Elder Tanner Welton's Mission Blog: Jungle Movers and Conference

Hello!

Good week. Good stuff. Good. Good. Good.

We had a baptism this week! Yes!! It was Brother J------. He's so awesome. Such a nice, humble man that has been so patient with us. With our crazy schedule, there have been a lot of apologies from us due to our double-scheduling his appointment with something else, and just poor follow through on his commitments. He is SO strong though, and probably didn't even need us to teach him! We had an interesting schedule with his baptism. We were so stressed about it because the time set for the baptism ended up conflicting with Priesthood Session. So we coordinated with the bishop to move it. The issue was that J------ works a weird shift that means he has to go to work at 12 noon and finishes 12 midnight. Poor guy. So the solution that we came up with was to put the baptism during the 1 hour break in between Priesthood Session and the Saturday Morning Session. It was wonderful. We bolted out of the Stake Center, traveled to the chapel in Alijis and then hurried to set it up. The water was running up until I turned it off right as we were entering the font. We then finished the baptism, he gave a great testimony, and we let him scurry off to work with probably only minutes to spare. We were a little late getting back to the conference, but all was well! That's kind of just how things go in the Philippines! He will be confirmed this coming Sunday, seeing as yesterday was conference for us.

During the second gap of conference on Saturday, we went to this pizza place I've heard of. We got this pizza during my follow-up training a year ago, and haven't eaten it since! In the office, by the way, we have a little saying called, "Sleep less, eat more" however, for the Supply Elders (Elder Cicon and I), that saying is actually "Sleep less, eat LESS." So, seeing as we hadn't eaten in 24 hours at this point, we decided to go big. We ordered two of the second-to-last biggest size pizzas they sold. I think it came out to only around 5 bucks a person, but it was just awesome because it was so big. They actually had to bring it out the back door and go around through the front door just to serve it to us. I guess it was too big for their service window! It wasn't the BEST pizza, but I think it's pretty hard to make BAD pizza in any circumstance. We actually ate a ton of it! Like, it was almost entirely gone. Missionaries like to eat, I guess.

On Friday, we had an awesome little adventure of moving one of the companionships out of a shared apartment into their own apartment in their own area out in Kabankalan. We drove down there, got to the house and said, "Let's one trip this bad boy." So that's what we did. We one tripped it. Like real men. None of this going back and forth stuff. One. It was quite a feat! We were quite tired after doing so, but it was so satisfying making it happen. So much cheaper than hiring someone to do it too!

As I told Hayden, Mom, I played piano for the arrival devotional. It was bad. I tried to explain I didn't know how to play piano, but nobody believed me. Moral of the story: should have taken piano lessons longer. You were right, mom. And dad. You can celebrate that if you so desire.

CONFERENCE! Conference was awesome. Unfortunately, we were quite tired, so we actually fell asleep. Many times. So we definitely have some reviewing to do... We should have some traveling this week, so we should be able to catch up on that! But I really liked the idea of Ponderizing during the Sunday Session. I imagine that is already a hashtag on the internet. Good idea. (Yes, I've already heard about the whole "monetization scheme" behind that all, I still like the idea!) I really liked how he gave a straight, direct invitation to the entire church, because sometimes we get these amazing, inspiring talks that leave you thinking, "Ah, yes! Let's be better! So... What do I do now?!" and you are just kind of left with a broad road of options to apply it. It's nice to be given a specific, memorable way to become better.

I also really liked the talk by Elder Keetch about the shark barrier. I have been pondering it (ponderizing) for quite a while now and it's so true. It's so frustrating that our human nature is to be disobedient to God's commandments. But there is so much power in learning to overcome the natural man, no matter how enticing or entertaining the disobedience may seem. The one thing that I thought was interesting about this story is that these surfers were so fortunate to have someone loving enough to show them the danger. We, being in our mortal probation, do not have the convenience of looking through the "binoculars" that will show us the dangers of certain choices. We simply have to rely on the person with the binoculars, "the old native local". It's hard! What if that old man had just come over and told them that there were sharks behind the barrier? I don't know if they would have believed him! But they were lucky enough to see through the binoculars when he allowed them to. I think, to a point, we all have access to these binoculars ONLY when were are close to the Spirit. So, naturally, we need to do those things that will get us close to the Spirit. Great talk. Two thumbs up.

Hope everyone is doing great! Keep up the good work!

Elder Welton

Jungle Movers. This picture will be one of my favorites forever. These are my two MTC group mates. We all look worn out. Weight loss galore.