Nothing short of the hand of God

Hey kids I'm getting transferred. I'll be leaving this Tuesday morning to a new area called Daraga and will be the new Zone Leader out there. It's an area that's pretty close to the volcano, so at least I'll be able to get some cool shots out of it! I don't know what to expect in this next area, but I know that it's definitely a bigger city than here in Masbate, and I assume that this will be my last area before I head home, but I don't know what God's plans are.

This last week was really weird, because last Wednesday we had interviews with President Kotter in the mainland in which he told us that BOTH Elder Del Pilar and I were going to be transferred. We were kind of shocked because two missionaries don't usually get pulled out unless they did something disobedient. But President Kotter told us that we didn't do anything wrong, he just feels that the area needs a fresh start... Well, I'll still be a Zone Leader and Elder Del Pilar is going to be a branch president on an island called Catanduanes, so we were assured that we didn't do anything wrong because obviously President still trusts us.

On our way back from interviews we had a really neat experience on the Roro. The roro took us back

Chillin at the pier

to Masbate from the mainland at about 10:00 PM, so we left really late and got home at about 3:00 AM. Normally Elder Del Pilar and I just sleep on the roro because it's a really big boat and there's nothing to do, and obviously we were really tired because it was late, but it just so happened that there were two younger girls about the age of 20 looking for some places to sit on the boat. We moved around some of our stuff to make room so they could sit down, and so they did. Now, Elder Del Pilar and I HATE talking to girls our age out here, because they ALWAYS get the wrong idea when a foreigner talks to them, but when we gave them some room to sit down, we were instantly launched into a conversation that lasted the entirety of the boat ride, yes, five hours. When we first tried to teach them/get them interested in the Restoration, they just kind of laughed, but after we persisted, they actually got pretty interested and started bombarding us with questions about the Restoration, the Gospel, and the Plan of Salvation. Long story short, in the span of 5 hours we pretty much covered the full content of all of the basic missionary lessons in detail. We assumed that they were from Masbate and we were about to get trasnferred, so we figured we wouldn't see them again after that, but we decided to ask them where they were from anyways. Well, turns out the one girl is actually from my hometown Irosin! And the other girl is from Masbate, but the cool thing is that they are both studying in a college in Daraga right now, which is my new area! So we got their numbers and I told them that I will contact them as soon as I get to Daraga, and they said it would be totally fine with them if we continued to teach them. How perfectly did that all line up right? Nothing short of the hand of God. I just hope that we actually can CONTINUE to teach them in Daraga.

Family home evening w/ Martinez family & the Ibanez family

I'll be very sad this transfer day to leave the Ibanez family, the family that we just found while tracting a couple of months ago. They are so amazing, and they absolutely LOVE living the principles we teach them. Brother Livino told us that before we taught them, he used to get very mad very easily, and his wife, Shannie, agreed with that. She said that one time she remembers that he came home with blood on his feet and with a machete in his hand... We didn't inquire further about that incident haha. But if you were to meet Livino now you would NEVER think he was like that: he is the most cool headed, humble, loving man that I've met out here. And they just want to be baptized so bad, so I'm sad that I won't be here to continue to witness their progress :(

But that's my life this week! Good luck to the next elders in this area (One of them is Elder Semaning who is literally my best friend out here. He was my roommate in irosin).

P.S. So my boy Elder Cabellas, is gonna be presidents assistant, which means that he will be giving ME training when we go on exchanges! I think it's awesome haha.

Me and Brother Garganta. This guy is flippin hilarious
so I had to get a picture with him before I left.

This girl was actually taught by Fraser Lefevre before.
She called us randomly & now she wants to be baptized!