PIZZA IN MY POCKET (NOT A HOT POCKET) (Week 34, San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, Elder Arandia)

HEY ALL YOU PEOPLE! I really hope you all are doing great! as for me, im doing pretty good! we had a good week! i cut a little down on the peanut butter...oh snap i mentioned peanut butter again! i cant help myself people. but anyway before i get into things, i got another food story because this picky american aint gonna be satisfied with the real filipino pizza here. so last week was chicken feet (eating nasty chicken feet skin) , another time was crab and corn soup (drinking an egg dropped in canned corn water) and the first time was balut (egg fart). now im gonna talk about what happened this week or yesterday the filipino pizza. so for any of you that have seen a lunchables pizza and thought yeah that's alright or maybe yeah i wouldnt eat that or why would anyone ever want to eat that...well im telling ya, there is worse this stuff literally looks like a lunchables pizza but the sauce is horrible i think it might be there sweet banana ketchup or some sort of ketchup and then the meat on there...i dont even know where that comes from or what animal would even offer meat like that, nevertheless it is thrown on to the pizza and they eat it still. let's not get started on the cheese on that thing...im not a cheese guy but other americans here dont even appreciate the cheese here. ANYWAY when i saw the box of pizza opened to us, i took a good gander at what i knew would be another moment of despair and i thought almost heard "RELEASE THE CRACKEN" as that box of nastiness was opened and i saw what i knew would be my death. I hesitated to grab a slice and filled up on some sparkly orange soda...eventually i knew suffering would come. I regrettably reached for what looked like the most bearable slice of them all and took a bite...i knew i could not finish. i took another. thankfully i could still swallow  the pizza and there was soda which had unseen powers to rid the taste of all evilness, but i still couldnt finish. when all hope seemed lost i knew what i had to do. my companion talked to them and as they were distracted i slowly brought the pizza down and slipped it into my left pocket of my nice grey pants...it was worth it and i survived.

i hope you enjoyed that, besides that moment we had other things happen this week hahaha so dont worry there is more hahaha. 

One day we met with this lady and we had the wonderful opportunity to bless her sick baby. we were teaching a lesson at less active's house and she came over and was a little drunk and was listening to our listen and after we shared our message with the Lyyyyyys family, she asked if we could bless her baby because she was told by the less active family that we could give her a blessing. she asked us if her baby could have one or if she has to be a member and what i told her is all she needs to have is faith in Christ and faith that we hold priesthood power. and when she answered saying that she believes i felt the assurance of the spirit tell us that we should give the baby a blessing and it was a good experience. it is so amazing to do the work of the Lord and you get to work as representatives of Him and serve people.

Our investigator Jyyyyy passed her baptismal interview and is still set for next saturday! we are so excited! she bore her testimony to us the other day because we had an interview and i started having feelings or thoughts that maybe she wasnt ready and then i had a prompting by the spirit that we should all have a testimony meeting and Jyyyyy poured out her heart to us for the first time about how she wants and is read to be clean through baptism and follow Jesus Christ and it was wonderful!

another day in my studies i had a really good time and found something that i want to try to help myself in life and that i think can help all of us really. because if we want to be successful, the key is diligence. and i feel i was inspired on how to be diligent! I spent like almost all of my personal study on it. I was reading in the Preach my Gospel under Christ-like attributes because it had been a while since i have studied them and I decided to study diligence because i want to be more diligent in all things. I read the first sentence and in there lied what might be the key to diligence. It's simple, we need to S.E.E.C. to be diligent in all things. We just got to S.E.E.C. and then we be more diligent. But what exactly is S.E.E.C. it means we need to be STEADY- when striving to be diligent we cannot just expect ourselves to be diligent all at once but we have to focus on things we need to do better and correct those things one by one and become steadily more and more diligent. really make a plan to be more diligent! Second, EARNESTLY - we need to have true desires to be hard working and to do this work of the Lord or really any work. We have to really give it our all to be better and to do whatever work we are doing. Third, we need to be ENERGETIC- love the work youre doing! enjoy it! dont wear a frowny face and slouch around all day. if you dont really love something you aren't doing then learn to love it! figure out the reasons why whatever it is your doing is good and what will be the good results and make them your motives! Finally, CONSISTENT- we need to be consistent in our efforts of being more diligent. if we do start to get off track we got to pick ourselves up and keep going but we also have to really avoid those things that will/may slow us down so are progress isnt stopped. so you may need to plan to prevent yourself from being lazy! And when i figured this out it really just made sense, if we all did these things and really worked on being STEADY, EARNEST, ENERGETIC and CONSISTENT in our work or if we will S.E.E.C. to be diligent in all things, we will have success! so those are things that i thought about that i really want to work on to see more success not just in the mission but in my life even after the mission, so i am really going to try and work on that and i will tell you how it goes.

But again i really think that is some thing we can all always remember and the Lord has promised us that if we are diligent we will be blessed. D&C 30:8

"Wherefore, give heed unto these things and be diligent in keeping my commandments, and you shall be blessed unto eternal life. Amen."

I love you all so much and i hope you have a great week!

Elder Wright

Adidas (Week 33, San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, Elder Arandia)

The food can either be real good here or really just not that good. Adidas are chicken feet and really there is nothing on the foot of a chicken but the skin maybe a a small piece of meat somewhere and the tendons and claws...so im not gonna lie that was another thing i had to choke down a little...thank goodness i wasnt expected to choke down the whole chicken claw...ewwww! just imagine swallowing that and feeling that slide down your throat! *cringing while typing this*. P.S. sorry for that image. i had to add it in. hahaha anyway i think i will just stick to my peanut butter. Peanut butter honestly might just become my eternal companion ;). i have an addiction...i even started putting it in my chocolate oatmeal... i definitely recommend it to all ya oatmeal lovers out there! hopefully this is the last time i talk about peanut butter.

SO now to the work we started teaching Jyyyy's (our investigator getting baptized on the 28th) sister Lyyyyra and she was really progressing until this last saturday. she was accepting and acting on our invitations and she had felt Joseph Smith was a true prophet but had a doubt also so we tried explaining opposition and how about sometimes we need to do more and deeper searching to know if something is true for sure. that brought in the perfect opportunity to invite her to read the book of mormon. we had a great lesson and the spirit was strong but she ended up not having time to read so that was sad but hopefully we can help her to read the book of mormon because it truly is a wonderful book! and its true!

with my trainee elder Arandia we have been really working on not being afraid. he will get afraid to talk with people and some times in teaching lessons but i have been trying to help him out and having do a good amount of work so he can learn and grow. he really is making a lot of progress and i love it becuase it makes you so happy when you see your trainee make progress and have the spirit work through him. it is wonderful, he is a great guy. i love him and i love teaching with him.

President Hughes yesterday talked about the importance of time and about how if you have time then you can have everything but if you have no time, you have nothing and it was a great lesson to use your time wisely and it was very inspiring! 

lets use our time wisely! I love you all so much and the work is great!

PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME (Week 32, San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, Elder Arandia)

WOW WHADDUP PEOPLE!

Sorry didnt get to you last week! hopefully i got a good email for you guys this week! :)

So guys i got a confession...im a Peanut butter and jelly adict...its been rough. everyday i always have to eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich otherwise my life is complete...its like i have a hole in my stomach that only delicious creamy peanut butter can fill and satisfy...so instead of solving my problem i bought a 4.4 pound jar of peanut butter hahaha. that will hopefully last me through the next couple weeks...and yes it is all to myself. and just for your information i feel like i scored a good deal on it...yes! killer savings! nothing better than scoring a good shopping deal and i am pretty sure all of the mom's reading this can agree...am i wright?

anyway i am just gonna slide right into stories now, if y'all can handle that:

there was one day last week when i was stuffed with so much food I LITERALLY LOOKED PREGNANT...PREGNANT! After we went to the mission office for our monthly zone interviews we all went to KFC and i chowed down over there and then i went to Mcdonalds with members later that wanted to take us out and they got so much food for us to eat and it was crazy and even if i didnt want to eat they are all like. Kain elder, kain. eat elder eat (translation=eat elder, eat). so i was all like...okay *tear drops down from my eye* and then i kept eating and then literally right after that we go to a teaching appointment and then the sister looks at me and says the words that would turn my whole night around. KAIN TAYO...(we eat)...I just about died. died. I was dead. deader than dead. i struggled to eat but i still kept going because they made us food and they are poor...so i HAD to eat...as soon as we walked out i was dead. my companion saw my stomache and he was so shocked! and i am not even fat i havent gained any weight but i just had so much food hahaaha it was horrible but awesome. the mission is full of miracles and food, it's a party hahaha.

also earlier today we were on a hike and then went and started going off in a place that blocked by a bamboo gate and then had a little trail looking thing at the top so we went through, just going through this jungle like place which let me tell you...that was my dream when i was a kid, to travel through the jungle also to have a best friend alligator but i cant fulfill all my dreams...anyway so we are traveling through this jungle and then we get on property that we werent too sure would be a problem but found out as security came with a gun. thankfully there was no problem at all they were friendly and were probably surprised to see three white boys out of nowhere with two of them speaking tagalog hahaha.

This week though we had some also good more spiritual experiences. Elder Arandia and i have been seeing miracles. before he came i really was having a rough time in the new area but as we have been making goals for finding people and finding people ready to be baptized, we have been seeing the success truly! it has been incredible. We had a good experience with this part member family where the father is a Muslim and even though that would be a situation that people would maybe not want to try, i just really have hope and faith that he will be baptized and i really want to help this family.On saturday he actually listened to us and we found out about his beliefs and we invited him to act. We found out that his beliefs in the Muslim belief are not as strong as they could be. We also had a good experience where we found a less active family with the mom who is wanting to return and there are non members over there in the house.

we also had a long time of not being able to teach this lady Jorna that we taught and really loved our message about eternal families but we were able to go back to her and she still wants to get baptized and wants her kids to be baptized to so we are so excited because when you see families coming together unto christ, there is nothing better. this work truly is a joy and when we make goals to fulfill God's work and help others come unto him, i see the miracles happen. it is my testimony that as we focus on him and his work that miracles do happen and He edifies us in what we do.

Love you all the work is great and the Lord is even greater! turn to him!