Technology, Transfers, and Skeletons

Hello Family and Friends!

So this has been a CRAZY week. Let's start from the top.

A few weeks ago (might have been a few months ago, I don't know), I accidentally sat on my mini speaker that I use for music while it was charging. So, because the charger was plugged in, it broke of the little spot where you plug it in. (For all you tech savvy, the charging port broke off, it ripped the solder out and some of the traces). Naturally, I had two choices: enjoy the time I had left with it because I wouldn't be able to charge it again, OR I could fix it. So that's exactly what I did. I fixed the thing. How did I fix it, you ask? That's a great question. Being here in the Philippines, it's a little hard to find tools to fix it, so I got creative. A few pieces of tin foil, paper, and super glue were all it took! The thing is working like a champ now. I have a picture that I can try and send next week. I am honestly shocked it worked haha.

BUT, now let's get to the crazy part of my week.

On Tuesday, our phone broke. This is our only lifeline to the outside world, and luckily for us, this ended up being the most inconvenient time possible for it to break. I managed to fix it long enough to get all of our contacts and to contact the office about it, but it ended up breaking again later that day. So we managed to go the rest of the day without our phone, what a pain that was trying to contact people through other people's phones. Then on Wednesday, we needed to contact our President about something, and luckily we had his number. So we ended up calling him and talked to him. At the end of the call, he mentioned something about needing to contact Elder Cruz later. We informed him of our phone being broken and that we would call him later. So we called later and he said that Elder Cruz will be transferring. He wasn't sure where yet and didn't give a date, but he said he would. On Friday we found out that the AP's had been trying to contact us the whole previous day and we hadn't responded. Apparently they had a transfer call for Elder Cruz before the actual transfer day. He ended up being transferred on transfer day anyway, though, because they had to find a new assignment for him. 

So, now I have a new companion! He seems really nice, he's a Filipino, and he is 26, a little bit older than me. There is a little bit of a language barrier right now, but I imagine that will start to disappear as time goes on. Hopefully we will be able to work hard and get to know each other at the same time!

It was kind of hard leaving Elder Cruz. We had some good talks this week as we foresaw the coming transfer. But I felt it was really time for us to split up. It is scary that I have to lead now, but I really feel this is the only things that will help me to grow. No more being babied by a trainer. I'm not sure what I am doing yet, but I have faith that I will be able to do whatever the Lord asks. "For God giveth no commandment save he prepareth a way." Not an exact quote, but it gives me so much comfort. Faith truly is what will get us through the hard times in life. A former AP in our mission, Elder Sablan, would always say, "You don't need to be sagad (kind of like "skilled") to be a good missionary. You just need to have faith." Right now, with as little as I know as a new missionary, my ONLY option is to have faith. 

We also learned in our zone conference about our attitudes. We were taught "to treat things, not as they ARE, but as they OUGHT to be, or COULD be." The potential we all have as children of God is something we know not. But everybody and everything has the potential to be something great, so why not treat them as such. Not sure why I shared that, but I felt like it was important.

We had an opportunity to proselyte in the cemetery yesterday because of "All Saints Day." This is essentially their version of Halloween, except it's a two-day-long party. So that's pretty cool, I guess! Basically, people just hang out by the graves of their family members and have food and stuff. So we went and taught a lot of lessons on the Plan of Salvation. It was cool! Most of the graves are above ground in cement boxes. One of them was like, broken open. And guess what was inside of it? Yep. A real human skeleton. I noticed it while I was teaching a lesson, so of course I kind of stammered through the rest of it, because the whole time I was thinking, "Am I looking at a real skeleton? Is this real life?" I wanted to get a closer look, but I thought that might be disrespectful. It was kind of cool though. I hope someone fixes it. 

This week was even crazier than I have time to describe in an email. But I hope you all have a great week!

Take Care,

Elder Welton

Answers to mom's questions:

How are your contacts working?  I don't see you wearing glasses in recent photos.  

Contacts are working awesome! I am able to wear them just fine here! Everytime I go into air conditioned places, I start to feel the dryness again. Yay. They have hurt a little lately, probably just because I wear them constantly, so I have been trying to take a break whenever I can and wear glasses.

  

How is crime/safety there? 

Crime is fine, no crime really. Pretty safe. I don't think people could afford any dangerous weapons here haha.

 

 Is the concept of tithing difficult for people to accept there because of limited means?

  The tithing thing is something that I am actually surprised about. There aren't very many who question it. I think maybe because it's common to ask for donations in churches. For sure I will run into some people with the concern, though.

 

Do you show church videos to investigators?  How...on an Ipad?

We don't show the movies to people here. We have a dvd player, (no iPad, people would be so distracted by the iPad itself) and we can show a movie at the church, but I haven't yet.