Week #60 Strangely Enough, the Key To Freedom is Obedience

Hi Mom and Dad - Thanks Mom for sending me Adam's email address. What a coincidence! I wanted to email Adam this week. It's great to hear about Zane's farewell. He will do great! I will miss those guys though. By the time I'm back home and they are back home it will have been over 3 years since I've seen them. That's a long time!

I got the packages this week thanks for sending those! We went down to Iloilo this week for our mission tour. We had a member of the Seventy come and visit us. Elder Bowen is his name and he's a member of the area presidency here. He did a really good job and I learned a lot. We went to Iloilo on Tuesday which takes about 3 hours on the bus. The bus drove through Passi which seemed really weird after being gone from there for 2 months. We ate at McDonalds which was so good! After that we went to our hotel room which was the same hotel that we stayed in exactly a year ago when we got here from the U.S. I remember when we got here we all thought the hotel was pretty low quality and really just dirty and horrible. But now after a year of living here,  we all felt like we were in a very nice hotel and very comfortable. HAHA Elder Seeds and I just laughed as we read our journals about that day because we both wrote something about the dirty hotel we stayed in haha. Wow how your perspective changes! The Mission Tour conference was really good and the spirit was strong. I learned so much and came away feeling re-engerized. Its great to get a training like that from a general authority because its like no other meeting I've been in before.

We spent the rest of the week mostly in Magubilan with our investigators out there. I went on a split with Elder Malaca so Seeds could interview them for baptism since he is the district leader. Elder Malaca is way nice and we had fun joking around with each other and working in his area. We didnt have very many teaching appointments this week because of the Iloilo trip but the ones we had were pretty good. I got to drive the tricycle again 2 times. Once just putt-putting around Magubilan to our appointments and then I jokingly asked our investigator if I could drive his (they give us a ride back to panay when we are there late and cant cross the river) and he took me serious so I got to drive for a long way on that trip :) People get pretty weirded out when they see a Kano (white guy) driving the tricycle haha I got lots of weird looks.

Church was sooo hot yesterday I was just sweating. I blessed the sacrament which I haven't done since Guimaras so that was fun. We are going out to Magubilan again today for an FHE so Pday will be a little short this time but that's ok I guess. Sure have missed you mom dad and hayley. Love you lots!

Here's the answers to your questions Mom!

#1 - What made you laugh this week? The Hotel and how "nice" it was. haha

#2 - What was your biggest blessing/accomplishment this week? The mission tour. I learned a lot!

#3 - What was your biggest frustration/disappointment? Sometimes I get frustrated about not having personal freedom haha but that's normal for most missionaries I think. (This made me think of the quote by Elder Boyd K. Packer "Strangely enough the key to freedom is obedience".)

#4 -  Which has been your favorite house you've lived in so far and why? The one I'm in now has been the nicest even though it sucks sometimes being so close to a loud street. Its a nice apartment. 

#5 - What scripture has been on your mind this week? I have loved reading and studying about Ammon in the Book of Alma. He's my favorite scripture dude. ;)

Love, Elder Rasmussen