Elder Dallin Christensen: 2014/03/03 "Working hard or hardly working..."

That's what I always say! Shrek folks, it's shrek. I hope you can all still keep up with me. Well, it's been a good week. My shoes have lost a considerable amount of rubber off of the sole. And you know that means good things. I don't know if I have mentioned yet, because my last few emails have been, well, they've been non-existent. Sorry about that! But! We walk sooo much here! It's incredible! And there is so much work to do! We have no time to mess around. Usually no time to take pictures. No time to do anything but walk and teach! It's been insane! We are definitely wearing ourselves out over here. It's been great!

Our area is not as beautiful as matt's. No beach here. But we do have plenty of open space that is super nice! We are not in the city. But we live within about 15 minutes. It's pretty where we are. But we work mainly in just subdivisions. Great place! And letting me work off all the excessive....padding I've put on. Awesome!

The work here is awesome. The zone is doing great. Lots of hard working missionaries. We are doing well in our area. The only thing is with everything being so spread, we only get to see people about once a week. If they are home. If we miss them....AH! Makes for slow progression. But progress not the less.

I will try to get you some happenings from the week. But everything is blurring together a bit. The time is flying so fast! I suppose I'll go backwards. Because I definitely remember today. First, we went and got fingerprinted. Now, let me tell you, the immigration office is crazy. Lots of white folks there. Lots of people that want to bash with you. We get targeted pretty quickly. But it can make for an interesting experience. Lots of chances to share the gospel. Then they slapped our hands in some ink and sent us away! Hopefully, we won't go back!

Yesterday, we had a bunch of less actives come to church and a few investigators. Our one investigator is named Xedric. And his sister's name is Xednyph. Yeah, don't ask. They are way cool though. Just young kids. Xednyph is 8 and will be baptized with her brother who is our investigator, hopefully next week. They are super cool. Their mom is solid. And they have a dad who is less active. He works in Dubai and is only here for 2 months, every two years. Life is tough. But they are an awesome family. They came to church and we were able to teach them afterward. The kids are brilliant. And they understand everything. Awesome. We went and taught their family this week and we asked them about another family that was on the records of the church. We went and found them. Active pala sila. They turned out to be the home teachers for 2 other LA families that live near by. And they own a jeep and can now drive the 2 LA families to church. So that turned out to be a blessing for us all.

We've been spending a lot of time trying to help bishop clean up the CMIS for our ward. They haven't updated it for a long time. So we've been going through our area, looking for all of the families on the list. Finding people that have moved out or died and what not. No joke, we found one house and asked about the tatay that lived there. He's been dead for 8 years. So. Yeah. We've got a lot of work to do with the CMIS! But it is a wonderful opportunity to find new investigators! We spent a few hours on Wednesday cleaning up one of the parts of our area. We found a lot of things that needed to be corrected and were able to find TONS of people to teach! We have about 10 follow up appointments in that one area alone this week. OYMing people, it turns out, is way fun!

On Saturday, we had a service project where we went and helped clean up trash in a barangay. That was awesome! I have pics later. And another opportunity to find people to teach. I think we talked with just about everyone we saw. It was awesome!

We have a recent convert that we've been teaching. She is progressing so well. She's only been a member a few months, but she has already gone and done a ton of family history work for her family! We went to teach her this week. And she invited her two neighbors over to sit in on the lesson!! Brilliant! If we could only help our members do that! The one liked the message of the restoration so much, that she decided she wanted to be baptized. We didn't even commit her. She wasn't sitting in with us. But we ended up giving her a pamphlet at the end and when we came back the next day, she said she wanted to be baptized. Awesome.

Anyway. I'm going to run out of time to send personal emails. Just thought I'd get off a real email to the fam this week for once. Hope it's decent. We're killing it over here. Might burn right through my shoes and come home wearing nothing but socks! Yeehaw! I wish you all the best this week and hope you have much inspiration for your missionary work!