Over a Week

I have been here over a week now so I can tell you more about the area. Right now we are very busy. We had no investigators when I came into the area so we are working on that this week trying to gain more investigators. We are working with a few right now but the big problem we always face is getting people to church. For the most part the people are poor and don't have a lot so that is a big problem for getting them to church because it is too far too walk. We have to just hope that they come. We work with a lot of less active members and try to get them to come back. It is called the rescue project and we work hard on it. The nice thing is that if they can speak English we are told to teach in English because they are educated and President Lopez wants us to teach them.

 As far as investigators we are working with a young girl named Anife. She is the sister of our ward mission leader Brother Tero. She doesn't want to get baptized right now because she goes to pray with her mother which is very Catholic. We think she will join eventually because all of her family is slowly joining. We are also working with the Dojoles family. They are less active and their daughter, Ferly, isn't baptized. So we are teaching them and trying to get them to come to church. They have a son, Ferboy, who wears contact lenses and they are blue so he sticks out wherever he goes. We are going to work on getting more investigators this week. We have a lot of referals so we are going out to teach them this week.

 As far as food, I have eat some interesting dishes. First off, I had crab this week and it was interesting. All foods are like crab (breaking into them) so it is hard to get to the food. You have to eat fast here, as well as a lot, or the people get upset. I have had a lot of fish cooked in all sorts of ways. I have had dry fish, boiled fish and fryed fish. We don't use knifes here. You eat either with a fork and spoon or with your hands. The fork isn't really used except to tear things apart and to scoop rice and food on your spoon.

 We hardly ever wear long sleeve. Long sleeve is for church, some zone conferences, mission conferences and general authorities.

Last Saturday we had a devotional for all the Philippines. The area presidency was setting up the new goals for the Philippines. It sounds like we are going to be working hard to help the wards do everything that they ask.

Love you,

Elder Nielsen