Elder Parker Reber: James Borrero Monilla's Baptism

hello everyone.. and merry christmas!! Yes, the christmas music is startin up here in the Philippines.. gotta love it! They don't celebrate halloween or thanksgiving so yanno it's time for christmas of course! I love christmas so i'm not complainin at all:) I'm hoping I'll get to spend christmas in this area I think it would be pretty intense haha.

Another good week in the books. For p day last week we went to "the beach." Pics will be sent if the computer is kind today. It was actually a really fun little trip we even found churros!

On Thursday my comp and I went to work in the other area of this ward. All four of us worked in their area.. I worked with Elder Armadillo and Elder Moster worked with Elder Dequito. Their area is super DIFFERENT than anything i've seen on my mission. The houses aren't neccessarily big but alot bigger and nicer than anything i've experienced. There's also NOBODY outside it was kinda freaky! We spent the whole time finding and in a few hours we found 6 new investigators. We met a 23 year old named Joshua who goes to school at UP (university of philippines) which is the kinda the harvard of the philippines. It was cool because he has always been looking into religions and his friends are all of different faiths. We shared the whole Restoration lesson in about 20 minutes and he was really interested because it's different from anything he's ever heard. I love how simple yet powerful the things we share are. I feel like the more I teach the same simple principles over and over the more I learn about them and know that they are really coming from God.

In our area we were looking for a less active in a spot we've never been at before and asked someone for directions. After getting help we got to know her and found out she actually went to an LDS church quite a bit growing up with her family. Her mom is also a member! We learned that she has actually been waiting for missionaries to find her and it wasn't a coincidence we met. Just cool to see yet again as we're walking God puts people directly in our path. She told us she normally is in her house with her kid which is in a little alley but for whatever reason that morning they were outside on the road playing.

Our bud james was baptized on Saturday! It was a great service and lots of support. His uncle from Mendinao flew all the way up for it. He and his family have been long-time members and have been praying for over 20 years for his brothers and sisters to be baptized. Last year it finally happened with the whole family (except for James) haha but now they've all been baptized! Super cool. One of the sisters who was baptized last year is now less active so he's also here to help bring her back to church. It was cool for me to see his faith. He said honestly their family could barely afford the plane ticket for him to come up here but he felt he really needed to come help his sister and knew that God would make sure everything financially would work out. The goal is for them to all one day be sealed. The people here are seriously the best.

Sister Joy Gontinas has her baptismal date for Sept 16 but sadly this week her old pastor went and chastized her and her kids! That dirty sinner haha. He basically forced them back over to their church. He went off about our church to them Saturday night then sunday morning he showed up at their house at 7am to escort them to the other church. At their church I guess the pastor focused the whole meeting about how Joseph Smith is our God. Joy then got up in front of everyone and basically bore her testimony to them all. It was the coolest thing i've ever heard! Apparently the pastor also knows when we have appointments with her so this week we might run into him. Should be fun! Joy is doing good though and her kids listen to us consistently now. They made us a big dinner one of the nights too! Two of the ward missionaries who always come with us to her also joined and she cooked my favorite food here- sinigang! This week I ate sinigang every single day except sunday haha.

So yep that's my up and down week! Filled with lots of adventures. Transfer week is this week and we still don't know if Elder Moster will transfer. I hope he stays- i've been learning tons from him especially how to befriend investigators. He has a big strength for gaining people's trust quickly and has some good jokes. Love you all and hope you have a great week!!

Elder Reber

The pics without his glasses are my favorite- smolder and all. Sadly the kid would be walking around blind without them but we just aren't used to Parker with glasses!