Well, well, well, another week has gone by, and so has another transfer. Dang! That was a pretty fast three months! I am now officially a Co-Senior! Which pretty much means that I'm no longer a trainee. Still, I’ll take it. I'm so happy to say that I am now companions with Elder Talento (Elder Talent, haha). He's an older guy - so very cool! He just finished training Elder Palmer from my batch in the MTC. I'm so excited to start working with him this transfer. We had our transfer announcements on Wednesday at Palayan, and every companionship in the zone is now new, except for Elders Crisanto and Nunn who are still on the 12 Week Program for one more transfer. Elder Declaro went to Sta. Ignacia, Elder Magbunua, Elder Manalo, and Elder Frearson all left. Everyone on the East side of the mission went to Cabanatuan to pick up their new companions. Everyone kept telling me how awesome Elder Talento is, how he's very outgoing with the investigators/members, and how awesome he is at basketball. Well, it turns out that all of those things are true. I'm very pumped to work with him.
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| Elder Royal and his new companion, Elder Talento from Manila |
The day after transfers we had exchanges, because our area and Palayan had baptismal interviews that needed to be done. Elder Burog (new Zone Leader) worked with me on Friday and Elder Talento went to Bongabon. We had our baptismal interview for Nanay Rose Marie on Friday. We went to her house first, because I thought she said we would do the interviews there, but instead we went to the chapel. So we rushed over there and found her and President Faustino waiting for us. I'm just grateful that she was still there and she will be baptized this Saturday (March 3rd). She is another great investigator that was prepared for us by the Lord to find. Nnay Rose Marie was in a time of her life when her husband just recently passed away (Nov. 2011), but as we shared our message that families can be together forever, she had a powerful witness of the truthfulness of the Lord’s Plan of Salvation and embraced the gospel. Who wouldn’t want to be with their family for all of eternity?? She has been such a great blessing to us. She has a few children in their 20's living at home, so hopefully they'll be interested to hearing the message of salvation and exaltation as well. When we first started teaching Nanay Rose Marie, they didn't want to listen to us, but they were at least polite about it. But now, one of them has seen the change in her mother, and just wants to know why. She read one of the pamphlets that we gave to her mom before and she sat through one of our lessons. Hopefully, the Lord will continue opening doors for us to do His work. We also had two less actives return and come back into activity this week. So a baptism, plus a few less actives coming back into activity is ayos!
Since Elder Talento and I are no longer training/being trained, we're really trying to practice teaching in unity and going back and forth with teaching. Before with Elder Declaro, I would teach as far as I could until I would get stuck and then he would come and back me up, which is what we're supposed to do in the 12 week program. But now we're done with the training program, so we can become more involved in teaching our investigators. Since we started doing that, I noticed that I became more aware of what was going on and what some of the issues some of the people had. I still don't understand a lot of what is said in Tagalog, but it's helping me more to focus on what is being said by everyone. If that makes any sense.
Steven Jex is coaching volleyball at Silverado?! Lucky! That's something I would love to do someday. Oh, and Dad, thanks for sending the volleyball pics from Regionals. They look pretty sweet :). I'm trying to see if I'm forgetting anything right now, because I know I probably will once I'm done. No, I still haven't received the package yet. I will for sure get mail this week or next week, because the Zone Leaders are going to Angeles for training for a couple of days. So I will get that and all of the 40 or 50 Dear Elders that are waiting for me also (haha). Bale, isipin kong tapos na. Segi. Pwede na. Ingat kayo at mahal ko kayo rin!
Pinakapogi anak na lalaki ninyo (oo, sobrang totoo),
Elder Jordan "medyo hindi totoo diyan" Royal
And now, for no particular reason, some pictures of Jordan playing volleyball with SHS in the May 2011 Regionals (just because he misses playing so much and is jealous that Steven Jex is coaching the SHS freshman team prior to leaving for the Germany Berlin Mission). (Pictures taken by Matt Carter at http://lvactionimages.com/p441377731)
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