Chapel Tour

This week was pretty slow at first but the past couple days have been awesome. So we had been making like no progress with finding new people to teach because street contacting just doesn't work here because everyone is always either working or busy, there's not really anyone that's out and about just to be out. Last Saturday we had a chapel tour though, which was looking like it was going to be a total bust, no one that was invited came. We have like 15 ward missionaries and they all invited people and like none of them came either. We were supposed to start at 5 and it got to 5:30 and Elder Clegg and I decided we'd try just inviting people off the streets. We tried encouraging people, promised them that there'd be food. We even talked with a homeless person and encouraged him to come and eat and stuff with us and even he didn't come. One of the ward missionaries said he was on his way still and that he was bringing a friend so we just decided we'd wait for him. He finally came around 6:30ish and he showed up with 8 people from his class! It was great, we actually got a chance to teach new people. There wasn't a ton of interest from them though, so we were still a little disappointed. However, the next couple days after that we received like 5 referrals from members just like out of the blue! It was awesome! We didn't even go up and talk with these members, they just came by and they were like "hey, I know this person that you should go talk to." So ya now we have a few new investigators so that's been really exciting. My bisaya is starting to improve more. It's still hard to have just like a normal conversation but I can really teach now in lessons.

Each day, as long as there's no meetings or anything that takes up time, we generally plan to teach around 10 lessons, but of course we generally get punted a few times. So some days we are lucky to teach just 2 times, but other days we end up teach 7 or 8 lessons. Weekly we probably teach around 20ish lessons on a good week, but other weeks we're lucky if we teach around 12 lessons. We mostly teach investigators, less actives, and a couple recent converts each week. We also meet with members though, so I've probably taught a lesson to most of our ward at this point.

Our church building was actually the original stake center that was built back in the 80s but it's actually still in a really good condition. Elder Clegg was telling me it was also there that they translated the Book of Mormon into Cebuano.

I remembered to take more pictures of our area this week. I also went on splits because a companionship in my district was in the hospital all week (one of the elders got a bacteria infection thing on his face) so I went with one of the Elders so that he could teach in his area at least once this week. So I have a couple pictures from that area (Arlington) as well.

We actually haven't been getting that much rain so that's been lame. I don't think I'll ever see the leaves change color here so if anything you're lucky. And we probably pray like 37 times each day so ya.

Gihigugma tika! Miss you!
Elder Shirley


Arlington + sunset


Pics of the area outside of our balay and in front of the church. and of course pics of the church


elder clegg only has a backpack because he is carrying a ton of pamphlets and book of mormons to the chapel for the chapel tour.










Our Chapel


Chapel tour with all the ward missionaries plus the people that came


Ward missionaries that woke up early to throw a frisbee with us --the one standing in this pic is the Ward mission leader, he's 20ish, his name is Louen (pronounced lowen). The one squatting right next to me is brother Prince, he's a recent convert and is super fun to teach, and the one in front of me I still haven't figured out his name... There's so many of them....