1st area week one!

Hello every one!

    So sorry I didn't get a chance to email last week. My transfer to the field landed on my normal Pday in the Manila MTC. A lot has happened here this last two weeks. I'll start last week in the MTC. So I told everyone about my "investigator" sister Jing Fey so she was having a rough time and we didn't know what to do but after a very good lesson led by the spirit we return  to find that she had turned her life around dumped her boyfriend and got a job she then committed to baptism. This just confirmed the need for the spirit in our lessons and for the guiding power  it has in everything even in a practice investigators teaching. Then the rest of the week was just any week in the MTC we all had a good time but then Tuesday came. Tuesday night we got to try balut a dish that is very common here it is a duck egg that is fertilized duck egg that the duck has started growing they then cook it and serve it just like a hard boiled egg. To be honest it tasted like a hard boiled egg to. Then we left for the field the next day at 5:30 so we got up at 4:30 and had breakfast jumped on a bus spent 4 hours on a bus and went to San Fernando where the mission home is. 

      We spent the day in an orientation then spent the night in the Assistance to the presidents house the next day we met our Trainers. My trainers name is Elder Sefuentes. He's a native Filipino. But get this My first area, and me and my companion are opening a new area. Missionaries have been here in the past but not for a few months. The hard part is the Philippines have absolutely no address  system so we can't locate any of the old investigators so we are starting from scratch. The members here are amazing though we have talked to several of them the branch here is small only about 150 active members but the spirit with the ones we have met are amazing. This just testifies to me to me that you don't need to be in a very popular area of the church to have the spirit of the Lord. Sunday we spent the day with one of the members of the branch who led us around the area and introduced us to some of the members because right now we don't even have an area map. We were so blessed to have Sister Angle and the other two members with us they know the area and I know she was sent to help us . She herself is applying for a mission being a convert herself from a set of other missionaries.

 It was so inspirational seeing how many of the members here are converts the church is still really new and some of the members of the branch are the first members of the branch and seeing their faith is amazing.

  This week we have been non stop calling people and I don't mean on the phone. Instead of knocking on doors 

here you stand at where the door would be if they have a door and yell Tao Po which translated means People

 Respectfully. Through this we have taught many people and me and my companion plan on returning and checking
up on some of them this week. I know that we were guided to some of them and maybe some of them are ready and maybe
me and my companion are just one out of 8 positive

 interactions that they needed with missionaries. 

     This Saturday and Sunday we watched conference Saturday we had to take a 2 hour bus ride to the stake 

center to watch it but Sunday we were in the local chapel which is only a trike ride away a trike is literally a motor

 bike and a side car they are the main form of transportation here. But conference was amazing I felt the spirit 

and I learned so much. I look forward to 2 hours of church it will be so much easier for members and investigators

 to attend now especially in my area where people mostly live off the land .

    My message this week comes from 2 Nephi 42

42 And whoso knocketh, to him will he open; and the wise, and the learned, and they that 

are rich, who are puffed up because of their learning, and their wisdom, and their riches—

yea, they are they whom he despiseth; and save they shall cast these things away, and 

consider themselves fools before God, and come down in the depths of humility, he will 

not open unto them. 

I know that if you come unto Christ and ask he will answer you

Elder Davis

(Ethan shared this experience with his Dad about eating the fish... in the picture I posted last time...)

No guts but head and all. That wasn't the one we bit the head off the one we ate the head off looked almost like
 a trout.They were good actually just tasted like crunchy bacon. We had a challenge to see who could stair down 
the fish and bite off the head we almost died of laughter at the way some elders did it.

And this is his reply to questions about laundry.. (We had heard many wash their clothes on rocks..)

No we have a bucket that we do it in if we do it by hand. but we have a washing machine I probably wont use it
 (it is too slow and doing it by hand is faster)
He also told his sister that they are showering with a bucket...