*Brandon sent us a little video of him talking, in place of a written letter, so I transcribed what he said here. It sounds less like a written letter, because it wasn’t one!
Hey! This is Elder Christensen! I wanted to try something a little bit different for my weekly update. I wanted to try making a video, so we’ll see how this goes. I will be reporting from my journal here and by the way, it just got filled up, so I will be using the journal that you sent me a few months back, Mom.
Last P Day was super awesome! I got to eat at Pizza Hut for the first time here in the Philippines and it was SUPER good! “Demons” by Imagine Dragons was playing in the background at Pizza Hut, so it was a nice moment…It felt like America….It was kind of weird.
Tuesday was super, super fun. It was just a super awesome day. We found some cool people. We found a really awesome former investigator who is friends with a member and we set a return appointment with him, so that was cool! We also followed up on one of the people that we had contacted before who is a heroine addict and he really wants to change so we are going to try to help him. He is really receptive, too, so hopefully we can do some good there. We have this family, the Canlas family, who is really starting to progress. The mom really wants to get into the Mormon culture and she has lots of friends who are members, so that is super good. We were able to teach Tatay Salsedo again. He is that super cool guy that we found in that new area that we hadn’t gone to before a couple of weeks ago. At the end of the day, we had had just such a solid day that I didn’t want to go home. I just wanted to keep going and teaching. It was a great day!
On Wednesday it was my first MLC/DLC, which is a giant counsel with all of the district leaders, zone leaders, the sister training leaders and the President. That was super fun. I got to see some old friends there. It was super inspiring and uplifting. It was all about covenants and it was super awesome.
Zone Training Meeting was on Thursday. I got to give a workshop about persistency and integrity. They didn’t really go together, but that is what I was assigned to give a workshop on. That went alright, I think. We had another good lesson with the Canlas family. When we gave the mom the Book of Mormon, she hugged it and just loved it. It was super cool. We contacted a referral, Marie Fea Bonus, and she is SO awesome! She has a problem with the word of wisdom, but she is just so solid. She has a solid testimony and her whole family wants the gospel. The husband immediately recognized us as messengers from God and he was just so happy that we were there. So that was super cool! So, Bonus family—thumbs up--hopefully something happens there!
Friday we taught the Rivera family, who is really cool and they have a lot of potential. We had the bishop work with us a little bit on Friday, which was super awesome, and we visited a recent convert family that has been struggling a little bit lately to stay active, so that was good. Also, we get our monthly support each month through our credit card and my companion didn’t have support when we tried to withdraw, and he still doesn’t. He has 300 pesos of support which is about 2 kg of rice. So he doesn’t have any money, so I’ve just been paying for stuff, but it’s super funny. I also had a super solid personal study that day in Alma 24. Man, those Anti-Nephi-Lehis had serious faith. They understood the atonement and they understood covenants, and I want to be like them. They understood it—they got it.
On Saturday we had a service project in the morning. Saturday was a little hard because I had to go over to one of the wards with sisters because I was going to baptize their investigator over there, so that took up a lot of the day, but it was super cool. So we only had three lessons that day, so it was a little bit of a low day for our numbers, but we had some OYMs and it was an alright day.
Then Sunday was a good day. Church was cool because we had tons of less actives that came to church that day and our sacrament meeting attendance was pretty high. We didn’t have many investigators come, which was a bummer. We just had one investigator at church. We were hoping for five or six, so we don’t really know what happened there. The rest of Sunday was good. We taught 5 lessons that day. Then we had a super awesome dinner appointment at the 1st counselor’s again. He is super nice and his family is just an awesome solid Mormon family. We ate a lot!
Then this morning (P Day) we got up at 5:30 and played basketball, which was super fun. My companion is really good at basketball actually. Oh! And I got your package, Mom, so thanks so much! The calendar is now hanging up in the apartment. Anna is now known as “Hermoine” because on the cover photo, where you are all wearing the jerseys, you look like Hermoine apparently! So yeah, that’s my week! It’s been a really good week. I’ve had a lot of fun this week. I’ve spent a lot of time laughing. My companion is just crazy. He is funny. I spend a lot of time laughing with him, so I am having a good time here in Tarlac, my second area. And so this is my weekly entry!
Elder Christensen
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