The Underground river!

Hey Guys!

Had an amazing P-day today! I'll talk about it later. Unfortunately I don't know have my camera thing, so I will not be able to send pictures home today. I also don't have my planner. But I remember pretty well what happened last week. Haha. I'm pretty worried about getting transferred next week. I really love Roxas. I love the members, the people, the recent converts, the investigators. Things are going amazing. I really hope they keep me there one more transfer. But at the same time I really hope I go where the Lord wants me to go. :)

Unfortunately I am not going to be able to do the whole day by day thing because I don't remember everything we did everyday. So I guess I will just go through some lessons and investigators that we taught last week! :) Last Thursday was President Bayaras' birthday and we were supposed to eat over there, but there ended up being a black out and we had no electricty that night. Actually almost all week we had no electricity. It's pretty hard out there sometimes and it's a pretty big problem with Roxas.... Haha. I'm used to it now though. Anyways we ate at Presidents house last Friday and we had chicken, fish and a ton of food.

Our investigators are doing great! We have been teaching this one lady, Lobick and she has been doing amazing. Every time we teach her she goes and gets everyone who is around to listen, which is great! She is also doing great! She came to church for the second week in a row. We taught her the full message of the restoration last week and she prayed about it and really believes it is true. We have a goal for her to be baptized on September 24th. :)

Sister Lee and Alfred haven't been around to much. They are both really busy trying to support their 2 kids and Sister Lee's mom. They didn't come to church again for the 5th week in a row which is really too bad because they know the church is true and they really want to be baptized and go to the temple. Sister Lee said that when she can start being active in church and her and Alfred can qualify for baptism, she wants me to baptize them both. It's too bad though because they haven't been to church in a really long time.

We visited a less active family last week. And we actually taught this Nanay who was there. Her name is Nanay Bajos. She is almost golden. She is doing great! We spoke to her last Saturday and she came to church the next day. Her whole family except the father came to church!

The Honorio family is doing great. The four kids, Jaypee, Rosbelle, Marc Joseph and Michael John and doing amazing. Jaypee reads the Book of Mormon everyday. Michael John and Rosbelle came to church last week. Jaypee said he would come next week for sure. They are all committed to baptism. We don't have a date yet, probably be in October on the 6th. Tatay needs to give up smoking and they all need to give up coffee. They are all really interested and every lesson just goes really great with all of them.

Alejandro is still doing really good. He was in Taytay visiting his parents, who were the first people baptized in Taytay. We only taught him on Saturday and it went really well. He had a lot of questions and I gave a lot of answers. Haha. It had a lot to do with baptism and I used every single verse in the Bible and the Book of Mormon I knew to support those answers. Oh and great news! He believes that Joseph Smith is a Prophet of God who by the power of God translated the Book of Mormon. He knows the Book of Mormon is true too. He is almost ready for baptism. He still needs to give up smoking and drinking and he needs to get married because he and his wife, Cheryl are having a baby and they live together. He is having a hard time working that out though. I have been praying so much for Alejandro. I really hope things work out for him.

Great News! Jessa and Larry, after being taught a few times last week, were interviewed last Saturday for baptism! And of course, they both passed. We were really happy for Larry, he really struggles because he can't read, we have been reading the Book of Mormon with him and he says he tries to read and he asks for help. He gave up smoking which is great! I am really happy for him. He asked me to baptize him this coming Saturday. And of course, Jessa' father is going to baptize her. He is a bit nervous though because he hasn't done it before. We are going to show him how though, so he will be fine.

Yesterday was a great day! We had church. And how it is here is it is: Elders Quorum first, then our investigators class, then sacrament. So pretty much how we have it in Montreal, but backwards. Anyways so I get to church and there is no President Bayaras or President Larrossa. They are both in Taytay. Haha. So because Pres.Larrossa plays the piano and he wasn't there guess who had to play the piano for church? Me. Then we go to Elders Quorum and guess what? There's no Elders Quorum President, again so guess who had to teach Elders Quorum? Elder Chiong and I! haha. Then we had to teach our investigators class. We had 9 people at church that day! Which was nice! Sister Lobick brought her friend! Haha. We watched "Finding Faith in Christ" and taught and bore testimony of the atonement. We also had recent converts bear their testimony about it. It was a really good class. Then sacrament started and guess what? The concluding speaker didn't show up. So President Reyes(2nd councillor in branch presidency) asked if Elder Chiong would speak and I could tell he really didn't want too.....Soooooo guess who ended up volunteering to give a 10 minute talk on Pagsunod? Me. I just kind of said what came into my mind as the other speakers spoke and just things like that. It's a great topic. Haha. I think that talk, even though I wasn't prepared was probably one of my better talks. I was really happy with it even though I was just expressing how I felt. Oh and the best part of all sacrament was this. Guess who gave the opening talk in sacrament? April, our new convert! She also gave a talk about pagsunod. It was a great talk! I was really proud of her. :). So That Sunday was really good. We also had to leave that night because we had to go to Puerto.

So we got to Puerto and we had a full P-day. We had a really short District meeting then we had our zone activity. Which was the underground River! It was soooooooooooooooooo amazing! I loved it! While we were there I tried contacting this guy. He was a foreiner from France so I spoke french to him and I just told him a bit about the church. Haha. My French is a little rusty though. After that we took some pictures and walked around the beach. We saw a ton of unggoy along the trail coming back from the underground river, so I got pictures of those :). It was sooo beautiful though. Just getting to actually see Palawan was great. The beach is sooo beautiful. It was a really great day. We're going back to Roxas tomorrow morning.

So last week was really great! I really love my mission soooooo much. I love my area so much. I have changed a lot in the past 2 transfers here in Roxas. It is all for the good though. I love the Roxas area so much, even though I have only been here for 11 weeks people have really become great friends. I'm going to miss it a lot if I leave next week. Next week I will be emailing on Wednesday or Thursday. Just to let you know. It's transfer week so yea! I might be in a different area with a different companion. But we will have to wait and see. I love you guys so much! Thank you for emailing me every week! Dad I hope you get better! and I hope you're all doing fine dealing with the hurricane! I Pray for you all the time!

Love you!

Elder Chris Gagnon