5-30-11

Hi Family and Friends,

Well this week has been good, full of change but good.
On Thursday was transfers and that day it was decided who was going to what mission. I'm still here in the regular Quezon City mission while my whole batch (all 7 of them) and all my past comps and friends are in the other mission. Kind of sucks but I'll just have to make new friends. Elder Hand went to novaliches and is companions with Elder Washburn, from the MTC, hopefully they're doing well. Elder Calder my dad is the new AP(assistant to the president) in the new mission. I'm excited for the guy, he's ready for that.

   My new comp is Elder Vargas, he's from Davao down south and my first filipino. He's pretty cool, really short. He's native and speaks Cebuano and I guess was having a hard time with tagalog at the beginning of his mission. He's pretty good now so now I get to speak tagalog 24/7 and improve some more. I feel I'm alright for having 4 transfers with americans but I got room to improve of course. He's short, like 5'2 I think, likes to get to work. He didn't want to come here (no filipinos do only americans haha) cuz of how hard the area is. I know he wants higher numbers and I know we can improve them but probably not as high as he thinks. Mindoro is so much different from the rest of the mission and I think he's getting it. 

   On saturday we had our english class again but this time it was more of a piano class. Bernard, presidents son, was who I taught, how to read the left hand. We just teach out of the simplified hymn book its pretty fun. Just kind of making up as I go. I've never taught piano before and now I'm the only one to teach english haha. Elder Vargas isn't bad but he's obviously not a native speaker.

   We had our branch family home evening on Saturday and it went well. We had a little lesson on the family proclamation at the Mariano family, a less active brother who's wife is working in Manila and has 3 little kids. He says its hard to go to church to walk there with 3 little kids. So many challenges and obstacles here, just have to keep teaching the doctrine and help building their faith.  Our  focus as a zone this transfer is the Book of Mormon and getting our whole district here to read it. We're passing out reading charts to get everyone to read it and get them excited about it.  Some branch presidents here haven't read it yet, it's kinda sad.  So that might be what we try to introduce in our family home evenings, reading with the members.  Also our focus especially with the youth and less actives.  Lots of things to do and not a lot of time to do it.  If only we had bicycles I swear we could do double the work.  When it takes 20 minutes to walk from our house to the church you know you're in Mindoro haha.

   But Sunday was pretty good. Elder Vargas gave a talk on self reliance it was good.  He also spoke to the youth in sunday school and we both taught a combined lesson about magnifying our callings (visitng and home teaching). president Raguin is putting him to work already. That's the benefit of a filipino comp, the members understand him better and kinda use him more. I don't know how to explain it. He's only been here a few days but he's already been a bit bold with people.  I mean its good I'm all for it but gotta do it in a loving way. And especially when you just get to an area you really gotta show love or people here won't respect you or want to listen. But he brings that element, I'm not as strong at so thats good.

   We went on splits on sunday too I went with Albert, a kid prepping for a mission and Bernard and Lovely, a recent convert. It was fun we got rained on pretty good and walked thru a little flood close to the ocean.  It rained every day this week but today its pretty hot. I feel like I'm back in Washington with the weather now.

   Anyways work is good, amazing how happy you can be when you get to do this work all day every day, even when its hard. Definitely something I learned yesterday in the rain haha

Love you all.  Thanks for the prayers, you all are in my prayers every day.

love
Elder Stover

5-24-11

Hello Familt and Friends,
Ok so where to start with this week? from the beginning I guess..

So this week has been a pretty long one. a whole bunch going on, tons of funny and ironic things happening too
For the most part, work has been hard. it's really hard to plan for people that don't really plan their own lives, if that makes sense? Like everything is so chill here that they just kind of live day to day and its hard to set up appointments or anything. So most days we spend just walking from house to house, no one being home or busy and then walking to the next place and so on. It makes for an interesting and long day. We were able to get a few new investigators so that's good. This one family, the Bacuel family is interesting. The mom is an extremely slow learner and always calls Joseph Smith Jesus Smith and the husband hates us and the daughter is 16 and really cool, Really smart and has a testimony but her dad wont let her go to church. Well one of the sons wife is interested so we've started to teach her but like everybody, it's hard to find a good time for her.

We were able to see Sister Lilagan. She's awesome and the relief society came over and visited her last sunday, and cried with her and invited her to come to at least sacrament meeting to take the sacrament. That made me feel so proud cuz thats exactly the relief society's purpose, it was cool to hear that. She's doing better but pretty weak. She's been drinking this guyabano tea that is supposed to help, hopefully it does cuz she refuses to do chemo says her body is too weak.  But they didn't end up coming to church this sunday which is to bad. She's just really weak, doesn't do much but make her tea and read her scriptures which is way good. She shared alma 32:33 with us, it was cool her testimony is very strong. Just keep her in your prayers.

On Saturday we started out English class/piano class. Apparantly past elders have done it and the youth asked us to do it so of course we were down for it. There was a brown out so we couldn't do the piano part (keyboard kasi siya) but the English class was good. We had about 5 youth and then Sister Raguin, presidents wife there. Her son Bernard is pretty good at English and just asked what a bunch of deep English words mean, like from the scriptures. We tried to just stick with the basics for Sister. It was good. Just so you all know English is the dumbest language on earth. I don't know who invented it but they're dumb. Maybe it's what we all did to it cuz none of it makes sense. Like "how are you doing?". doing means to do right? not in that question it means "how are you" a lot different from "what are you doing" but still the same word. Tagalog is much simpler believe me haha. Gonna be refining my English skills tha'ts for sure cuz we plan on doing it every Saturday. Hopefully get the word out a little more and we''ll have some good attendence in the future.

Oh and today we found out that Elder Hand is getting transferred, going back to civilization. He's excited and was all packed yesterday. So 5 companions in 5 transfers, gotta love it. haha I hope he's cool, whoever he is. we're gonna work hard next transfer. A lot of work to be done out here and we're gonna do all we can. Just gonna keep focusing on the branch, helping them get stronger, bring back less actives and visit some new ones I haven't seen yet. I'm confident good things will come from that whether its baptisms or not. It takes a different kind of missionary to be here, especially in Mindoro, too many lessons to learn and I'm gonna miss the really good lessons me and Elder Hand have had.

Anyways love you all, thanks for all the love and support and everything. I'm ready to start my best transfer so far.
Keep choosing the right and serving in any way you can. The Lords work needs any help you can give. Oh and don't forget to count your blessings. We all got it pretty good, don't ever forget that. We have the gospel in our lives, most of us have been lucky enough to be raised in God's church. We've been priviledged to have so many examples to look too. Take some time to thank Heavenly Father just for those blessings alone and serve your neighbor just a little bit to show that gratitude.

I'm just greatful for the testimony I have in this gospel and church and the things it's let me do. I'm grateful for the person it lets me become and am continually becoming. It is the power to cast out evil (Revelations 12:11). It's the one thing no one can take away or add too except for yourself.
I love my Savior Jesus Christ and I hope I can just be half of the missionary He needs. 
Listen to the Holy Ghost, it is the greatest miracle we can have (3 Nephi 19:35, whole chapter)

love
Elder Stover

5-15-11

Hello po everybody

   It's been a pretty good week I got to say. We've been way busy but not so much with appointments and teaching. President, his wife, the AP's and a senior couple came down this weekend for the Mindoro version of jubilee. It was pretty sweet I gotta say but it left us with only 3 days of work this week.

   First on Tuesday we had splits with Calintaan the farthest north area. I worked in our area with Elder Valdez from San Diego. He's an alright guy, been here for 5 months, now he's ready to get off the island haha having a tough time up there with his branch. Another testimony of how Rizal is the best branch here =) It was fun as we got some good appointments in, including this recent convert lady who has stage 3 breast cancer. She's really not doing well, but has a very strong testimony.  Last Sunday I gave her a priesthood blessing. Elder Valdez said on Tuesday when he went in there he didn't feel like she had much time left. It's sad cuz her husband isn't a member and is kinda just whatever about everything, doesn't want to change. We showed the restoration video and we challenged brother to pray about Joseph Smith cuz he hasn't yet. He doesn't want to cuz he's afraid he'll get an answer, ie. have to change. Its too bad we're gonna talk about eternal marriage with him next time, be bold with him because we know he loves his wife and he needs to face reality. We went to our neighbor's house for dinner, the Hina family. They're way cool but not investigators, they're fine with talking and feeding us but not the gospel. I just happened to bring the restoration video with me  and so they wanted to watch it and I was surprised, problem was they weren't too focused, and sister is way hard headed. She was just trying to see the parallels to Catholisism the whole time. I just had to cut it short before it became an argument cuz her beliefs are pretty wacked, kept contradicting herself. Funny how a mission can chill you tho, before the mission I would have jumped all over that kinda stuff, now I have a bit more self control.

   Anyways then me and elder Hand got to work together on Wednesday.  We got punted from basically everywhere, walked out to a far area and tried some finding with no success. Then Thursday we traveled to San Jose, helped out with the multi stake (only one district actually I don't know why they called it that haha) youth and YSA thing going on. It was cool all the kids from the district stayed at the church Thursday, Friday and Saturday, which Saturday night was the Mindoro jubilee celebration. Way awesome night I have to say, it was awesome. All the branches had different cultural  dances, they had a video about the history of the church here in Occidental Mindoro over the past 25 years, and us missionaries even sang a song. Awesome program, leaders of the district planned it for themselves.  We were all very proud, definitely a positive night.

   I love this work, it truly is the work of the Lord. It is the Eternal work of God, saving men's souls from damnation, leading them to Eternal Life, helping them realize their eternal potential for true happiness. It is the most rewarding work in the whole world and it is a work of a lifetime, not just for two years. These are only the luckiest two years of my life, to be a part of this work full time and learn all the lessons I need to go to battle every day for the rest of my life. I love you all. Always remember how much God loves you. He sees all, he understandeth all, He comprehendeth all. Always remember how much you need Him and you will never fail to find joy.

   I hope everything is going well.   You are all in my prayers,

love 

Elder Stover