Great Blessings Pour Down

Elder Celebrado climbing up another hill.

Charity suffereth long and giveth his umbrella to his companion who does not have one.

 Balabag in the rain (for how low quality pictures my camera takes at least it's water proof.)

Coming down a very slippery hill (you can see our tracks) Looking up.

 Looking down at what we still need to descend.

Rain?? What rain??

The road (main highway technically) from Siwahon going back to Colonia.

Hello Family!

Wow, I didn't expect to get so many comments on the pictures of the fish I ate. I guess I'm just getting a little too adjusted here... have I ever mentioned dried fish? Probably not.

The Philippines I think gave me a new set a taste buds.

For this week I feel like all of the non progress we saw last week, we made it all up and then some. We've been blessed to have so many investigators start showing a lot more interest and start to keep commitments, and also we were able to hold a special sacrament in Siwahon, an area that is about an hour walk from Colonia, and had over 20 people attend who were not members of the church that we've taught, among which were 5 potential Melchizedek priesthood and 4 potential Aaronic priesthood. Also since that was the first special sacrament being held in that area, about half the branch came also to support and fellowship the investigators, all of them walking an hour plus there and then back to Colonia afterwards.

Now we have 5 investigators (brother and sister, friend of a recent convert, and two elderly ladies that are the sweetest ladies you'll ever meet) just from that area who are preparing to be baptized in August, with another 10 (3 complete families) that we've taught before that are starting to really show potential to progress now that they have attended a sacrament meeting and met a lot of members.

I'm just so excited for our area and I am half hoping that I will be able to stay here until the end just to be able to see it all come to fruition (and I say half because I know that if I fully hope then I will for sure be transferred... as such is the mission).

And now for story time! I want to tell you all about the two sweet ladies that I mentioned who are preparing to be baptized in August, Sister Lapid and Sister Hemera.

These two women are, again, the sweetest ladies that you'll ever meet, both of them being physically impaired, Sister Lapid having had a stroke and Sister Hemera having fairly developed arthritis in her ankles. They are sisters and live close to each other. We met Sister Lapid first when Elder Peralta and I were going through Siwahon looking for people to teach. We decided to just walk down the walk way their house was on and look for houses where we could give prayer meetings to (a kind of "tracting" you could call it) and as we walked by where Sister Lapid's house was we stopped and looked in the direction where her house was, being in the back a little behind a few houses, and both felt that we should go that way and look there.

We went down and found her in her house having just finished lunch and asked her if we could say a prayer for her home and give a short message, to which she responded very enthusiastically saying she was very willing, and that she had a child in another city in our mission who was also a member of the church.
And thus started the journey of conversion that would involve us meeting her sister, Sister Hemera, and teaching them on a regular basis for 2 months.

We knew right away that it would be hard for them to be baptized, since there was no way that they could make the hour plus walk to Colonia over hills and up the mountain to make it to church, but they were always so happy so see us and just absorbed everything that we taught them, even accepting to be baptized and living the commandments, so eventually I asked our branch president if we could have a special sacrament at their home for them, and also for all of our other investigators in that area, and the result was what I reported earlier in this letter.

There is a lot I could share about these two women and our experiences with them, but that would take way too long to write, so it sufficeth me to say that I believe that the faith and willingness of these two women have been some of the first seeds planted that will start to grow the Siwahon branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In other news, Elder Celebrado and I got completely soaked to the garments by typhoon rain two days in a row this week, the first time climbing up and down very muddy/slippery hills (pictures attached) for about an hour, the second at night coming home from Siwahon. Fun memories.

I hope you all are doing wonderful! And happy birthday to my favorite older sister Kristine! :) One year older and hopefully wiser too.
Save me some cake.

I love you all!

Stay firm in the faith.

~Elder Butler

 

Character Cultivation...Patience

Two dogs, a pig, and a regular house in the mountains.

What I ate for lunch with rice at a recent converts house. They just got it out of the river running next to their house. You just pop the whole thing in you mouth with a hand full of rice and don't think too much. :)

 

This is what we climb up and down most of the day.

Man plowing (the same way they have for a 100 years)

We go down, then go up, then go down, then go up again. Poor Elder... he's still getting used to the climbing :)

Street outside our house..,

Main street. Or... the only street in the town...

[Looks like volleyball to me...no caption~K]

Views of Colonia

July 21, 2014
Hello Family!

Our time is short today as we had some errands with the couples missionaries to run involving finding housing for another set of missionaries, so we are a little later than usual emailing today and need to go soon.

This week felt a lot like what my title implies. We've been working a lot with some of the investigators near the proper (or center of town) and many of the lessons came out feeling like we ended in the same place as where we started, not making progress, and not losing ground, just no movement and no one wins.
Also July is looking like it is going to be the first month in long time where I haven't been able to help someone come unto Christ through the waters of baptism for the whole month. We plan on remedying this in August, but it doesn't make it feel much better for now.

But! We are still seeing success in the long run and we still have many blessings and small miracles in our work daily so I know that the spirit of the Lord is still working in us, and just asking for a little more patience, especially on my part.

Our power came back by Tuesday, and now we are working on getting a new full gas tank, but being up in the mountains makes things a little more complicated on that end so it could be a few more days before we get that back.

We are also planning on moving from our house shortly, as soon as we have the paperwork done, to a new house that is significantly better than our current house, actually having title floor instead of just cement, so we are pretty excited about that.

I think that our area has caught the edge of two typhoons, not causing any damage but just making the weather a lot colder than it usually is (you can tell I'm acclimatized now since I think it's cold now) and bringing lots of wind and rain. But it makes it great for us teaching since nobody wants to go out and about on the mountain paths during storm/typhoon weather except for the missionaries, so everyone is at home and has no place to be so we get lots of great teaching opportunities that we might not have otherwise. More blessings.

I love you all! You're always in my prayers.  
Elder Butler

Lightning Strikes

Improvising during the power outage from the storm!

The hill they climb up each week to go to church...

The view down the path while going to church.

Hello Family!

I have some fun stories to tell today. But I'll start by saying that this week was, once again, FAST. 

Wow.

It really feels like I was just here at the computer telling you about last week. Just thought I'd say that. Ok, now for the fun story, starting this last Saturday night.

We got home at around 8:20 PM after another full day of walking over hill and dale while teaching the everlasting gospel of peace, and closed our day as usual and planned for the following day. During our planning our district leader texted us and asked if we were doing alright since there was apparently a really bad storm where they were at and raining super hard (down the mountain in Dian-ay a ways away from us) and they wanted to give us a heads up. At the time it had only just barely started to rain mildly (for the Philippines) and we didn't think much of it. So we finished our planning and continued with our night.

We then went on to cook our dinner, only to find out that our gas stove had just ran out of gas, which wouldn't be a problem except that right after we found out we had no gas our power went out. Leaving us with almost cooked rice in our rice cooker (luckily we had started the rice before we planned) and not many options with what to do to cook our canned beef loaf to eat with our rice (we're on a pretty poor eating budget).

We then, using what I had left of my eagle scout skills, fashioned a very ghetto stove out of two candles and a tin pan that goes inside the electric toaster as a skillet on top of the rice cooker and toaster oven (pictures attached). And we now have a hot meal! We were quite please with our ingenuity.

But! While we were thus rejoicing we were taken quite unawares by having a strike of lightning hit a tree literally right outside our window, which is arguable one of the scariest things I've experienced yet.

The huge storm that our district leader warned hit, being the reason for the early power outage, and bringing with it the craziest lightning storm I have ever experienced.

The next 30 minutes were what I would compare to what someone might feel in a war zone being pelted with mortars. Every other second there was a lightning from as close as to 200 to 300 meters away up to right next to our house.
It was a long 30 minutes. But we made it through alive!

Now Colonia Divina has been without power for the last three days and we are still out of gas. What used to be mostly camping has now turned to all the way camping for me.

Is this life experience or what? :)

That's all I have time for today, but I hope you enjoy the pictures and the story. Sorry it's not so much on the spiritual side this week.

I love you all!

~Elder Butler

Old Things Become New

Elder Celebrado & Elder Butler

Here are some pictures of my area!

 

Hello family!

Well for those of you that don't know yet, my new companion is in fact a very new companion, actually he's fresh off the plane, which means that President has asked me to train again!

Except this time instead of training a foreigner I'm training a local missionary, Elder Celebrado, and he is actually a native Illonggo speaker! A first for this mission, or at least for the time that President Lopez has been serving.

This training has definitely a much different feeling than my first, of course being that I was still a pretty new missionary when I trained Elder Schow, but I feel like it's almost more of a treat than it is an assignment. I really miss being around new missionaries since there was a huge wave of new missionaries right behind me when I arrived, but then dropped a lot when our mission hit full capacity so I rarely ever saw new missionaries. There is just that "new fire" that you feel that you can't replicate in an older missionary, regardless of experience, and it reminds me a lot of myself when I was new and still figuring a lot of things out.

The biggest change though is adjusting from having a companion who was in his last transfer to having a companion who is in his first, thus making the old new, and once again I feel like I'm looking at my area with new eyes with a new missionary.

Elder Celebrado is from a family of 6 kids, his mom being a member but his father is not, and he is the youngest of 5 brothers and one sister, and also the first in his family to serve a mission, his brothers being less active. But he told me that he saw the choices they were making and the effects they were having when he was young and decided to take a different path. So there is definitely a lot of moral courage there.

He's also from a province so the adjustment to Colonia isn't too much of a shock for him, just the long walking and lots of going up and down hills since his place is relatively flat.
He's doing great though and I think he's going to be a great missionary.

In other news, before I met Elder Celebrado I had to wait in Bacolod for two days, and while I was there I was able to see and work with one of my former companions. To say the least we did not have the best companionship, with him having a very hard time being companions with anyone who isn't a Filipino, but I was so happy to see him again, and even more surprised to see that he was happy to see me again as well.

I actually wasn't even sure that he was still in the mission before I saw him, so seeing that he was still here and enduring filled me with a lot of joy, and I could see that he had made a lot of growth in the last 6 months since I had seen him last.

I was able to work with him in his area and stay the night with him while we were waiting for our companions (he was training as well) and I think it was just what I needed to have some closure finally after having a hard time while we were companions.
Another tender mercy, and another evidence of the power of the Atonement to change peoples lives and behaviors.

I love you all!

If it's any comfort to Dad, his few days at scout camp are pretty comparable to what I've been living in for the last month and a half. :) Minus the cold bucket showers. Maybe you could give it a try.

Halong!

~Elder Butler