Week #52: I don't think I have any more news... except work is hard still but it's still fun!

Hello all!

So guess what??? IT'S SUPER HOT HERE!!! Summer season has started and thankfully it's my last summer here. It's pretty hot here in Vigan. So let's see what I did this past week. Monday, we visited ate Karen. Actually, it was a really good week this week. We FINALLY got our best friend Arthur Acena to church. He's been investigating for 2 years! I think I told you about him before... the old man who came to the Branch FHE. Well I have a picture with him! We also had this new investigator come to church as well. It's the daughter of our recent convert. She and her husband came to church. They accepted baptism really well. They really want to know.

This past week we did a lot of finding. We have a lot of old people we are teaching. The area goal is to save the rising generation. Elder Oberg says "we're supposed to save the rising generation; but we're saving dying generation." The people we teach in the morning are 60+ years old.

We also found this dog outside our apartment. We fed our scraps to it. We named the dog Saggy. Just check the picture to see why. Dogs here are pretty gross.

So this past week... it was tough for the other elders in our apartment.. the work was at a stand-still. Also for the sisters in our branch. Just to give you an idea, the elders were working in Vigan city itself and the sisters were out in the bukid. It's kind of backwards. So I prayed about it if I should switch and I felt strongly that it should be changed. So I reported it to the BML then we talked to President Piedad. What we found out is that Vigan city was actually supposed to be for the sisters. Well that's the power of prayer! It's all done in a wise purpose that we don't understand.

So to answer your questions dad. Ilocano.. narigat pay.. Tagalog.. mahirap pa.. French.. Difficile. I tried talking to a french guy back in Laoag and I kept saying po or sige all over the place. And we talk to the family here in Tagalog or English. Broken Ilocano to the kids. Actually, auntie Jean brought Uno to church. Ace wanted to come but he's 3 years old and makulit. He should just come anyways.

Oh by the way, about DA's... Ipinagbabawal ni President Barrientos ang mga DAs after 5 pm. He wants us out proselyting after5 pm because that's when most people are home.

Our rice is not that Milagrosa stuff haha.. we buy that sinandomeng rice. If we're really poor.. TFA na lang. We're actually going to eat really really cheap this week. Torta. Money is scarce on a 5-week month. So we're all trying to survive.

Anyways, it's really hard to explain how I feel the Spirit during lessons. Just go work with the missionaries and you'll find out for yourself.

And being out for a year now, me and Elder Oberg were talking about this yesterday. For some reason, we look forward to General Conference now being missionaries haha. Before, it wasn't as important. One big thing I noticed for myself is how much I look forward to reading the scriptures. I'm reading the Old Testament now and man is it boring sometimes!!! But I've actually used the stories from there in some lessons.

Anyways, I don't think I have any more news... except work is hard still but it's still fun!

Love you all! and take care!

Elder Morales

Week #51: Transfer week and guess what... I'm still in Vigan!

Hello family,

So this is the news for this week. When President said I was going to move this transfer, I think he changed his mind because I'm still in Vigan!!! Auntie Jean was super happy when she found out I'm still here. So now I have more time to do whatever. Well missionary work obviously. I started making a family tree here. I'm just getting names. I'll start getting birth dates, death dates, marriage dates, whatever dates, children. All the stuff for family history. I love playing with my nieces and nephews here. They're marami. It's like spending time with Esa or Mak mak or fredrick or liam or auraya or ... well there's so many. Especially here. It's weird sometimes because one of my niece, Vanessa, is almost as old as me. That's probably how mom felt since ate Sally is almost mom's age.

So last week, it was pretty discouraging since Vanessa and her husband are not really allowed to come to our church since their barangay made it bawal to listen to other people. Parang wala nang free agency. Ayos lang. I found a scripture to motivate me. 2 Nephi 28:18. So all is good. We'll just keep teaching them. Later this evening, we're going to visit ate Karen. I thought I was getting transferred so we planned on visiting a whole bunch of them and have despedida but nevermind. I'll just go visit them anyways just to finally visit them!

Anyways, this these last two days were medyo pangit. We have this minor leak under our the bucket underneath overflowed. So I emptied it out last night. This morning, we walked into our kitchen and it was super flooded! So we called over the landlady and we temporarily have no kitchen sink. Good thing though is that we have 2 other sinks in our apartment. That's our adventures here in Vigan. Me and Elder Oberg were also walking around 3 of our barangays (centro ng Caoayan) and we saw all these crosses outside on tables with candles. We we're pretty weirded out... We later found out that there's procession going on. When it comes to missionary work in Vigan, all I can think about is 1 Nephi 13 and 2 Nephi 28. It's one of the hardest areas I've been in.

The work actually has been at a pause for some reason here. We have been struggling finding our investigators. So we dropped most of them. We are spending this whole week finding. Our investigators who have a baptismal date are still not going to church. One of them got a job and had work last sunday... how unfortunate. She was so close to getting baptized. As for our friend Arthur, he didn't come to church again. We bought glue for his shoe because we found out the reason why he didn't come the week before is that his shoe actually fell apart. I guess he didn't use it. It's slowly working it's way back up though. We found the daughter of our recent convert, and she and her husband already accepted the baptismal invitation. All we need to do now is commit them to a date.

Anyways, this month is gonna be a tough month. We're gonna start going cheap on food hehe. We're going to eat mostly fish so time to learn some new fish dishes. Actually, last week, I cooked sinigang and we didn't have the packet for the sabaw, at walang sampalok or any pang-asim sa apartment. So we grabbed a green mango from the tree and chopped it and used it. And... the sinigang tasted really good. Unfortunately for Elder Hunsaker, ayaw niya talaga ang fish. So he's going to buy chicken nuggets in Solid West.

Anyways, wala nang balita. At least I don't think so... anyways. Take care all of you! Love you all!

Elder Morales

Week #50: It's now getting really hot!!! The summer season has started.

Kumusta kayong lahat!

Well this is probably my last week in Vigan. It's been fun working here in Vigan but it's really expensive. It's now getting really hot!!! The summer season has started. So for today's p-day, we spent the morning at the libing ng asawa ni ate Auring. We got permission from President Barrientos to be able to attend. So we sat in the Vigan cathedral for an hour or so.

It's pretty weird, especially wearing proselyting clothes and a name tag. We also went to the burial. We got to march with them. It's an experience. Then we ate back at San Pedro. Then we went to go check out the baybay malapit sa kanila. Every monday we try to go find some sort of tourist spot so that we can enjoy our time in the Philippines.

So this past week, we actually had a branch activity. It was pretty fun. It was called "Missionary Work, Retention and Reactivation" or... branch FHE. It was a success. There were plenty of investigators there and we had less-actives there too. Our favourite investigator, Arthur Acena, came. He's 64 years old. He also played the games at the activity. Unfortunately we didn't see him at church. It's most probably because he's embarrassed of his broken shoe. I'll take a picture with him one day.

I'm not really sure what happened this week...

Oh! We also decided to look for this random former investigator. Elder Erickson told me about this one house they found and how he lived in a mansion. He was really interested but then told the missionaries to not come back because his mother (who is super old) would get mad at them because she's super catholic. We went to go check it out, to also go see if the mother is still alive so we could start teaching him... unfortunately we met the mother and she looks pretty healthy for a really old lady. And the guy is REALLY rich. There's a picture of his mansion.

The first day we tried finding his house was really hard. There's two paths to bongtolan, left and right. The first day we went through the right path and ended up in some random place in the bukid. Apparently it was still Camangaan. So the next day we found signs of life of Bongtolan on the left path. As we were walking, a family just saying "hi elders." We stopped and started to talk to them. They ended up being less-actives. Tatay angel agcaoili is 80 something years old. We taught him some other day and he's losing his mind kind of. He doesn't remember our church. He's mixing it up with catholic and mormon and calling it baptist or born again. And he's really madaldal. So we decided to cut the lesson quick or else he'd talk forever about anything. I guess he just wants someone to talk to cause he's so old.

Oh, this week we also had the chance to teach Vanessa and her husband. It's pretty awkward sometimes teaching some of the family because they're really really shy. Auntie Jean and Julius are fine. They're not shy at all. My kuyas here are actually shy. It's funny sometimes. I found out all the names of my cousins here. I asked auntie Jean to give me the names of them all.

There's actually not that much news this past week. I can't think of anything. I'll probably have some news next week since I'll know where I'll be going. Transfers are really exciting. Sometimes really scary since a lot of missionaries DON'T want to go to Cagayan. I don't know why that is. I guess it's because it's so far away. It's a real adventure when you're there. Sta. Ana was a nice part of Cagayan though. It'll be fun. It doesn't matter where I'll go.

Anyways, that's the news so far! Kapayapaan sa labas! HAHA bad translation. Love you all!

Elder Morales