! Nowhere better than the Philippines :) At least for me right now. I love the people here and serving the Lord. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed and almost incapable of doing things, but God provides a way every time. All you need to do it your best, God makes up the rest! 

 

Love,

 

Elder Munk

 

 

 July 13th letter:

 

Hello Everyone :)

 

This has been a pretty good week, I have learned a lot and had some pretty interesting experiences.

 

First we can start with some things that I learned from the week than I will tell some quick stories that are a little bit funny.

 

We were expecting a lot of people to come to church on Sunday, we had 12 last week and were hoping to have 15 come this week. We also had one of our investigators baptized on Saturday and was going to be confirmed. We went to pick up an investigator to bring him to church, we waited at his house for a while and he never showed up so we went to church, we get there late and were a bit stressed out because we should have missed our investigators confirmation. We got there and sat down and realized that our investigator/recent convert was not at church. We were like "ohhhh nooo!" He and his family showed up later and we got everything taken care of. We had a total of 6 investigators at church and were bummed that most of them did not come to church. I have had a couple days that were rough but I had a mabigat na pakiramdam and I was just feeling a bit sad. I have let those feelings get me down in the past and they can make days pretty bad. I resolved in myself that there could be no good coming from feeling bad and I decided to participate in church a bit more and just work through the day going nonstop. And my mood shot through the roof! Everything got better and I was super happy. Sometimes it gets difficult working so hard all week and have things go bad but there is no reason to get down. When you are happy you get things done and can improve working that you will see paying off in the long run, but if you get down on yourself your work goes down too, its a vicious cycle. At some points in my mission I would have been very happy to get 6 people at church and that is a good number, but there are some special circumstances, so I am still very grateful for those who did come to church :)

 

Side note, I met a man wearing a Washington Huskies Jersey, #23, it was pretty astigg.

 

(Mom, do not worry I am safe) Story time! Elder Vail and I were walking down the road and this man called us to the side of the road, we had seen him before and knew he was not mentally stable. He wanted a pamphlet and Elder Vail hesitated a second than opened his bag, Elder Vail started writing something in his planner and I talked to the man for a second. He told me that we had a war, and pulled out a handgun. I did not feel any fear or anything like that but he put it away before Elder Vail looked up so we handed him the pamphlet and walked off. I told Elder Vail he had a gun, and it could have been fake, but it looked pretty real, and he flipped it around a bit, while maintaining eye contact with me. I was pretty impressed with his gun flipping skills. Elder Vail was like, wait.. what?! I laughed a bit and just said well lets get to our appointment.

 

Also, there is a man named High-May, James in Hebrew as I am told. He is about 60 years old, quite large and mentally handicapped. He basically lives outside of the bakery by our house. He points at all the men and says kaaway ko! And at all the woman and says Buntis siya! Ginawa ko! Thats not exacly the cleanest thing to say so you can translate it if you want. Anyways, he picked a fight with an old man earlier today and they were standing on different sides of the street throwing rocks at each other. The old man had a stick and could only throw them half way, and High-may hit him a couple times. The old man could barely walk on his own and tried to hit High-may with his stick but could not catch him. A man gave them each 5 pescos to stop fighting, as High-may walked off he got one last shot in than they parted ways. Oh goodness, High-may is a bit of a punk.. But we love him :)

 

I will have some more good stories next time, just you wait!

 

Elder Munk

 

July 4th letter:

 

Hi,

 

This week has been really great and we were blessed with opportunities, one of them being a very great opportunity. We taught a lesson with the first person I ever baptized, Nanay Maria, to follow up with her and see how she was doing. We stepped out of her house and walked down the street. We walked by a group of people and took no huge thought about talking to them, we believe in sharing the gospel with everyone but if you talk to everyone you see on the side of the road you will never get to your appointments. One of the brothers in the group said, "hey! Walking Religion Iyan!" Elder Vail started turning around, he later described it as almost involuntary, and he found himself talking to this man before he really realized what was going on. We told him we wanted to share a message with him about Jesus Christ and he invited us into his home, he started opening the door and the people inside said no and shut the door before we could say, "huwag na!" So we said we could go over to a members home just about 5 doors away and share with him real quick. He accepted our invitation and we went back to Nanay Maria. The first thing she said to this young man was "You are going to get baptized and become a member!" We told him we were just going to share first and ask him to pray about our message and after he received an answer to his prayers he could choose to continue or stop, we were not going to force him into anything. Because he is not obligated to us, only to our Father in heaven. We seemed understanding about Nanay Maria's rush and listened to our message. A couple days later we taught him again and shared about Joseph Smith, and told him if he prayed with faith and really wanted to know for himself that Joseph Smith was called of God to be the first prophet in our panahon (time). We brought him to the temple the next day, as part of a temple tour where the Sister missionaries taught about the importance of the temple. Yesterday he came to church, which never happens the week we start teaching people. We taught him later in the day and followed up on his prayers, we questioned him fairly hard as to remove all doubt as where his feelings came from. He said I know Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, and I know that the Holy Ghost testified to me personally.

 

Heavenly Father puts others in our path that we are supposed to help and we have changes everyday to help others, even in things that seem small and insignificant can be a big factor in other people's lives. Telling someone they look good, (I told Devin about 10 minutes ago ;) ) or something as big as sharing the full gospel of Jesus Christ with them. All are ways we show our love to those around us. What else would our Father in heaven have us do? Might as well do everything we can, "di ba?!" :)

 

I love you all! Especially Devin, and of course the rest of my family, Trevor keep up the instrument playing, you are a stud too. :)

 

Elder Munk

June Letters

 

 Four letters that Elder Munk wrote during the month of June.

 

 

 June 27th letter:

 

Today was a good week. Sometimes you have to go through a little bit of change that requires faith and trust in God, and in the end everything works out for the better. President Howard is going home, on Thursday I saw him at our Zone Conference and that will probably be the last time until I get home. He gave all the missionaries a blessing, and he expressed that the Lord has really high expectations for me. Along with a lot of blessings. He says he is going to try to make it to all of the homecomings of the missionaries who live in the States. So I am hoping that he will be able to make it. At the rate that time is flying it will not be very long, maybe 2 months. Time is flying, its weird to think that Elder Ward was my apartment mate for 6 weeks and he has already been gone for two weeks. It is in a way kind of a hard situation. Because you want to live your mission to the fullest and work every second of everyday and just "house it" (in the terms of Elder Staples). When you work so hard that you are trying to squeeze in as much as you can time escapes from you. But of course I am not going to slow down, but I am still hoping time will slow down.

 

Also this transfer is my first transfer without Elder Taylor, he was my zone leader for the first halos 6 months and I had the chance to work with him on Wed, he is a teaching assistant who goes to each area and works with everyone and tries to help them teach better. Elder Vail worked with Elder Perez, a Filipino who lives in Australia, who used to live in the Philippines Manila mission boundaries. Elder Taylor and I got the schedule of appointments  for the day and Elder Vail used the ward list to find investigators and less active members. Elder Taylor and I stopped at 10 places and taught 1 lessons, everyone else said they were busy. We gave a baptismal date at that lesson which was accepted. Than we took off to try to get some appointments, because 1 in a day is not so good, we ended up teaching 9 lessons which were good, except for one lesson which was kind of average. The most lessons I had taught in a day before that was 6, so we were pretty excited, we celebrated by getting pizza, it was expensive, but I wanted to treat Elder Taylor for all he did for me.

 

Elder Vail and I had a strong spiritual experience last night. We went to go contact a referral that was given to us by the Zone Leaders, we got there and the man was busy and told us to come back later. Elder Vail turned to me and said "there is someone here we need to talk to." I said I felt the same that the spirit was confirming what he has felt. I gave a quick word of encouragement telling Elder Vail that if the spirit told us this we better not mess up. We talked to about 30 people on the street and found ourselves talking to someone who was not interested at all, but it turns out his wife who was peeking through the door was interested. We go in and share a little bit, the spirit guided us to talk to them about their previous experiences with missionaries. Turns out they used to live in Makati, they just barely moved into our area and had been taught by the sister missionaries before. The daughter who was quiet and seemed pretty shy at first started talking. She told us "Naniniwala ako sa simbahan po ninyo at alam ko na ang totoong propeta si Joseph Smith." She shared a little bit more about her testimony and we figured out their concern right away, the Tatay and Tito (Dad and Uncle) were not really that accepting to change, especially in religion, so they were counciled to wait until the daughter was 18, she is currently 17 but her birthday is in April so still a ways off. Elder Vail and I have found we have a strong ability to share with people who do not want to listen, we are going back tomorrow and will share again and do all we can for that family, hopefully we will be able to make things work out :)

 

I figured out some missionaries have this fire in them, than I realized I do just like I did when I first got here. Every house I go to, every lesson I get excited and have a strong hope that everyone I teach will accept the message and be baptized. Of course that does not happen, but I still feel like it will and think it will with every single person that I teach. That hope is important in life, also not getting discouraged when things get hard, because life is hard, thats just life. My life is pretty easy in respect to most other people, but there is an importance of having love and faith to help get you through everything. I really love you all and wish the very best for all of you :)

 

Elder Munk

 

June 20th letter:

 

Hello :)

 

This week was an interesting week, it was transfer week, which means work usually goes down. Elder Vail and I have been continuing to work hard. The whole zone had a big drop in work in terms of numbers that we report every week, a couple of the areas had reasonable excuses due to sickness. Elder Vail and I have always had a good work ethic and  try our best but we are always learning ways to work smarter and use our time 100% effectively. This week we taught more lessons than we have before and had a really successful week even though we had a big portion of one of our days going to get other things done for some of our investigators. We have a great companionship and are really helping each other to improve in every aspect of life, spiritually, mentally and physically. We are having such an awesome time.

 

I think I will start from my favorite experience of the week. It starts off a little bit bad but it ends very well, and is a good example, I think of following the example of Jesus Christ to make someones life better. Grace Ann is the cutest girl in the Philippines, she is 8 years old. Her brother is a member and her grandparents, but her parents are not, and we just barely started teaching her. We taught her the first time and she was super excited and loved church (she went once) we taught her and she was like "I love church po! I want to get baptized po!" And we were super excited, so we come back the very next day to share with her again. Her eyes are mustardy yellow (the white of her eyes, not the pupil  ) She get hepatitis and was not feeling to well. We talked to her grandma and decided to come back to see how she was doing in a couple days, We walked up to the front door of her house and not expecting to be able to talk to her, the door opens and she was screaming, her mother, aunt and Grandma were all yelling at her. Her mother was even smacking the poor girl with a hanger. We walked in and our first thoughts were "ohhh no you don't!" But we discussed what we were going to do first, the first step was we politely got everyone to leave except us and Grandma. We figured out what was going wrong and the problem was she was afraid to take her medicine, because it was too big for her to swallow. We talked to her and got her to calm down, every once and a while we asked her if she  could take her medicine, she said no the first few times so we did not push, because we did not want her to get scared again. Elder Vail and I gave her a blessing that she would get better and be able to do what the Doctors told her to do. We had her brother Marlo go and get some bananas to put the medicine in so she could try to swallow it. She ate a little banana and her stomach started hurting so we waited about 10 minutes until she was ready to swallow the mushed banana with the medicine in it. She swallowed it and followed it with a big gulp of pineapple juice then she laid down for a bit. We shared with them about the power of the priesthood and we snuck patience in there a little bit. We closed with a prayer and when we left little Grace Ann was smiling and laughing a bit. We went to talk to her mom, the doctors said she was going to be confined in the hospital for who knows how long. We prayed for her that night and came back the next day, she was still at the house, she was not running around but she had a huge smile on her face, she brightfully told us she could take the medicine now and we are going to go back and see how she is doing tomorrow. It is often said that patience is a virtue, but more importantly it is a Christlike Attribute, and it may be a coincidence, but so is virtue. :)

 

You cannot replace love with anything else in this world, whether it is being given or received, no matter how hard you try.

 

Love,

 

Elder Munk

 

June 15th letter

Well Hello everyone!

 

This week was a little bit crazy in a good way. Where to begin..? Well I will start with a story, followed by a story, followed by one more story, and than I will type something else.

 

Story number 1, Monday 7:43 am Transfer Announcement Day:

Elder Vail and I came to the Donada Chapel early so we could toss the frisbee around before we had our meeting. We had a great time and got a little bit sweaty. Elder Vail wanted to try to grab the rim he missed, so I was a punk and did it fairly easily. He did not get discouraged but kept trying till he got it. Than Elder Munk, continuing in his "one-upping" of Elder Vail jumped up and grabbed the rim without running up and I got my reward. My CTR ring got caught on the rim, and when I got back down to the ground I looked at my finger and noticed my ring was gone.. It took me a second to realized it was still on my finger, but it was not on the outside, it was on the inside, so I laughed for a second, and Elder Vail sprayed me down with some alcohol to avoid getting an infection. The moral of the story is... Well you can figure it out and email me your answers.

 

Story Number 2 Monday 9:27 Transfer Announcements Mismo:

Elder Taylor said to me "Elder Munk! You will be transfered to the Dasma Zone! Where you will become a Senior!" I was excited but at the same time sad to leave Elder Vail, and to put it simply to leave when a whole lot of good things were starting to happen. So we went to Wendy's to celebrate our time together and get a frosty + a super American burger. I felt a strong resolve to do as much as possible before I left, scouts taught me to leave a campsite better than you found it, and Manila 2nd ward is my campsite. So we went out, and right before our first lesson we got a call from the Zone Leaders, and they said "Elder Munk! You are staying! Keep up the good work" (Elder Taylor has a loud voice sometimes, but he is always happy and smiling, I love that man). So Elder Munk is staying in his first area, for at least the first 7 months in the Philippines. And I love it here, even though Dasma has forests and swamps and all kinds of fresh air, we are going to in Elder Munk's terms well I guess in general missionary terms, tear it up :)

 

Story Number 3: Last night was a great night, I want to tell you about the Florido family. They live on Old Panederos in Santa Ana Manila. We got there and the Mom was not there so we went to talk to people near by until she got home. (Background info, one week ago I left them a DVD with 6 or so Church videos on it, including the Joseph Smith movie) Elder Vail shared with some old folks while I talked to kids about how smoking gives you bad health, and could prevent you from getting super handsome. We played around with the kids for a bit then ran back, (part of the story is exempt for content, :) Elder Vail may have accidently hurt himself) We got to their house and they were watching the Joseph Smith video, we finished with them than watch "Only a Stonecutter" it was awesome! Only 14 minutes long, but it led into a good discussion. The family started out by saying that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is sacred, they have watched the different movies every single night. The mom is a bit of a sassy pants and she made it seem like watching everynight, but then in clear Tagalog she said "Biro lang huh!" or that she was just joking, she felt the same way as her husband. We shared about Baptism because the spirit said now is the time. We gave there family a baptismal date. And the Tatay (Dad) said yes! The Mom says she wants to, and she hopes she will be ready. We are giving them time and will be helping them the whole way. Oh man life is so great, those stories are lined up from the most average to the very best.

 

Also, I got a letter from Janette Perry, the United States Postal Service completley tore the letter in like 5 places, but they were polite enough to put it in a fresh new US envelope, it was really big too. It took me a while to figure out where it was coming from but I lined all the sides up and saw Nerf Gun, I appreciate the letter, and will try to figure the rest out later once I go back home :)

 

 I did not bring my camera, but I have a couple of pictures to send next week. :)

 

Also Pono! Let me know when you get your mission call! It should be within a month right? I am excited to know where you will be serving.

 

Kristena Hall! I am excited you got your call to Romania! I cannot spell the name of the mission.. But it is still awesome!

 

Nothing is better than being in the service of God, if you ask the opinion of me. Elder Munk certifies this message. His certification only means anything if you have trust in him, otherwise you just have to figure out for yourself.

 

Love,

 

Elder Munk

June 7th letter

Hello everyone! I do not have a ton of time left so we will see what we can do here. First off Iove you all, and appreciate the emails and the letters I have been receiving, sorry that I am not better at writing back, time is always really limited and I am doing my best to write back.

 

I have a couple of pictures from our adventures at ocean park, it was a pretty fun day, I not have more pictures on my camera of fish than I do of people, but I will work on that a bit, so hopefully I can send you some pictures of things that live above water.

 

I will know on Monday where I will be transfering or if I will be staying in my area for one more transfer, some missionaries that came with me to the Philippines in my "batch" have in their third area already, 2 of us are still in our first area. I am kind of not sure what will happen, usually.. cough* information gets leaked out before we are supposed to get out transfer announcements but they are keeping it especially tight right now. There has been some interesting stuff going on, we will just leave it at that, :) :( little bit of each. Oh man! The song "I want to go home" just came on, that is kind of funny, I do not want to go home, thats a little bit balik-dad.

 

We have made some really good progress with our investigators this week, and we are hoping for some baptisms soon, it has been a while since I have sent any pictures like that home, part of it was because my camera was gone, but we are building up our area and lots of progress is being made.

 

The area I live in is about a ten minute drive from the most densly populated area in the whole world, I thought that was pretty cool, my area is right behind it, one ward boundary has almost 1 million people in it, thats in an area a lot smaller than Redmond, I think my area has about 700,000 and it is pretty small too.

 

Funny story, me and ElderVail were trying to find someone house, and we were walking down a street and we look to our right and made eye contact with a few.. well prostitutes, and we were like ohhh no! Than we realized the whole street we were on was filled with dance clubs.. And one of the girls started following us, luckily being giants among Filipinos and especially Filipinas our walking pace is way faster than she could go, especially in high heels. So we safely made it out of harms way. We also discovered the 'Red-Light District' in our area. It was a pretty new experience, but I guess you can learn from every experience, we are not going back there. :)

 

Also we almost got hit by a big storm, but it missed us by a bit, to put things in perspective. From what I remember hearing, I could be wrong, Seattle gets about 44 inches of rain per year, which is quite a bit, it is fairly wet there. The area north of here got over 200 inches.. That was not in a  year, that was last week, to be more specific, that was in one day. Thats getting close to 20 feet of rain. The storm was reported being capable of dumping 50 feet of water, but it went through pretty quickly. That is a lot of water. We got the warning of it coming and worked until our curfew, with thoughts of wet in the back of our minds, but nothing ended up coming our way.

 

Everything is going well, if you do not mind sending some pictures too me I would not mind, I want to be able to show my good friends to my new good friends :) It would be a good BRT opportunity in some cases, and I brag about my little brother being ripped, so I need something to back it up :)

 

Love you,

 

Elder Munk