4-25-11

Hi family & friends,

Well family hows it going? Probably not as good as its going in Mindoro, on the island of rice and....rice hahah.

It's awesome out here, but very hot, it's summer season and especially here on the rock,  I've got the missionary tan going really well I got to say, got a little sunburned that's turned into a nice tan haha

The best part of this week by far is I got to baptize in the ocean! Oh man way awesome!  The ocean is like perfect, just nice and cool, not cold at all. We had the baptismal service at the meetinghouse then tractored it down the street to the beach, did the ordinance and came back. It was legit.  I gotta say the best part is Rey, the guy I baptized, is awesome. He's only been taught for a month but he's a referral from president and he's been thru a lot in his life with his wife leaving him and stuff.  Now he's accepted the Gospel and the day before his baptism we visited him and he said he was able to forgive her and receive forgiveness for his anger towards her. its a pretty cool change.  

It was cool with Easter being on Sunday.  We shared in almost every appointment all week about Christ's Resurrection and His Atonement for all of us.  It has definitely helped me focus a little more on my purpose cuz sometimes you can lose focus on the Savior if you're not careful. I love it tho its been fun.

I'm tired like all day everyday from all the walking all day.  We need bikes! haah It sucks we don't have ones.  We're always trying to brainstorm ideas about how to get some transportation around here haha, other than hitching on the occasional tractor. It's funny we had an interview over in Calinataan, the next area away, an hour away.  On the way back this tricycle with a guy and his wife and their son drove by and a wrench fell out of the back, right in front of us.  So they stopped and we gave them the wrench and we got a free ride!  It was so cool, a total tender mercy, it was so cool.  The Lord definitely does provide, don't ever doubt that.

Sunday was pretty cool tho, we showed up like 10 min before church started (late for us) and everybody was seated and quiet when we got there  It was cool!  All the kids and everything.  Then we gave talks on the Atonement and Easter, it was cool for sure. I definitely grew a greater appreciation for the Resurrection this week, one I really didn't have before. It really is a miracle we can't overlook, equally as important as Christ paying for our sins. "He is not here For He is Risen!" ang ganda talaga.

Elder Hand is the man for sure. Hes a way funny guy and we got along really, really well I gotta say. He might be my favorite companion already.  

 

love you all

Elder Stover

4-18-11

Hi everyone!

I'm on mindoro!!! on the rock! hahah oh man I couldn't believe its so cool it was one of two places I wanted to go and now I'm here! I wanted province now I'm very much in province. The only vehicles we ride around in are tractors, the ones they use for the rice fields. oh man I was so happy when I found out I couldn't believe it! only problem was you only get 15 kilos of checked luggage or about 35 pounds so I just packed what I could in my little suitcase. that day, on tues, our flights weren't until weds morning so tues afternoon I went on splits in quezon city. guess who was my comp....Elder Heather! oh man it was so fun we worked in his area. stuff has changed so much since the mtc we've both changed a lot. not to mention we can speak tagalog now haha which is something neither of us could do in the MTC lol. it was way fun then the AP's picked us up, took us to the mission home where we packed what we could, spent the night at their house then got up at 2 to make our 530 flight. 

my new area is called rizal. its this tiny town,, well ok its not tiny its huge just not many people. we live in rumbang which is the barangay with the most people and work in about 3 of the 11 barangays. to get to the other two we walk like 3 miles just to get there. its a lot of walking. oh and its April by the way the hot season and its way extra hot here in mindoro. ohh boy i sweat all day every day. we only work til around 7 cuz there's this gang/militia in the mountains that carry around machine guns and don't like white people so even tho we're kinda far away we play it safe. not to mention there's no lights out here so once its dark its dark haha. we don't have a water filter we just drink the water but its from a well and I've been drinking it all week and no intestinal worm yet lol. my comp is Elder Hand. yep another American. he's from Boise Idaho. a really nice guy, really funny, always smiling. him and his old comp were here for 3 transfers together and now this is his 4th one. he's pretty ready to leave but still loves it here. we get along great always laughing and joking. only problem is he's been here awhile so he's pretty comfortable and I don't want to be the junior who comes in and tells him we need to tract houses he's already tracted a million times. so its kinda hard for me cuz the work is real slow. we have very few investigators but our big focus is less actives. we have about 130ish members in our branch and yesterday we had good attendance with about 50 ppl there. we meet in a meetinghouse, one of only two meetinghouses in our mission. we don't have a chapel yet but the church does own a big piece of land real close where its rumored if we can get 20 priesthood they'll start building a chapel. problem is we only have 4 active melchizedek priesthood other than us. we have about another 5 active aaronic priesthood holders. so we got a little ways to go. its fun we bless the sacrament every week (in tagalog its astig) and taught the priesthood lesson on sunday with a minutes notice. everyone said there's no english out here, only deep tagalog which there is but more english than i was expecting. our branch just got english hymnbooks like a month ago i guess, before that it was tagalog.
oh and we have a baptism on saturday! his name is Rey he's about 40, a single guy seperated from his wife and just really cool, a referral from our branch president. really smart guy really willing to serve and come to whatever we invite him too like FHE. wanna know the best part of his baptism? its gonna be in the ocean! yep that's right im gonna baptize him in the ocean im soo excited for that its gonna be awesome. cuz we're in a meetinghouse we have no font. that couldn't make me happier to be honest hahah. it is beautiful out here, really clean and beautiful. we have a bunch of members and investigators that live right on the beach here.
we worked on president's farm on saturday morning picking mangos it was fun you use these nets attached to cuayan poles (bamboo) fun stuff and they gave us some too.
everyone is very nice to the missionaries and we're pretty well known here. people like to feed us so hopefully i don't get fat out here cuz everyone seems to while they're out here on mindoro, the opposite of what i thought.

anyways yes im really stoked for this transfer. its way tiring i come home every night about 8ish and im just pooped from so much walking. but its fun. we dont get a lot of lessons in but thats what happens when it takes half an hour to get from one appt to the next. but president delamare knows and our big focus are strengthening the less actives, doing big branch family home evenings on saturday nights and doing whatever president raguin wants us to do to help the branch. i hope we can find some good investigators this week somehow this week cuz we're lacking. we depend on referrals a ton out here and when there is none, there are no new investigators. ill be sending you all some pictures of the new area tho. can you believe it? elder stover is on mindoro. .

its crazy out here its like a big adventure/vacation. just gotta stay focused, remember the Lord's work all the while i enjoy my mindoro paradise =)


love you all hope everything is going great over there!
happy easter!
remember the savior this week i know im going to do my best to study him and his last week here on the earth

love you all
Elder Stover

4-11-11

hello everyone!

 

Well this week was a pretty good one. We actually had a lot of success! We got a bunch of new investigators this week who have a lot of potential.. But after all the success we had this week and the way the area is looking up I found out today that I'm getting transferred. Yep only one transfer here in San Bartolome, pretty lame.  I would have been excited about leaving here but this transfer had just made progress this week, I felt like we were getting somewhere, however slowly, and then now I'm out, so it is on a mission, especially here in this mission. Everyone gets transferred like crazy, about 3 or 4 transfers is the max in an area and that in itself is kinda rare. So yep I'm out of here and on to different things. Elder Febbo is still here and will be training a filipino cuz there's no foreigners coming in this transfer. We keep losing missionaries every transfer until August when 26 are coming in. So its going to be a rough hectic next couple months, a lot of areas getting closed down or doubled up, so we'll see.

 

Really tho this week was good. We had our temple day, got out to work on Wednesday. On Thursday we had splits with the Zone Leader's and it was fun I was with Elder Lazaro, he goes home this next transfer and is really good.  I learned some good stuff from the guy, hes funny too. But then Friday was just a good day, found some more investigators just tracting. It was funny the difference faith and a positive attitude can have.cuz we've both got pretty negative about the area and the work but on Friday at the first door Febbo just said, this is going to be a whole family and all 5 of them are gonna get baptized. I laughed and then this guy just let us right in without us really even introducing ourselves at all.  It turned out to be a really good lesson and the guy was very interested, himself being catholic and his wife recently becoming born again and he wondered why. It's crazy what just asking simple good inspired questions can do.

 

Then of course Saturday and Sunday we had general conference. It was awesome.Its kinda weird how they do it here, just a little small room for Tagalog and the regular chapel for English, a little backwards.  I don't know, they just love English, especially here in the city, which was a problem cuz on Sunday we had some investigators come and they didn't understand the English like at all (they use some deep English in conference) so we took them to the Tagalog room. One of them Joey, a recent convert said after, that he felt the spirit so strong just hearing President Monson say good morning brothers and sisters.  Joey has such a strong spirit, so sensitive to it too. Me and Febbo talked after about how he has so much potential and how we could see us all listening to him in a conference in the future. He really is the rock of that family, all members except the tatay (so hard headed) and his little brother who is just really shy. The kid loves the scriptures tho it'll just take time before he overcomes his shyness.

 

But man all the talks were awesome in conference. I don't know how to describe it but there is so much power in the conference. Like this one and the one in October are the only ones that I've ever listened to and took notes in every session. So much to learn, I don't know I really don't want to miss many of the sessions in the future.

 

But ya that's it for right now. I learned a lot this transfer, so much. Like Elder Febbo has taught me so much directly, indirectly and maybe not even wanting to. I learned how much farther I have to go, how much I have left to learn, basically humility. and to seek the spirit. Oh and not to get comfortable, cuz its fun and easy to get comfortable until stuff suddenly gets hard then you look back and regret getting comfortable when you could have been working, getting better to prepare for the harder times that are most definitely arriving. I loved Elder Christofferson's story about the bush and how we have to be cut down by Heavenly Father to take the path we need to take, to reach the potential we don't know at this moment we have. I love the mission. I love the people. I love my companions, even if they frustrate me and make me question myself. It's just what I needed and I thank them all for it, especially Elder Febbo. cuz he wanted the best for everyone and you could never say he didn't care, even if sometimes he cares too much. He's a loving person and I learned a lot from him. Can't wait to see what's gonna happen tomorrow, where I'll be next week.

 

love you all

Elder Stover

4-4-11

Hello family and friends,

Well this week has been a better one than last week.I've felt the Spirit a lot more and that already makes it better.

The best news is Sis Ybanyez got baptized on Saturday! It was awesome she was really excited, got to the church almost 3 hours early! haha we just laughed at her and how excited she was. She is awesome, has a strong testimony and she's one of those converts that you just know will stay active for the rest of her life. I remember thinking that a few weeks ago actually. want to know why? cuz she actually reads! she reads the Book of Mormon along with the Gospel Principles book too. Oh man I wish I could describe the difference reading makes in people's lives. All the people we've dropped this transfer have had problems, all have one central theme : they don't read!  It makes such a huge difference really. That is how we help people be independent of the missionaries, to truly work out their own salvation. That's why Sister Ybanyez is awesome, shes funny too haha. It was a good baptism, Febbo baptized her and so it was the first baptism I got to witness for so far.

Other than that it's been another hard week. We have a tough time finding investigators. We tract, get in one house, teach a good lesson, then come back and they're either never home or they don't want us to teach them again or whatever. It's frustrating cuz you get pretty excited about some of these people then wala na. To make stuff worse me and Febbo don't always get along the best. It's hard I really can'texplain what the problem is, we both just know how to push each others buttons, whether we mean to or not.  Sometimes I feel like it's my fault but I don't know.

But we started this week out well.  Since today is our p day and not yesterday (its our temple day) we worked yesterday. I had gone thru the CMIS late Sunday night to find some part member families and La who might have referrals.  So that's what we did yesterday. It was time consuming and tiring but we got a bunch of potential investigators from it, not to mention a referral from Sunday (he came to church with his family). Yes we actually got a referral! hard to believe right? haha but it was an awesome lesson, the Spirit was way strong.  I remember talking to Febbo after and him saying how easy it was, even tho it wasn't a perfect lesson the spirit was still there.  I said that's how its supposed to be, cuz he is one of those that is truly prepared and those type of people don't need a perfect teacher they just need the Spirit. It was really encouraging, made me a bit more hopeful for this week.

But the good news is I feel I'm growing. I got complacent in Navotas and now I'm being forced to stress a little bit more, but thats good cuz that's where success is, and growth.

But we got one more week then transfers on tues (ya it's wierd the Area presidency asked our mission to move our transfer day from Thursday for some reason) but ya so we'll see what happens.  I dont feel like I'm gonna get transfered I feel it'll still be the two of us, me and Febbo, growing a ton in San Bartolome. Sounds like I could use it.

Alma 48---Moroni is the man! I hope to be half of what that guy is one day.

love you all thanks for the care, love and prayers

love
Elder Stover

3-28-11

Hello Family and Friends,

ya so about my week, its been tough. This is definitely one of the difficult transfers on my missions. The first one was hard but in a different way than this one. Now I suck at Tagalog but I should be better. I think Heavenly Father is telling me to hit the books and work a little harder. We talked about going about doing good today in our district meeting. So today when we were waiting for our investigator to take her to the mission office for an interview. But seriously I want to be the kind of missionary that takes every opportunity and recognize every opportunity to serve. So we'll see how that goes, i could definitely do better at that.

As difficult as this week has been we have found new investigators. which has been a blessing. I mean they're not getting baptized tomorrow but they have potential, now we just have to do our part to share the Gospel, give them everything they need and then let them decide what they want to do with it. We do have our golden investigator, Sis Ybanez getting baptized this Saturday.  She's been a huge blessing though. She's very smart and likes teaching and I swear has taught us the past couple lessons. She loves her gospel principles book and reads it like crazy haha. She wants to be a visiting teacher as soon as she's baptized. She's all good to go and I'm excited for Saturday, its gonna feel good to see some fruits of our labors.

We also had Larry a less-active/recent convert work with us this week, it was fun. He's a smart kid and even took down notes as we taught.This is the greatest work on the earth and in the heavens, gotta be happy to be a part of it.

love
Elder Stover