January 13th: Hard Week!

Dear Friends and Family,

Happy Monday again. It seems that Monday comes to fast sometimes and sometimes not fast enough. Not saying that I just live for it to be Monday, but reading my email and just sitting down for a little bit is very nice sometimes. It's a great stress reliever and just a great way to relax. We've just been so busy and it's been a little bit of a different week.

Here's pics of my Escalante apartment:

 

I don't think I've ever had anything go too terribly wrong until this week but I still just keep holding on to... pretty much nothing.  I just pray our investigators and members come to church and things, then they don't show up. It's been raining here the past 5 days non stop. The roads are washed out in the far out areas since they're just dirt roads so our attendance was way low yesterday and we actually had 0 investigators at church. Something that has happened only 3 times my whole mission I think. There was always someone there! However, this Sunday, nothing. Our investigators live pretty far from the church so maybe that's why they couldn't come. We texted a few, but only got replies from a new family we've started teaching. They said the road is too bad to come to church, but that they are reading the Book of Mormon. So we answered questions and anything they needed over the phone. We'll go visit them tomorrow. So, I guess you can say this week was not that great. haha. However, still smiling!

There's a situation with our power. Monday to Thursday our power was just slow, like my fan would turn slow, our lights would flicker on and off. I was just thinking ghost or something and didn't really care. Then I played with the breaker switch and blew the whole houses power... I guess there was a problem with the connection outside to the breaker. So we were out of power for 2 days. Last night at 11pm we heard some guys outside our house looking for us, they were from the power company because we went there the night before and tried to get them to fix it. Anyway, we got it fixed now! I guess with the rain and things, water got into the box outside on the post and then blew when I flipped the breaker on in the house... so note to self, don't do that again. So I was without an electric fan for 2 nights, but I slept great still! It's been cold since all the rain and stuff, so it didn't bother me that much. It's so moist that all my stuff just feels wet. My pillow, the clothes, my towel hasn't dried for a few days, but it's all good!

Since all the rain has just been coming down, I guess the rain all goes into a tank and then it goes somewhere. However when the tank gets full they shut off the water to the city because it can get not clean... which it's not clean anyway... so I don't know what they're trying to get at. So we had no water for 2 days either. haha. It's almost as if I just lived through Mini typhoon for a few days. All is well though now. We have power and the water came back on this morning! So we were super happy last night when our power came back! This morning the water! :) Happy Elder Ellis.

We've found a great new family this week; The Abaledo Family. We've been teaching the Dad, Mom, 2 Daughters, and 1 Son. We had two different lessons with them this week. The first one we taught all about the family, then about prophets, then about Christ building his church while he was on the earth, but then of course the apostasy. Then we got to the restoration. That's my favorite part. I love saying the first vision in Cebuano. It just like rolls right off the tongue. It was so spiritual, you could just feel it flow through the room. After I said it, I was just impressed to pause. After about 10 seconds, I think Elder Lenoy was like... what's the American doing? Anyway, so he started talking. It's okay though, it was still really spiritual! We were impressed to just leave them with the pamphlet rather than going on to the Book of Mormon, we would just leave it for the next lesson. When we went back to teach about the Prayer and the Book of Mormon, we just asked follow up questions. The daughter Judy Mae is super smart! She answered every question in depth, not things we're use to hearing from investigators. So we're super stoked with this family. The live the farthest of any investigators that we have though and they walk about 2 km before they would ride a motor to go to church, through cane fields and muddy small paths, so they weren't able to come to church. They said they will next week though. So we're super stoked on them! They're super fun to teach. Everyone is always interested except the dad. We're not sure if he's really listening, just acting like he's not listening, but right now we're going to tact or lesson at him. Because if we get the dad, the rest of the family is set. 

Okay, more bad news. We went to another family that we've been working with, the Apas Family. The daughter attended youth conference last week and they've been going to church. On Saturday we go over and they said, we don't want to be baptized. We're like, WHY? Then they said, Dad doesn't want to be baptized and we all just want to be one religion so that there's no fighting or anything. So if he's not going to be baptized, we're not. There's 4 of them. A nice family! So our next step is really just focus on the dad and we're going to hope for the best. He doesn't really want to talk to us, but we've got nothing else that we know what to do! The next door neighbor of theirs, just a young woman age would always come in the lessons to I guess. Edrian Kaye is her name. Anyway, she also said that her mom all of a sudden changed her mind. Her baptism was supposed to be this upcoming Saturday. 

Speaking of Baptism! We were supposed to have one yesterday as well. Luigy Gargar. We've got his parent permission signed and everything. He's a young man and has tons of friends at church and stuff. His parents were cool with it and his dad even said that he wanted to come to his baptism! Friday night his mom goes off on a rampage on how Mormon's are evil and all the bad people in the world are Mormon's. (False) Anyway, we just hoped that on Saturday his dad would bring him, but Saturday comes, we wait at the church, no show... So... yeah, not a great Saturday. All that happened on the same day. The families telling us no to baptism, the no baptism, no power, no water, and tons of rain. I think Satan had control of that Saturday to be honest. 

Nevertheless I still have faith in the Lord and Savior. I'm sure that he can make anything possible and won't abandon me here in the Philippines. I've really been trying to focus on my prayers this week and just making sure that I'm super sincere in listening back. Half the time I just jump right into bed and fall asleep... which isn't the way it should be. We should actively listen after we pray right? So, I've been trying harder to do that. I've also been studying my patriarchal blessing a lot more this week just trying to figure out some stuff with the future and what not, it's been great. I think I've something down, but not sure of course. I guess we'll see what life throws at me. I'm so thankful for the Book of Mormon though. Sometimes I wish I could just read it even more. There's not many hours in a day and we do a lot of stuff, so it's rough, but I want to try my best to read it even more. Things are still going well here in Escalante. It's no San Carlos, so I just miss my last area. I really just loved it there! I love Escalante too, not that big of a deal. Sometimes you just get attached to an area and a city and people that you really love here. That's what happened to me. I miss you all back home so much. Thanks for all the love and support! I hope y'all are gearing up for the concert you lucky little punks! haha. It's all good, there's plenty of concerts to attend when I'm home. I miss you. I love you! Hope you are all doing great! I'll send some pictures next week to you! 

Our new friends!

Love,

Elder Ellis