Week #41: The Cologne you sent smells too strong!

Hello!

Christmas last week. With a nice lockdown. We stayed inside Tuesday night. We had to be in our apartments at 5. Our neighbour came to bring us snacks. It was a good night. We actually we watched "The church: 50 Years in the Philippines." It was a lot of dancing and history. So that's basically how we spent our Christmas. We actually got up at midnight to open our presents. The cologne I got from mama and papa smells really good. It's kind of strong too haha. Whatever, at least it smells good. For Christmas day, we went to San Pedro and had breakfast there. I met more family. Every time we visit them I meet more and more family members. Like some of your cousins mom. I met ate Karen then. Friday, we had dinner at ate Ria's place and met her family. We actually committed them to baptism that day but no baptismal date. That's the next step. We explained to them they need to pray, read, and come to church to know if it's true. They accepted that. And guess what, they came to church on sunday (Auntie Jean, Raven, Julius, and some guy Jake). Auntie said "masarap ang pakiramdam," which translates badly when put into english. So that's good. They actually know a lot of people at church. Auntie says she knows the branch president. Although they attended the wrong branch, they said they will attend Vigan 1 next week. We also went to go teach this family yesterday, the 1st councilor, and found out he's originally from San Pedro (his mother), who ends up being related to Raven. It's really funny how things connect.

Hopefully, things will continue in a good way.

Anyways, this month was a hard month. Pamasahe here is super expensive since our area is so far away. We've been walking and walking and finding and finding. We have been giving pamphlets out to a whole bunch of random people. Every time we talk to a tryce driver, we end up having to give him as a referral to the sisters in Vigan. We really can't find in Caoayan. We tried finding there but there were actually no people there for some odd reason. Maybe it's because of the holiday season. I don't know. Hopefully something picks up.

For this week, it's going to be the same thing, but we have more people to teach from all those we found last week. It'll be fun. One of the things we kind of need to work on is helping the members get excited in doing missionary work. It's really hard to share the gospel being a member because we don't have that nametag. But it's super effective. People are scared of the black name tag. We have been asking members to give out pamphlets for us and to think of people (friends, family, neighbours) who we can teach. We got some. So the work is moving forward here!

Other than that, I'm good. It's actually really cold here now. I have to sleep with two blankets because of how cold it is. We have to sleep with a fan too to drive away bugs at night. So it's kind of odd sleeping in the cold with a fan. Survival guide to the Philippines. During the day it gets really hot. So that's that.

Anyways, I love you all! Give me updates! Take care!

Elder Morales