My birthday and round two to Panitian

After P day was over last Monday Elder Ramos and I went to go teach a lesson with some of the branch missionaries.  The branch missionaries are between 15 and 22 years old so they are a good help when the investigators are around that age.  We taught one lesson to one of our investigators that is progressing really well.  After the branch missionaries surprised me with a cake because it was my birthday.  It was pretty fun. 

     Tuesday we got invited to dinner and it was pretty good.  When we came  back to the apartment the other elders told us about how they cast out a devil earlier that day.  I was a little bit jealous because I think it would be cool to do something like that.

     Thursday we went around trying to teach lessons to investigators with one of our investigators to help us.  It really helps in lessons to have more than just two missionaries.

     Saturday was round two with panitian.  The drive was about 25 minutes on a trycicle with a total of seven people.  Motorcycles are a lot stronger than I thought.  We were trying to find a member who hasn't been to church in a long time.  We weren't able to find who we were looking for but we did find an inactive member that we didn't know about.  He hasn't come to church for a long time because he is too poor to pay to travel there.  He seemed really poor.  His shirt had holes in it and his jacket was way too big for him.  There was also a girl there who wasn't a member.  We taught a lesson to them.  At some points during the lesson the girl seemed to be holding back tears.  I think their lives are hard.  When I asked her what she wants most in life she said she would like to go to church.  I feel really bad for these people because they can't do the things we sometimes take for granted or complain about.  The longer I am on my mission the more I realize how dumb it is to take things for granted.

     Sunday I taught the gospel essentials class.  It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  It was really cool to be able to teach a lesson by myself in Tagalog.  Later we went out to try to teach lessons.  I saw some people training their roosters for cock fighting.  I have never seen cock fighting before but it seems to happen a lot here.  There are a few cock fighting rings around Quezon.

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Love, Elder Harkness

I haven't really noticed a difference in the weather here.  Some days are hot and others are a little bit cooler.  We might have some bad rain tonight because there is a tropical depression that might hit Palawan  I think that tropical depressions can turn into typhoons but this one  probably won't.  The weather is a lot more crazy in Manila I hear.  

Love, Matthew 

on P days we just eat lunch, email, shop, and then go back  to the apartment for laundry.  we might have a little free time but it is still a nice break from missionary work.