Week 93

Hello Friends and Family.

This week was literally the best filled with lots of great memories and adventures and I am just so happy to be here and work as a missionary. As most of you know Missionary work is hard, but I can say it doesn't feel like work at all and the week just goes by so fast because of all the great things we get to do.

On Saturday we had a baptism for these amazing people and seeing them enter into the waters of baptism was just a great blessing.

We had Zone Interviews this week and on Elder Ramos' Birthday HE made chicken Adobe for us. He is very sweet. We had some visitors as well. (Sister Espinosa, Elder Nielson, and Elder Stevys)

Don't worry later that night we bought Elder Ramos a cake and had an FHE at our Investigator's house.

 

We had 3 Community Service Projects this week and one of them was fixing the electricity in someone's house. Good thing Elder Collins and Elder Tay Tay know what their doing cause I had no clue. haha

The other Service projects we did consisted of clearing a school classrooms from remodeling and cutting down an over grown bamboo tree and planting new ones.

Earlier this morning we woke up at 5 am to go hiking. It was way fun because a ton of the youth and single adults from our branch wanted to come and we had a blasts exploring huge caves.

There were so many more pics from this week, and I would love to share everything with you, but every P-day at around 3 we have members and a lot of non-members as well come over the the church to play volleyball with us, so I will just have to write more next week.

Sending Love to you all

-Elder Terry

Week 92

agyamanak,
Hello I am back mga mahal ko. I am happy again to be here and write about this great week in Alaminos.

I realized last week I didn't give too much info so I will try to update you more this week and the stuff that went on here

Here is a pic of the house that we live in. It is only a 2 minute walk from the church and city and it is PINK. Random people we meet on the street refer to us as the guys from the pink house which is kind of weird.

We were in a trio this whole week with Elder Ramos being our addition, the cuteiest , sweetiest, and shortiest filipino guy in the world and is going to train a new guy named, Elder Taylor.

We are having a great time here together burning trash together, zapping bugs, lizards, and each other, and saving goats lives.

Elder Ramos saved their lives

yeh

If you have any more questions you would like to know just let me know and I will be sure to write more about it next week.

Love,

Elder Terry

Week 91

Happy New Year

It is another grand privilege to write you all and to feel your love and support.

This week was actually pretty monumental because after being in Urdaneta City/Zone since May I have actually transferred and it was by far one of the hardest times to say goodbye too all the Members and Investigators and recent converts that I have gotten so close to the past 8 months.

But this new area is way beautiful!

I am now back in Alaminos Zone the farthest Zone from Urdaneta and my new companion is Elder Collins from Idaho who is only 5 weeks in the field so I get to finish his training up. As you can tell here I have gotten very white in the Office.

I also already love the people here so much. These kids had gummy teeth and they wanted to share so...

I am so excited to give it my all in my, most likely, last area here in Alaminos 1st Branch. If you have any questions for me just send me an email and I will be sure to update you in my next post.

I love you all and Happy new year!!!!

Elder Terry

Week 90

Feliz Navidad mga Kapatid

It is another great pleasure to be here and write you all this Christmas time. This week has been overwhelmingly filled with blessings and miracles and I am pleased to update you on just a few of the great things that happened this week.

Just this last Saturday we had a Stake White Baptism here in Urdaneta and even though we didn't have any real snow we did have a lot of white with a total of 18 Baptisms Candidates all in all in just one day. Actually every Stake in our Mission had a White Christmas so this has been a great week for us all here.

These were the candidates from our Ward, Urdaneta 2nd Ward, with our Candidates Tatay Diony, Nanay Tessie, Sister Carol, Sister Clarisse, Xyriel, Paul Benedict, and Paul Cedrick.

I like this pic of Elder Seve and I with our van. (the van's name is Mufasa)

Also this week we had an Interview for Baptism in another church building and we noticed the Ping pong table again and knowing that we have a curfew of 6PM on Christmas Eve. and would have lots of free time that night, we called the Bishop of that Ward and asked if we could take the table. He said no. We took it any way. Check it.

Joke Bishop said it's aight

Also I am pretty excited about my last video call home tomorrow. See you soon Fam.

Love, Elder Terry

Week 89

Hola amigos,

This was a great week filled with lots of amazing events such as our Christmas Conference and President and Sister Espinosa and us Office Elders have been planning this for some time now.

The Christmas Conference started out as a pretty normal Zone Conference with Missionary attire and workshops, but things changed after our lunch time which was a Boodle Fight  “a military style of eating,” in which food, piled on top of banana leaves laid out on long tables, is to eaten with bare hands, or it is better known (jokingly) as "Philippines Fine Dining"

We also gave out tons of gifts and Elder Evans the New Mission Secretary in Training showed up right in time to help us fold programs. As you open the gifts, inside was the agenda for the day, and also some Chocolate Kisses.

We had 3 pigs at the Conferences

After the food we changed into P-Day Clothes and moved onto our Zone Performances, Games, Gift Exchange, Raffle Prizes, and we even got to watch the Greatest Showman after all of that to end the day.

Overall it was a blessed week and we still managed to get out and have our Investigators get interviewed for baptism next week at our Mission Wide Baptism. YAY

Love you all,

Elder Terry

Week 88

Hello again,

I love and Miss you all especially during Christmas time, but I am super grateful for all your emails that you send to me.

This week was full of blessings and I want to give a special thanks to the Cordata Park Ward Laurels from back home in California for sending me these awesome posters for Christmas. I feel the Love. Thank You.

Also this week we realized that we had a ping pong table in one of our church buildings in our zone so we of course we had to test it out to make sure it worked. I won. NBD

On Saturday we went Caroling as a district to the houses of Investigators and Members and we gave out wrapped up Book of Mormons and Pamphlets and it was a blast.

To end this amazing week on Saturday night after singing I think I got food poisoning and then after church on Sunday I couldn't hold it in any more and I hurled in front of a bunch of members. Watching me blow my brains out they say kept saying, "Kawawa" which basically means "oh you poor baby" haha

I feel great now though. 😂

That's pretty much it.

Love,

Elder Terry

Week 87

Tao Po,

It is great to write you again and talk about the great things that happened this week.

After our Baptism we had this week we took our recent converts to Mang-Inisal to treat them out for being such stud investigators. Kua Mark and Kua Joshua were just so excited to be baptized we just flew through the lessons and after their actual baptism the Bishop then announced that they will be giving their testimonies and that's when we realized that we forgot to teach them about what a testimony is. I ran up to them and after explaining a little bit what that was I just said, "as long as what you say comes from your heart" They then proceeded to give the most powerful yet simple testimonies I have ever heard. That small moment of listening to these brand new members speak from their hearts made me, and I am sure many other long time members, feel a great feeling of Joy, Love, Peace, and Motivation which really cannot be described. Super blessed to have been a part of that.

Christmas is truly getting close and that means lots of CHRISTMAS CAROLS and lets just say some kids are relentless. For instance, after just pulling up in the car and opening the front door I was bombarded with children sing "Ang Pasko ay sumapit". I had no candy to give and giving money is not allowed so I just gave a bunch of #lighttheworld Pass along cards and they seemed pretty happy about it...except the kid in the front.

I also helped cleaned the attic in the office

and this last Saturday as a Christmas parade was going on through the city we all lined up and gave out more pass-along cards.

Thanks Lovelies

Elder Terry