Tuesday, January 10, 2012

No firefighting, but still a cool week

Monday, January 9, 2012
San Joaquin, Panay Island, the Philippines


I'll just start with the most interesting thing that happened this week.  I got a text from Sister Pagaduan that I had to go immediately to the hospital on Friday morning.  Lame.  It was O.K. because Elder Eror had some training there on Friday anyway.  I really didn't want to go to the hospital because the lady there just claims stuff is wrong with you, gives you no proof, and prescribes you a billion medicines.  So, I was less than thrilled to go.  Sister Pagaduan said that they had found spots on my lungs from an x-ray I got back in November.  All of this is nonsense, resulting from my mentioning a thing in my neck to Sister Pagaduan.  How many trips later is it now?  The nice thing about it was I had good company.  I got to go to the doctor with the financial secretary and my good friend Elder Thayne.  He was also in Iloilo for some sickness problems.  It was good to catch up with him.  The financial secretary drove us and paid for it all.  

Once I finally got to visit with the doctor, it was exactly like I thought it would be.  She assumed I had some tuberculosis or something.  I asked her what the signs of that are.  I had nothing of what she listed.  I was pretty forward to her, that I came all the way from San Joaquin for something she should have seen back in November.  I'm not so sure she wasn't just making it up, either.  She never showed me the x-ray.  I did have to get another x-ray, which she also never showed me.  She said something about coming back when the results come in, but I'm not going to.  It's ridiculous. 

I also got to see Elder Arrieta.  He had been in Iloilo the day before for training, and had stayed with Elder Thayne until they both went back to Antique.  After the whole ordeal at the Doctor’s office, I ran errands with the financial secretary.  It was kind of fun. 

Elder Eror and I are pretty absent minded.  We left our phone in Tigbauan on Monday, then we went to get it on Tuesday after district meeting, but neither of us picked it up, so we had to go back again and get it.  On Thursday, Elder Eror left his glasses there.  On Thursday afternoon when I returned with Elder Domincel (we were on splits) I realized I didn't have a key.  Luckily our landlady has one. 

We had a long-time less active come to church again.  He's been a kind of abusive drunkard.  This is the first time he's gone to church in ages.  We have been focusing on him recently.  We are going over there and doing scripture study as a family.  We just pick a cool story in the Book of Mormon and read it with them.  Then we commit them to do it on their own between visits.  As of our last visit, they haven't done it on their own, but the spirit has been there while we did scripture study with them.  They don't know how to discuss what they’ve read, so we're showing them a bit. 

It was Elder Eror's B-day on the 5th.  We celebrated it with the Tigbauan Elders before we did splits.  I bought ice cream. 

Sunday we went up into the mountains to New Gumawan.  It was their fiesta.  We got fed pretty sizeable amounts at two separate houses within 45 minutes.  It was good food.  It was good to talk with our investigators there, but it was bad that I had a full stomach and the way down the mountain is windy.  I kept it in, though. 

Dweedle dum bit me again - during the Sacrament prayer.  On the finger.  Hard.  I don't know why we always end up by these kids at church.  They’re the devil.  Later in the day we went to a less-active family near to them.  The kids came into the lesson and screamed and kicked us and stuff.  Elder played with them just outside the door while I finished up the lesson.  At one point I took over for Elder Eror, but the kids threw rocks at me, so I let Elder Eror handle it.  It was quite the lesson.  You can only imagine how freaking wild these two kids are!  It's like two of me when I was younger!

We taught a lot of our investigators and less-active families about the atonement this week.  Elder Eror and I found that most people know that Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins, but that’s about it.  We talked about spiritual death and temporal death, and why we can't enter into heaven with sin.  Those were some cool lessons.  We also committed a lot of the folks to repent.  We didn't ask them what their sins were or anything, but we still committed them to repent daily.  Cool.  It's a hard thing to follow up about, but it's necessary for people to do it.

We got the George Albert Smith books.  I've probably read a third of it in 3 days.  That guy is cool. 

We ate a lot of yellow watermelon this week. 

I got a haircut.  It’s the shortest it's been yet.  Yikes. 

People here can be way flakey.  Elder Eror and I went out to a place that was really out of our way. I called ahead to make sure it was going to go through, because sometimes she’s at the beach house, and sometimes at the bukid house.  We made sure it was at the bukid house.  When we arrived, the lady wasn't there.  We went to the beach house, and she was there!  I waved to her, but she kept on walking.  When I got to where she was at, she was pretending to be asleep.  I could hardly talk to her.  We had such a busy day that day and man, I was frustrated.  Man, sometimes it's rough.  I did what I could, though. 

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