Sunday, October 18, 2009

It's Fall

We were parked in front of the Naic Chapel the other day waiting for a meeting. While gathering our stuff and preparing to unload there was an amazing occurrence, right there in front of our eyes two leaves fell from the tree we were parked under! That was it! Fall in the Philippines happened and we saw it!

Lots of fun things happened this week. We were able to go out with 3 sets of Elders and also the Zone Leaders. We visited several less active families and were there for a few teaching moments also. It was fun to spend time with our amazing Elders and to meet new people. We visited with three less active families in Ternate on Tuesday afternoon and low and behold, they all three showed up at Church today. We were so thrilled. Sometimes all someone needs is a reminder of how much they are loved and needed.

Thursday was our Zone interviews with Pres. Howard. He furnished a pizza lunch for the highest baptizing Zone in the mission. Go Naic Zone! Pizza Hut is quite a treat as the closest location is an hour away and outside of our Zone. Elder Smith and I sneak there once in awhile but the Elders can’t so they were thrilled.

After our FHE on Monday night we were tired but made it to the Zone meeting Tuesday morning and then watched a video with the Elders. Granny sent Elder Smith a copy of “Mafia to Mormon” for his birthday in August and we watched it. (With Pres. Howard’s permission.) They all enjoyed it and it was a fun change. We skipped choir practice so will have to make them work extra hard this week.

Our Naic Zone


We attended three different baptisms this weekend. Three were baptized in Naic, four in Punta and three in Maragondon. There are quite a few more baptismal dates scheduled between now and the end of the month. We haven’t heard the count for all seven branches yet but just Naic, Ternate and Margondon had a total of 40 investigators at Sacrament Meeting today. Wow!




Cock fighting is a popular pastime here. It is not unusual to see someone carrying their prize-winning rooster under their arm. They really baby them. We took a picture of a typical rooster residence on the way home from Church today. Each rooster is tethered to the A-frame with a rope or cord.


They can’t get to one another but they sure would like to. They are constantly crowing and arguing. Some of them have amazing plumage and they get pretty big. We have a large complex in the backyard of the house behind us. Noisey stinkers! There is a Cock Fighting arena quite near to our apartment but we haven’t gone down the road to check it out up close and personal. I’m afraid we might get in trouble as we couldn’t handle watching the abuse.

Another typhoon is threatening this week but is supposed to be to the north of us so we should only have some rain. We have lots planned for this coming week. We need to get our monster spider web up in the apartment for our Halloween FHE on Monday, October 26th. Yes, we are crazy!

2 comments:

Merrivonne said...

You are a fun couple to be serving with. All of those elders (and sisters?) are lucky to have "crazy people" working for the Lord. Keep up the Great Work! The Lord is having much success in your zone! :)

-W said...

I'm so happy to see that the Balmocina family got closer to getting the whole family baptized and active in the church!

-Elder Barton