A Few More Pics! (8/29/11)

We received five more pictures from Michael this week!  Take a look...

1. The Cruda/Encina/Maanyo family.  The three in front of Hopkins are getting baptized this Saturday!  The mom is a member and dad isn't.  Their family is solid.  The dad is new to church stuff so he's coming along.  He's trying to quit cigarettes and he's doing well!  We're excited for him.  He and one of their sons, John Robert, will probably be baptized towards the middle of October.

2. The Duran family.  Lost members that we found.  And they're so awesome!  We love visiting them.  Marvin is a fisherman and he dives and literally hunts the fish with like a gun.  Its pretty legit.  We just got done playing basketball with him earlier today.  We won of course.  They want to feed us all the time, so its nice...haha

3. Edna Luceriano and her family.  Edna literally asked us to be baptized.  She was like elders, I read and prayed and feel like the right thing to do is be baptized.  What is the process I have to do to be baptized.  Her and her two baptismal aged kids, Kade and JJ, read out of the BoM everyday and love it.  Her kids love me and really have no idea why, cuz I can barely even talk to them.

4. Down at Cabu Beach.  A possible spot where we'll do the baptisms!  It would be soooo sweet!



5. My absolute best friend.  She totally loves me and I really have no reason why.  Its cuz me and Elder Hopkins are guwapo cuz we're white but she likes me alottt more than him and I don't know why.  Its pretty funny though.

A Couple of Pictures (finally)!

Michael and the missionary who is training him, Elder Hopkins.

 This is not Michael's trainer:

 Part of the island...

From Coron - August 8, 2011

There has a been a little bit of confusion as to who is writing what on the blog.  This is Kirk and I usually write a couple of sentences before I turn it over to Michael.  Of course turning it over to him is code for "cut and paste his latest e-mail".  We still don't have any pictures!  As he describes below his internet connection is slow so sending pictures may not be an option for awhile.    So with that, here is the latest from Elder Gadberry:


Allllright! Another week down!

Guess what.... its been great! ...go figure.

So I'll answer a few questions and then talk about what I remember from my week. Usually I like to bring my journal along so I remember all that happened but I forgot this time, sorry! And if I spell stuff wrong forgive me "kasi" this keyboard is really hard to type on sometimes its really touchy and other times its sticky or hard to press the letters.

First question was. "Where are the pictures?!?!?" And my reply is. Patience, everything will be revealed to you in time. hahaha But really, I'll probably wait till I get back to the mainland before I start sending most of them back. But next time I'll try to send a few of them. The connection here is really slow so I don think it would handle it very well.

The other two elders that are on the island are living with us. That's why we have two bunkbeds. One for me and my companion and the other for the other two. They're pretty cool. I love Elder Osumo. He's hilarious. You'll see pics ventually.

So two weeks ago we committed Jimmel (I almost always type Jimmer instead of Jimmel and I have noooo idea why...hahaha) and Dona to being baptized when they come to know these things are true. We're still working with them but they're progressing really well. This week we didnt have anyone progressing well enough towards baptism "kasi" we only have 5 members on the island so we've got a lot of work to do with everyone. We had this family (Juniors family) that we taught on Thursday or Friday and we committed them to going to church and they said they would. So Sunday came and they werent there so we visited them. And it turns out they went to church but were late so they didnt know where it was or anything. So that was cool that they tried.  The katulongs that work here at this house are doing really well too! Efraim is definitely the strongest of them. They're progressing well. We're so hopeful for them that we've talked to Efraim about serving a mission and he said he would do that if things work out. Efraim has had a kinda rough life. His mom died when he was young, and his dad disappeared so he pretty much worked here and been on his own except for the people that live and work here with him. Oh and we went way out farther than we usually go and we found a lost member! She has been to the temple and everything! But her kids aren't baptized so they're for sure going to be our first baptisms. The dad isn't a member (well this is where it gets complicated cuz of Philippine law). The mom
left her husband because he went bad. But divorces are illegal or really expensive here. So she's living with this guy and they've been together for 6 years but can't married. But yeah we're going there for FHE tonight so that will be cool.

I guess the baptisms will be in the sea/ocean some where hahaha that'll be awesome!!

Another mail update. So I'll get mail every few weeks via zone conference/packages from the office. But being stuck out here I can't mail anything. So yeah, that's whats up with that. So parents, you said you were sending an SD card. Just send it to the mission office. And maybe batteries too please?

No one from the mission office has visited us yet. We're pretty much on our own out here haha. But yeah its all good. Everything's gone good so far!

Wala means Without or none. haha

So this week has been great! We were out one day and it rained hard allllll day. So that wasnt very fun. Cuz I got my scriptures wet =(  haha But I'm teaching more and more pretty much the bulk of the Restoration every time and Elder Hopkins just wraps it up and hopefully clarifies anything I butchered. He says my Tagalog is really good. But kids still laugh at me sometimes haha You just have
to challenge them to speak English, its great! At least one crazy experience. We had just got done teaching a lesson and we were walking down a sketchy bridge thingy back to solid ground when we look up and this completely naked 40 or 50 year old Filippino is out dancing around! It was soooo weird! The people said that that guy is crazy and I believe it obviously! I have to get my haircut today! Ugh! I told Elder Hopkins the safety of my hair relies on him because I can't speak Tagalog! hahaha So wish me luck!

Love,
Elder Michael Gadberry

First E-mail from Coron

Michael arrived at his first area, the island of Coron.  It looks like Coron is about 150 miles off the coast from Manila.  He, of course, is very excited to be there! The e-mail response is mostly answering our questions.  Please read on...

Everyone!

I arrived in Manila and the next day we got assigned our companions and areas. I have the privilege of opening a new area/island called Coron with my companion, who was an AP up until this transfer, Elder Hopkins. He is awesome! Coron is absolutely beautiful! We're the first missionaries here and there are I think like 5 members on the island.Question time.

"How is your apartment? I'm sure it's small, but how small?" -- Are apartment is pretty nice! Its weird because its brand new, they built it on top of Brother Arnold's (Our Group Leader) house and like everything in it is new. But its not like US new, but its pretty nice for the area. For example, we have a shower head, but it doesnt really work But at the same time we're missing a few like regular things like we dont have anywhere to put our clothes and unpack yet. And when we first got there we didn't have any trash cans but now we do. We've got 2 bunk beds and 4 desks so its pretty cramped. I'll send pictures sometime.

"Where is Elder Hopkins from and how much longer does he have?" -- He's from a middle-sized town in Idaho (I forgot what its called at the moment) and he leaves in six weeks! Crazy cuz usually you're with your trainer for 12 weeks.

"How far away from Manila is the island? How did you get to the island?" -- Umm I'm not too sure the mileage. Because one, everything here is in Kilometers. And two, we flew here and it took about an hour in a fairly small plane. And yes, its probably the same Coron as Wikapedia because I guess its a huge diving place. But on the airplane we could only have one checked bag of 20 kilos (44 pounds) and a personal item/carry on so I had to leave a lot of stuff at the mission office. That was hard to unpack and pack and unpack and re-pack again, but worth it!

"Are there any Western fast food places on the island like in Manila?" -- Nope! There's pretty much nothing from the "Western World" here.

"How many people live on the island?" -- Umm I think the estimation from people is about 36,000. But it definitely seems smaller than that but there's so much more to this island that we've seen yet.

"Are you two the only two LDS missionaries on the island?" -- Nope, actually we had another companionship open with us so we have two areas. Elders Osumo, a Filipino from Cebu, and Robbins, sadly a USU Aggie...haha But he's a greenie like me, but according to the members at church my Tagalog is bad, but not as bad as his...score!

"Are you going to be doing your own laundry or will you be able to pay someone to?" -- Well we would normally do our own laundry....but! So the first day we got here we stopped a tindehan to get some water and started talking to these really cool guys around 20 yrs old. They invited us in to their like store/driveway area and we scheduled an appointment to return that night. There's three guys and they are katulongs (helpers) for the store and house. And this house is probably the biggest one in Coron and so that night we met with the owner and those three katulongs. He was superrr nice and told us to come back whenever we wanted. And seemed pretty interested in the gospel. So he told us we could come and use their internet to email so we didnt have to pay for an internet cafe, and I guess he said we can use their washer and dryer even cuz we don't have anywhere to dry our clothes cuz its raining and we dont have space in the apartment. But the three guys came to church and are really progressing well! So we're really excited for them.

"What kind of food are you cooking for yourself?" -- Rice of course and different kinds of ulam (anything you eat with or on top of rice). So far its only been corned beef and sardines...interesting but decent.

"Being a brand new area, how is the investigator pool?" -- Its great! So many lessons taught and people met and everything. From just working Friday we had 18 new investigators and 7 more on Sunday so its going great! And just from working on Friday, my companion and I had 7 investigators at church on Sunday. It was great!

"Who is your district leader and how far away is he? How about the ZL's? Where are they?" -- Our district leader is Elder Osuma so he's right there with us. We have a district of 4. The ZL's I'm pretty sure are on Palawan which is the bigger island I think south west of Coron.

"How rainy has it been? It looks pretty rainy on

"How was the flight? and going through customs?" -- The flight was pretty good. I don't know nothing too exciting. And customs was pretty easy it was hot in there though haha

"What were your VERY first impressions once you got out of the airport in Manila? In one sentence." -- OH MY GOSH! This is it! Game time! hahaha or somethin a long those lines. Mostly just a ton of excitement.

"Is the island more rural or city?" -- Definitely all rural. Like we only have electricity from 1 pm to 1 am. We dont have running water about half the time too. And yeah, definitely super rural.

"Do they mostly speak Tagalog there or will you run into some English?" -- Umm its definitely almost completely Tagalog and there's even a different dialect here in Coron but its not too different....I hope.

"Did you get any of dad's letters when you got there?" -- Yes, I got two of them, just because I was at the mission office one night and Elder Swensen saw them and just gave them to me but thats it.

"What are your impressions of the mission pres?" -- Super nice and super humble I really like him.

"Most importantly, did you buy an umbrella? Or two..." -- Well I havent bought one yet...but President Stucki gave me one of his extras, so he rocks!

Ok I better get going that took forever!

Love

Elder Michael Gadberry

1st E-mail from the Philippines!

He arrived safely and here is what he had to say about his first few days.   As always, he couldn't be more excited!  He has started inserting words in Tagalog, so you can be just as lost as we are or find an online translator to figure out what in the world he is talking about.  Good luck.

GUYS!

I'm in the Philippines! This is so crazy! I don't really know what to
say though cuz like everythings different but its so awesome! So I
feel like most of this email isn't going to make sense to anyone that
isn't familiar with the church but hopefully it makes some sense.

Alright so on Wednesday we landed in Manila. And guess what, it was
raining! Go figure. So we got picked up and went to the mission home.
The traffic here is crazy!  Wala police cars/traffic laws so its crazy
but wala accidents too for the most part! So we got to this mission
home and got to eat some food and then change and shower for a little
bit. 

Then! We went out and did actual missionary work! It was crazy to get out there
and work so soon!  It was just with random people that were in the
district closest to the mission home but it was legit work!  We went
and visited two families who are interested in the church.  They literally have nothing
here but they're still so nice and friendly and happy its crazy.  The
first lady lived in a two story cement house about the size of my dorm
back at school.  And then the other family lived in a bigger house but
they had a bunch of holes in their roof and like lizards in the house
and chickens and dogs and stuff runnin around.  It was so crazy! And
especially the first night out I understood like none of the language
but they were still so nice to me and helped me and what not. 

The second family gave me my first taste of legit filipino food.
It was rice (of course) with like the broth that you eat with it.  The
broth consisted of fish meat (complete with bones), water, and this
funky vegatable thing.  But it was surprisingly good!

The next day, we had orientation all day pretty much and we got to
find out who our trainers were!  I pretty much have one of the craziest, most
awesome, wonderful privilege ever! One of the Assistants to
the Mission President is stepping down in that role to transfer
to be a trainer and open a new area, on island called Coron. 
And I was assigned to serve with him!

We just got here today and this is definitely the most beautiful place I've
ever seen! Plus I'm being trained by an Assistant to the President and
we're opening a new area! The area is the island its crazy! Everyone says
how lucky I am to have Elder Hopkins as a trainer and I know it.  I'm getting
the best training and a ton of practice and there's a ton of work to do
here its going to be awesome!
We have 6 members on the island and they meet on Sundays in a kitchen.
Elder Hopkins said we're probably going to end up building a
make-shift meeting house even. How cool is that?! So yeah this is
seriously going to be quite the adventure!  Lets see...I dont have a
lot of time to email today (Friday here) but we have p-day on Monday
too so I'll send another email then.  I've taken a bunch of pictures
already but I dont have time to attach them to this email so look out
for them in the future!

Oh and mail wise...I guess they might have somewhere here where I can
send and get mail but I'm not too sure.  There's a pretty good chance
I wont be able to get anything for 6 weeks so yeah...sorry for not
replying to anything anyone sends me.  But we'll see, you're welcome
to try.  But I've got work to do! Peace out!

Love,

Elder Michael Gadberry

Last MTC E-Mail

Two days until Michael leaves the MTC at this retrospective point.  He was sooo excited to leave the Training Center and get to the Philippines.  Read on....

LIKE TWO DAYSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!

 

Geez its so crazy that I'm leaving this country for about 2 years in just a matter of hours!  This week has been good as always!  I really don't have too much to say so I'm like super sorry but I'll see what I can scrounge up.

 

Tuesday we had a pretty good devotional about Christ.  Its so awesome to hear about Him and all that He has done for us.  Each and every single one of our lives has been blessed because we have a Savior in Jesus Christ.  He died on the cross and suffered for our sins because He loves us and wants us to have the ability to return to our Father in Heaven if we but recognize His example and do the things that He has asked us to do.  Christ suffered for each and every one of us.  He suffered because we are imperfect.  And we were part of the cause of His suffering, yet He still loves us unconditionally and would do anything to help us, and that is what I am out to proclaim as well as all of us should be sharing the love of Christ with all those we come in contact with.  I love my Savior, He loves me, and He loves each and every single one of us and wants the best for all of us.  He will never not help you if you but ask for His help.  I know I'm going to be asking a lot for a help a ton while I'm in the Philippines and I know that He will help me, and He will help all of us with whatever our struggles are.

 

 

I've got awesome packages this week!  I can't, nor can anyone else, actually believe that I actually got a watermelon as a package!  That was crazy but awesome! I cut it up with a butter knife we "stole" from the cafeteria.  Yep, that was the best we had..haha  But it was so good! And then yesterday I got the huge package from my family with my hat and lava-lava! and lots of good junk! including candy pizza!  Then today I got the biggest box ever! It had enough chips and salsa to last like a year! So I appreciate all the love I receive from my adoring fans! haha  But really I appreciate all of you.  So if you're going to write me be on the look out for (or maybe its already on my Facebook or somethin) my address in Manila.  I know that you can dearelder.com for free to my mission so that's defnintely an option.  If you want to dearelder me this weekend I will be able to get them Monday before we go.  So that's the heads up on contacting me.  Any other questions, hopefully my parents can help.

 

I'll talk to you soon! IN THE PHILIPPINES!

 

Love,

Elder Michael Gadberry

 

 

 

July 15 MTC E-mail

Michael ended up giving a 5 minute talk in sacrament meeting in Tagalog.  I remember having to do that in Korean when I was in the Missionary Training Center.  I am absolutely certain he did much better than I did.  I managed to speak for 5 minutes and only utter two or three intelligible words.  One of those was "Amen" which sounds a lot like "Amen" in Korean.  I'll let Michael do the talking now...

 

 

Ano ang nangyayari na mga tao?!

 

That's how we/I decided was the right way to literally say what's up/what's happening? Kinda a mouthful so....I don't say it much, I stick to English for that phrase.  But most everything else is Tagalog here its sick! (good sick not bad).  Like I kinda feel like I have the ability to figure out a way to say whatever I want to say in English in Tagalog but it just takes me a while to formulate it or re-word it to my ability its soooo amazing how far we've come in a few short weeks.

 

Well on Sunday...well okay you probably need background info.  Every week all of us have to prepare a talk on a certain subject that's five minutes long (practice for the field I guess), and we dont know who's speaking until it is announced in Sacrament meeting.  So on Sunday I had prepared my talk in all Tagalog (and so did most of my district) and it was the first time any of us had done so even though we're supposed to have been doing it for a couple weeks now. 

 

So I prepared in Tagalog and I was like I'm goin be ticked if I don't speak because I had a talk and it was in Tagalog so even better! And sure enough I was called upon to speak. And...I don't know it went okay I guess.  But like the first speaker spoke in Tagalog and I guess he used 2 Nephi 31:20 at some point I didnt here probably cuz I was going over my talk.  And then the sister that spoke before me stole part of my quote I found from Elder Uchtdorf and also used 2 Nephi 31:20.   I was pretty nervous for whatever reason and I felt like I stumbled over a lot of my Tagalog but everyone said they enjoyed it and that I did good.  But I think they were just being nice so who knows. 

 

Sunday night we had a pretty good fireside from Brother Heaton and he talked about repentance, but more specifically on why repentance has such a bad connotation.  In the ancient languages of like Latin and Hebrew or somethin repentance  means to turn; to turn away from sin and turn towards God.  So it was pretty interesting I liked it.  Because I definitely don't think positively of like repentance in general.  In Preach My Gospel it says "you will come to find great joy in repenting daily."  So that's like super interesting.  Another thing he pointed it was that Christ suffered for our sins so that we dont have to.  We only suffer for our sins when we refuse to repent of them so that was a good talk.

This week has been good. YESTERDAY WE GOT OUR TRAVEL PLANS! On Monday the 25th at 6:30 we leave the MTC for a flight out of SLC at 9:55. Then we land in San Fran at 10:55 their time and fly out again at 1:20 AM.  We then land in Hong Kong at 6:25 AM their time and fly out again at 9:10 AM to make it to MANILA! Sooo pumped!  So yeah that definitely made our week/day!  So yeah if you're sending me anything get on that because unless its dearelder it generally takes about 4 days to get from Illinois to Utah so yeah.. But so pumped!  Also yesterday we had TRC and our "investigator" was a guy that had like literally just gotten home (you could pretty much tell) and so he spoke really good Tagalog.  And like its always comforting to me to go to TRC and teach people that know Tagalog really well and have them actually understand me because that means I'm not butchering it too bad..haha Because when we all talk to each other, we're all on the same level so I'm always concerned if actual Tagalog speakers would understand me. So yeah that went well and Tagalog is coming along and yeah everythings goin good!

 

One more email (I think) till I'm in the PHILIPPINES!

 

Love,

Elder Michael Gadberry

July 8 MTC E-mail

Michael continued to progress in his language learning and got to spend July 4th in the MTC.  His enthusiasm continues unabated.  Obviously, we couldn't be more proud of his decision to be a missionary and his very positive approach.  As he became friends with a fellow missionary from Hawaii, he started wearing a lava lava for the fun of it.  I'm pretty sure (hoping) that he didn't wear it to class.  Cindy ended up making and sending him one of his own.

Hey everyone!

 

Well I had the "privilage" of spending the Forth in here.... But actually it wasn't too bad I kinda liked it.  We had a pretty good speaker come and speak to us and then they did this pretty legit ceremony with like a mini bagpipe/drum band marching in playing Praise to the Man and then people carrying a flag of where they're from down the bleachers to represent where everyone here in the MTC is from it was pretty cool.  I liked it.  Then they told us we could go watch the fireworks but had to stay on the MTC campus. So it was like way hard to find anywhere halfway decent to watch them but we got to see some of them nonetheless and it was a good night overall.

 

But then on Sunday we had an awesome fireside! Those pretty familiar with Mormon musicians or modern classical performance may have heard of Jenny Oaks Baker, but she came and shared her talents with us. It was so good! She like has played everywhere you could possibly play got a Masters in Violin Performance from Julliard. And she was so good and it was a great fireside.  Then she had her daughters (like 4, 6 and 9) play a song for us.  And it was incredible! The 4-year old rocked a mini cello and the 6-year old beasted the piano and the 9-year old was crazy at violin! Obviously I was way impressed.  AND they all wore matching 4th of July dresses, can you say adorable?! hahaha but really it was tight, yo.

 

So yeah solely teaching in Tagalog now, we had our 2nd all Tagalog TRC yesterday and it went pretty well! I'm like almost naturally just putting sentances together. Like they're not complicated sentances but its getting easier and easier to take the English from my head and put it into Tagalog out of my mouth.  I love it, but I know the my Father in Heaven is helping me a ton with that!

 

So on Monday and Tuesday we had our district above us leave.  It's way sad to see them go because we are all pretty tight with them, but that means we're even closer to leaving! We get our flight plans a week from yesterday (July 7th being yesterday)! And then just over 2 weeks till we're out and doin this thang! haha But we're so pumped.  Then after they left on Wednesday we got two new districts! That's 24 new elders, our zone is like huge now! So its kinda hard to get to know all of them but they're pretty cool, most of them from what I can tell.

 

Oh yeah, and for fun I taught myself how to write in Ancient Tagalog symbols its so cool! I don't know why but I think its awesome! Yesterday I spent about an hour writing the First Vision in Tagalog/Tagalog symbols its pretty legit if I might say so myself. So yeah that was random. Oh yeah! Another random! So Elder Wong in my district is half Chinese and half Hawiian and so he has two lava-lavas (Polynesian skirt things) so starting last Friday I decided that to wear one just for fun.  So yeah, I'm pretty much Polynesian now, just sayin. Well, I'm running out of time. All is good here!

 

Love,

 

Elder Michael Gadberry

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! MAHAL KITA! INGOT PO!

MTC June 24

So I have been way delinquent in keeping this posted.  I will have a couple of updates in relatively short order.

June 24

Michael continued to really enjoy and learn in the Missionary Training Center.  On very regular basis they would have church leaders and other well known church members come and speak to them.  Below is his reaction when a local church member/politician came and spoke:

From the fireside on Sunday and the devotional on Tuesday I seem to be thinking a lot about what an awesome opportunity it is to be here.  Brother McIff (Utah State House of Rep Member) spoke on Sunday and one thing he said that stood out to me was that I ¨bear the burden of having the responsibility of blessing the lives of Heavenly Father´s children here on the Earth.¨   I thought that was an interesting statement and in my journal I wrote ¨That´s a burden?! I mean its going to be hard but what a wonderful opportunity! There´s added pressure on me to be worthy and be my best, but I am having the opportunity of a lifetime! I´m already thanking my Father in Heaven for this everyday! I can´t wait to spread the joyous message of this gospel! Then on Tuesday Elder Sybrowski said that the ¨strength of the Kingdom of God is in the returned missionary¨ and a little later he said that ¨we are sharing God´s greatest gift to His children¨ that being eternal life.  And I´m just thinking how blessed am I to get this opportunity to draw closer to God and to bring other´s closer to him too! I get to share his ¨greatest gift¨ its like the best Chistmas present ever for them! Wayyy too cool! 

This week has been awesome!

 

Love

Elder Michael Gadberry