Work Work Work

Hey there it's Elder Espiritu coming at you once again from Cabugao Ilocos Sur! Still alive, still working hard, still tired a lot and still loving life. How would I say this week was? Pretty exhausting but, a fun exhausting. Did I have more weird animal experiences this week? You bet. Should I tell you how Elder Peck and I are doing? For sure. Should I tell how this week was? Probably, so I will. 

You'd think that now I'm in a more city like area rather than the province, I wouldn't have as many weird experiences with insects and rodents. Turns out I thought wrong. 

One night this week I was outside hand washing my clothes (our washing machine has been broken for 3 weeks now), and Elder Durbin and I were just talking so I didn't get too bored while washing. 

First thing that happened, we started hearing bottles moving around. When we turned to look why they were moving, we saw a rat the length of my hand just chilling with us. We just let it be. We then had something flying around the whole time, which was a moth. We then had another thing flying around us the whole time. Turns out that one was a cockroach, so we had to keep making sure it didn't fly onto us (Elder Durbin's not a big fan of those). It also had 2 other friends chilling with it so we were just being careful. 

Just when I thought I wouldn't have any more friends with us I felt something crawl on my back to my stomach. When I looked down to see what it was I was pretty shocked to see a dark brown thing with 8 legs. I did scream when I realized it was a spider slightly bigger than my palm and the rest of the night I was pretty paranoid with crawling things in general. So there's my fun memory for the week. I hope you enjoyed. :)

Now on to the more missionary subject. I just ended my first week with Elder Peck. Who's Elder Peck? He is an 18 year old boy who is from the Lindon Utah 17th ward. So he is actually in my stake. Did I ever meet him before? I don't think so. I would've recognized him. But he was good friends with one of my good friends, Elder Jordan Parra. 

Anyways he and I are doing really well. I prayed that for my last cycle God would give me someone hard working and not make me trunky, and that's who He gave me! 

Elder Peck is really good when it comes to not wasting time. We're working hard and even though we still see a lot of failures, we're not discouraged. There is one area that we've been trying to build up that has not had much success lately. Mostly it's a lot of more wealthy people who just ignore us, walk away while we're talking to them (legit I just asked a girl for her name and she turned around and walked back into her house) and it's a pretty good amount of rejection. Are we discouraged? Not at all. 

Elder Peck and I just laugh when that happens. We know it's not personal, and we know there are people that are ready to receive the gospel. We just have to keep looking for them.

We do have people that I know are so close to entering the waters of baptism. One of them is super awesome, and is just having trouble figuring out what she wants to do. She reads, and prays every night whether to know this church is true, and is just waiting for her answer. We've been praying and fasting for her to help her. She really just wants to know what her purpose or calling is now. We really hope she receives an answer. 

We have a good amount of people seeking the truth and others that know it's true, so we're helping all of them individually with their needs and helping them come closer to Christ. 

Each one of the people we teach are God's children, and all need something different. They are people God loves and we have come to love too. Hopefully by the end of this cycle we'll be able to see some people enter the covenant of baptism.

We've been constantly finding this week, and have lots of potential people to teach. Cabugao is just an awesome place. There are really nice people and all they make it all worth it.

So, although this week felt long (like all other first weeks do at the start of a cycle) I felt we got a lot done. Had some hardships, had some blessings, and overall, it's going to be a good cycle. I really have come to love all the people here and I know they are each a child of God. 

God knows every single person that I've talked to, and He's definitely leading us to the ones who are ready to accept this gospel. 

That's all for this week, hopefully next week will be really good too. Until then, love you all! 

Elder Espiritu

Elder Peck and I with the Salodez family

Our "forts" at home 

(Sister Andrada gave us all mosquito nets)

The Cabugao Elders 

(Elder Durbin, Elder Estrella, Elder Peck and I)