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

 My Zone

Hello Everyone!

This last week has been quite alright, there are always ups and downs, but I personally like roller-coasters. There are trends in the Philippines, everyday has its theme, and everyone seems to be doing the same things everyday. The week started out kind of rough, and the first day was make fun of Elder Munk's Tagalog day, which is quite a fun theme if you are already having a hard day. But it did not really effect me too much, I just tried to take it in stride and study better, and I have noticed when I am having a rough day I mumble a little bit (well more than I normally do) so that was probably what the actually problem was, but oh well :)

Day two's theme was mice climbing over my feet during lessons, it happened quite a few times actually, I do not mind them all that much but when you are trying to bear your testimony and something runs over your foot sometimes your mind gets turned to other things like not getting rabies :) I think I have some help in teaching though, because I always asked a question before the mouse came, and the investigators gave really long answers that let my mind get back from mouse to Ebanghelyo.

Day three was just not good people day. I will just share what happened on one street in a 5 minute period, and you can try to imagine the rest of the day. We first met a man who I firmly believe is the only Atheist in the Philippines, I believe in respecting others beliefs, but holy cow, I knew this guy would drive me crazy, so I talked to his very Christian friend and let Elder Vail speak with him, I listened to what he was saying and he was just criticizing us and was very anti-Christ, in my opinion there is something more worth living for than dying. So we start walking away and this kid about 18 years old with all his friends exposes himself to me and makes a pretty big public show about it, I was like ohhh no! I just laughed and I will admit I may have been hoping that Rudy (our 60 year old ward missionary) would go take him out. But it did not really happen.

Day 4 I believe was Mommy's birthday, I hope it was a wonderful one :) So the theme was loving my Mom and eating ice cream. It was a good day.

Day 5

Day 6..

Well I forgot the themes to those days, but I will share with you a little bit of my thoughts about following the spirit, or those good feelings you get inside that help you choose what is the very best for you in your life. A strong sense of direction that comes from our Father in Heaven. And also my thoughts about knowing the difference between that, and your own emotions. And I will use an experience from my very own life, Yesterday. :) I have been working hard and having success in my area, everything is going really well and we have a lot of strong potential. Of course I want to be here to see all of that being fulfilled I want to be here for the many baptisms that could potentially happen. And I found myself praying asking if I could stay, and what I should email my mission President so he would keep me in this area. And more specifically with Elder Vail for one more transfer, because I do not want to deal with a terrible companion, and staying with Elder Vail is a pretty safe bet in avoiding that from happening. That was my own emotion, that was what I <--- Elder Munk, wanted. Heavenly Father may have a different plan for me, and he definitely had something to teach me that night. I felt restrained while I was praying. And I felt a strong prompting that kind of slapped m in the face, I heard clear words say, okay you have said what you want, do you care what your Heavenly Father wants for you. And my first thought was 'oh know, do not send me into the office!' That is like having your parents put you into the timeout corner. I felt peace that I was not going there, which made me happy. Than I asked Heavenly Father, "What do you want for me?" And it was a little bit contrary to my emotions, to my kagustuhan, he did not tell me I was leaving, but he told me to figure out the benefits of both, and discuss those with my President, and the best thing will happen. A lot of the time people want things that they see benefit in, especially immediately. A lot of the time our promptings like this are encouraged by the spirit also, because God wants us to be happy, but he knows the true way to achieve that, we do not. That is why you can see certain people who do not take the easy way, they take harder paths that at first seem to lead to nothing, but they are the happiest people I know, they follow the Spirit. So if I can leave a challenge with you for this week it would be, do not let your emotions control your life, let someone who knows have a little say in what happens, and soon once you realize it is better that way you will give him 100% control, you just have to be strong enough to do what he says. :)

I love it here, and I have a few pictures, I love you all and I really do hope the very best for all of you, especially my family, be good. :)

Love Elder Munk

Time to Sing and Dance!

Hello everyone :)

 

Okay, I will have to set a couple of rules before you read this email. First, after you read the second paragraph (the one after this one) you will have to sing and dance before you are permitted to go on. Second, if you really love me you will follow the rules and regulations. There is not a time limit to the amount of time you can dance, or a particular style in which you must dance, but try to get to bed on time, and not go too long without food.

 

This last week had a couple ups and downs, but the ups are always better, so we will focus on the ups. This week we gave a goal baptismal date to the Piedad family, and they accepted! We still have a lot to do, given that the Dad still does not feel like he needs to be baptized, but he went from hiding from the missionaries, to sleeping in every lesson, to staying awake without listening, to listening a little bit, to listening, to being active in the lessons, to smiling, and finally to accepting a baptismal date! (Start your dance here).

 

There are a few other things that happened this week but I feel like I would like to share my testimony, because that is why I am here, not cause my parents said they wanted me too, not for a woman, not for myself, but because I believe one hundred percent that this is the true Church of Jesus Christ of the earth, and I believe I can be an instrument in helping others come closer to Jesus Christ and our Father in Heaven. I am definitely not a perfect person, I as myself alone am not able to learn how to speak a language fluently in 7 months, 2 years in high school French got me less than the first day in the mission field, of course I am working harder with a purpose other than receiving a good grade, a purpose that means a lot more to me. Really the most important thing I have ever done in my life, and I have the wonderful opportunity to do this for two years. I know Heavenly Father expects a lot out of everyone, he has things for all of us to do everyday, whether it be of really high importance, or something simple, we have the chance to help our Heavenly Father answer the prayers of others, and we more often than we should ignore those feelings we get to help others because we are either lazy, busy, or scared to follow the promptings that we receive. There is nothing wrong with trying to help others, especially when it is something we feel prompted to do, if we do not, we are missing out on blessings, and more than that we could have been exactly what that person needed, and now they are without it. It could be something life changing for them, or it could be something that is of less importance, but we will never really know if we do not do anything. I also know that our prayers are answered in the scriptures, and by the Lord's living servants the Prophets and Apostles. There is always something close that can help us, or that we can use to help others near by. I know that Joseph Smith was called to be a Prophet, and the Lord restored his church on the earth through this Prophet and seer. Thomas S. Monson is the current Prophet on the earth and is receiving revelation always for the church and he has a responsibility for the whole world.  Every single person. The is nothing that the Lord cannot do, except that which is contrary to good, or to the free agency of man. He cannot make you change, turn you into the better person you wish you could be, but he most definitely can and is helping you. There is no point in dwelling on things of the past, learn from them and move on, revelation is based on knowledge, if you do your small part, which may be insignificant to the world, if it is the best that you are able to do Heavenly Father will fill in the rest, through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. And his part is way more than we are able to do, so do not be brought down by the trials and hardships of life, because first off life is good, second, it has potential to continually get better. I leave this in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

I have one more thing to mention real quick, never limit yourself, I have noticed that people see the average as others, and seem to be satisfied with just barely making the average. You are all capable of doing so much better. The average really is low, do not set your goals low, and even if your goals are high, do not let that be the limit shoot past it :)

 

Love, Elder Munk 

 

A New Perspective of the World

Hello po! Life is going really well, and I am loving my area, we are hoping to see a really big improvement in the area, we are working hard and seeing things happening. I will keep you updated with the people we are teaching, especially the Piedad family, because they are still my favorite. We are hoping to give them a baptismal date sometime this week, we need to wait for one of the girls to get better, because Tatay Piedad's focus is on his daughters health, which is a good thing. :)

 

At the store today and man randomly put 1000 pesos in Elder Vail's hand and said it was for us, he is not a member and does not know a ton about the church, he just felt like he should make a contribution, he does not live in our area but we will have other missionaries go to him and visit, hopefully his inspiration to help us out will lead him to where he is supposed to be in his life.

 

I will hopefully be sending some pictures home soon, I am not sure though, I have not really taken much in the last week or so, but maybe something exciting will happen when I have my camera with me. If not, I will send you a picture of me and my pikachu.

 

Brother Rudy Ibay our ward missionary has been working with us a lot, almost everyday and is a stud, he is a little bit old, weights 93 pounds and only has three teeth, but he has a powerful testimony and a drive to always work with us. He says he does because he thinks me and Elder Vail are awesome, I hope that is not the only thing, because the next missionaries could really benefit from him going out and helping with the work.

 

We taught a lesson a few days ago and there were 17 people who ended up coming in and joining us, it was really awesome. They could not come to church yesterday because there was a big party, which was basically all of Manila, all the Adults get drunk and the kids play in the street, and the old ladies play bingo. It was interesting, when Asians get drunk they turn bright red, and we ended up going through a gauntlet of drunk people, who were all pulling each others pants down and spanking each other... So that was what my weekend was like, I hope yours was just as lively. Some things you experience change your perception on the world. That was one of those things that changed my perception.

 

This is not for sure yet, but my Zone leader made it sound pretty sure that I will be transferring soon, because I have been in Pasay for a while, he says it is long enough, he has been in Pasay for 18 months of his mission, out of 21 so far. He loves it here, but he is hoping to go out and explore the rest of the world also. He also made it sound like I would become a Senior next transfer, which kind of made me nervous a bit, I like just being a little Jr, with no extra responsibilities, but I guess we will see what happens, if that's what I am called to do, Heavenly Father will provide a way for it to be accomplished. Nephi told me so :)

 

I love you all, hope everything is going almost as good for you as it is for me, but its impossible to be 100% unless you are Elder Galbraith or Elder Crandall, because they are studs, and have the same pagkakataon that I do, minus the spankin gauntlet, that probably does not happen in Canada, maybe in Brazil though..

 

Love you,

 

Elder Munk

May 4th Letter

I do not know exactly know where to start, but there is a lot of good stuff going on right now. Today was the transfer meeting and it was good to see a lot of familiar faces again, one of my roommates has been out on Palawan the whole time, so I saw him for the first time in 4 months, which was pretty awesome. Even though it did not seem that long it was good to see him.

 

I have been thinking, studying, and praying a lot the past 6 months, but I have seen some bigger changes in myself in the last few weeks. There is a family that I am teaching right now, I have mentioned them before, the Piedad family! Nanay (Mom) is a member, but the Tatay (you guessed it, Father) is not, and he does not want to have his children baptized until they are 18, because he wants them to be sure in their decision. 18 is still a long ways away for those 3 girls. I find myself on me knees a lot praying for them, and I had a thought come into my mind that I would serve a full 2 years here just for their family. Then I kind of thought about my thought , well that's a long time, 4 baptisms in 2 years is not a lot. But without hesitation I would do that for this family. I am still trying to get myself to the point where I could easily say that for anyone. And I am getting closer to that point where I would, even for people I have never met before, or who might be seen by the world as of less importance. When I have been studying in the scriptures I have learned a lot about love and teaching and realizing even more how those go hand in hand, if you love someone you will serve them, if you do not love someone enough to help with dishes, or to even smile at them you have some things you need to change in your life. From my recent studies in the scriptures I have noticed a remarkable similarity between Paul in the New Testament, and Joseph Smith. After focusing on their similarities I noticed their striking similarity to the way that my Dad writes, and the way that I think he thinks, but I am not quite a mind reader. If you read from his blog about Devin's accident and study the scriptures you will see it also. Maybe you need to know him as well as I do. Well anyways, this led me to different things and ways of thinking about teaching people, and realizing the differences and similarities between people, and which Prophets or teachings they will connect the best with. I am guessing my Dad connects best with Paul and Joseph Smith. Which is what I seem to be growing closer too. But you can tell me if I am wrong.

 

I have also noticed that sometimes life is really hard, and I have noticed that sometimes you just plow through the tough times with such happiness and enthusiasm that you do not even notice how hard something was until it was already over. Then you look back and say "Holy Cow! I actually did that!" Sometimes you need to slow down enough to realize how much Heavenly Father is actually helping you, and be more thankful for what he is doing for you, because it is probably a lot more than you are doing for yourself.

 

I had an exciting day today, last night I spent the night at the Zone Leaders apartment, they are awesome, we got some pizza and stayed up a little late... and Elder Taylor played the Ukulele and we all sang along (Taylor Swift). It was quite fun. We made it over to the meeting and I confirmed that my next housemate is Elder Ward, my MTC companion, I was so excited! This is going to be the best transfer ever! I hope :) I received some letters, some dating back to March 14th,  some were more recent, I think one was from April18th, I think they just send them whenever they get enough letters going to the Philippines from the US. I do not really know, but they take their time sometimes. And I am sorry if I neglect you a little bit in writing back, the past few transfers have been rough in terms of extra money, so I had to pick between eating and mailing. :) I ate.

 

I will try to do a little bit better at keeping you up to date with some of the people that I am teaching, and I will probably buy a new camera in the next few weeks, I do not have a ton of extra money, so I may beat anyone who comes near it with Elder Vail's Filipino fighting sticks. Joke lang!

 

Oh yes cannot forget this, I will be calling home on Sunday, I am going to be getting up early just for you and I am going to call sometime around 6-7 am my time, which means you should just all be home Saturday if that is alright with all of you. It will be in the early afternoon most likely, if we do not get to talk for long, or if something does not work I will try again on Sunday night, which will be Sunday morning for you, and hopefully everything will work alright. If not, I will be calling on Christmas, that is only like 8 months away, not even that far. :) I love all of you, some of you more than others. ;)

 

Love, Elder Munk