Elder Austin Russell Cook Philippines, Legazpi Mission 8-2016 thru 8-2018: He challenged literally EVERY point that we made with an intellectual question

This is how the jungle people do laundry.. lol

Not much happened this week, but we found a great new investigator named Ronnie Villamor! I want to write about him because he is probably the most intelligent person that I've ever taught here on my mission. I'm just used to teaching people that sit there and listen and have NO QUESTIONS EVER because they just have absolutely no prior knowledge about the Gospel, but this Ronnie guy asked so many questions about everything. He challenged literally EVERY point that we made with an intellectual question, and to be honest, we aren't used to that out here. But it was so much fun teaching him because it actually makes us think while we are teaching, kind of gives us a challenge. But he's great because he actually accepts the answers we give him in response. We found him last week while tracting and have already taught him twice and have a return appointment with him this Wednesday.

Fat people can climb too!

Sad news though. Remember the Ramos family? Well, Tatay Jimmy Ramos has kind of apostatized this last week. So what had happened was this: We taught him about tithing, saying that NO MATTER HOW POOR YOU ARE, you still have to give 10% of your income to God, because that is the simple commandment, and in return you will receive huge blessings. So he understood that and agreed to it. But then our Branch President interviewed him, and in this interview the Branch President told him that since Tatay Jimmy is so poor, if he can't give the full 10%, that's okay, he should at least give what he can. So boom, Tatay Jimmy got confused, and because of his confused frustration, he got drunk, and TA-DA he's refusing to go to church now and is not allowing his family to go to church either. We have no idea what to do there, but we will see in the coming week how we can help. I still have hope, however, we aren't too worried about it. God is watching over him and will help us deal with the situation.

So I guess our ray of hope right now is the Ibanez Family, Livino and Shannie. They really love us teaching them and they absolutely love the Book of Mormon. They say that they try and share it with their neighbors, but all of their neighbors just laugh at them and tell them that "Mormons" is a cult and that we don't even believe in Jesus Christ. But Livino and Shannie know very well that our church is centered more on Christ than any other, this is, after all, His church right? That's why they are great, because they really believe and don't care what their friends and neighbors say. We have high hopes for them.