Tuesday, August 5, 2014

July 27, 2014 - "...crazy how quickly time flies by when you're doing the Lord's work."

Well it's been yet another incredibly fast week here in the Philippines. It's just crazy how quickly time flies by when you're doing the Lord's work. Wow that will be really cool for Emma and Kolsen to get to be a part of the rededication of the Ogden temple. I bet it looks really cool. Well I miss soccer a lot so all you siblings of mine better enjoy it and pray that they like soccer where you get called to serve ;) It's funny that like almost all of the world plays soccer, especially in poorer countries, and then we have the Philippines: a bunch of short fast people that would be perfect for playing soccer and they all like basketball. But I'm learning to like basketball more I guess :) This is the first apartment I've had where we need to pump the water. It's one of like 2 that are like that. We might be getting it fixed sometime...That's awesome for Danny! He'll love the MTC and I'm sure he'll like being in Chicago too. He only gets 2 weeks in the MTC I think.

Well as for things here in Sta. Te; I think I'll start with the good news. For the first time in my mission we hit and the passed the standard for number of lessons this week!! WHOO! That's pretty exciting. 32 is our Mission standard (that's pretty high and it's like the highest in all the Philippines.) We got 33 this week. That's a record for me. So that was sweet. Next thing is we found a family. This is THE family! I've never felt so certain in my life that this family will be baptized. The feeling in their home is just different. It's nice. They were taught before and then the missionaries stopped going out there because tatay got moved from Gonzaga to Aparri. He's a security guard and he works one week then has a week off. He's got a motor and they can come to church, but we need to teach him when he's home and we need to find some solutions to the work problem and transportation. It takes us an hour to walk there because there isn't any tricey that will take you there unless you pay a ridiculous amount of money and then you have to walk out anyway because there's no one going back to the centro. That's two areas now where we walk an hour just to get there and then we teach! It's a lot of walking but it's so worth it.

As for the not so great news...No progressing investigators!!! That was somewhat discouraging. We worked so hard to get standard on lessons and none of our investigators with a baptismal date came to church. Bummer. You pause to think and say "what's wrong?" Well we're just going to keep working as hard and be exactly obedient to the mission rules so we can have the Spirit with us. I hope they feel and recognize it too and then choose to accept it. We'll do everything we can and then the Lord will bless the people here in His own time and way. Oh yeah, Denver has appendix and UTI sickness stuff so that's why he couldn't come to church. Next week he will though :) That's about all my fantastic family and friends.

I got those letters from the family reunion and they were awesome! Nice little bonus to my day. Maybe I'll tell you about that day. It was District meeting and I felt like I was starting to get a fever. Just that awful feeling. Well I had no desire to feel that way so I prayed that I would have the strength to keep going, took 2 advil, and that's the day we found that family that's going to be baptized. Miracles! I truly do count it as a miracle that I've never had a sickness where I've had to stay in and rest. Can't say the same for my other companions (except the Filipinos so far have been doing good). The Lord is really good to me. One thing about the letters though that kind of caught my attention is that grandpa said he wrote an email and I have not received an email from him ever. In fact I've only ever gotten one email from grandma Snow ever. I'm starting to think that they've been sending some and they're not getting to me. Maybe just double check that they have the right email and everything. Oh yes package!! Thanks mom you da bomb! Well we go out into those mountains to teach, just not very far up so I probably won't get to climb them. It was raining (halata (obviously)) so it was somewhat cool, but then it warmed up and got SUPER HUMID so it was still hot :)

That's all...for reals now. Love and miss you all. Mahal and Ingat!
-Elder Egan



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