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Somehow, two years have passed. And Dallin will be flying back to the states on March 26th. It has been quite the adventure! I will encourage him to add his own summary when he gets back...(Living the good life in the Philippines, Quezon City North Mission. Entered the MTC in Provo on April 4, 2012. Flew to the Philippines on Sunday, May 13, 2012. What a great adventure! And what an honor to serve the good people of the Pines!)

Monday, March 4, 2013

2-24-13 Dawg, that ain't chocolate...

So I already know what you are all thinking. No, the subject is not about excrement of any kind. Although, that usually would be the deal with a subject line like that. But, I am in the Philippines. And therefore, surprise!!! But we will get to that later. Also, the computer I am using has no apostrophe key, so I cannot use contractions. Happy day. Let us move on!! Man, English is weird without contractions! 

It has been a good week. Ha, a very good week. Firstly, I got a nice surprise in the mail. Yeah, that is right foos!!! My special visitor was not the stork. No children. But Santa did pay me a visit. Christmas packages!! Yea, verily verily I say unto you that my joy was exceedingly great, yea, unto the exhausting of all my strength. But that probably came from the celebration!! Christmas packages! Yes! That means that I only have two wait 10 months til Christmas, while all yall will be waiting a total of 12 months. Read em and weep boys and girls. Weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Dont you just love the word gnashing? Who came up with that? What all does that imply exactly? I dunno. You should google it and let me know. Google is bawal for me. Thanks! 

I guess we will get to the subject line story already, cuz that is what is up next. So our MTC teachers warned us that when we got here, our fellow missionaries would try to give us chocolate. But this chocolate is something they heat up on the grill and it does not melt. Fun fact, it is not chocolate. It is blood. Now, I have been here ages. Of course, thanks to the warning of my beloved teachers, I was not fooled. But I keep watching people eat it and I figured hey, there is one to add to the list of crazy food I have eaten. So I did. Not bad. At all. I will probably never ever eat it again, cuz it wasnt exactly phenomenal, but ok lang. Ps, Im sick of talking without contractions cuz it sounds weird. So all yall are just going to suffer the missing apostrophes. Pasensya na. 

So we had an interesting experience with being bold this week. We have loads and loads of less actives. I think my ward has about 500-700 members. About 200 of them are active. Yeah, what in the world? So we spend a lot of time teaching less actives. The Book of Mormon talks about those who know the truth and turn from it have harder hearts than those who have never learned it. Thats a fact. With our less or shall I say inactive members, we have to be bold to try and get through. Mormon talks about how when he didnt use boldness, no one cared. When he was bold, they got angry. Its a fine balance you have to hit. But the man is spot on. Sometimes it can be really hard to get through to people and help them repent or realize that they need to repent. You have to hope that their heart has got a crack somewhere that the Holy Ghost can sneak into. Im not really good at being bold. Its hard to tell folk straight to their face that they need to repent or they will have to suffer the same way the Savior suffered. D&C 19, recommendation of my boy Elder Broadhead. We hit up this one man with this section from the good old D&C this week. Killer lesson. I was freakin a bit cuz Im not used to being so bold. But Elder Sumagaysay and I had decided beforehand that he needed to hear this. I have been teaching him since I got to this area. Coming from his own mouth, he has not made any progress since then. Its actually the same guy I talked about a few weeks ago that talked about how when we are young we have to worry about work instead of the things of the Lord. So we hit the man with this lesson. It was a score of a lesson! I always read about the wonderful missionaries in the BoM that teach people straight up, no beating around the bush about how they need to repent. Or in other words, they go around smacking people with the good word. I wish we taught everyone that way. But anywho, it felt a lot like that with this less active man. He got really squirmy. You could tell he felt super guilty and that he knew he needed to change. The Holy Ghost was inside just taking notes for all the things that needed remodeling. We actually havent been back to the man yet, but we are hoping some good things come from that. Haha, thats a weird story to end with we dont actually have any results yet. But it was a really cool lesson. So moral of the story is, sometimes you have to be bold with people, even if you dont want to. Sometimes you have to risk someone being offended to offer them the chance to realize they need to repent. 

We also had zone conference. Man, do I love me some good zone conference. President Sperry is an incredible man. He can lay down the law with the scriptures. He just unfolds things to you that you never would have even thought of before. Its the best! We talked all about the Atonement. Man, I will have some cool things to show you all when I get home if the Philippines sun doesnt melt the brain out of my head!! 

Weve been getting tons of referrals lately. Grabbed a new investigator this week from a referral. Sweetness. 

We also had temple tour and a baptism!! Weve been teaching this little munchkin child forever! He is the one from the Papa Jesus rant a few weeks ago. Kid is awesome, but really slow to understand. But, the time has finally come that he was ready to be baptized!! He is only 8, but he really wants to serve a mission. He was asking us when he could go on a mission so that he could be like us. Ah man. Good kid. We took him and his siblings to temple tour in the morning. Then afterwards, we had the baptism. Good day. 

Pics yo. First is my blood on a stick. Filipino chocolate. Yum yum. Next is me showing off my wonderful Christmas blessings. Oh man, I havent eaten so well my whole mission!! Thanks mum! And the next. Yeah. Elder Sumagaysay is also enjoying my packages. Me and some kids just being us. Then a morning sun thingy. And then the temple tour. And the baptism. And then me and some kid on a jeep. Good times yall. Good times. 

And that my dear friends, is kind of it for this week. Sorry, I once again didnt write anything down. I have gotten sloppy there. In my defence....there is nothing. Sorry lang! Thank you all for the wonderful support! Have an awesome week! 

Much love,

Elder Dallin Christensen

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