Elder Parker Reber: A Rat named Abinadi

Hi friends and fam. This week was packed with lots of fun stuff! I’m lovin the Christmas spirit here in the Philippines. It’s such a fun time to be a missionary. This week we were blessed to have Elder and Sister Schmutz come visit our mission for a mission tour. He is a member of the quorum of the 70 and is the second counselor in the area presidency here. A cool thing that happened was me and my companions were able to be interviewed by him before we went to MLC. He is a very righteous man and as he talks he basically is quoting scriptures. It was interesting as well to see how he would observe things and ask lots of questions to different missionaries. I learned a lot just by watching how he’d do things! That night we had MLC with him and he talked a lot about how much a leader can influence someone. He showed how the whole Book of Mormon is records that came because of 4 people being good examples to their kids as well as the people around them. If just one of them didn’t exist (alma the older for example) then lots of the Book of Mormon wouldn’t have taken place. We can see their influence on other characters in the book of Mormon, and not to mention even the millions of people who have read of their experiences.

The next day there was a big zone conference with all the missionaries serving on the mainland. One thing Elder Schmutz taught was the importance of teaching repentance. How we aren’t just trying to get people baptized but we’re trying to prepare them for temple ordinances as well. Helping them really use the gift of the Atonement of Christ in their lives will give them the desire and power to change. He invited us to promise specific blessings to our investigators then to pray to God that he will hold up the promises we have made with them. President Nelson made promises with us if we’ll read the Book of Mormon and now God has to uphold that promise because it’s coming from His servant. I’m excited to show my faith more now by making promises with those we’re teaching.

After our conference on the main land we hauled to the airport and barely made our flight over to Palawan haha. It was SO GOOOD to be back over there! We slept in my old house that I lived in for my 9 weeks over on the island. We were able to visit some of Elder McCauley’s recent converts while we were there and it was awesome to see their strong faith. I also got to see my old companion Elder Vinculado, who I haven’t seen since I left the island forever ago. He has served his whole mission on the island! We had another good conference there and it was cool to see how the messages were shared differently but the same points ended getting across in both of the conferences! We then flew back to the mainland and got back home at about midnight. The office Elders picked us up from the airport with little signs saying “Welcome home Elder McCauley!” it was super funny since a few days later he’d be going home for real!

Friday was awesome. We went to the temple one last time with Elder McCauley. I will always love the temple. That night Kathy got baptized! She was super excited and her friend Christy who I mentioned last week was there too! Something funny happened there though that I’ve never seen before. There was an 8 year old from a member fam getting baptized as well and as he got dunked under the water he didn’t plug his nose right! Most people here actually haven’t been swimming since the ocean is so dirty and there aren’t many swimming pools at all haha. His feet flew up and when he came out he was screaming and didn’t want to be rebaptized. He began to cry and tell his dad to let him go. Eventually after a few minutes though his dad convinced him to let him dunk him again haha. The second time he came up he was yelling even louder.. but luckily he was all good by then. I’m not sure the kid would’ve been baptized that day if it would’ve taken a third time haha.

Saturday we said bye to my companion Elder McCauley! We dropped him off at the airport and yelled “hurrah for Israel” to him in front of lots of people then took off. I’m sure he didn’t want others to know he knew them but I think our missionary attire gave it away. He served a great two years though and I learned lots from him. After that we went and played some tennis next door to the mission home! Elder Fiesta actually played in a big league throughout the Philippines growing up so he was dang good. It was tons of fun to play him for awhile.

The funniest part of this week though was our experience with a rat. Elder Fiesta saw a rat one night in the mission home and nobody would believe him. President HATES rats too so he was getting mad at him for even joking about it. Anyways though the next day us missionaries were cooking up some dinner and sure enough we all saw this crazy huge rat. I texted President that we have more witnesses and he immediately called me telling me to kill it asap and he wouldn’t be coming back til it was dead. We set a rat trap and by the time we finished eating we went to check it in the laundry room and we caught it! Right then President and Sister Fermanis got back and President went to the other little building to his office. We set the rat cage with the rat in it right outside his door and Sister Fermanis called for him to come grab the phone. He FREAKED out when he opened the door hahaha. Long story short a few minutes later the rat sat in the cage covered in hand alcohol and was set on fire. President named him Abinadi.

Love you all! Have a great Christmas week!

Elder Reber