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
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