July 24th, 2012

Hello Family! Last week was a good week. We had interviews with President Stucki yesterday so today became our Pday. Things are going really good. President told me I might be staying in Makati! I'm really excited! Things are going really well in our area. Even though I have been here for a long time I still really want to stay. If I did stay this would become my longest area in the mission. Last week we had our zone meeting. It went really well. We made a test on the Book of Mormon of things that were in PMG and we were a bit disappointed with how well the zone did... The highest was a 7/10... Some of the questions were a little bit hard, but it was still all based on things in PMG, so it should have been a lot better.... Anyways we also talked about daily planning and why it is so important and how to tell if you daily plans are effective. It was a good meeting. Our investigators are doing really well. We will have another baptism this Sunday after church. Sister Charlene will be getting baptized. We are really excited for her. We also had a baptism last Saturday, Sister Reyna was baptized. She is doing really great and will be a strong member. She also wants us to start teaching her brother, but he is never around. Hopefully though we will be able to teach him. All the pictures that were taken are on Elder Kunzlers camera. I will get the pics from him though. It's also really kool that Derek is now a missionary. I'm really excited for him. If you could, please send me his mailing information so I could write him. I'm really excited for him. I'm also really excited for Justin. I really hope he is studying hard. He will need it no matter what mission he serves in. Also, I have been getting sick and exhausted more often, it's mostly because there's a lot of rain though and floods. We're just really tired from working really hard. Don't worry though, I'm eating fine and I'm taking vitamins. :D To answer more questions, yes I did get my guitar back and I still play it a bit. I haven't really used the CDs that much though. It would be better just to maybe buy just a USB that he can use and plug into speakers. That's what we use now when we want to play music and it's good. There are those though, who use Ipods and speakers. Just make sure his mission president knows about it though. Also, I never really used the big blanket I got, but that's just because its 100000 degrees out here. I also never sewed anything because I can get that done here for really cheap. I use the shoe shine every once in a while, whenever we have interviews or zone conferences or other big meetings. Everything else I think I use... I'm not sure though. I think if you just sent Justin out with 7 white shirts, a few pair of pants, a lot of pairs of socks, a good razor to shave, tooth paste, PMG and a compact sized quadruple he would be fine. He can mostly buy everything else in the place wherever he will be assigned. (Unless he gets assigned in Palawan, then maybe buy him a few ties, and bed sheets.) That's about it though. I love this mission. Yesterday I had to text Elder Comish because I needed a number from someone in the Cavite zone. He texted it back and I said "Thanks batch! Love ya Batch!" Then He texted back and said "Love ya too batch. 6 Months na lang! :D" It was pretty funny and it made me realize that yesterday, I have exactly 6 months left in the mission. I'm really not excited to come home. I mean I am, but I just don't know what I'm going to do once I come home. I want to start thinking about what I'm going to do but there's no time. It's just really amazing how fast time goes by. I love my mission! I love serving and working hard and teaching and everything about it. It's been one of the greatest and happiest things I've ever done. Anyways, that's about it for this week. It was a great week. Thank you so much for all of your support! I love all you guys! Take care! Love, Elder Chris Gagnon