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