cycle 3/ week 1

Kamusta kayo,

So this week was one of the weirdest, Elder Kelson went home, and I got my 2nd companion! Its weird without Elder Kelson here. Don't get me wrong my new comp is awesome! His name is Elder Alfonso, he is from Pangisinan, which is in the Philippines. So I got my first new Filipino comp. He is sweet, I couldn't be happier, he is hard working, a great great teacher, connects well with the members and the investigators, he is funny, taught me that I have been washing my clothes wrong the whole time pala! So this morning I learned the real and best way of how to wash clothes...hopefully my clothes will get a little cleaner then usual. My shirts are already really gross, there like a gross off white, like a light yellow...oh he also is teaching me how to cook Filipino food, which is nice cause Filipino food is delicious. I was talking to him about it and as Filipinos they have to have rice, every single meal! even breakfast, and he said that Americans have to always have bread or pasta...which is kinda true. We do eat a lot of pasta's and bread. Filipinos think that if there is no rice it is just a snack..so apparently in their eyes most Americans just snack their whole lives. Haha. Anyway Elder Alfonso is awesome, I'm already getting better at Tagalog, sometimes its hard with Tagalog, cause sometimes I will be able to have, and be able to carry a convo with someone, and I am like...oh pala I actually am not that bad a tagalog...then other times I have no clue what someone is even saying to me! and I feel like I suck at Tagalog...right now honestly I mostly just need to enlarge my vocab.

Anyway, this week what happened is, first on tuesday, Elder Kelson went around saying goodbyes to people and giving stuff away that he doesn't need anymore. Then Tuesday night we made a big fire and threw a whole bunch of trash and stuff away that Elder Kelson doesn't need anymore. A little cultural fact is, yeah Filipinos do have "trash people." But a lot of the trash they just burn, so the air is always dirty, and sometimes you'll look out and it looks like their is fog...no its smoke! Anyways so elder Kelson finished packing tuesday and then on wednesday he went to cauayan in the morning, I stayed in Santiago and went on splits with the ZL's but...elder Valdez was getting transferred, so he went around saying goodbye to people. Then later that night we had the departing missionaries farewell up in Cauayan. Then the next day was transfer day in Cauayan, that was nice seeing my other batch mates and other missionaries. Then I got my new comp, and we went home! Now finally Friday, back to normal schedule we were able to go out and teach and such. We kinda got punted on Friday and Saturday but that is okay the lessons we did teach were solid, Elder Alfonso is a great teacher!

To our investigators, So the Balagbaggans are doing good, I am kinda concerned for Nanay Balagbaggan, she really misses Elder Kelson, and I hope that doesn't affect her activity. She has a solid testimony and such. So right now I am really trying to involve her in lessons and make sure she still feels loved. What she really needs are hometeachers and more friends at Church. So Elder Alfonso and I talked to Philip about getting her those things. Tatay is doing great, he in two days has read like the first 20 chapters of the AnM, its pretty sick that he is doing that great!

We had a solid lesson with the Crisologo's this week, it was actually one of the cooler things thats happened so far since I have been out. It was Sunday and the Crisologo's live close to the Balagbaggans so after the lesson on the way out of the Balagbaggans I told Elder Alfonso that I wanted to stop by the Crisologo's before we left, and so we headed over there and they were both home and we asked them when we could come back and teach them, and Brother said that everyday but Sundays he's at the bukid. So Elder Alfonso was like could we teach you now. They reluctantly said yes...they are kind of mad at us because it had been such a long time since we visited, but they let us in, you could tell that neither one wanted us there. But they were to nice to say no. So we taught about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the Spirit was super strong, it was such a great lesson. Then at the end we asked if they had any questions, and sister was like ya, she looked at her husband and...I thought she was gonna say she didn't want us to come back but nope she was like, "We have had a lot of missionaries here and we've been taught a lot, we couldn't get baptized cause we weren't married yet, but now we got married, and so we were wondering if we could get baptized!" We were like...whaaa, totally caught me off guard, then we talked about their marrige a little bit..apparently it was invalid, but what elder Alfonso and I are thinking is, if they start coming to Church and strengthening their testimonies, we can probably do a wedding before the baptism, because Bishop Pulido has the lisence to be able to Marry people and so the marriage would be free, we could have other members cook and such...so we could have a pretty legit marriage and baptism...depends on if we could teach them and if they come to church and ya...it was awesome. It showed me that if you follow the promptings of the spirit he will lead you to those who are ready. Cause the Crisologos weren't on our schedule and I wasn't thinking about visiting them until after the Balagbaggans...so it was a cool experiance...

Anyways other then that not much has happened just the same old same old. I am excited to keep on doing work, we already had someone come back to Church for 4 weeks..cause the rule here is, that if an inactive comes to Church 4 weeks in a row they are active again! So its cool to already see the success. The Gomez's are close to being active too!

So all in all everything is going good out here and I am happy to be a missionary. Oh I had a realization this week that was really cool! We were walking and I was leading cause I know where everyone is, and I had my head looking down at the ground cause it was really uneven, a lot of rock, muddy and a lot of "stumbling blocks", and it was dark. And I wasn't really watching where I was going, and we passed the street that we were supposed to turn on, and we walked quite away past the street. Then I looked up and realized how far away were. And had to go back. I realized that, sometimes thats what life is like, sometimes we are looking down, focusing on the rocks and mud, or the as a parallel the trials and hardships, and we get lost in them, just cause we don't look up at whats ahead. Always look up, no matter what, you don't want to miss things in your life just cause your focusing on the hard parts of life!

Mahal ko kayo lahat, patuloy yung pananampalataya ninyo at tandaan ninyo yung pagmamahal ng Diyos sa inyo sa puso ninyo palagi! (I love you all, continue in your faith, always remember the love of God for you in your hearts.)

mahal kita
ingat kayo
Elder James