This is after a service project, where we carried buckets of sand and large rocks to build a retaining wall where they will eventually build a small house. Elder Vilela started stacking rocks on this sleeping puppy, but then the kids took over and started covering him. kawawa (poor thing) But he woke up and stretched when it got too heavy - don’t worry. 

 

Last Pday after Email we had some free time so Elder Lloyd showed us a minimart that has a pool room you can rent for 125 pesos ($2.45 USD) an hour per person. I didn’t know where we were going at first but we went behind the counter, through a small hallway, through another door and opened up into a cellar of a pool room, but it was cool enough for us. We played for a good hour, next time we will probably stay longer. It was funny how back room it was. Never would I ever expect there to be Billiards (as it is always called here) in the back room. 

Lastly, this is my companion Elder Vilela at a calenderia (outside eating place) and I finally decided to try the thing that’s in my hand. “What is that?" you might ask, It’s grilled chicken heads. They were good, a little bit bony but I would eat it again. Only 10 pesos for 3 (20 cents).

We are teaching a family of 5. The Father and the daughter are the ones we are teaching but we will try to have a FHE there to get his 2 other younger boys to join the lessons and gain interest too. The father is really cool, really funny. He believes everything we teach him, is living the word of wisdom, but his problem is he won’t come to church, and wants to wait for his wife to come back from working abroad so they can be all baptized together. We told him that he should take the opportunity now because he will be able to help his family more through his example. He is getting really close we can feel it, we just need him to come to church instead of driving people around in his Tricikel. I'll try to get a picture with them next week, he is a roly poly kind of a man, haha He’s awesome. 

Thank you to the people who emailed me this week, you know who you are. The missionaries in the field are soo appreciative of letters, emails, or any pictures you think to send. If you have any questions about what I’m experiencing, I’ll try to answer as best I can. 

Have a great week Y'all

Elder Hennessey

 

This is Sister Brown and Sister Manu. As her first District Leader, I  am Sister Manu's mission dad, and as her first “stl”, Sister Brown is her mission mom, meaning that we are a couple and this is our kid, which makes my facial expression pretty funny in this pic. 

 

BANGUED ZONE (mostly)

This week was cool. I had for the second time in my whole mission a Family Home Evening at the investigators house without another member present. It is a weird concept for people just to gather with Family and then have some quality laughs. We always supply the games and a short message. The father of the family missed the lesson but came in for the games which was amazing because usually he is very shy towards us. The games allowed us to break the tension very easily. The mother has fake teeth and one of the games requires you to say a phrase without showing your teeth, even if you laugh you need to keep your teeth covered by your lips. The nanays teeth fell out!! haha It was really funny and she sat out the rest of the game because it was an "unfair disadvantage." 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Invite the missionaries over for dinner!! I don’t know if they do fun games like we do here, but if you ask them to beforehand, I'm sure they’ll come up with something. 

Have a good week!

These are pics with my new companion Elder Vilela.  He is from Batangas, Phillippines, a place where Tagalog IS the native language, but it’s not just tagalog, it’s a very deep dialect. The way he explained it to me it sounds like they speak the Tagalog equivalent of Old English, and instead of saying happy they’d say overjoyed. Anyways, he’s a super cool guy.

We rode in the back of my branch president’s truck, #ItsMoreFunInThePhilippines

Last Friday was a memorable day of work. First we met a guy who was really old and after we gave him a pamphlet with introduction to the Restoration of the Church, he told us "ok, I have a story to tell you, I spent 2 years in grade 1, 1 year in grade 2, 2 years in grade 3, 1 year in grade 4, and 3 years in grade 5.” That’s all the education he had, but then I said "Yeah that maybe true, but if you add all those years together, you get 9 years of schooling!" He laughed and said thanks for the pamphlet. 

The next person we saw was fixing some shorts, so while I introduced myself, I grabbed some of the other shorts he hadn’t yet fixed and got to work. I was halfway done when his neighbor came to sit by me and said I was doing it wrong. I hadn’t stretched the elastic taught before sewing, so it wouldn’t have been able to stretch and probably just tore. Also I had sewn the drawstring into the seam so it wouldn’t have adjusted anymore. Silly me. I undid it, we laughed a lot at my blunder, and I fixed them the right way. They’d probably already been fixed 4 times by the 4 other color threads I saw. 

I really enjoy finding, meeting all new people and trying to let them see I’m not just some foreigner, but I’m a person too and I have a message that will raise the quality of life. It is so easy for me to see the blessings in the lives of people here because even if there is a big house, if the inside of the house is full of hate and contention and no one is being nice then the house is worth nothing. But there are many people here whose lives are not super luxurious but they are happier than many others that I’ve met all because of the gospel of Jesus Christ and obedience to His commandments. 

Elder Hennessey

 

Elder Pitt at the Balun. He is nagbabumba, or pumping water.

 

Elder Jenson, Elder Campbell and Me inside a Trike.

 

The small river our Trickel had to cross. We drive onto the raft then they pull us across. On our way, there were 2 trickels on the raft, we were in the back, but because our trickel had 4 amerikanos in it, it was heavier, and the raft was off-balanced. It slid back maybe a foot and a half when our end sunk down into the water. We all yelled and pushed at each other to get out of the cramped Trickel. It was very fun.

Elder Campbell and me before he left. I'm wearing a sweater even though it made me super sweaty.

 

The longest bridge in the Phillippines.

 

Harvesting Corn.

I don’t have too much to say about this week, other than it went by super fast. On Tuesday I went to Bukay on Companionship exchanges with Elder Siojo, he’s almost 2 months into his mission. We had a good time, I only go there when they need me to interview someone for baptism, since I’m the district leader. They had two Baptismal candidates that both passed, they’re baptisms were on Saturday and confirmations the following Day. While in Bukay, we had a nanay and tatay that worked with us the whole time, from the first appointment (which was a referral from them) to the dinner appt (at their house).

It was a fun time, and nice to be with someone so young in the mission because they haven’t relaxed yet. It was hard to return to Bangued because my companion and Elder Pitt's Companion will be leaving this Sunday night. They will go home and never return to missionary life again... unless they do a senior mission. I'm so gonna be super sad to see them go, but it will be hard thinking that I still have a year to go, and they'll be seeing their fams within a week. But it’s ok, just as long as I come home when I'm supposed to, and not earlier due to disobedience.

 

This rice was 46 Pesos a kilo, which is kinda expensive, but it was very delicious. I have gotten the bad habit of sorting out the rocks and leaves from the uncooked rice. It’s really time consuming and doesn’t make too much of a difference, but all those little rice shells and rocks came just from the rice on the plate. Sometimes I will be eating rice and chew down on some tiny rock, luckily they are usually softened a little by the boiling process. But the worst thing I ever experienced with eating rice was chomping down on a small piece of...not rock,... glass; that did not get softened in the cooking process. But it’s ok, the Ulam (rice topping) was still good and I didn’t break my teeth.

Some Sweet Basketball shoes, see if you can find the unusual bit. A funny evidence of imitation shoes. 

Elder Jensen’s ingenious way of drying the pants that he would need to wear later in the day. 

Don’t forget to email your Elders in the Field:

          damon.rennaker@myldsmail.net

          tanner.symes@myldsmail.net

          tiegue.hennessey@myldsmail.net 

Even just one sentence, and an attached picture will go a looong ways. 

Have a blessed week. In 2 weeks I'll have a new companion. Hopefully I'll be training again :)

This week was pretty normal... besides the fact that I JUST HIT 1 YEAR IN THE MISSION!! But yeah, pretty normal. For my 1 year mark I bought our house pizza, because there’s this really good pizza shop that’s run by some big white guy and a Philipina and they both speak with really thick English accents. I bought 5, 10 inch, Pizzas for 640 Pesos. That’s right - we got stuffed on 5 pizzas for less than 13 Dollars. Then we went out to proselyte like regular.

We're currently having a level 1 Super Typhoon (basically just a tropical storm) passing through the Philippines. This means it rains in the morning when it normally doesn't rain until about 3 in the afternoon like clockwork. And at night it gets really windy. I have mixed feelings about a super typhoon hitting Abra. Yeah of course it would be really hard on the people, many many houses would get wrecked and everything would get wet, and there would be floods everywhere. But it would be fun to do a lot of service, and we would probably not be able to work for a few days and we’d get bombarded with opportunities to serve the people. And it would be humbling to witness the Raw power of a super typhoon, just the name sounds intimidating.

Shout out to Elder Rennaker in Argentina. He’s experiencing probably the opposite things from me weather-wise. I have yet to receive pics from Elder Symes, maybe his Mother can Send me some (Hi Audry!)

  

More pictures from the resort that my Branch President designed.

Elder Jenson buying MacDo on a bike at the Drive through-window. 

Elder Rennaker in Argentina.