Another successful week!

Another successful week in the mission field! This place is super fun. Our area is only one barangay.. but it's the most-populated barangay in the whole Philippines!! It's called CAA. The school here has more students than anywhere else from what I've heard and I'd be surprised if anywhere had more haha. They have morning session, afternoon session, and evening session and when school is let out hundreds of kids come flooding out of the school. They all walk down this main road and it's hilarious when we're walking down that same road. Since I'm "amerikano" I hear hundreds of kids yell "aphir!" to me. Aphir is a tagalog word actually coming from the phrase "up here" haha. I've gotten more hi fives this week than any other week in my mission haha! Even in a lesson we were teaching out of nowhere this high school kid outside yelled, "hey wassup man!" through the window. I really love these fun people.

We got some sweet new investigators this week. We started to "tao po" some doors and met a 17 year old named Kenneth. After explaining our purpose as missionaries we asked him if Jesus Christ were in the room and he could ask one question, what would he ask Him? He had a golden question! "why are we here?? I've just always wondered why we're here on earth." It was awesome we went into the Plan of Salvation and he was all into it. I love the messages we have to share as missionaries. Just from talking with someone for a few minutes the spirit always tells us what we need to teach. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm going to say but as I start talking it always works out. I'm thankful for the holy ghost! As missionaries we can't do anything to offend the holy ghost, the work would be impossible and useless without it. We also met a family who was having a very sad day. There was a 17 year old sitting on a rocking chair moaning and we asked what his sickness was. They then pulled up his shirt and there was  a HUGE lump seriously a little bigger than a basketball covering his side as well as his back. They had been to the hospital the night before and apparently the doctors had no clue what to do so didn't let him in. I felt so bad for this kid.. Elder Moster actually said he remembered talking to him in the past. He's pretty tall and I learned he LOVES basketball. Super sad to see him in that condition. We quickly gave a little overview of the plan of salvation then talked about how we have authority and power from God to bless the sick. We gave him a blessing then left. We'll return later this week to check up on him and his fam.

We have a baptism coming up on Aug 19! His name is Jansen Belonias and he's 10 years old. His mom was less active but is now active again. Jansen is awesome though! He's one of my favorite buds I've met my whole mission. He is super smart and calm and really understands what we teach. He even asks really good questions like for example he asked if in the next life we'd still remember what happened on earth and if we'd remember family members. You can tell he's really thinking things through while we teach. We have a sweet handshake too. I'm excited for him to be interviewed this Saturday!

This ward is awesome. We have an RM who served in the Laoag mission who works with us nearly every night. There's also a recent convert named Julius who is 22 and preparing to serve. He's with us a ton as well. They're both awesome! Our ward mission leader Nephi gives out reading assignments to the ward missionaries and full time missionaries every week then texts spiritual thoughts to all of us every day. He also got everyone involved in a ward mission fast! We all closed our fast Sunday after church and then had a huge feast! They also all committed to one day every week where they'd be able to work just 2 hours or so- they got to choose. It helps a ton when the ward is super organized!

Also yesterday we taught Gospel Principles class again. It's cool though because the last time I had to teach that was in my first area and the language has gotten lots better since then haha! I'm thankful that I can now comminicate what I feel and get things across better. Kinda cool to have something like that where I really can notice I've improved a little! I think every day in lessons it seems the language is about the same so having these last two weeks to teach gospel principles has been good!

We had MLC thursday! It's fun seein how our new President does things. Lots is actually being changed already. His big focus is the Book of Mormon and doctrine. We were discussing things to make district meetings more productive and he had the idea of having one person in the district get up and share what they've learned the past week in their 10 pages a day in the Book of Mormon. He said it would be cool for them to break down a few verses with the district then bare their testimony. He then said "well let's try this out right now and see if it's worth doing! Elder Reber, get up here!" Haha it was so out of nowhere! The spirit helped me pull something out of nowhere haha. It was a super spiritual meeting though.

That's about all from me this week! Thanks for all the bday wishes. The people here are so kind and would give us merienda (snack) when they heard it was my bday haha. We also set up some decorations that you sent in that package and the four of us chugged some rootbeer. So that was good!

Love Elder Reber

Parker back at the mission home for Zone Conference