Another Week Gone By

[Editor's Note: We like pictures.  Since we did not receive Jordan pictures this week . . . we added a few of our own.]

We did not get any pictures from Jordan this week
so here's a picture of Jordan's nephew Beckham
meeting cousin Royal for the first time last week

            Well, well, well.  Monday again.  And so it begins.  This week went by pretty fast, like they always do, and it was pretty fun this week.  Monday night, Elder Talento and I were playing basketball when these random kids showed up and wanted to play with us.  There were about six of them and the oldest was probably around 16.  We figured, why not?  It would probably be more exciting and fun than just playing one-on-one the entire time.  We played a long game with them, and it was pretty fun.  Elder Talento and I were on a team with these two kids, and the 10 year-old on our team was just surprisingly really good at defense.  Elder Talento and I were pretty much the only scorers on the team, but we still only won by like two baskets or something like that.  The thing about Filipinos here is that since they play basketball every hour of everyday, they're endurance and stamina is just through the roof.  I'm not really that much in shape anymore (when was that again?), so I was getting tired pretty quickly after every possession while they would just keep flying down the court. 

            So I guess you've already seen the video of me playing volleyball at the chapel by now.  [A member of the ward where Jordan is serving posted about five minutes of Jordan and his companion playing volleyball on a Preparation Day last month.  It's posted on Facebook.]  That was pretty fun, actually.  We're probably playing later today, so we'll see how that goes.  Oh back to basketball, I won the first series of our March Madness tournament this week winning four games to Elder Talento's two.  It gets pretty intense in the house while we're playing, but it's just so much fun.  Our next series will probably start tomorrow, so we'll see if I arise triumphantly once again this week (haha).

David and Kambria will be married May 12th.  We
get to speak with Jordan May 13th for MOTHER'S DAY

            Usually, OYMing (Open Your Mouth: or simply just finding people to teach by street contacting) doesn't really work, or it's not as effective as member referrals, but this week changed all that for me.  We decided to go OYMing and see if we could find anyone to teach.  To our astonishment, we found a family of about eight and their neighbor that we met and taught them the first lesson.  I was just so surprised that OYMing actually works sometimes (imagine that).  The next people we contacted the same way were two elderly couples, who seemed really interested.  We didn't get to teach one of them, because they were on their way to the hospital, because she's been having problems lately, so we arranged to teach them either this week or next week.  The other couple we found are Methodists, but they were willing to listen.  Just goes to show you that OYMing DOES work sometimes.  I remember experiences I had with working with the missionaries back home in Vegas.  Most of the time that I would go teach with them, their appointments would fall through, so I didn't really experience that many lessons with them.  However, every time that I was with them, we were able to find people through OYMing. 

           

            Tomorrow is Zone Conference in Cabanatuan.  I always love zone conference.  We get to see the Elders from the other zones, receive direction from President Martino, and - also importantly = we get mail (haha).  We're going to try to talk to the Zone Leader of Cabanatuan tomorrow to challenge them to a zone-on-zone basketball game sometime before the transfer ends.  We also need to discuss about getting zone t-shirts, because we still haven't received one yet.  We're going to the Bowcutt's house in Cabanatuan today for lunch and basketball, so that should be awesome.  Wow.  Sorry for such a short email, but I can't really think of anything else that happened this week.  Well, I guess that's about it for me.  The work is still progressing here and we're going to continue to tear it up here.  Mahal ko kayo.  Have a great week everyone!

            Elder Jordan "March Madness Champ (so far)"  Royal

Beckham and Royal are gonna be a lot bigger by the time Elder Royal gets home