Philippin' Awesome: BAPTISM, BAZOOKA and BEER

Week 41

Monday, March 27, 2017

Hello Friends and Family,

I hope you all had a great week. This week I have a few stories... haha!

This week's crazy story:

So as I said last week, the Assistants came up to Pandan for "L's" interview. (Of course she passed and the baptism was amazing!) On Monday, Elder Cobabe was driving us around and we were showing him potential new meeting houses... President Cruz wanted him to check them out with us. Elder Cobabe pulled the truck down this alley and he needed to turn around... the alley led into the beach. He decided to drive into the beach... I said jokingly, "I hope we don't get stuck"...that' is exactly what happened! We got stuck really bad!. After about five minutes of pushing and trying to get the truck out, we realized that it wasn't gonna happen. Luckily, there was a bunch of people on the beach and they happily jumped in to help. After about 25 minutes of pushing and putting trees and ply-wood i\under the car, we finally got the truck out! Elder Cobabe said, "lets's give them money for maryenda," (which just means snacks.) So we told them thank you and gave them like 200 pesos for them to go buy maryenda. They were so excited for the money and as soon as they got it they said, "LET'S GO GET BEER!!" SO... we essentially bought them beer. II guess t's okay...Ithey have their agency. It was really funny though.

Second story:

Later this week I got a call from Elder Cobabe. He told me there was a big package in the office with the words Titleist" on it. (My parents are awesome and sent me a couple of old golf clubs so that I could play a little on my p-days.) Elder Cobabe continued to tell me that when President Cruz saw the package, he said, 'oh... there's that bazooka I ordered.'" I died laughing...SOOO funny!

The week:

This week was a fairly normal week. We've been spending some time looking for a new meeting house and a new house to live in. President Cruz really wants us closer to the bunwa, or center of town, so every morning we've been looking. It looks like we have found one of each, they just need to be checked. I'm not sure that I'll still be here when we move though. I'm really good at finding new houses... haha, (I think they should send me to areas that need new homes and find them because I found a really good one in Dumangas, and a good one here haha.) This week ended in the best way possible with "L" being baptized. It was a really good baptism. We ended up doing the baptism at this resort. It wasn't as cool as baptizing in the ocean, but still really great! The day of the baptism was also the birthday of one of our members. We had a bunch of great food after the baptism. I bought two cakes, one for the birthday, one for the baptism.

Yesterday we had our District Conference. It was a lot of fun and a really good conference. We had to wake up at 4am and travel about 7 hours. President and Sister Cruz spoke and also a General Authority. The teaching is going good. We have investigators who are actually keeping their commitments and really want to know the truth. It's very exciting.

The Language:

I've had a few people ask me how the language is... I think this experience will describe the language here in Pandan. SO... when Elder Cobabe conducted the baptismal interview with Luc, he said that he asked her the first question in

Kar-ah, and Luc answered in ilonggo, so he asked the next question in ilonggo, and she answered in Tagalog, so he was just like ok... I'll do it in Tagalog. Pandan is a weird place language wise, it's pretty tough and kind of a melting pot of languages, but so much fun!

That's about all I have for this week. I love this work, and I love being a missionary!

Love,

Elder Andersen