Elder Rasband came to town

Hello everyone!

These last two weeks have been pretty busy! As far as the area goes we have quite a few people we’ve been working with but nobody is progressing too quickly. We’ve been filtering through lots of people and continue to meet and teach lots of new people each week. Just trying to find those who are ready. On exchanges we met a mother named Ale Li Lim (not sure where her names comes from?) Her husband listened to missionaries in the past and we had a great visit with her teaching the Restoration and Book of Mormon. They are a super fun young fam I’m excited to continue to work with them.

This week was transfer week! There are TONS of missionaries flooding over to Palawan now. After lots of planning there are tons of areas opening up there and many branches getting more missionaries. Most of the wards here on the mainland here now only have one companionship. President noticed that companionships in the same ward hardly ever baptize here on the mainland so he wants to try something new. Having one companionship in the ward will keep those missionaries busy helping the ward and teaching part-members and referrals. Another thing that went into this big change is what the church as a whole saw a few years back. When the age change was made for missionaries throughout the world, missions saw a big jump in the number of missionaries in their missions. Even though there were so many more missionaries during these few years, baptisms stayed about the same. We’re excited to see what happens when we put missionaries in areas that haven’t really seen missionaries and see if anything can spark as a result!

One thing I’ve learned from him is that if you want the same results then keep doing the same thing. He’s happy with the mission but knows that by trying new things we can show our faith and see new results. I’m realizing with myself I often start to get comfortable doing things a certain way and don’t have the courage to try it differently. I remember when Alma was commanded by an angel to return to the city of Ammonihah he did so “speedily,” entering the city “by another way.” It’s going to be cool to see what happens down on the island now!

Transfers were smooth other than a few wrong turns which took us across the map and a flat tire on another van haha. Although we had a lack of sleep we definitely had lots of fun having new problems arise that have never been seen before and finding a way to resolve them.

Friday we were blessed to have Elder Rasband visit our mission! The 2 hour devotional was held at the mtc so it was our missionaries here in Manila attending along with missionaries who were coming in that very day. I know without a doubt that Elder Rasband is a apostle of the Lord. It was “part of his message” to shake each of our hands which I thought was really neat to experience. Through the spirit I was able to learn new things and was also reminded of things I need to work on. I thought it was interesting he mentioned President Monson telling him about his calling, “it will be overwhelming until the day you die.” Elder Rasband is very down to earth and humble. He also referred to himself as a “baby apostle.” I’ve learned that even prophets and apostles are still line upon line doing their best to become more like the Savior. They have weaknesses, problems, worries, and struggles just like all other people here on earth. Even through reading the Book of Mormon and some of church history you can see weaknesses in writing, speaking, patience, trust, and so forth.

The other thing he talked about is having a “burning” testimony. What does that feel like? How do you gain that feeling? What can that testimony drive you to do? He said how everyone at times has a burning testimony but that doesn’t mean once you have it it won’t go away. He said if you feel like you’ve “plateaued” there’s simply one thing we can focus on to gain that fire for the first time (or gain it back again) and that’s through getting to know the Savior, loving the Savior, and serving the Savior. I kinda look at this like a cycle. Doing any one of these three things will help the other two grow as well. I had the biggest feeling at that moment that I need to better focus on Him. Even in the mission there are so many different tactics, focuses, things to study about, things going on, investigators you’re thinking of and striving to help, that I sometimes forget the great importance of the Savior’s life, example, love, and atoning sacrifice. He is the reason all of this is even possible. I’m thankful for Him and for the experiences I’ve been able to have out here on the mission because of what He did and continues to do for me. I’m thankful for this time I have to represent Him at all times and to walk with Him shoulder to shoulder. I’m especially thankful for the time we had as a mission to meet with one of His servants and this past week

Hope you all are doing great! Have a good one!
Elder Reber

Busanga and a bucket list check

Helloooooo!   

Heres a special birthday shout out to the newest member of young womens at home. Happy #12 Paisley!! I can't believe you are so old. Paisley and I both have blonde hair, blue eyes and love the best plant, cactus.  I have decided Paisley has changed the most out of all of my siblings since I left.  Love you Pais- hope you had a great day! 

I guess you could say this week was upper dec. Started the week off with some exchanges in our area. I worked with Elder Davis from Oregon who’s been out a transfer more than me. It was kinda interesting because most of the day appointments were falling through and we were finding but not getting much success. I realized at the end of the day that it was the first day in awhile where not much “success” seemed to come. Elder Davis and I were talking about it though and realized it was still such a great day even though we didn’t teach as many lessons and find as many investigators as we goaled for. We just did our best and enjoyed every moment and as President says “Let He who is in charge stress about His work.” We don’t need to worry if we know we’re doing our part. The bright side of not having many lessons is the fact that we were able to give many more people the opportunity to accept the gospel than if we were in lessons with those we’ve already met. We also have had the Priests in the ward work with us a lot. It’s really been awesome to get to know them better. They’re so funny haha and they remind me of what I was like back before I left on my mission.

We got an apartment finally!! It’s literally the closest building to the mission office (the pics we took last the other week were on top of the senior couple’s apartment.) It’s gonna save us lots of time with travel now so we’re pretty excited. Although I guess there is an opposition in all things because another set of Elders in the mission had their house burn down (sound familiar big nick?) Getting a phone call at 1am is usually not good news haha. Their fire alarm was randomly going off 2 days before the fire so they decided to drown it in a bowl of water but hadn’t gotten a new one in yet. If they would’ve woken up 5 minutes later they would’ve been toast. 2 of their neighbors died but other than that nobody was injured or anything like that. I’ve slept in that house quite a bit so it was weird to see it all burned!

From Friday to Monday Elder Mitchell and I went with the Pasay zone leaders to help out down in Busuanga! I’d search it on google it’s an awesome place! :0 It is one of the islands in our mission and the area has only been open for 5 months. There are four elders assigned there right now and two of them have been my companions (my last companion elder fiesta and my trainer elder cibuco.) It was so sweet! At the airport we were talking to some of the workers while weighing our luggage and they pointed to one of their workmates and asked if they were pretty (it’s not weird to ask here if someone is good looking, ugly, fat, etc. haha) We looked over and they were pointing at a transgender guy and out of nowhere Elder Tuiatua just yells “Whatta maaaaan!” then gave the guy a hi-five haha! I think he would’ve been punched in the States but it’s pretty normal to joke like that here. We flew in a tiny plane with those big propellers and got to see some super pretty little islands as we were about to land. The funny thing about the airport there is it’s literally in the middle of nowhere! There were animals flockin around near the runway it was hilarious. The runway is tiny so right as we landed the plane nailed on the brakes. The airport building itself kinda looks like a big shed haha.

Once we drove across the island to a place called Salvacion we got right to work! Friday Elder Mitchell and I were told to just go find new people. Literally I can count the number of people who rejected us on my two hands for that whole day haha! Basically every house we “tao po’d” told us to come in before we could even say hello. The people there are so ready. The crazy part was the surprising part wasn’t how open they were to let us in- it was seeing how prepared they were as we taught them the lessons. They all have such great faith and many great questions that all missionaries hope to hear. The very first lesson we taught was to someone named Mae Daco. When we asked her what she felt and thought about the first vision she just started crying and said she’s been feeling so heavy for the past few years because she’s been wondering which church was true. She told us she knew God would give her an answer because she doesn’t believe God wants His children to be confused. We scheduled to return to her Sunday at 3 but since church went a little long we were late. Apparently she had her whole extended family of 40 who lives in their compound ready to listen to us! Ahh we were so sad to be late but our second lesson with her and her aunt was even better than the first! She will be baptized next month and we’ll see what happens with the rest of her family. There hasn’t been a new religion introduced in this little place in years so everyone seems to know that the “Mormon church” is the new church here. Everyone seemed to want to know more about who we were and why foreigners are walking around their place teaching about Christ.

Saturday morning the Sister missionaries from Coron (other side of the island) came to Busuanga to help us out with an activity. Total there were 12 missionaries and we held a huge activity playing volleyball and basketball with kids. There were about 40 kids there and we were all playing games. It kinda reminded me of playing with kids when I went to Fiji on that HEFY trip with ode. It was about the same atmosphere but this time I could understand the kids haha. After a bit I was wondering if we were just wasting the Lord’s time playing games with kids but lots of parents ended up dropping by and I realized that service is a great thing these people could see missionaries doing. As we were proselyting later that night we would knock on a door and the people would ask “hey weren’t you playing with all of those kids earlier?” or we would see a kid in the family who was at the activity.

Sunday we had church! For Sundays the Elders actually rent a trike and go around picking people up for church. I got to drive for a minute it was cool. Ha it was literally a minute though because I didn’t really know how to work the thing. Either way I guess I can check that one off the bucket list haha. The church is actually a little tarp that hangs off the end of Elder Cibuco/Elder Dial’s house. We had about 30 people there.. 24 investigators and 6 members. Lots of the investigators we had just met during the weekend while we were finding! In the middle of the sacrament the wind blew and water came hurling down from the tarp all over me haha.

This week I was able to work with my trainer Elder Cibuco for the first time since he trained me! It was a big flash back in lessons sitting next to him and looking over at him as he taught. He is such a great missionary mainly because of how hard-working and diligent he is. It was fun to talk about our great experiences over in Tondo. He actually speaks a different language called Cebuano so when he trained me he was also still adjusting to Tagalog. I honestly didn’t realize he was also struggling with the language when I was new because I couldn’t understand hardly anything but he never once mentioned it or complained. Love that guy!

Overall it was a great week to be a missionary. Our district leader Elder Asay said something really cool this week. He said, “We should want to be the guy that when we wake up in the morning Satan is thinking ‘oh no, not this guy again! Nothing seems to be stopping him.’” Wouldn’t it be amazing if he thought that of all of us. I know this is Christ’s church restored to the earth. I know that Christ is at the head and hopefully we can continue to do our best to gain His trust to do whatever it is he needs of us. Have a solid week!

Love elder reber 

Simon Says

LAST WEEK’S EMAIL-

Hi fam!

Well there goes another week! I feel like I was just typing up an email haha. This week was mainly in our area which is always tons of fun. Lots of our investigators we’ve been workin with have shown lack of action so we’ve been having to sort through everyone and find who we need to focus on. Although many of our investigators haven’t been progressing we still had such an awesome week finding new people! We’ve been praying to find people who are prepared and were blessed with lots of new people. We’ve seen lots of success mainly with college kids since our area seems to have more of them than normal.

I think my favorite lesson this week was one night with Elder Mitchell and Elder Somosa (an office elder who spent the night with us working.) We met three college kids who live next to one of our investigators. A goal we’ve made lately is if an appointment falls through we talk to everyone around that house for 10 minutes and if we still don’t have a lesson we’ll head to our next appointment. It’s helped us find lots of awesome people who see us walking by their house all the time. Our area is actually super small (you can walk across it in about 10 minutes) but I think especially if I’m ever in a bigger area where we might have to travel more it would be really effective to do this. Haha it’s kinda something we hear we should do as missionaries but I feel like not very many apply it.

We had super fun exchanges with Elder Palmer and Elder Tuiatua. The four of us worked in our area and I feel like I learned a lot of new things. Elder Tuiatua and I knocked on a door and an older lady opened the door and started shaking her head. Elder Tuiatua just started nodding his head saying “yes.” Haha I was laughing and then the lady started laughing too. After getting to know her for a minute she said she was busy but we asked her if we could teach her another day. As she was thinking of what to say Elder Tuiatua jumped in and said, “hey have you ever heard of simon says?” She said she knew what it was so Elder told her to follow him. He then said “yes” and she said the same haha. We then said, “Ok thanks!” and again she started laughing. We have an appointment with her later this next week. Haha he’s a pretty funny guy.

At church our recent convert named Aga told us he has a good friend named Aga who’s been in the hospital for about a month with Leukemia. We were able to go meet him after church with our recent convert. We walked in and met Aga and his family and wow they were so nice! He loves the NBA and penny boards I felt like we had lots in common. It was cool to just give him some company and introduce the Book of Mormon to him so he could have something to do. We were also able to teach him about the priesthood then give him a priesthood blessing before leaving. It was the first blessing I’ve given with a mask on! It was a neat experience for me. I’m thankful for the mission giving me so many opportunities to exercise the priesthood.

I got news this week that Danny Santos’ (first baptism) daughter’s family got baptized! The mom, dad, and two kids. I guess they’ve wanted to be baptized for some time now but were just having problems getting married because of birth certificate issues. It was awesome to hear because I remember meeting them at Danny’s baptism then seeing them go to church for the first time over in Tondo. I also learned that Danny has been the Elders Quorum President for a few months now and his wife Rose Marie is the Relief Society Secretary. The two of them are still looking set on being sealed in the temple this may when then temple opens back up! We were really lucky to meet such great people.

Well other than that I think that’s about all for this week other than the fact my righteous companion Elder Mitchell got a ticket for taking a u-turn on a red light haha. They took his license and it took a few hours at the city hall to get it back and pay the fine. Also, they don’t have garbage cans here in the streets so what you do is put your trash in a pile that has randomly been made by others then some workers eventually come grab it after a few weeks haha. Elder Mitchell went to throw away a juice box-type drink when out of nowhere a dog on a leash literally jumped out of the pile of trash at him. He about lost it and it even scared the crap out of me even though I was on the other side of the road! Hahaha good times here in the mish.

Love you all!

Elder Reber

We think these are pics from the new apartment Wow!

He says the places he has worked recently are mostly these that are just outside the city

 

Apparently these guys aren't busy enough- :)