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
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