Elder Parker Reber: JR's Baptism

Kamusta mga kaibigan!

This week we flew over to palawan monday night and got to work over in Puerto Princesa. I went with to Elders and we were just walking around looking for people to teach. we found a huge compound full of college student boarders and we taught some really cool kids our age! It's great teaching kids the same age because we have lots in common- even though i come from the other side of the world haha. Wednesday we had zone conference for the island which went pretty well. It was good to see some of my old companions- Elder Petersen and Elder Vinculado. They're both in Narra right now and their zone had 30 baptisms this week which is the most we've seen in a long time in a zone! Lots of changes have brought new results it has been fun to see. It's interesting though because Satan seems to see that and the most successful zone also has the most problems in companionships haha.

Highlight of the week was JR Inopia's baptism. He has made some awesome changes over the past few weeks but has been a strong investigator from the first day. When we came back from Palawan he tricked us and told us he drank coffee four times while we were gone haha! At first we believed, but then he continued on to say that he also drank beer one evening, during his lunch break at work he drank tea, and every day after work he would smoke the longest cigarette he could find. Haha that guy is so funny it was a great day to see him be baptized. His new job has kept him working really hard at a factory but it's inspiring to see him meet with us to read the Book of Mormon each night- even though that's his only free time he has.

We actually met JR's cousin this week named Syra. She's 13 and just came from her province last week. Her sister MJ was baptized here a few months ago but Syra was always "busy" in the past. This week she really really wanted to go to church and was planning on going but her grandpa passed away so she had to head to the province for the weekend. She left a letter for us that explained why she wouldn't be able to go to church but assured us that she had read up to 1 Nephi 20 or so and had taken her BOM with her so she could keep reading. Haha it was the funniest letter.

June went on his own to JR's baptism which had us super pumped! He has now been over a week without any word of wisdom which is a miracle. He's gone from 12 cigarettes a day to 0 in less than 2 weeks. He's such a humble guy and like i said wants to be able to talk smoothly and read better. We promised him in one of our first visits that those things would improve drastically if he continued to keep commitments and we've seen that promise be fulfilled little by little. He made some awesome comments in gospel principles and we've seen his reading speed up in lessons. The bishop announced his baptism for May 12 to the ward and June looked like he had just won the superbowl

I've had some fun experiences with Elder Mitchell over the past few weeks. We always laugh at what's going on around us in the area- never had a day without seeing something "new." This place is so crazy haha. We've started pulling little pranks on each other which has been funny. I'd say i took the W this week. Just small things like moving his shoes further away from the door as we leave a house after an appointment has padded my lead pretty nicely. Yesterday we were making noodles in the house and he decided to take a quick power nap as i watched the noodles. I found in one of my packages some "instant snow" that i forgot about so i made a big bowl of that. Long story short i woke him up, had him sit down to start eating, and dumped snow all over his face and got it all on video :)) Boom. Since he's from Georgia i don't think he's very adjusted with snow so it made it that much better. Good times here on the mission haha!

Last night we were on our way to June's house and on the way we saw a little alley. we decided after visiting June we'd go back and try some doors down the alley. The first door we went to we met a 17 yr old kid named Tim. He was a little shy and after a minute his sister came out and he shoved her forward to talk to us and ran inside haha! His sister then ran in as well (some filipinos can't just say no) and i was about to head to the next door but elder mitchell said "no let's just walk in and see what happens." Soo we just opened their door and started walking down a little hallway. We were kinda curious as to how they'd react since we just walked right in and as we got in we saw about 8 teens and 1 grandma. The 8 teens ran upstairs (including Tim) but we sat down and met the grandma. She is awesome and her mom and aunt are mormons. She wanted us to teach her but more importantly her grandchildren. We asked a little boy to go up to get the teens but he told us they weren't there. We asked how they got out and the grandma laughed and explained that they had jumped out of the window up there. Haha some of the people here are SO SHY! We are going back tuesday and i'm glad we went in even though it was a little scary haha.

Right after that we got out and walked past another guy on the way to the car and when we said hi to to him he answered with a very friendly sounding hello. We walked a little more then both stopped, smiled, and said "yep we gotta go talk to him." That was also kinda awkward to just walk back but we got to teach this guy outside of his house. His name was Marvin and he works at a call center so he speaks great english. He understood the apostasy perfectly and was one of the nicest people i've ever met in a first lesson! It was neat to have two cool experiences like those back to back.

I had an awesome personal study yesterday where i read Enos pretty quickly but as i finished i realized i have never really studied the chapter intently so decided to read it again slower and it turned into my whole study. My respect for Enos is now so much greater than it was a few days ago. I love how he prays to the Lord for the records to be preserved for the benefit of the very people who were trying to destroy those records. The Lamanites at the time were evil-natured, wild, ferocious, blood-thirsty, idolotrous, and filthy towards his diligent labors to restore them unto the true faith. Even though he knew that his own people, the nephites, would be destroyed, he still sacrificed much to help God's children. He saw the Lamanites as God would and looked past their many faults even to the point where he was willing to spend "all his days" in trying to help them. I invite you all to read it!

Have a good one ! Elder Reber