New Area

  This last week we had some good lessons with some good investigators.  Kyla Bonette is an 8 year old girl who should be baptized in a few weeks.  We just have to finish teaching all the lessons.  She is a very easy investigator.  No problems just lessons. 

     Gaciento Echore is also a great investigator we are working with.  He always comes to church.  We are just working on his marriage and then he will be able to be baptized.  I really love teaching lessons at his house because he is happy to see us and always accepts everything we say.  When we taught him the word of wisdom he lived it immediately.  We had a fun lesson with him last week where I gave the analogy of commandments to a string on a kite and how the kite can't fly if it doesn't have the string.  I was surprised I was able to do it in tagalog.  I did have to learn the words for kite and string though.

     Last night we had a family home evening at the branch president's house. We gave a lesson on prayer and it was good.  The dinner was also really good.  They had a pig head.  I didn't get a picture though.  The members here are really friendly and good.  

     One weird thing about being in a more modern place is how much more English there is.  I think the members here think English might be the celestial language.  When they give talks some of them want to give it in English.  The sacrament prayers are also in English.  Some tagalog words are always replaced with English words.  I actually can't really blame them for wanting to use English so much because frankly it is such a better language than tagalog in terms of being able to express yourself and also English is a lot shorter.  The Book of Mormon in Tagalog is 777 pages long.  They can also get better jobs if they know how to speak English.

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Love, Elder Harkness

Thanks for all of the recipes.  We don't have a real oven but I think I will try making things in a rice cooker and see how that goes.  I don't think it can burn in a rice cooker right?  I will have to try it.  I miss St. Patrick's Day.  Nobody in the Philippines even knows about it which is actually a good thing because these people don't need another excuse to get drunk. 

     It is weird that me and another missionary just switched places.  It would be a big shock for a Philippino to come to the US because they really have no idea what it's like.

Thanks, Love,  Matthew

My area is the red line and down.  Sorry it isn't a very clear picture.

We had a service project this week. We just pulled weeds but it was fun.  In this picture there are missionaries from America, Tonga, Samoa, India, Australia, and the Philippines

This is a guya bano.  I know I spelled it wrong.  It looks kind of weird but it is SO good.  It is white on the inside and has black seeds. It tastes a tiny bit sour but is super sweet and juicy.  This is one fruit I will miss after my mission.


Love, Elder Harkness