We decided to use the church's Christmas initiative "Light The World" in order to spread the Christmas spirit

Us and the Ramos family

Transfer announcements were just two days ago, and it turns out I will be staying here in Masbate for the Christmas season! That's a really good thing because I don't wanna spend my Christmas in a brand new area, that's no fun. Anyways, these past two weeks we have really been spending most of our time teaching our investigators that have a date set for their baptism and setting up for our Christmas activity that we had yesterday. So more than a month ago we suggested to the branch leaders that we were going to set up a missionary activity on November 26, and since then we have been trying our hardest to get the members involved in the planning and preparing, but no one moved an inch when we tried to make an activity. That means that this past week, Elder Del Pilar and I have been trying to set EVERYTHING up for the branch activity. Needless to say, it was a very exhausting week, but we held the activity yesterday, and it was pretty successful.

This was our activity: We decided to use the church's Christmas initiative "Light The World" in order to spread the Christmas spirit. The church released 25 different videos that relate to each day leading up to Christmas, showing us different ways to serve one another on the days until the 25th of December. Our idea was to put up a huge projector screen in the middle of an area where tons of people walk by as a type of advertisement for the "Light the World" initiative. We invited all of the Branch members and we gave them a stack of 300 different handouts to give to people who stopped to watch the videos. Filipinos are a very curious people, so many people stopped by to watch, and by the end of the night, all 300 of our handouts had been given out to people. Not only that but we got the numbers of some people who want us to visit them in their homes and teach them! So I think it was a pretty successful activity.

Sorry, I spent most of my time today emailing my family individually, so my mass email is pretty short. But I'll send some good pictures!

Elder Austin Cook

 District activity. We just put all of the food on a banana leaf & eat it w/our hands

The mama lamb chased him around after this because he took her baby

This dogs name is whitey. He's absolutely disgusting and pitiful,
but he leaves outside of our apartment and always follows us when
 we go outside. Figured I'd take a quick picture with him before he bites the dust.
Yes we do feed him mama!

Love you all, life is hard, but it's also very good

With the Ramos Family

This past week has given us some relief that we have been hoping for! I'm not sure if you remember them, but the Ramos family came to church again yesterday, with four of their children, and they all loved it! The father, Jimmy, has told us that he has completely stopped drinking ever since we started teaching them, and he doesn't miss it at all. The amazing thing is that we never even asked him to stop drinking, he just decided it was probably the right thing to do.

Two weeks ago we met a girl named Jingky who is 18 years old and is actually the maidservant for a very active family in our branch, the Montilla family. She's not a member, but since she works and lives with a family full of very active members we reached out to her to ask if she was interested in learning more about the church. She responded very warmly towards our invitation, and just last Saturday we were able to finally sit down in a lesson with her and the Montilla family. We started by asking a question that we NEVER ask because the answer is always SO obvious for people here but it felt like an appropriate question to ask at the time: Do you believe in God? Surprisingly enough, she fell silent. She thought for quite a bit and told us that she isn't sure, but she thinks that she feels His presence every now and then. We asked her to explain a little bit more and she told us that when she was much younger, she very much believed in God but because of a health incident that took her father's life, she doubts very much. She thinks that after that incident she moved very far away from God and wants now to make the journey back to him. She told us that when we first came up to her and asked if she wanted to know more about the church, she really felt that that was God's way of giving her another chance to come back. She has expressed to us that she is very willing to do whatever it takes, and has proved that already; just yesterday she went to church all by herself without even doubting it a bit! We are very excited for her!

Me and my Companion

The Ramos family continues to improve. Yesterday we taught them about the Word of Wisdom and they all jumped a little bit when we told them that we aren't allowed to drink coffee or tea. But after a little bit of explanation as to WHY, they all confidently declared that they want to and are ready to follow the word of wisdom by not drinking coffee or alcohol or tea, and not smoking. Funny thing is that we ran into Jimmy later that night with a lit cigarette in his hand! But hey, repentance is a process right?

Anyways, that's all for now folks! Love you all, life is hard, but it's also very good. Ingat kayo!!
Elder Austin Cook

All the students attending my English class I teach

I

me and Elder Bangal my 2nd companion on my mission

So only half of this last week was actually spent in our area, and the other half was spent in the area of the Assistants to President in Legazpi. But in the half week of work that we got, I thought it wasn't too bad. We have been really working with the leaders in the church to get some awesome activities set up in order to find new people to teach, but the leaders seem to be moving pretty slow with all of it, so we are just gonna have to take the initiative ourselves to work it out if they won't work with us. We are writing some letters to get permission from the area officials in order to use certain facilities in the city to present some videos and put on a Christmas show for the people in Masbate.

Last Tuesday we went to Legazpi to have MLC again, so we were able to receive some great direction from President Kotter. Also I got some more letters from Twinkle and her family, so those always make me happy because I know that at least they haven't forgotten about me!

Last week we had an area realignment with the Sisters in our Zone, which means that we took a part of their area so that we can proselyte in it. In that area that we just took from them, we found a whole new family of investigators, the Ramos Family, and right away they came to church with us! Just yesterday we stopped by their house to pick them up and we walked with them all the way to church, and we have another return appointment with them tomorrow, so we hope that it will go well.

We also have been working with a less-active girl named Rea this past week. Actually we have been working with her for the past two months, and she has yet to come to church again. She has opened up to us saying that she WANTS to come back to church because she really misses it, but she is just having a problem working up the courage to actually make the journey back to church. But yesterday she FINALLY came back to church! She only stayed for the first hour, but hey, we gotta start somewhere right? We really hope that she will continue to progress towards becoming active in the church again.

Elder Bangal & I at MLC, He was my 2nd companion on the mission

Last night we met with the Cantre family for the first time. They are a less-active family that was baptized about a year ago, but it has been a really long time since they have had any contact with the church. We only met with the mother, Melissa, and talked with her about why they stopped coming to church. She explained that they ARE going to church-just not our church. They have found their way back to their Catholic traditions and roots and no longer have the desire to come back to church. She refused to accept it, but her life seems to have gone significantly downhill ever since they left. Her husband used to have a smoking and drinking problem which went away when they joined the church, but we saw some cigarettes hidden in the roof in their house, so obviously that problem has come back. Also her husband does not treat her well at all and always yells and gets mad at her and the kids. We just hope that we can somehow show her that we can help her through the Gospel. But as sad experience shows, once members go less-active, it is so much more difficult to bring them back to church.

Elder Pullicar (He's a cool guy from Idaho) 

These are the cemeteries here in Philippines.
We just kind of walk all over them and stuff, so that's fun

Filipino Cemetery