Dear Family and Friends,

First I want to apologize for not sending a email last week, there is a good reason why I didn't. After the second black out here, the power was out for a couple hours, so proctor and I just went back home, washed clothes, then we had a fhe at a members house at 6. So I am sorry that I didn't send a letter home last week. But skyping was awesome! I really enjoyed it, next time is Christmas! It will come faster than you know...time flies out here on the mission. In 4 months I will have officially have been out for a whole year!! Holy smokes time is so fast as a missionary. It doesn't seem fair how fast it is sometimes.

So transfers were this week, and man there were some huge changes to the mission, and we some transfers that happened. First of all, Proctor, Molino, and Valdez all got transferred, I was the only one in the house that didn't get transferred..haha suckers! But elder Valdez only got transferred to Lamut, so he is still in the same house and branch just in a different area, I am still in Bagabag, I got my new companion his name is Elder Tadena, he is a Filipino, he is awesome! Pretty funny, mature... not gonna lie valdez was pretty childish, its nice to have the change of maturity in comps. Elder Valdez is still a good missionary, he is just probably the most childish missionary I have ever met. Elder Tadena is pretty awesome, he is the new district leader in our district. He is a good teacher, at freaking great cook!! And he has a good desire to serve and follow the rules. He isn't the best at english, but his tagalog is super clear and easy to understand, which is nice cause I can understand almost everything he says. I've gotten to the point in tagalog where I understand almost everything just still working on my speaking ability. Which is coming! But elder Valdez's new comp is Elder Crowly, he is sooo sick, he is such a hard worker, it is his last cycle here, he was a zone leader in Cauayan for like 6 months, him and Valdez are the new Zl's here in Solano. But every night we do splits, because Lamut is so far away that they need to come home early around like 6ish cause rides home are hard at night, so around 6 we meet at the house and do splits, Valdez and Tadena usually go to the less actives in the area, and Crowly and I tract, we destroyed this one area this week it was awesome. I come home sooo tired every night, Crowly works like a dog, I am learning sooo much from him already. This is gonna be a great cycle.

So the Lacaden family is still doing good, sister is reading the book of mormon and coming to church. They had their baptismal interview on Saturday and passed it, no concerns, they know everything pretty good. Man I hope I am still around when brother gets here, in august, he sounds super interested, and it would be sooo sick to complete that family, sister says, every night she calls him, and tells him everything that we taught her, and he is interested apparently. Her baptism is the 26th, so that should be fun.

The bodegoen brothers have been a little bit harder to teach, were pushing their baptismal date back to June 9, just because we haven't been able to finish all of the lessons with them, they are interested, and believe in Joseph Smith, they only problem with them is its hard to get all 4 of them there at the lesson all at once so we haven't been able to teach them as much as we want to. But once we finish the lessons, they should be fine, as long as Nanay Bodegoen is active, which I think she will be, she has a really strong testimony, is reading the Book of Mormon, and comes to church. We really want to teach her husband but he is always busy, and when he isn't busy he is drunk... so not much oppertunity there, if we could get one lesson in with him, maybe we could start teaching him more. He is open to it, and he is really nice, he has the coolest mullet I have ever seen. haha

We started teaching this one guy who is gonna be soo sick, I am thinking gonna be like another Sister Lacaden. This guys name is Julius Blance, on tuesday he went up to elder molino when we were in Solano, and he asked if the missionaries could come to him and start teaching him. He just happens to live in our area, he lives soooo far away. Elder Crowly and I were on splits, and so we went to him on saturday for our first contact, it was fun trying to find him. Cause you get out of the highway at this little place called Bakir, and there are a bunch of Tricees there waiting to give people rides out to some of the farther villiages. Or Barangys in tagalog, and so we were going to Nangalisam, and it is a good 4 kilometers out there. But the fair all the way out there for two people is 70 peco's... ya right. Elder Crowly and I decided we were just gonna try to walk it, so we are walking as fast as we can and we get to paniki a little barangy, and we see a tricee driver, ask him how much it is to Julius Blance's house, they say 20 peco's... we gladly take that, we get taken straight to Julius's house, and he is soo open, his mom is a member and working abroad in Taiwan, we were looking around, we didn't see any cig buds, so I dont think he smokes, didn't see any empty beer bottles, or any beer at all, so I dont think he drinks, he had like 3 Mormon novels, a Book of Mormon, a lesson 1 pamphlet and a Teaching of the Prophets: Joseph Smith, book. We taught him such a good lesson, he is soo interested. We didn't give him a baptism date but we asked him if he comes to know our Church is true, if he will be baptized, he agreed to it. I am stoked to teach him, he said that he is going to come to Church on the 27th. He couldn't yesterday cause he was going out of town, to take his brother back to where he was going to be studying.

Tatay Magno wasn't able to come to Church this week because he was cooking for this wedding. He was in charge of cooking 100 kilos of Pork. which is like 202 pounds!!

We had a lot of success this week and I am learning a lot, my tagalog has already gotten a little better this cycle. This could be one of my best cycles! I sure am gonna try.

For pday, we didn't really do much, just cleaned out the apartment really good, tomorrow is apartment checks.

Thanks for everything, I love you guys.
Elder James