October 1st, 2012

Naic branch activity last Saturday

Nicole's baptism last Friday

This is me in my new area...NAIC! :D

This is me and my brothers in the mission, Elder Olongayo and Elder Munk. They both go home this transfer...

This is us at the Stake President's house for the last time in Makati...the Arzaga family.

Hello family! Another great week here in Naic. We were really busy last week, I even got to go on 2 exchanges! Nicoles baptism also went through last week and it went really great. I also got to do an interview for the elders in the Punta branch. Oh yea, I guess I didn't say this in the last few emails... I'm still a zone leader here in Naic. My companion, Elder Griffin is batch with Elder Kunzler, so he has been out for about 14 months now. Actually my other batch, Elder Antonio, was his last companion so I hear quite a lot about Elder Antonio in this area. Something else that is pretty cool in this area is that it has been an elders area for a really long time, unlike STA Monica and Makati where all I heard about was sisters. Haha. I really love this branch so far. The members are really cool. The only thing we are really working on is finding people to teach. We have a pretty big teaching pool of less-actives, but we don't really have a lot of investigators... So we have been finding a lot. Last week we found a family, the Manuel family and they are really interested, their boss at work is a member, we have only taught them one lesson but they are really interested. We also found another tatay, his name is Tatay Linas. He is 77 years old, is on his 7th wife and has 17 kids. His youngest 2 kids are 9 and they are twins. Tatay really has a desire to change. We taught him a first lesson and he accepted to be baptized on a specific date. We are going to be going back to him sometime this week. Then we have Sister Emma, I think I mentioned her last week. She is blind and we have members go to her house and read the Book Of Mormon out loud for her. She was doing really good, but now she had some trials and is worried she won't be able to be taught... We are still trying with her though and her son Eric. Then we have the Solero family. They are a family of 4 who were old investigators, we visited them and they told us they really want to come to church. They were not able to last week but they will this week. We also gave them baptismal dates for the beginning of November. Then we also have Brother Joseph. He didn't come to church last week but he has stopped smoking and really wants to get baptized. His date is on the 27th of October. That's about all the investigators we are working with. We have like 100000 less actives that we are also working with. It's really hard for a lot of them to come to church because they all live so far away, but we are still going to be working with a lot of them! :D Time really does fly. I can't believe about Chris Morales! I am soooo excited for him. He is gonna do amazing in the Philippines. It's too bad that I won't get to see him though. It's actually funny, I was talking to someone the other day who said they were assigned in the Laoag mission and I was just telling him that I never met anyone who served there. Well I guess this week I know 2 people who were assigned there. That's also really exciting for Patrick and Jonathan and Ben. Nothing is gonna look the same when I go home. Haha. I'm really excited! :D Anyways, that is about it for this week. I hope you all have another amazing week! Take Care! :D Love ya! Elder Gagnon