21 June 2010

Hey everyone,

Well its just another day in paradise!!! We taught a few lessons, I attended my first funeral service and burial, and lost one of my shoes in the mud! ha ha

Well yesterday, the report from church, I talked, that was fun. I talked about Visiting and Home teaching and how it related to missionary work and how much easier our job would be if the members would fulfill their calling. We'll see if any of it sunk in.

Batas, Billy Pentalver, and Roel Conte all came to church yesterday. That was great. Batas and Billy both said that they were going to stop drinking and Friday was their last bottle. Billy has been true to his word. Batas on the other hand can't quite stop as easy. When we went to see him yesterday afternoon, he had been drinking a lil bit. I HATE liquor. You have no idea! That is the root of all evil! It is rooted so deeply in the culture over here. Satan loves using it, thus I severely dislike him as well.

On a good note, we got our fridge fixed after 1 week of not having one. It turns out that there is a sensor in the back of the freezer that had frozen and because of that it wasn't reading right and the air was not able to circulate or something like that, thus, it was not working. ha ha To add to our frustration, we went 2 days with no water. ha ha Yeah, we were rationing our water, but luckly it came on before we used all of the water. They say that it won't be a big problem when the rain starts coming all the time.

On Wednesday we had a Funeral service, it went over real well. The counselor that was in charge of it wasn't going to plan anything. He just figured we would invite a bunch of members and call it good. So Elder Pennock and I spent Tuesday night planning and contacting. It acually turned out really good. I saw some tears so at least I know they were listening. Then Friday they had the burial. We were not able to go into the Catholic church for whatever they were doing in there but we joined them after and walked out to the cemetary behind the hearse. Then they opened it, did a prayer type deal, then pushed the casket into the cement shelter. Oh, I probably should mention that all the cemetaries are above ground here in the Philippines. I don't know why, but thats how it is.

Oh, the loosing my shoes. We went to see one of the members, some people had said to take a different route, so we went into his house that way. But on the way out, we went the "shorter way" ha ha ha yeah, mistake. We ended up crossing a few hectars of mud and weeds. We were almost there and all of a sudden I stepped wrong and when I pulled out my foot, the shoe didn't come with it. ha ha Luckly Elder Pennock was following me and grabbed my shoe for me. ha ha People were laughing at me when they passed me, but such is life. I better get used to it because the rainy season is only going to get wetter.

Well i gotta run,

I love you all

Elder Chase