Elder Blake Ellis' Mission Life: 6.9.14 Rainy Season + Zone Conference = Busy Week

Dear Readers,

Well, I don't know what to say about this week. It's rainy season right now, so we've seen non stop rain for the past 7 days straight from 1pm to 4pm, then it'll pick back up at about 6pm to 7pm, it really hurts our work and it really hurts people going to church. You already know that though. Also school started here in the Philippines this week, which means people are "busy". Even the parents because they have to "take the kids to school" which they don't. And... that takes 30 minutes if they did. Excuses excuses... gotta love them! I think as far as key indicators go, this week would be an all time mission low for me. We only taught 12 lessons to investigators this week and 16 lessons to less actives and recent converts. That's how much we got punted and rained out. It was a rough week I'll be honest. But, I guess that's whats supposed to happen after to have one of the best weeks on your mission last week. I honestly don't know what to say right now. I'm speechless because of such a terrible week, haha.

Yesterday we had 3 investigators at church. Two of them are family members of a recent convert. We've given them a date for the 21st of this month and they are progressing towards that date. However, they haven't had a chance to talk to momma yet, and they're really nervous to tell mom. The older sister is named Gemma (21) and her younger sister Jenevibe(11). They're really smart though, keep all commitments, read the Book of Mormon, and we've already had their prayers answered, they already have received witness from the spirit that it's true, our only problem now is having their mom not get mad. Gemma doesn't technically need parent permission since she's over 18, but it's still a culture custom here to get permission from your parents. The third investigator at church was that referral family that I told you about last week. We committed the whole family to come to church and only the oldest daughter came. We know the dad has no work on Sunday and the mom doesn't either so we don't know why they didn't come. The only thing we can think is money to pay the tricycle. We were going to visit them yesterday, but then we were blessed with rain and they live in the mountains and we weren't able to get there. At least the daughter knows what it's like now though so she can tell her parents that it was good. She also had some friends at the church that she didn't know and it turns out their far distant cousins are members, so that was a cool connection we found out yesterday.

We taught the Lumacad Family (our Recent Converts) about the temple and preparing them to go to the temple in a year. They were super excited and I'm super happy for them. They've recently come in contact with some apostatized members, so we had to teach them about agency as well and that it's their choice to not come to church and be offended. They were confused as to why people say some things they do, but we just said, someday someone will say something to you that you won't like... but it's your job to know that it's their sin not yours and you need to just continue on the path that you know that's right! They're super super strong. Sister Lumacad is just super insanely strong with reading and understanding. She was talking about the 7 dispensations yesterday in our lesson, something that's not taught in missionary lessons, but she had some questions about it, so I helped her out with what it means and the prophets and what they did. So it was really good, I'm glad to have helped with their conversion, they're really great! ;)

Sorry that I don't have much to say this week, like I said, nothing to really write home about. We've got less actives all grouping together against us and forming like groups and making sure that we don't teach them or try to bring members to their houses to help. They say that we're annoying and that we are always at their houses just bothering them. I'm fine with it though, just kinda a bum deal because some of their kids were our investigators and now we can't teach them, especially now that school started there's no way they'll let us teach them because they have to "focus" on school... meanwhile they just play for hours after school anyway. Oh well.

I've learned a new term this weed!!!! It's called "busy". Or in Ilanggo, "Sako". I've known the word forever since the times of the MTC, but I found out what it actually means this week. As long as you are doing something until noon (12pm) That means you were busy all day!!!! I've asked tons of people this week why they didn't read or go to church and their answer was, "Sako gid ako der"==="I'm really busy Elder". Then I have them break down the times, what time did you wake up? Shower? Why were you busy? They were doing laundry they say. Okay till what time? Till 12. After 12 what did you do? Took a nap! What time did you wake up? 4pm. WHAT?! After you woke up what did you do? Prepared to the evening. What did you do to prepare for the evening? Swept the floor and did the dishes. GREAT! So you had about 3 hours that you could've read the Book of Mormon and then they laugh at me! hahaha! That's what busy means everybody! Cool huh? If that's the case then every day of my life I'm the busiest person on the planet here... really, we would be compared to here. haha.

I love you guys! Got to go to Bacolod now for Zone Conference! Have a great week!