Elder Parker Reber: Negotiating with the big timers

This week was pretty swingin. On tuesday before district meeting the STL's put together a "zone lunch." We all have district meetings at the same chapel so it worked out well. They cooked up TONS of rice then everyone brought different ulams to share (kinda like a main dish i guess.. basically what goes on the rice.) We then threw all of this rice and random food onto huge banana leaves and ate with our hands. Kinda a cultural thing here in the philippines. It was lots of fun, there are alot of great missionaries here. Good thing sisters are creative cuz i'd never think to do something like that haha.

We are continuing however to try to be somewhat creative with our finding haha. There's a funny thing that happened with that one hospital we played the piano at. So when we played there they didn't have a light near the piano so it was a little dark and a security guard was just standing behind us pointing a flashlight at our little handheld hymn book as we played and sang. We could tell some of the workers "higher up" were pretty embarrassed since we're white guys haha and were kinda chastising the maintenance head guy for not having a good light. Anyways we returned back this week and they had a SUPER fancy light installed right over the piano. They also got tons of christmas decorations on the piano now as well as a full nativity right next to it. Haha it's funny what people will do here to impress some white 20 yr olds. I was laughing so hard when i saw all of those renovations.

We wrote that hospital a letter asking permission for our zone to sing christmas stuff there and we also went to ask an SM Mall. We walked in and next thing we knew we were in some of the main administrative offices it was kinda scary since we had no plan haha. The head of marketing came out and started "englishing" us. They basically asked us what we have to offer and if we're actually good. I guess they do big christmas programs there on their stage so we're trying to get into their program to sing 3 songs or something. It's all just a work in progress haha but it will possibly get us on tv and help people be more familiar with us missionaries.

Went on another district blitz this week with some of the missionaries. We've had to spend lots of time in other areas trying to get things movin a bit it's been super fun. It's cool throwing lots of missionaries in one area for a day because i feel like we're all more united now and missionaries feel that other missionaries care about how their area is doing. they can also see we're all ready to help each other.

AJ, RJ, Pauline, Chelsiey, and Xyza all passed their baptism interviews this past saturday and will be baptized on the 25th this saturday! They're super excited it's awesome to see how much they now know compared to when we met them. The night before interviews I guess they all talked about the book of mormon and reviewed everything they've read so far together. They all got the story of nephi going back to jerusalem down super solid haha. AJ is the oldest and is kinda the ringleader of all of em. He's 14 but i feel like he's 18 haha. He's already gotten us tons of people to teach and continues to try to get his less active relatives to listen to us. He's also plannin on goin on a mission now! Such a sharp kid i love that guy.

That's about all! I'm so thankful to be serving here in this area at this time. I love this work and i know it's a very important work. I'm thankful for my Father in Heaven's patience with me as I try to be an instrument for Him. It's very true that by small and simple means, great things come to pass. His ways continue to really amaze me.

Have a great week :)

elder reber