Well Christmas was great this week! We had the Baptism for JellyAnn on Christmas day! Other than the fact that there was no program written and we started 40 minutes late everything went great! ;) That's just the Philippines for ya, we call that Filipino time. Everything starts late, except for mission events. After the Baptism we were able to go get some Siapao at Merci with the members from our ward who attended the baptism. It was a fun time. Siopao is like the bread thing with like a barbeque pork or chicken inside of it, it's really good! After that I got to see all the wonderful faces of my family. That was the best present I received this year! :)
So after Christmas, nothing too crazy happened. We did have Zone Conference on Thursday with President and Sister Lopez. President Lopez gave us an awesome training on the law of tithing. It really opened my eyes to the importance of tithing and why it's a command only for members of the church. There's 3 specific blessings stated in the scriptures that we will receive if we pay our tithing! The first is that we can enter the temple if we are a full tithe payer, second we are promised that we will always have food on our table, and third we are promised that we will not be burned at the second coming of Christ. Three pretty awesome blessings if you ask me. President said for those people who say "Oh, I don't have a job, I don't have to pay tithing." That if they think they're exempt from paying tithing, they're also exempt from the blessing of paying tithing. He told us that will be the first lesson that we will teach Less Active members and Recent Converts. He said there are always members who go to church every week and don't be tithing, but there are never members who pay their tithing and don't go to church. In short, tithing is the key to everything. If we have enough faith to pay our tithing we have enough faith to follow every other commandment. It was a pretty awesome training. After that we finally watched the Christmas Devotional, good thing Christmas was already over haha!
So yesterday Elder Cruz and I both had the privilege to speak at church. I remember the times as a kid when I would plan a talk for 30-45 minutes that would only last 5 minutes, adn usually not even. Now I don't really even need to plan and It's hard to only speak for 5 minutes. Sacrament started like 20 minutes late yesterday so the Bishop told us to only speak for 5 minutes. Pretty sure I went over and I cut out a lot of things that I had prepared. Weird how things like that happen. I spoke in only English and then after church we were at Nanay Advincula's house and I was telling them that I get nervous when I speak Ilonggo in front of large groups of people and she was like "What, why?!" She kinda raised her voice a little haha, it was funny!
After that we went on member exchanges, this is where our day got crazy. I went with Bonnie, and Elder Cruz went with Brother Crampatana. Pretty much right after we left it started raining. Elder Cruz and Brother Crampatana only had a motorcycle and no umbrellas. Bonnie and I were walking and had umbrellas but that didn't really make much of a difference. We were still drenched. Usually the hope is that when you split you can get more work done, but we didn't get much done at all because we couldn't go anywhere. It was raining so hard. We also had no communication because Brother Crampatanas phone wasn't working. They could receive our texts, but they couldn't text us back, and we couldn't call them because our phone can only call other phones with Globe Service, and he has Smart. It was crazy. We had a meeting place in town, but Bonnie and I couldn't get there because it was raining so hard. We were literally walking through the street with water up to ankle, it was crazy. And the wind was blowing the rain in on us so our umbrellas, like I said, didn't really do us much good. It was a crazy. Then come to find out Bishop found Elder Cruz and Brother Crampatana in town and he has a tricycle. Appaently Brother Crampatanas electric start on his motorcycle wasn't working so Bishop was just towing Brother Crampatana as he was trying to start his motorcycle, then Bro. Crampatana got his motorcycle started and lost control and balance and rammed into the back of Bishops tricycle and fell over. It was a crazy night to say the least. We aw Bro. Crampatana this morning and he said his knee was a bit sore, he was limping a little bit. He had 2 tiny scratches from the accident so it wasn't too bad. And of course all this time it's raining so everyone is just soaked. When he got to our apartment he said to me "Best Missionary Work Ever!" They still want to work next week even though yesterday was crazy! I can't wait to work again and actually get something done!
Well that's all I have for this week. I hope you're all having fun wherever you are at the moment. It was nice to talk to you this past week. Have a wonderful New Year! We were told we have to be home by 5 tomorrow to avoid all the crazy New Years events here. Brother Crampatana invited us to his house to Celebrate and when we said we can't be out he said alright I'll just bring you some food! The people here are so nice, I love it! :)
Palangga ko kamo!
-Elder Walters
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