Memories of a Mission – Page 16 – "We will work for the glory of our Lord"

Zone activity in Magsaysay

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Today has been a very long day. We slept in the San Jose apartment last night and got eaten alive by mosquitos! First thing this morning we went and emailed. That is always good. I love hearing from my family. We also went grocery shopping for this week. We decided that we’re not going to drink any juice because we’re getting fat. We’re going to try it for a week and see what happens. The whole zone left at about 12:00 to go to the zone activity over by Magsaysay. We went out to a beach and played hand-ball. It’s like ultimate Frisbee but you use a football instead. It was great fun and the ocean was absolutely great! The only problem was that it was way too hot and my feet got sunburned really badly. It really hurt when I put shoes and socks back on. Hopefully they’ll be better tomorrow. We didn’t get back to our area until late because we worked too long on getting an MP3 CD made with a lot of songs on it. Elder Cox bought a MP3 CD, and VCD player yesterday. It is really nice. It’s actually only the size of a little Walkman CD player and so it’s really portable and should be great for using videos in our proselyting. The good news for today is that Nanay Tardio is back at home. She ended up losing the baby which is obviously hard, but she seems to be doing ok. We got to meet a lot more of the Tardio family today because the older children were there visiting from Sablayan.

Me standing in the ocean at Magsaysay where we had our zone activity.

Elder Cox and me standing in the ocean after the zone activity.

This is the view from the top of the jeepney in San Jose as we’re waiting to ride back to Calintaan. There were always a million trikes whizzing around.

Me sitting on top of the jeepney waiting to go back to Calintaan from San Jose. You can see how burned I got at the zone activity.

Adam27 October, 201426 October, 2014 Calintaan No Comments

Blessings

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

We spent all day today down in San Jose because we’re having a zone activity tomorrow morning. This morning right after we got up, Eva Tardio came by the house and told us that they had taken Nanay Tardio to the hospital because her blood pressure was low. I didn’t know but she is pregnant and they were afraid that she’d have a miscarriage. We actually went and visited her after we finished district meeting today. She didn’t look very good and they had her on a sugar IV. She told us that the baby was still there but there was still a chance of losing the baby. We gave her a blessing and Elder Cox was the voice. It was kind of strange because this morning we thought and felt that the baby was going to die for sure but as we were giving the blessing we really didn’t feel either way. We just gave her a blessing of comfort and then left. It was a neat experience.

Adam26 October, 201419 October, 2014 Calintaan No Comments

Got the maps

Monday, October 25, 2004

Today was a fairly ineffective day. We did manage to get the municipal to give us the maps of Calintaan so that we can copy it. We’ve gone in about five times and never been successful until today. We also tried to follow up on getting the birth certificate for Sis. Manzo but the lady that we talked to just decided that she didn’t want to come into work today and so we didn’t get to follow up with that. This afternoon we were supposed to watch “The Mountain of the Lord” with Pulidos and others today but it didn’t work out. We couldn’t get a VCD player to work. We had one that would read the disk but wouldn’t show a picture and another one that couldn’t read the disk but did show a picture. It was more than a little bit frustrating. We did get to have a good family home evening with the Pulidos, Tardios, Bro Romell and Sis Villoria.

Adam25 October, 201419 October, 2014 Calintaan No Comments

Unpredictable church meetings and piano

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Today was another crazy and unpredictable day out here in Calintaan. First we had church this morning. I taught the lesson in Priesthood meeting about sacrament and sacrament meeting. Then Elder Cox taught in Sunday school about the gathering of Israel. Then there was sacrament meeting . . . I played the piano and Elder Cox passed the sacrament. It got even better. The only speakers that we had were two youth speakers and then Pres. Isla. Of course the youth speakers didn’t talk for very long and Pres. was left with about 30 minutes to speak. This would have been okay except that he hadn’t prepared anything. He just shared one of the scriptures that I used in my lesson and then rambled for about ten minutes. He then just stopped speaking was going to let everybody out early. Elder Cox had to get up and speak off the top of his head. Basically it was just a missionary show today. Wow, we have a lot of work to do here. After church we went out to Conception to visit the referral that we have out there. We had a good discussion and felt the spirit with them. It was good. One more thing that happened in sacrament that made me feel bad. Lennie Tardio wanted to play the piano for two of the songs. Of course I let her. She’s only been playing for two months and really she’s quite good. The first song she did really well but when we sang “Come, Come Ye Saints” for the intermediate hymn she really had trouble. The congregation rushed like crazy and she couldn’t keep up. I felt so bad for her. She practices so hard but she gets nervous when she plays in front of people. She has great desires to learn and she really does well but she sometimes lacks confidence.

Adam24 October, 201419 October, 2014 Calintaan No Comments

Lightning lessons and struggling to understand the culture

Saturday, October 23, 2004

Today was a strange day. We had a total of four lessons today, more than I’ve ever had before, but I still feel like this was a fairly ineffective day. We tried a new way of finding today where we approached people as they were just sitting around and ask them if they had five minutes that they could listen to a message. We got to teach three lessons this way but I’m really not sure how effective it was. I kept having the thought go through my mind that we shouldn’t cast our pearl’s before swine. These people certainly aren’t “swine” in any way but I just felt weird about it. We also taught a second lesson to the Estoga family. It went okay and I did feel the spirit. I tried to extend a baptismal commitment to them but they didn’t accept it. Actually I got interrupted a couple of times by Bro. Pulido, who was helping us teach, and that made it hard. Maybe that was the spirit’s way of telling me that they weren’t ready yet. Next time I’ll be sure to ask before I just go off doing what my brain tells me to do. I guess I’m just feeling down about how wicked all the people here are. of course there are some really good people but the majority just sit around and are lazy, smoke and drink. Everybody here has something about God either on their trike or on their Jeep or on their house or something but they still don’t want to or are “too busy” to listen to a half-hour of a message about Him. Also the church itself is not well off. For example, the branch president here in Calintaan didn’t want to use the budget money for new Tagalog hymn books. He was saving 1500 pesos for the branch Christmas party. All that they think about here is food, rice, and when they get to drink more alcohol. The culture here is so far from gospel culture that it’s a little bit frustrating to work with people. Well enough of my raving. The church is still true and everybody still needs to have the gospel.

Adam23 October, 201419 October, 2014 Calintaan No Comments

Some photos

Thursday, October 22, 2004

Irene Pulido, Elder M Cox, Teaching Piano Lessons

Teaching piano lessons to Sis. Pulido

Arnesen and Cox in front of the Pulido's House

Me and Elder Cox in front of the Pulido’s house.

Sunset off the beach by our house.

We had some big spiders!

Adam22 October, 201419 October, 2014 Calintaan No Comments

Sorrow for a brother

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Tonight I had a really sad experience. We’ve been trying to follow up with Bro A. for a long time to see if he still has problems with the word of wisdom. He’s always been in the field harvesting and so we’ve been worried about him. Also he hasn’t come to church for two weeks because of the harvest. We got to his house at about 7:00 and his wife told us that he had just stepped out and that he’d be right back. We waited for about ten minutes and then we asked when he was coming back. They told us that he was afraid to come and see us because he’d been drinking. We were surprised and of course really sad. We asked them if they’d take us to him and sister obliged. She took us next door and there he was with two of his “friends” drinking and smoking. We went right in to see if we could get him to stop and to go home. We asked him for his cigarette and immediately destroyed it. We also took the alcohol bottle and put it far away. We tried really hard to get him to see that what he was doing was wrong. He was so drunk that he couldn’t feel any remorse and just tried to justify his sin. He was so far gone that he drank right in front of us while we were in the very act of telling him that he was wrong. Elder Cox told me that they knew that he had a testimony of the restoration and of the Book of Mormon. I feel so bad for him. He totally let Satan have the victory over him tonight. Both Elder Cox and I were just crushed afterwards. I also feel so bad for his wife, who is a member, and for his children. We’re going to go back and visit him again tomorrow and hopefully he’ll feel a lot of remorse and want to repent and start again to avoid alcohol and cigarettes.

Elder Cox in the waiting shed

Me in the waiting shed

Adam21 October, 201419 October, 2014 Calintaan No Comments

Lazy P-Day and a Long Walk

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Today was the laziest preparation day I”ve had yet. We do our shopping and email on Tuesday so there’s really not much to do on Wednesdays. I got some good studies in and read a lot of ensign articles. I also got to do a little bit of clean up at the apartment. It’s actually really clean and there’s not much to do other than upkeep. I swept the floor and did a little bit of organization in our study room. I also had time to sit down and write a good letter to A. I’ve missed the last couple of weeks because of transfers and zone activities and other such things. We also had the great opportunity to eat a whole loaf of banana bread today. It was good.

Today for work we went out an hour early, at four-o-clock, because of the time we used doing email yesterday. We went to the municipal to get a map because we are looking for land to build a chapel. They didn’t have one! Insanity. We also had a plan to watch “Mountain of the Lord” with Pulidos today but once we started setting up the power went off, like always. I guess it was better anyway because Bro was still out gappas-ing and it’s mostly for him to help him get excited about going to the temple. We had to walk back to Calintaan from Dagupan again today! I think that this is the fourth or fifth time that we’ve had to walk it in the one week that I’ve been here. It was okay though because we had a good half-moon and it was actually quite bright.

This is a map of the route we’d walk from Dagupan to Calintaan. I got very familiar with this road!

Adam20 October, 201419 October, 2014 Calintaan 1 Comment

5 month mark, pizza, and pants

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Today is my 5 month mark out on the mission. Time goes so fast. It really doesn’t seem like I’ve been out here in the Philippines for three months. We had district meeting this morning. Elder Cox taught a really good lesson about hope. He decided that we’ll focus on D&C 4 this transfer for our attributes lessons. We also had our skills lesson about using the scriptures better in our teaching. It’s great to be here where all the Elders are better than I am. I just bask in their spirit and it’s great. After our meeting we all went over to P and P’s and had some pizza. It was really good. The place is run by a really fat German guy and he cooks really well. The pizza was really good but it’s really expensive but that’s ok. I also got to email, pick up my first pair of Filipino pants, and get my hair cut today. The pants are really nice and also I got my hair cut shorter than I’ve ever had it before. I can’t even comb it over at all and parting it is a real trick. I decided to cut it because it just gets all messed up when we ride jeepny’s anyways and so I just gave up.

Adam19 October, 201413 October, 2014 Calintaan No Comments

Companion “issues”

Monday, October 18, 2004

I had a really good study today at lunch time. I finished reading Jesus the Christ and it was really good. It was talking about the second coming and how we need to be ready for it. I felt the spirit really strong and also felt a new sense of urgency to do this work. I was on a spiritual high after lunch. We also had a really spiritual lesson today with Bro. Hart. He is an inactive but with the new way of doing things we decided that we’d just teach him a first lesson plan. The spirit was really strong and I know that he felt it. He really has a testimony of the gospel and its truthfulness. He was really saddened by the fact that others don’t have the truth.

I’ve been feeling not the best toward my companion. I don’t know exactly what it is but I just clash with him. I know that I shouldn’t but I’m having a bit of a hard time with it. I guess he just feels kind of shallow to me. I don’t know if that’s just my perception, or if he really is like that.

Another problem we have is finding people. I know that it’s hard to find but every time we OYM, Elder seems a little bit shy. I’m, again, not sure why I feel that, just that I do.

For the record. Elder Cox was an awesome companion. I think that this entry is more indicative of the difficulty with any transition to a new companion and not anything “wrong” at all.

Adam18 October, 201413 October, 2014 Calintaan No Comments