Everything about this week was hilarious so I would like to
start this post by listing some of them.
1. I asked an investigator, "Saan ka nakatira?"
This means, "Where are you from?" The investigator said,
"What?" I repeated myself a couple of times until they
said, "Oh, you mean "Saan ka nakatira?" And I
said yes, I have been on my mission for sixteen months. I know
how to ask where you are from. Well the truth is that I did not
and it took me this far into my mission to realize that I had
been stressing the "ka" and not the "ra" in
"nakatira." For the last sixteen months I have been
asking people where they are getting high, not where they are
from.
2. After we were done proselyting one night, we decided to
try a bakery that everyone is always talking about that has
buy-1 get-1 bread after 6 pm. We took a tricy and went inside.
We soon realized that we had left our personal money at home and had
very little to spend on bread and get home, too. When we looked at
the prices of the bread we realized it was way more expensive
than we expected and that it was going to be tight with the
little money we had. In the end, we bought bread, got one free,
and walked a very long way home. I think it took us an hour. We will try to exercise better financial planning
this week.
3. In our area is a very big bridge connecting downtown Laoag
and the rest of Laoag. We have an investigator assigned to us
just over the bridge. One night while we were in downtown we
had no one to teach. No one was home so we decided to cross the
bridge. It was night and raining and the bridge is a little
long and a little dangerous, but because we are poor
missionaries, we decided to walk the bridge. When we got on the
bridge, we decided how ridiculous the decision was and tried to
cover ourselves with our umbrellas so no one would recognize us.
Well, we are maybe about 5 meters onto the bridge and a tricy
pulls over, a woman steps out and says, "I'm a member of
your church. Get in!" We tried to reason with her and say,
"Oh, we are just going over there. We can walk." She
said, "What are you thinking? Get in." So we got a
free ride over the bridge. Thank you Rivera family.
The work of the Lord is good. The area Sister Pututau and
I have is difficult but we are working to outsmart our area and find
those the Lord has prepared. We are fighting Satan everday, but
he works in mysterious ways. We have to outsmart Satan with the
help of the Lord. A story I recently heard reminds me of the
power of Satan:
It was about this city that was
perfectly perfect. They were all so good except for this one
man; he was out to destroy these people. The two things that
could destroy these people were chocolate cake and the color
red. Obviously the people weren't going to just go out and
eat chocolate cake and wear the color red, so the man
devised a plan to get into the hearts of the people. He
started by making chocolate chip cookies with just a little
bit of chocolate. The people loved the cookies although they
were nervous about chocolate. They reasoned however that it
was a far cry from chocolate cake. Eventually however, it
was extra chocolate chip cookies and then he introduced a
move about chocolate to the media. At this point the people
were exposed to chocolate at every point. The man soon
introduced cake. But not chocolate cake - every flavor of
cake BUT chocolate, but ALL were topped with chocolate
frosting. Then one day the people in the town began to eat
chocolate cake, not even realizing the consequences soon to
come. "Have you seen the new movie?" the
townspeople soon started I say. "No, but I don't want
to see another movie with chocolate in it." "Oh
this movie has no chocolate, it's all about the color
pink." Not before long, the people were destroyed and
the city fell.
We should never let ourselves justify anything close to sin
or reason that we are "good enough." Satan will take
those opportunities and destroy us. The problem is we may be
oblivious to the personal destruction we are encountering
because of the sneaky ways of Satan. We must be alert and never
fall for anything.
This week our investigator, Nanay Monette, shared with us a funny
story. Nanay is poor and old. She cannot work anymore because she
is weak and she has no money. She often struggles to find money to
buy food. One day she had no food so she thought of a grand idea-
she would sell her old typewriter that was worth 6000 pesos when
she bought it over 50 years ago. This typewriter is big, heavy, and
clunky, but nonetheless, Nanay toted it from neighbor to neighbor
trying to find a buyer. She was having no success until she found a
merciful neighbor down the street. Her neighbor kindly explained to
her that they use a computer now and have no need for a typewriter.
She siad, "But even though we will not be buying your
typewriter, you may have this bread and drink." Nanay did not
accomplish the task she had set out to do, but she did find what she
was looking for. We are all grateful for the Good Samaritan that
kindly gave her bread and drink to get through the day.
