Happy Birthday To Me - Elder WHITE, The Candyman

8/12/18

Elder WHITE

On August 9th I had my anniversary!  Here are some pictures of me burning a shirt and tie at my one year mark. I just barely lit the bottom of the shirt, and within a matter of just a few seconds it blew up in flames. It was kind of fun to see it while it lasted though. 

I took the liberty of buying myself (and my companion) a dozen doughnuts for my one year mark. I bought them on Aug 7th and only 4 were left by Aug 9th.  I have resorted to taking selfies because my companion sometimes struggles with taking pictures.

Our Aug 9th lunch outing.   It took a couple of shots but we finally got a good picture.

Other pictures are food in the Philippines, a huge caterpillar that was outside our meeting house, and a cool picture of a flower.

We have some exciting things coming up. The two girls I emailed about last week will hopefully get baptized on Aug. 25th. If they get baptized then it will be awesome. Our branch will be having an 8-year-old baptism that day as well. Plus every branch in the whole Roxas district has a convert baptism scheduled on the 25th. It would be cool to have all the baptisms at one time because then we could probably get a lot of people there, as well as get some speakers from the district. Aside from that of course, LOTS OF BAPTISMS! The two girls are named Shane and JL Del Rosario. They are great. They keep on reading the Book of Mormon, praying, following commitments, as well as understanding the doctrine. 

Yesterday was a pretty exciting day at church. Aside from the two Del Rosario girls, we also had two other ladies attend church. They are really bright, understand, read the Book of Mormon and do assignments. One lady is the daughter of the relief society president, and the other lady is a referral of the relief society president. Yesterday they both finally came to church...meaning they can now finally be counted as progressing investigators, and hopefully progress more quickly towards baptism. Both of these ladies are single mothers and one has a 3-year-old daughter, and the other has a 5-year-old daughter. Us three are pretty much best friends now! I took the liberty of playing with the two little girls a little bit during church so that the sisters could pay attention to the classes. Then one of the ladies a few hours later when we went to her house told me that her daughter was wondering when "Elder White" would be coming to their house.

This is a picture of me, Missy (the one in white), and Reyna. You could say we are pretty good friends. 

I hit my one year mark this past week. I did all the normal stuff that missionaries do on their one year mark. I ate at a restraunt. Bought myself some doughnuts. Then later that night I burned an old shirt and a tie that I didn't really like. Other than that, it was just about a normal day. Nothing changed too much, my attitude didn't change much. It was basically just a normal day but I just used it as an excuse to enjoy the day a little bit more. 

I sent a couple pictures of food that I eat here. It all for the most part tastes pretty good. One big acomplishment this past week is that I went to mang inasal. It is a really famous place here where you can order your meat, and then if you want you can pay for unlimited rice. A couple days ago I paid for "unli" rice and ate 4 cups. That really doesn't mean much when my companion does 5 without even trying, but at least I felt proud about it! ha ha 

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Forever and a day, Love Elder Williamson!

8/19/18

Elder White, The Candyman

If you want to know how to get a good headache on your mission, follow these instructions. 

Teach two sisters 11 and 13 years old. 

Teach them really long lessons to try and fit all your teaching into a tight schedule. 

Review the baptismal questions with them and then tell them to study. 

The next day have church. 

Teach them again. 

Fill out all their paperwork while you are waiting for you zone leaders to come and interview your two investigators. 

Wait while your zone leaders interview them, and take their sweet time while interviewing as well. (Did I mention that the younger sister is super super super shy. She told one of the members when our zone leaders first showed up that the zone leaders were scary looking. ha ha) 

All of that makes for a decent headache Sunday night. The good thing is that both the girls passed the interview. That's all a joke though because we are super happy and excited that they passed! Our whole zone (each companionship) has a baptism this upcoming Saturday. We are going to do them all together. The district president will be speaking at the baptism, and because there are so many baptisms President Hiatt will be the presiding authority. 

Its all super exciting, its just not quite as easy to teach younger kids as it is to teach adults. It was also really cool because those two girls' parents, who are both less active, came to church for the first time in who knows how long now.

This upcoming week will be an exciting week. We have that district baptism coming up which is a once in a mission type of experience. We also have zone conference this Wednesday. Those are always fun to see other missionaries, have free lunch, hear about the the things you need to be doing better, and feel extra motivated to go out and work. Elder McOmber will also be speaking at our zone conference on Wednesday so that will be cool to get to meet him in person and talk with him a little bit.

I would also like to thank everyone who contributed to my birthday package. I basically got a package full of sugar, with a few other things as well! :)

Here is a funny little story of what happened with some of my candy yesterday. Excuse me for not being a great story teller here.  

Yesterday after church we were going to teach one of those single mothers I told you about.  We went by their house early to let them know we were coming and also that the other single mother would be joining us. When we got to the house though, the daughter (3-years-old) was a little bit sad. Her mom said that they had stopped by the store and Missy (her daughter) had bought some candy and she said that she was going to give some to "Elder White". As they were walking home though the little girl dropped her candy in the mud. When I heard that we went by our apartment real quick before the lesson and I grabbed one of those bags of just assorted candy. The two little girls at the lesson, of course, loved to have some candy. The adults were even more excited though. The two ladies both wanted all the tootsie rolls that were in the bag, and our fellowshipper, my companion, and the grandmother of Missy all took their share of candy as well. My new nickname for the time being is "Elder White, the Candyman". ha ha

Other than that if any of you were wondering, I love the food here. It all tastes super good, even though you dont know what its made of or what its called. Just don't eat 4 cups of rice - that wasn't a good idea!

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Forever and a day, Love Elder Williamson!

Here are some pictures of Shane and JL. Two girls of a part member family that we are teaching. They are getting baptized this Saturday.

This is the first time that their dad has been close to the church in a long time.  He didn't actually attend, but he picked up and dropped of his family. This was also the first time that I have ever met their mother. She is less active as well and works in a different city. They always go to church with their grandma. Their brother is already baptized.

8/27/18

Baptism Day!

We had a pretty great week as far as baptisms go. It was also the most crazy and stressful baptism you have ever heard of. In Utah, if you have a baptism of 8 or 10 or 15 people nobody breaks a sweat. Even though the Philippines leads the pack as far as baptisms go, it doesn't really happen where you have a ton of baptisms at one time. It was definitely something to be part of! 

We started out a few days before just doing all the little stuff like inviting members, making sure the candidates were ready, handing out invitations, and finding baptismal clothes that fit people. The day of the baptism we got a call from our zone leaders asking if we could get there a little bit early to help clean and set up. When we got there is was a little bit crazy. 

If we go into a bit of a side story, it seems to happen that little children who are members of a Mormon family seem to be a little bit more hyper or wild than the average pinoy. It just so happened that the morning before the baptism was the district primary activity for the 140th anniversary. What that meant is that you had all of the wildest kids in all of the Roxas area in one building. I dont know how to describe it but it felt like I was in the scene from the Matrix (clean version) where everything is flying everywhere and its all in slow motion. 

We got all set up, fixed up some programs, and did all the last minute stuff while everyone was arriving and while they did an actually fairly good job of cleaning up the primary activity. 

There were a few good things that happened from the primary activity happening right before hand. The members cooked food for all the missionaries, or at least let us eat the food that they had prepared for themselves. It also meant that there were a ton of people that attended the baptism. The whole chapel was full of people. It was fun to see so many people there to support the new members of the church. 

As the service started it was a little bit crazy again because there were maybe a few too many cooks in the kitchen trying to direct everybody. The room where the font is is a little bit small so not everyone was going to be able to fit in the room at once, somehow it all worked out though. Everyone got baptized so that was the good thing!  We also almost flooded the church because there were so many people that were getting out of the font that there clothes were making the floors all wet. ha ha 

Despite all the craziness, it was a very special experience for me because I had almost like a big brother feeling for these 3 girls that I was a part of their baptisms. The two Del Rosario girls' father may also be on his was to returning to the church because he attended their baptism and then attended church the next day as well. 

One other cool thing that happened was one member is an icecream man, so after the baptism he was giving ice cream to everyone that attended. It was cool because I was just letting all the little kids get the ice cream and I was off talking to people.  Sister JL made sure to get me a cup of ice cream and ran up and gave it to me. :)

Thats all I will tell you about the baptism. It was great. Another kind of funny thing that happened this week was we all got flue shots at zone conference. All the Filipinos were about ready to pee their pants having to get a shot. It didnt even hurt at all. When the lady got to me she told me to relax my shoulder. I told her ok, then she asked me if I was sure I was relaxing. I said yes again. She then asked are you working out. I said yes again. She said ok, that must be why, medio matigas (kind of hard) are your muscles. At least me working out every day is having an effect on some people. ha ha 

We had a zone activity today to "be trained on proper transfer week protocol". It was actually just to celebrate the baptism and say good bye to one of our zone leaders who is going home this cycle. Elder Jayme is probably one of my best friends on the mission because he has been my zone leader almost the whole time I have been here. He is leaving now though. Too bad, so sad! 

We had a bar-b-q today though. It was great. He marinated a whole bunch of meat and we all got together and cooked meat and then ate it. It was pretty awesome. If the pictures come through you will be able to see how serious I was taking my cooking while everyone else was trying on their zone t shirts. 

(Added by Alayna: The pictures didn't come through.)  :(

I did not buy myself a zone shirt for a few reasons. It is money that I could spend on food. Or I could spend on a t-shirt that I will never wear. I will never wear it because they printed it with this thick rubber that is super hot and heavy. Another reason I didn't buy it, even though this is mostly a joke is this: Back in Cauayan, Elder Temple and I were talking about zone t-shirts and how we probably wont wear them if we buy them. He gave me a great example of why I should not ever wear a zone t-shirt. He said, "Look at all of the returned missionaries in the branch we are serving in right now (there were quite a few). Out of all of those RMs, how many of them still wear their old zone t-shirts? Out of all of those that still wear their zone t-shirts, how many of them aren't yet married." ha ha 

There is a strong relationship between wearing zone t-shirts and getting married because it was totally true!  

I miss you all and love you all. Hopefully, you are having a little bit of fun without me.  Kita kits sa susunod na buhay!

(Added by Alayna: Translation came through as "See you soon in the next life".  Ummm, I think it didn't translate correctly or he meant something else.  At least I hope!)

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Forever and a day, Love Elder Williamson!

Luiza Shane Del Rosario, 13 years old, Mallig Roxas area, part member

Jamie Lea Del Rosario, 11 years old, Mallig Roxas area, part member

Jelly Heart Lopez, 8 years old, Mallig Roxas area, branch baptism

I had the opportunity to baptize Luiza Shane as well as sister Jelly Heart. Her dad is a recent convert and a bit shy, he asked me to do it because he didnt want to I guess. I was more than happy to baptize her though. Ill still count it as a baptism though because numbers are all that matter, right? Joke lang

You can't say that you are a real track and field fan until you do this. We are all a bunch of softies there in the US. I have walked past this field a few times and all it was before was a field. Then they decided to truck in some loose dirt, and then make the lines on the track out of rice shells. Apparently, it was like the equivalent of a state sports meet. The whole city was converted. Every open field or basketball court or anything had events going on. It kind of made me want to take the day off and just watch the track meet. People were just parked on the side of the road because there is no stadium or anything. Anyways, I just thought you would all like to know the they do hard core track and field here.

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9/2/18

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Things are going good here. We have a few really solid investigators and some people and refferals that have some potential. I am really growing to love it here in the Mallig area. I was a little bit uncomfortable at first, but I love the people here now. The appartment isnt that bad either. 

Their isnt really anything bad in our companionship right now. We get along great. Elder Dela Cruz is super patient and loving. The only problem is that that type of attitude can make you a little bit laid back. If we are at appointments too long or schedules don't go correct or little things like that it doesn't bother him too much. On the other hand, I am the exact opposite and want to get everything under control. I am always the one that has to call and text people in the morning or else our days are just kindof walking around hoping that people will be home when we want them to. The good part about that is I am getting better at planning and hopefully, it will make me better at planning a date when I get back home. ;) ha ha

We have two really great investigators right now, like I said. They both have come in contact with the church in different ways in previous years, but now is when they have been prepared to accept the gospel. It is great because they live close to each other so we will teach them at the same time. They both have kind of turned into fellowshippers for each other. They were able to have a meeting with our branch president yesterday which was really good for them to get to know him. Then President Agustine walked in the door so they got to meet him as well. Tonight our branch is having a family home evening and it will be held at their felllowshippers house just down the street. They both said they will be in attendance. 
 

It is crazy that it is already my birthday again! It doesn't feel like I celebrated my birthday in Provo that long ago. It is much better this time around that I am celebrating my birthday in the Philippines rather than Provo though! 

Those two single mothers will have dinner for us almost every time we go to teach them and they made sure that we had a lesson on the 4th so that they could make dinner for me! 

This is one joke that I learned from Elder Uy way back when I was in Cauayan. He had his 20th birthday while I was in the same house as him. He would always get calls from President or Sister hiatt because he was the assistant. He would always hang up the phone and say: "You don't need to tell me what to do, I'm 20-years-old, I can do whatever I want!"  Of course, that was just a joke but it was super funny when he said it. Now, none of you can tell me what to do though because I am 20-years-old. Thank you for all the people that told me Happy Birthday. To all of those that didnt, no worries. I didn't love you very much anyway.

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Forever and a day, Love Elder Williamson!