Happy Mother's Day Mom!! Love you so much, you are my hero :)
This week was straight success. Full of happy moments and lots of good opportunities here in Santa Ana.
The not so cool part, first of all, is the fact that the power has gone out here like three times in the past week. Which leaves us without electricity all day. Which means no electric fans, and some of our food going bad. It also results in our American housemate shouting, "Only 6 weeks then I won't have to deal with a power outage longer than 5 mintues again!! haha"
So the other day, we decided to have lunch at a kind of higher end restaurant/hotel here in Santa Ana. Didn't turn out being as expensive as we thought it would, and we very much enjoyed. When we started heading out, a big white van pulled up to us and opened the side door. To our surprise, a huge American Marine sat there, and asked if he could sit down and interview us about the Mormon religion. We happily accepted and headed back to the nice restaurant with him to have a talk. He said it was a miracle that he found us, because just earlier that day, his boss was giving him an earful for not talking to people about their non-government organizations. So he was stoked to see a couple of American guys on the street that he could talk to. He was trying to gather info because he was putting together a big production that would be shown to hundreds of people, so we were way excited. We had a real good talk with him about what we do to help the people here in the Philippines. Got to talk a lot about Mormon Helping Hands, and he said he was pretty surprised by how much good we do without getting paid. Said when he gets home he's gonna look for the Elders and learn more. Really cool opportunity for us to open our mouths.
A not so cool experience was on Tuesday. Elder Ivie and I went on exchanges in his area, and if you could see our planners, there was nothing but Less Actives planned for the day. I don't get the opportunity to work in their area very much, so I wanted to visit as many members as I could. So we ended up going to an area that is about 15 kilometers away out in the middle of nowhere. We worked there and visited some less actives until about 12pm, then waited for a tricy. Well, a tricy didn't show up, so we decided to start walking, expecting that a tricy would show up. We had been walking for about 1 hour in the blazing heat, and couldn't believe there wasn't a tricy yet. We were pretty thirsty and saw a little store in the middle of nowhere, so we stopped off to get a drink... and of course, right when we turn our backs, a tricy drives by -_- Turns out that was the last tricy of the day, and we ended up walking the next 12 kilometers back to the main road. We couldn't believe it... what a day.
the long walk home
exchanges with Elder Ivie
Yesterday at church was another big step for the Branch. We got the attendance up to 100!! The members were so happy to see the room pretty full again. Was a great Sacrament Meeting with the speaker's topics about mothers day. There were lots of tears shed, which is always expected here in the Phils. These people love their mothers:) All the Nanays were also pretty happy when we handed out candy bars to them with a "Happy Mother's Day" note on it. Was a good day. Our strength right now in the Branch is the youth. They just got back from their youth conference, we set up another big activity for them this week, so they are real excited. Things are going good here in Santa Ana.
Zone Conference
One of the best parts of this week was on Friday. We had our zone conference in Aparri so I was able to see a lot of friends. But the best part was after the conference when I walked out the doors of the chapel to see the DEL ROSARIO FAMILY WAITING FOR ME!! (see pics & video below) Oh man, that was a happy reunion. They ran up to me screaming and grabbed my hands, the two little boys, CJ and Jerico gave me a big hug. Was so much fun to see how good the family was doing. Chris had a brand new tricy and said they haven't missed a day of church ever since I transferred. They also talked about how excited they are to be sealed in the temple. They all just looked so good and happy. I think I was the happiest one there though :) Shyrine and her younger sister have changed sooo much. They used to be so shy around people, but now they are so outgoing. Shyrine is working with the missionaries all the time and preparing to serve a mission. That was such a great moment to be able to meet and talk with them again. Oh, how glad I am that Elder Reyes and I worked like horses back in the day. The Lord used us to change a family's lives forever!
Love you all. Happy Mother's Day!
-Elder Jenkins
Bravo, bravo, bravo!!!
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