Being a tatay is pretty freaking intense but luckily I survived the first week haha :) Part of that is because my anak is already a great missionary, part is because I'm a lot better at being a missionary than I thought I was, and the biggest part is that we've got Heavenly Father on our side and helping us a ton :)
So my magaling anak? He is an absolute stud! :) He's a lot of fun, isn't too scared to take charge or give parts of lessons or spiritual thoughts when I give him an opportunity, and is really good at the language even though Tagalog isn't his true language. He's from Cebu City and lives about a block away from the temple there. (Sound familiar? Man we are so lucky and blessed to live so close to one!:) The language they speak there is Cebuano and he keeps saying he's not fluent in Tagalog but that's just because he's humble haha. He's fluent in English so no prob on communication. One problem is he's got a flash drive with a bunch of GOOD music on it haha. I told him it's up to him on P-day but during the week no Babylonian songs haha. Pretty tempting for me too :P This morning we listened to Don't Worry (Bob Marley) and my new favorite song Today My Life Begins (Bruno Mars) :o) Don't worry, not losing focus just trying not to be a ridiculously strict missionary haha, we still follow the rules :) I've only got one picture of him (here in the computer shop, just got batteries hehe) sorry, I'll get some epic ones this week :) I've got some epic leftovers to send you from time with Elder Mika :o)
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| Elder Montemayor |
We've also got 2 other missionaries in our ward now! :D Elder Wilson is one transfer ahead of me (He went to the MTC on my birthday:) and is from Meridian, Idaho. He's training Elder Hurt from Orange County, California. It's always a blast messing around with other missionaries and our ward is HUGE so I'm glad we got 'em :) Sadly we live in 2 different apartments. (Awwww man!:o) Which might actually be a good thing because we might not get as much work done otherwise haha. We've slept over at their house the last 2 Sunday nights so we can party together on P-days. (Woot!:) They're in an apartment that's new to missionaries so they've been killing TONS of roaches haha. And they caught a HUGE spider and they're keeping it in a bucket with a lid on top as a pet :o) It's almost as big as my..... ok maybe a Filipino's hand... :o) I thought those didn't exist in the city, hope there's none at my house :)
So one thing that I've learned is a little tough on missionaries this week..... AGENCY! Aww man, why can't we just force people to make the right decisions?!? haha :P I know why agency is important but man sometimes people don't know how to use it right haha. Last Saturday night we visited a Less-Active family, it was our last appointment of a long day. Before we got there I wasn't sure what we would teach them and I asked Elder Montemayor what he thought we should do. He said let the Holy Spirit guide haha. So we got there and I'm trying to think of what we could teach them so I asked them, "Bago nagsimula tayo, meron po ba kayong katanungan sa amin?" (Yeah. That's right. Tagalog's AWESOME:o) "Before we start do you have any questions for us?" (For all you Joe's out there:o) The mother asked us why life is so hard and we have so many trials. BOOM! Ideas and answers just started absolutely flowing into my head. Super cool :) We explained about Ang Plano ng Kaligtasan (Plan of Salvation), which tells us the reason we're here on earth is to learn and grow. Analogies that I had never used before flew into my head, I was able to use scriptures from the Book of Mormon. After that Elder Montemayor shared 3Nephi 13:31 which says that God knows our needs and if we put the Kingdom of God first things will work out.
The Spirit was SUPER strong in there, the best I've felt in a long time. Elder Montemayor promised them that if they went to church on Sunday that they would begin to see blessings poured into their lives. After the lesson he was stressed out haha :) He said, "Aww man why did I do that?? I promised them!" I told him not to worry about it. In D&C 68:4 it says that when God's servants are moved to say something by the spirit it becomes scripture. It becomes the word of the Lord, the will of the Lord, and the voice of the Lord. I was super excited to see how his promise would get fulfilled when they went to church the next day............. but they have Agency :/ Awww man!!! haha, they didn't show up! I'm bummed out but we'll keep trying to help them help themselves haha :) Either way it was an AWESOME experience :)
Glad to hear things are still goin well at home! :) Hunter, Kylee, and Ashlyn are gonna be absolute STARS on their teams this year and I am kinda sorta SUPER jealous that Chelsey get's to watch Swamp People the 2nd with you mom haha. I'll definitely watch the exciting life of Cow-herders with you when I get home Mom :o) Tell all the fam I love them and miss em!
MAHAL KITA MGA KAPATID, MAGULANG, KAIBIGAN, AT IBANG MIYEMBRO NG PAMILYA NATIN! :)
All of you take good care of yourselves and remember that okey dokey? :)
Elder Bryan Powell.... the 2nd
P.S. Buffalo meat?? SO jealous! That's nothing to be scared of ma, it's like a cow! Elder Hurt ate pig toes at FHE last night hahaha :)
P.P.S. I'm starting to LOVE the people in our ward, we had 3 FHE's this past week and probably will have at least 2 every week haha, fun stuff. I'll write a bit more about them next week.
LOVE YA!
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| Just playing dress up with the Elders:) |
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