Sunday, February 28, 2016

Week #79 “Today’s Trial is Tomorrow’s Testimony”

February 22, 2016
I met this woman - she will be 100 years old in May!
Hey Mom and Dad! It's been a good week in Tangalan! My birthday was pretty fun. I got to eat dinner on Tuesday night at a member' home who's little boy also had a birthday the same day. They cooked some really authentic Filipino foods and it was a fun time!


We had a really good week with the work and had fun along the way as well. Now that I'm trying to type about it all though I seriously cannot remember too much about what we did except visit our investigators! haha Who are really progressing and doing great by-the-way. We're excited about that. Wednesday was probably the most challenging day last week where we worked in the hot sun tracting all day long and nobody was home so we had lots of rejection but we did get to talk to a lot of people. In the evening we have our lessons with Sister B and Brother L and during both of them we had members with us, which helps the lesson to flow better. Sister B is a really cool lady. She has changed a lot in her life since we've met her, like abandoning a really bad coffee addiction and not saying "dios ko" anymore (taking the Lord's name in vain). She has been so happy and willing to follow the  commandments. L has made lots of changes in his life as well. On the other side of town we teach sister K and Sister A and they are really cool too. They have been working with us and aren't t even members of the church yet. They are really funny girls and they too are making some really good changes to bring their lives more in line with what God wants :)
Birthday Boys!
Birthday Dinner


Here's the answers to your questions Mom:
#1 - What made you laugh this week? Some dude ate crap on his bike in front of us and everyone was laughing at him. Don't worry Mom...he was ok and was happy he gave everyone a good laugh.
#2 - What was your best experience this week? We had one day where we didn't get rejected one time the whole day! All of our appointments we scheduled were home and the lessons turned out great. It was a good day!
#3 - What was your favorite meal this week? We ate at McDonalds on my birthday and then the birthday party with the members. So that was a perty good day of food :)
#4 - What was your favorite scripture or scripture story you studied this week? First Nephi - I just started re-reading the Book of Mormon again.
#5 - How come you guys don't ride bikes in your mission? I'm not sure, no one has ever said. But just guessing it could be that lots of the Filipino Elders don't know how to ride and most areas have enough transportation to get around if we need. I'd think too that we travel a lot off the beaten path which riding a bike would be difficult. There is an area on Guimaras where Elder Seeds was serving and they ride bikes, but that's the only area in the mission I know of that has bikes.

I've been helping Elder Dansalan with learning English which has been fun. That gives us something else to do during studies when we have extra time. He has also been helping me to learn more Tagalog. On Saturday we had a Valentines party. All of our investigators came which is just awesome! There were some visitors from Taiwan in church on Sunday. An American guy with his wife from Taiwan and their kids. I felt a little awkward talking to them IDK what happened haha but maybe I was just nervous to talk to another foreigner. Me thinks coming home might be an adjustment... lol.

That's about it this week! Thanks again for everything. Love and miss you all lots.

Love Elder Rasmussen 

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Week #78 “Pollinate the world with the pure love of Christ” M. Russell Ballard

February 15, 2016
Hi Mom and Dad!
Thanks mom for taking the flowers to Maddie for Valentines for me :) She said she was really happy so mission accomplished! Your trip to Lava Hot Springs sounds like a lot of fun. You two have been all party ever since I have left! Always traveling and going places. I hope we can still party when I get back!
My finger is all messed up so hopefully I can type haha
The funnest thing that happened this week was being able to go on a split with Elder Mudrow who is my batchmate in Numancia. He is a funny guy and great to work with so we had fun working together. I did 7 baptism interviews so that's why I was with him. A Missionary from their had just come home from Seattle, Washington, so that was cool to get to meet and talk with him. He spoke just like a kano. Then the same day we dropped off a sister missionary at the airport who was on her way to LA. Crazy to think about the change that will happen for them. Elder Mudrow is way good with people and kids which I envy :) I learned a lot from him and we talked a lot which feels good since it can be hard to talk to the Filipino Elders for a long time.


I had some drama to deal with this week when a stupid member edited a text that I sent them and tried to make it look like Elder Lopez and I were flirting with her and she sent it to her boyfriend. No kidding! It caused all kinds of drama and my companion got mad thinking I had really sent it and put his name on it. <sheesh!> I hate drama so much! It was really ridiculous, but things worked out and all is well again, but dang it really bothered me so it was hard not to be annoyed for a few days. When things are going along super well, just watch out because Satan is always hard at work trying to ruin everything!
Zone conference was good even though I struggled to keep my eyes open at times since I was super tired and sleepy for some reason. We did get to stay in a really nice house in Kalibo Sunday night which had hot showers and air conditioning!! It was heaven getting to sleep in A/C for a change. I didn't get to appreciate the hot shower however, since it's too stinken hot to shower in anything but cold water. LOL Oh and I got the package you sent THANK YOU so much for everything you sent Mom and for always spoiling me. I had no idea there were cookies in the potato chip tube! I thought they were just chips so I havn't looked in there. Now I'm way excited. The package apparently got left it in the hot truck though since some of the chocolate melted, but it's still edible, so no worries ;)

We also had 5 investigators at church last Sunday and 4 of them will be baptized in March if things work out the way they should. They are all cool people and have good members to fellowship. 
Well, that's about all for this week! I Love and miss you tons! Elder Rasmussen










Week #77 - “If You Want To Know the Lord, Go to Work For Him”

February 8, 2016
Hey Everybody! This was a good week for us in Tangalan! We've got some wonderful investigators who are progressing and who accepted baptismal dates for March! Their names are Angemea, Kiah, and Laurance. They are all around the age of 15-17 and they have family members and friends who are members. They are just awesome and we're excited to be teaching them.

This week we did some tracting but honestly didn't have very much success with that, so I'm glad we have some great investigators to teach to help keep our spirits up. Tuesday we watched a missionary training video which is like watching an action movie when you are a missionary. haha I love to see videos that are filmed in Utah, it's so great to see "home". and of course it its great to hear from general authorities also and be inspired and remotivated in the work.



The week went by super quick. After Tuesday the days just flew by and before I knew it Sunday was here again. Even though we didn't have too much success with tracting I did feel like I have improved a lot with talking to people. The words just seemed to come out easy when I introduced the message to them. We had a good laugh walking down this road towards a house when we saw a little boy run out to their fence and lock it then ran back haha Guess they were sending a message! Its not very difficult to see the "Kano"  in a white shirt walking down the road.

We visited a lot of members who we haven't visited with before and one of them was not home at the time but we met her brother outside their house and ended up sharing with him and he was a super cool guy. His marital situation is a little mixed up right now but hopefully we can help him get his house in order. On Saturday these two members fed us a really good dinner and man I was stuffed. The next day was Sunday and we went to Kalibo for Stake conference. Our investigators came with us and the meeting was cool with a member of the Seventy who spoke. President and Sister aquino spoke and sister Aquino said "this will be our last stake conference with you before we go home (she was smiling), I'm not trunky, I'm just excited." That's how I have felt a lot lately.

Transfers are now on Mondays and apparently can happen whenever President gives us a call, so no more 6 week intervals. Today is transfer day. My trainer Elder Fogavai is going home today as well which is crazy because he was only 6 months out when I entered the mission. Seems not long ago at all! That's all for this week! Love and miss you all! Elder Rasmussen 

Monday, February 1, 2016

Week #76 - Hard Work Beats Talent When Talent Doesn’t Work Hard

February 1, 2016


Hey Mom and Dad! 

Wow that is just not fair how much snow there is! I miss snowboarding and playing around on the wheeler and snowmobiles. It makes me homesick to see all the snow, but that's ok. It's going to make me really appreciate it when I'm home next winter!


I was thinking Morgan would be back soon that just seems unreal how fast her mission was! Mine is going fast too though. Only 6 more months! That is really hard to believe.


This member here named Vaughn bought a brand new iPhone 6 and I felt totally clueless trying to use it! There's so much new technology that has come out while I've been gone that I don't know about. Holy cow, I'm going to have a lot of catch up to do. haha

I know my house doesn't look all that nice in the pictures and it really isn't that nice compared to American standards, but truthfully its way nicer than lots of the houses here. We get around fine in it since all we do is sleep study there. I will miss this place a lot I know. Nevertheless I miss home like crazy and am way excited for my turn to come home :) Mom, I can tell by how much detail you gave me about your new horse that you're excited about him! ;) It makes me happy you found something that makes you happy! That's pretty cool he's got Kentucky Derby winner blood in him hopefully he'll be a winner for you! He really once sold for $35,000? That's a really amazing story and so cool you can find all that out from a lip tattoo! 

To tell you about this week mine was really slow, at least it seemed that way. Since last Tuesday it has rained for 5 straight days and that made things really slow down. A couple of highlights about the week was we had a couple of members work with us and one of our investigators has a baptismal date for this month and he came to church! He's a super shy kid but such a nice guy. His name is Lawrance. This week I felt kind of awkward talking to people because we seemed to get rejected a lot this week and no one wanted to talk to us. That's the worst :)

This girl we visited is really cool her name is Marian and she is interested and wants to go to church but her parents are being stubborn about it. We got a text from her saying her parents were apparently mad at her because we've been visiting even though we cleared it with them the day before so I guess there's some kind of misunderstanding going on. Just another thing not to get down about but it can be challenging at times!

Another positive thing that happened was that my companion and I had fun in the work regardless of the crappy stuff going on. I asked him to speak full Tagalog to me because I want to learn it before I go home. He is a native Tagalog speaker, but because he's been speaking Ilonggo and Karaya all year he struggles to teach in Tagalog haha but he's been helping me learn a lot and the Tagalog is starting to click more. That is one of the challenges of this mission is all the different languages and my brain needing to switch back and forth depending on who I'm talking with, but it's also really cool to learn all the different languages.

Last night we had  2 Elders (Elder Dacutan and Bombita) stay at our house for the zone activity today. Nanay Antaran always gets way excited when other missionaries stay with us and she is all about feeding us dinner. She loves the missionaries! 

The zone activity today was at Jawili Beach and it was cool mostly because we get to see the other missionaries. But that's why I'm late emailing today.Have a fantastic week! Love and miss you! Love Elder Rasmussen 


Service Project Day


Tangalan LDS Church













Week #75 - “Pollinate the world with the pure love of Christ” M. Russell Ballard

January 24, 2016

Hey Mom good to hear you are feeling better now! I've had a runny nose and phlegmmy throat and so has my companion but luckily mine isn't as bad as his.

I feel like this week was a very productive week!
On Monday we got rejected by a few people, but that night we went to a less active member's home and had a really good visit with them. So that ended the day on a good note!
Tuesday I taught district meeting again and also got some letters from Uncle Rob and Grandma so tell them I say thank you for sending those~! I went on a split with our zone leader Elder Nuttall in his area in New Washington which is also where Elder Kellerstrass is, so that was fun! We did some really good work and I learned a lot teaching with Elder Nuttall and got to know him a little better. We talked to a lot of people and this week has been one of the most talkative in my mission. I knew a few people from Tangalan which was a big coincidence to find a guy I know pretty well in one of the houses we visited.
Here are the pics of where I lived that I've promised for the past 2 months! haha I know it looks a little rough to your standards, but it's actually a really nice house. One of the nicest I've lived in here. Besides, all we do is sleep and study there and the rest of the time we are out working.
By-the-way, I know nobody really cares but I feel like including the fact that I ate a lot of veggies this week! haha I haven't been able to do for a long time--fresh vegetables have been in short supply lately. I think eating healthy has helped me get over being sick really fast thank goodness! :)
Yesterday we had a member come with us and she was awesome and had a few referrals for us which ended up working out very good! One of her friends we visited and I felt really bad for her because she started crying out of nowhere when we asked her about her family. It's a sad situation. Its only her and her parents and the parents always fight she said. That was sad but she was a really nice girl and hopefully the parents will listen to us and we can improve help make their home life happier.

Saturday we had a guy named Roy work with us and I love Roy because hes a really nice guy and he's from Negros so he speaks Ilonggo/Hiligaynon and that's always so nice to hear! Hiligaynon is the best and that's all I have to say about that and I love those people! Sunday was a day of visiting a guy named James who is paralyzed and bed ridden so he always appreciates the visits. We also visited Chery Jane our recent convert and also a few new investigators we met, one of whom was very thankful that we gave her a Book of Mormon to read! Nanay Antaran of course fed us twice today which we love because eating at her house is awesome and its nice to have meals prepared that are so good! :) She is really a wonderful lady. Its raining today so the temperature is nice. It's been super dry here the last few weeks so the rain is needed. Well, that's about it! Love you all! Elder Rasmussen
Kitchen

My Bed

Front Room






Week #74 -“If You Want To Know the Lord, Go to Work For Him”

January 18, 2016
Hey Mom and Dad - I'm sorry to hear you are still dealing with your cold Mom. That just sucks you have been sick for so long! That's cool you got to speak in sacrament ;) I haven't had to do that in a few months. I still get a little nervous about speaking in Sacrament here, but mainly because I don't know which language to use haha. Please send me your talk, I'd like to read it! Knowing you I'm sure it was the best talk ever mom :) I love those fishing pictures Dad! I wish I could have been there to fish with you. 40 perch sounds like a lot! I remember us getting skunked at Starvation when we went there ice fishing before. So I'm glad you didn't get skunked! The collage you made looks awesome! I can't wait to see them all!

The Ati Atihan festival has been going on here in Aklan so the people have been kind of crazy with that. It's like Carnival or Mardi Gras, so lots of parades and cultural stuff. We didn't go into Kalibo this week because the traffic is so bad so we're just here in Tangalan emailing this week.


This week was different for me.  For some reason I had a lot of anxiety to get home haha Go figure? Every once-in-awhile homesickness will creep up on me and I get out of my groove for a bit, but thankfully it goes away again. I think what brought it on was there are a lot of my batch mates in Kalibo zone and we are all trying not to count the months left haha but we're all excited to get home! Nevertheless the work goes on as always and I'm still so glad to be here!!

We did a boatload of tracting this week which wasn't the funnest part of the week of course but we did talk to a lot of people which is a good thing! We've been asking the members for referrals because we've been struggling to find people who have the desire to progress. We've been teaching a part member family with 2 girls and a boy and the lessons go alright even though there are a million little kids running around and lots of noise haha. We walked up a road as far as we could because it looked really interesting and I was wondering who the heck would be living way out in the middle of nowhere and we found a guy with the last name Cheng and he has been listening to us the lest few days. There are lots of houses around the area but the people either hide from us or were too busy to listen. That's a common struggle here! We had a meeting with the Branch leaders yesterday so hopefully they will be able to get something going with the members. This guy named Roy, who is the coolest guy, offered to get the youth involved in the missionary work so he took some action on that but the other leaders weren't too ambitious about getting something done. We will have some young men and women work with us though this week so that will be cool! 

That's about it! Love and miss you lots!
Love Elder Rasmussen

Week #73 'Get On Your Knees and Pray, Then Get On Your Feet and Work"

January 11, 2016

Hi Mom and Dad -This week was alright but I was feeling a little bit trunky, so that had things dragging a bit for me. We went to Iloilo on Monday Night for Zone Meeting. That was a good 3.75 hr bus ride. They played Fast and Furious 7 on the bus *again*, and it was the fifth time I've seen that movie on my mission haha. Zone meeting the next day was pretty good and they did a good job with it. It was all centered on goal setting, which I could really improve on. I'm feeling re-inspired, so hopefully I'll improve on that. We went to SM after that because my comp needed to get some new shoes. We ate at a new burger place there which was the most american like burger I've had in a long while, well besides Mcdonalds. HAHA  The burgers were huge. One of the other Elders did the burger challenge and devoured the burger in like 2 min but couldn't get past the mountain of fries! That was fun to watch!
We finally got home after being away for a few days. It's always kind of challenging to get back into the groove after traveling but we were still able to teach a few people that night. We looked a lot for more people to teach this week and we ended up finding more less active/inactive members in the process. I learned this week my companion really doesn't enjoy walking haha and I love to walk. I've always walked with my companions everywhere but he doesn't enjoy it too much, which is hard since taking transportation a lot gets really expensive, so I try my best to discourage that. So we did do a lot of walking this week and I think his feet hurt since his shoes aren't the greatest. Mom, would you do me a favor and in my next package send some of those comfy insoles your can buy (like Dr. Scholls?) I think maybe if he had those that maybe it would really help him. Thanks Mom!

We found a lady named "Dichee" (that's how its pronounced) who is a member and we were always told she lives in a certain area but we never could find her there, so we went looking for her house and she was way up deep into the mountain.  We also visited and shared a message with her which I think she really appreciated because its only her at her house with her two dogs. They reminded me of Izzabelly fuzzy pants and that made me miss our puppies back home. In the process of looking for her we found a cool area to work in as well and found this one home that had these parakeets so I got some pictures for you Mom. They are cute little birds.
An RM named Carter Peterson visited Tangalan this week and he ended up coming out teaching with us. It's always fun to visit with former missionaries and ask them where the worked and how they did things. We got a lot of talking in with him while we worked. He came with us to Kalibo this morning on his way to the bus terminal to head back to Iloilo. The festival thing here is going on right now called the Ati Atihan so there's all kinds of crazy traffic in the city so we had to walk a ways this morning to get to the computer store, but we made it.
That's pretty much the week! Love you and miss you! Love Elder Rasmussen