April 6, 2010

Hey Mom & Dad.

So I'm serving my mission in the jungle. hahaha. Calape has one road that runs through a straight up JUNGLE!!! Its all bushwhacking to get to investigators, pools of water, animals moving in the brush, coconuts falling from trees...the whole nine yards.

So I'm glad I'm out of Cebu and here in Calape. For a number of reasons. But its still sad to leave Cebu behind. But they need me here. This place hasn't had a retained convert baptism in a couple years and all the missionary work has slowly turned to retention. The average amount of people tracted into WEEKLY is about 20. The missionaries just gave up because there are so many inactives. So now I get here and we have 2 investigators. They havent been to church in weeks because thats not the priority for the missionaries. The priority is the inactive members! So now the INVESTIGATORS are falling by the wayside. I'm like...are you serious??? So I told Elder Estavillo (more on him later) that there is no way that we can continue. So we sat in a Julie's bakeshop over ice cream, bread and coke and received revelation for our area. We are going to tract EVERY HOUSE in our ENTIRE AREA. Thats our focus this transfer. We are telling the members that inactives are not our job. Getting new members is our job and then we are going out to find them. The only problem is that this little jungle province is ruled with an iron fist by the Catholic church. The church will PAY people to stop taking discussions. Nice huh? Its gonna be fun.

I'm trying to attach some pics of our bathroom. I dont know if I can do it. This computer is being pretty gay. Maybe next week. But last night Elder Estavillo and I spent two hours cleaning it so we could be free for today. Carbon dating put the soap scum around 2500 BC while the urine residue around the toilet was carbon dated at around 1973 AD. It was gross. But we went in there with a bottle of muriatic acid and just went to town. It was crazy. Fumes everywhere, bubbles from the acid, water getting everywhere...but it looks AMAZING now. Its actually looking like a bathroom! The toilet is white!!! Not yellow and brown! Nice! The bathtub is blue! Not black! Honestly...I thought it was a black tub. Yeah...I still do chores. Even when you're not around to write a list. hahahahahaha.

Cool thing that I saw the other day. We were walking home on Saturday from a members house (inactive of course) and I hear this really loud squealing on my right. I look through the banana leaves and chain link fence and see these three pigs in pig pens that are too big for the pens. So they are standing up. And they are literally. This is not a joke. They are the size of a full grown GRIZZLY BEAR!!! They were all standing and squealing and freaking out. I thought they were going to bust out and just start eating people! That was crazy.

Elder Estavillo...is just like Matt Woo. Its awesome. Great companion. His last companion was really lazy and didnt want to work and so he just kinda went along for the ride. But I got here and was like, "Alright lets look at the Area Book. Lets go tracting. Lets go see these former investigators. Lets study." And he's totally down for it! He wants to work. Thats good. Its what I like. His follow up trainer is Elder Goodsell. (Speaking of which, whats going on with that? Dad said him and Tress are dating???) Great guy.

But even with a great new companion its really tough to leave Elder Nambio. The two of us had our little speed bump but after that, I set aside everything that I wanted just to make sure he felt loved and appreciated. And through that, I grew to love him more. We're really great friends now and it was pretty tough for us to leave. We loved being companions and we loved that area. And they loved us! We had a BUNCH of members come to the transfer meeting on their own accord and wait for us. They cried and took pictures with us and wished us luck. It was really cool. Its good to know that I left that kind of impact with a group of people that I couldnt fully communicate with.

Anyways....Hope everything is good. Love you bunches.

Brandon