Well even though I didn't get an email this week I'll still email you guys just in case anyone cares about whats going on with this unloved Gadberry across the world in the Philippines. I mean its not like my parents are doing anything thing over there, or like my mom gave birth or anything crazy like that. So I can't imagine what would cause them to not email me. . . whatever their excuse is...it better be good! (ha,ha!)
Well I don't have any questions to answer, and I can't think of anything creative to do. So I guess you guys just getta here about my week! Woo! This week was a good one, but I'm like exhausted. . .We had zone conferences all week...and so it was pretty crazy with that, then I had like a ton of other stuff goin down and now I'm just tired. haha But it was greatt! I loved it! haha =)
So lookin back at the week, I guess that's when the exhaustion started..haha Well first we had church and it wasn't so good cuz no one made it again! But again, sacrament meeting was great, the sunday school was good, and Priesthood was awesome as well. After we got done with church and had lunch, we went out to work! Our ward is trying to start up home teaching (male members in the church unit are assigned families to visit and teach once a month) cuz its nonexistent right now..haha But its awesome cuz they really seem serious about it and most of them are pretty excited to do it! The only thing is. . .our records for our ward haven't been updated for at least 9 months now.... Yeah. #Problem So, they're working on that, and Brother Matt (our Elder's Quorum President ) said that we (meaning the whole elders quorum) need to do our best at identifying those that need to be added and taken away from the records so they can update quickly once they get internet to the building. So Elder Pugmire and I, with that in mind, went out to work! We had a list that we were told were less-actives, and we went off to find them all! Let me tell you, that's quite the task on a hot, quiet, did I mention hot?, sunny afternoon in the Philippines. But hey, we're tough, we got this. haha So we went off and we walked allllll up and down our area like we hit every street in our area at least twice and many of them much more than that. And guess how many of those people on the list we found! . . . . . . . NONE! haha =D It was good though, we found a lot of potential investigators while we were doing that.
But we found out that people didn't live at most of the houses that they were supposed to be at, so I guess thats a plus....it'll at least help our ward records..haha Finally, when we were completely exhausted we went and visted Ponce. I loveee visiting with him and sharing with him. It's awesome. We had planned to share with him Moses 1:39, to help him realize how important he is to Heavenly Father. I started off by asking him three questions. One, "Brother Ponce, in your opinion, why are we here on Earth?" He answered and I asked, "What are just a few things that make you happy? They can be anything." He gave us a few things, and I asked the last question, "Brother Ponce, what is it again you do? What's your job?" He answered again (he's in charge of the inventory at the warehouse in case any of you guys were wondering). And then we started by sharing Moses 1:39 and explaining to him, why we're here; what makes God happy; and what God's work is. We read it twice, once regularly and then the second time with Brother Ponce's name replaced for Man. And we also explained a little bit about how we can liken the scriptures to ourselves that way. It was an awesome lesson, and he really got it! We came out of that lesson and I felt like re-energized and pumped. Then we drove home, and collapsed on the couch like right away..haha Tired day number one.
Monday wasn't so tiring, but it was kinda frustrating. I think I use frustrating to say that it was a little stressful, but I say frustrating cuz "I don't feel stress" =) Still standing by that statement. It was just frustrating. It was potentially stressful cuz I went into Monday with like a billionnnn things I needed to get done like on Monday to make the rest of the week go as its supposed to. Well, of course, somethin weird happens anddd we dont have internet. Like all day. Okayyyy . . . I kinda need internet to do everything that I needed to get done that day! So that was potentially stressful cuz I had to leave the office having accomplished none of the things that I needed to get done, so I'm like worrying about how the rest of the week was goin go down especially without me being able to get like anything done come Wednesday cuz Wednesday was our day for Zone Conference and that took up pretty much all day. But anyways, I finally got my spiritual experience done. President Stucki asked all the missionaries to submit a short spiritual experience so that they could assemble them and make like a little book thingy out of it to give to all of us. I'd pushed it off foreverrr and decided I should finish it because Sister Dietrich was making the books..haha #StillProcrastinating On the bright side, Sister Dietrich said she was proud of my grammer(but maybe not his spelling...)! She was like whoa! You even used semi-colons correctly. . .I was like "Yeah...that's what Word told me to do..." hahaha But she said the rest of it was still impressive. I'm just trying to make Grandma G. proud. haha And since I had no internet, it kinda forced me to spend much of the day filing! Ew. Filing for me is like one of those things that is the last resort..haha Like I took out the trash for everyone in the office before I started filing...haha That's saying somethin right..haha
Well we left the office and went to visit the potentially awesome potential investigator we talked to, the baseball fan! Yup..no dice. He wasn't home. =( So we were thirsty and remembered a really nice nanay that runs a tindahan, that we considered a potential investigator (side note: don't know if I ever explained "tindahan"s to you all, so just like google it or search it on wikipedia or somethin). So we were like lets go over there and talk to her some more and get somethin to drink. So we went there and got our drinks and just started talking to nanay's friend. She called us "artista"s and complimented me that I knew how to use "po" and asked a few questions about the church. We talked to nanay and her friend for a while and they told us to come back and hang out with them again. So it was a pretty successful trip for somethin to drink. We then went back to talk with Ponce to see if he knew where Dittz was, but still no dice. So by then we had to get going soon anyways cuz we were asked to give Elder Dietrich a blessing, so we just went over and talked with their househelp and re-scheduled. We then gave Elder Dietrich a blessing cuz he was going into the doctor the next day to get his head looked at and possibly get some cancer cells dug out. (dug out? ew. haha) After that, we essentially has scripture study with the Dietrich's and it was cool!
Now Tuesday was like the best day of my life. Like not even kidding. =D Well actually come to think of it this whole week was pretty good. So Tuesday we get to the office aaand. . .we still don't have internet. Be tee dubs, they said the internet would only be gone for forty minutes on Monday morning....Well let's not get to pushin 40 hours..haha So without internet we decided to take our van up to the area office to get it fixed up, and since the area office is at the temple and the temple has this place with legit Filipino food, we decided to have lunch there too. It's not like legit Filipino food that you would find at a restaurant. it's like the kinda stuff you would have for dinner at a members house. Me and Elder Pugmire love it, (surprised??) but if you were like a foreigner just visiting, I would probably encourage you to avoid it. Well we were eating there and I turn around and through the fence I see Josh... I was like nahh..little Josh Nepomuceno is in Coron...I look at him a little more and I was like THATS HIM! (of course I didn't shout it, I'm a very mild mannered kinda guy..haha but I sure shouted in my head) So I just like leave my food and go over to the fence to the Patron house. I was like "Hey Josh!" and I motioned him to come over. He kinda glanced at me, did a double take, gave me a weird-ish look and ran inside... I was like "Butt. The kid doesn't remember me, and I scared him" haha. Well he comes back out the door with like half the branch behind him!!!!! WHAT?! So they're on like onside of the fence and I'm on the other, and there's no doors here in this part of the fence..haha So I'm like trying to shake their hands and talk with them like through the fence. They're all like "It's like you're in prison. How long have you been in prison?" haha IT WAS SO AWESOME TO SEE THEM!
Apparently they're here on a youth temple trip, and then they have youth conference later this week. Oh it was so nice to talk to them for a while! I was just like beaming, I didn't know what to say..haha They told me two things, more than once, it seemed to be the kind of theme..haha One, "Elder, you got fatter.." hahaha (For the record, I've only gained 7 lbs in the office, and thats not bad for eating out like alllll the time..haha And for the record as well, its in the process of coming off..haha) (But I told them I was getting skinnier and they told me not to..haha I think its a weird Filipino thing with how getting fatter isn't like a bad thing, it just how it is) And two, "Wowww! You're really good at Tagalog now!" I talked to President Nepomuceno and little bit and he said things are going pretty well, the missionary work is kinda down out there, and he still doesn't have counselors. He told me to come back or send him some hard working missionaries haha. Ivy and Joy said that their parents were still doing good. The Talons are still out there, Brother Talon had to stay home with their kids. The Sister Encena was reported as doing well by her children. Christian was there which was awesome because when I left we were really worried about his family. Brother Jubilado was there and seemed to be doin great. And Sister Janice was there, and just got her endowments! It was awesome to here from them.
Apparently, Brother Jucaban has finally been baptized! He has the Aaronic Priesthood and is acting as the young men's President. I'm not too sure if there's any young men yet though..haha There's some that are close though. I was so pumped to hear about him! Well as with all happen chance meetings, it had to come to an end. So we left =( We went back to the office and we had internet! Woo! But I didn't have a whole lot of time to get too much done. Cuz we had to deal with Zone Conference peeps needing our help, and then the Coron elders were coming to the office for Zone Conference the next day. And Elder Partridge (he was in my district at the MTC), was at the office cuz he's going to Coron. (I guess there's an issue in that companionship or somethin so we've emergency transferring one of the elders out and putting Partridge in). So then Elder Anderson and Elder Caliao finally got here from Coron. Elder Caliao and Elder Partridge's companion, went back to their area, but Elder Anderson and Elder Partridge hadn't eaten yet so we went to eat with them. Meanwhile, I was gettin lots of Coron news from Anderson, it was awesome! Apparently, Sister Aurora's husband has a baptismal date. They're having issues with Sister Edna's husband. No real progress with Dante. Tatay Espayos is in like Cebu or somethin. The Durans are doing great and Brother Duran is full of stories about me..haha Brother Jucaban is baptized and administering the sacrament every Sunday. Sister Lagrosa is doing great and has read the whole Book of Mormon. Elder Anderson said that there's a few families as well that they're teaching and excited for.
Now you take how great Tuesday was, and like Wednesday was probably pretty equal in greatness. haha It was our Zone Conference! It was like an awesome, super-uplifting experience! Towards the beginning, our zone was to sing a special musical number, I Stand All Amazed. No one had told me! I think it was cuz we missed district meeting on Tuesday cuz we didn't know we had it...haha But there's like 12 of us in our zone and so we sang it and it went awesome! Everyone said it was really good. The song just ushered the Spirit into the meeting and helped prepare for an awesome Zone Conference. At times during the Conference we were split into groups of 4 and I was in a group with Elder Bagahansol. It was awesome cuz we were doing like practice teaching and stuff and Bags and I got to be companions again. #KickinItOldSkool It kinda felt like back in Coron, and it was nice to work with him again even thought it was like true work work but being around him is always a great, uplifting experience. I can't really go into detail about Zone Conference other than say that it was awesome! We talked a lot about faith, and also about how the Lord takes the ordinary to accomplish the impossible, and also a lot about finding and how to find as we search for less-actives (i.e. teaching along the way - D&C 52:9-10). So check this out, its pretty legit.
President Stucki pointed it out. So ya'll know the story of Gideon right? You know, in the Old Testament...ah come on, don't tell me you haven't been keeping up on your Old Testament reading..haha Okay maybe at least you've had Brother Jones as a Sunday School teacher and that's the only reason you know the story cuz that just might be the case with me..haha Well anyways, Gideon's got this army and they're going to fight the Midianites. The Lord tells him his army's too big, they need to have less people or they'll think that it was by their own strength that they will win. So Gideon says okay, and tells anyone thats scared or fearful to leave. So of course, some leave, and Gideon's like alright let's go. The Lord comes back to him and says you've still got too many do this. So Gideon does that and his army is reduced to 300. That three hundered, no they're not the three hundred from the movie, but that three hundred is set up to fight 150,000 Midionites. That's 1 soldier of Gideon for every 500 enemy...some good odds huh?
So now lets jump a few thousand years forward to the year 2012. There's a roughly 14 million members of the Church and an estimated 7 billion people in the world. Pause. Do the math. Pretty cool huh? I think he actually said Elder Nelson pointed it out to them in their Mission President's Seminar but I'm not too sure. But anyways, after Zone Conference, I had a tonnn of stuff to do. I had to finalize support for all the missionaries, I had to get working funds processed so they could get money on Friday, and we had like 6 apartments that were moving on Friday that had to have checks by then so they had to be processed by Wednesday at the latest. And that's why I needed internet on Monday..haha But I guess it worked out for the most part. Things were pushin it a little but it worked out all in all just got a little crazy.
The awesomenss continues through Thursday! It started with a sweet Personal Study! I was reading in Moroni 7 and the word hope in verse three caught me attention. I hit the footnotes and remembered that Ether 12:4 says, "Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God." So I was like okay, if hope cometh of faith. How do we build our faith to perfect our hope? I was then able to make a scripture chain that started with the very basic definition of faith which then went step by step until we read what will happen to those in the end who have achieved this hope. I was pretty pumped cuz its like jumpin from the Book of Mormon to the Bible and back and then we hit some D&C. It was just really cool, and I was super appreciative of the Spirit there to help me remember some of these verses so I could include them in my chain (I'll include the chain at the bottom of the email in case you guys wanna look them up or whatever cuz I know I like hearing what cool stuff other people find in the scriptures and what not). I also, thought of President Eyring’s talk this past conference. He said that personal integrity is our foundation of faith that “our choosing the right consistently will provide for us that sure foundation of faith from which we can build.” Later that day I got to talk more Coron, and it was AWESOME!
We were taking the Coron elders back to the airport and so I got to hear more stuff from Elder Anderson and it was awesome! #I<3Coron. After we got back from the airport, Thursday's Zone Conference had just ended and my amount of things to do went crazy! haha I got lots of people from ZC wanting reimbursements, I had people texting and calling me with issues withdrawing their support, and I had the Forinash's trying to call me to solve apartment issues. It was just a little crazy..haha And then with ZLC the next day, there was still plentyyyy of work to do. So us and the APs ordered four pizzas (four pizzas for four elders, sounds about right, right?) and got down to business. I didn't have a whole lot to do that was like super immediate, so I rocked the finance secretary and prepared all the supply orders. Fun stuff..haha And then the APs wanted to make these bookmarks to give to all the ZLs, so I got to make those too! Woo! haha In other news, my mom probably had Bunso sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning here. #CRAZY
So yeah, my mom had another little Gadberry. That's so crazy! But I'm kinda pumped. At least I'll be gone for his first year cuz they're a lot cooler once they can actually do stuff..haha But it's another boy cuz that's just how us Gadberry's roll I guess. His name is Samuel, but you should join me in calling him Bunso. It's Tagalog for youngest, and I figure if I start calling him that at an early enough age it'll stick. #TheKidsNameIsBunso. Your support and efforts are greatly appreciated..haha Well Friday morning was....I'll just say weird. One, we had to get up early. ew. haha But it was sad cuz I had to take my companion from the MTC to the airport to go home. I’m actually grateful for the opportunity I had to help him get to the airport. It was a really weird experience because this was an elder who I looked up to and felt really close to since our companionship in the MTC. I felt so bad for him, my good friend, not being able to complete a mission, but at the same time I realized that that feeling multiplied by the infinite love of Christ and Heavenly Father is what they feel every time their children, myself included, make decisions that lead them away from them and the path back to them.
That experience, as short or small as it was, actually gave me a firmer desire to do good continually and to help others make it back to Heavenly Father, so that when the time comes, they may enter his presence and not be turned away. We had to kinda rush that cuz we needed to get back to the office cuz I had like a billion things that had to get done on Friday in an order on a schedule without much room for error. The morning part of it worked out. It was a little crazy but I got everything I needed. Then we made it to ZLC, to do everything there. After ZLC, we're in charge of taking the ZLs from Palawan to the airport. Well we pile in the car, and this car that the Area Office gave us won't start! I was like what??? This isn't good..haha So we switched with the APs and managed to still get them there on time. But we still have a car that doesn't start at the mission home! Luckily President was able to jump it and its worked ever since.. We just wanna get that car back to the area office before we get stranded somewhere..haha So after all that we made it back to the office to prep for more stuff that was going to happen on Saturday. I was sooo tired! I like couldn't even celebrate the birth of Bunso..haha Cuz of terrible traffic around the airport going to and fro we were in traffic for like 6+ hours on Friday...and yes, I still prefer to drive everywhere haha One, because I like driving even when it's frustrating and two, because Elder Pugmire doesn't like driving. haha
So yeah, that was my week! It was crazy! I guess that email might be long enough to catch your attention..haha Well hope you all have an awesome week! When ever you feel that your life is bad, just remember that there is an Elder Gadberry halfway around the world that hasn't eaten a Chips-Ahoy cookie or drank real chocolate milk in like 10 months...haha Now that's what you call a sad life...haha just kidding I love it here! Just missing my good'ol American snacks sometimes...haha =D
Love you all!
Elder Michael Gadberry
My Faith - Hope Scripture Chain
Alma 32:21 - Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge
Alma 32:27 - Faith begins with a particle, even a desire to believe
James 1:5-6; 2:17-18,22 - How we can strengthen our faith
Alma 32:41 -- How to strength faith
Ether 12:4 - That faith bringth hope
2 Nephi 31:20 - How we should endure/perfect the hope and faith
Alma 7:16 - Whosoever doeth this shall have eternal life
D&C 138:14-15 - The state of those who have passed with this "firm hope"
D&C 14:7 - This firm hope and enduring well to the end well obtain "the greatest of all the gifts of God," eternal life
Pictures
0057-0056 -- Balty got a little worn out
0055 -- Little baby Bunso. Sister Dietrich made them for me, I think she's more excited than I am..haha
0054-0052 -- ZLC Prep
0051-0049 -- Elder Pugmire got a tie from someone he was just a little excited about it and put it on the day he got it in the mail..haha
0048/0047 -- CORON! Not everyone that was there was in the picture but this was the majority I guess (keep in made it was a youth temple trip and a youth conference, that's why its a bunch of youth..haha)
0046 -- Crazy burger place scattered around the Philippines or at least this area that Elder Pugmire actually enjoys..haha #ItsSketch
0043 -- It was raining like superrr hard. You can't really tell though. Rainy season here we come!
Pictures from the Dietrich's
P*Stuff*71/70 -- The office staff lookin good
P*Kwan*69 -- The Beloved Dietrichs
Pictures From the Dietrich's that I Played With Featuring the Toys I Told You All Me and Elder Pugmire Got With the Hotdogs We Bought
Capt America - P*Kwan*66 -- See description above
From Dietrich's
P*Kwan*53 -- Filipinos!
P*Kwan*91/90 -- Couple nice shots Sister Dietrich snagged
The rest of the P*Kwan*'s
Playing With Pictures While I Don't Have Internet
0186 - View a little ways from the temple
0165 -- View from Dietrich's Apartment
dljfaseofjaslefjiealskjefaeofeamnfoea -- The one of me and my flower
Yeah the rest of them
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