The Promise Land of Caloocan

Hey Fam,
Well we had another fun week here in the Promise Land of Caloocan! I honestly have grown to love this place so much! Most missionaries say Caloocan is the hardest zone, and kind of the "armpit" of the mission haha. But I freaking love it so much! This has been my home for such a long time now that the stuff that bothers other missionaries doesn't even faze me anymore. There is just a ton of people everywhere, and it has been good for me to try and push myself out of my comfort zone to meet tons of people daily!

My comp and I have gotten along super well this week! The first week he was a little uncomfortable and judgmental of Caloocan, but my love for our area has effected him a lot and now he is doing a lot better! We have been joking around with each other a ton, and are starting to get a lot of random inside jokes which has been fun. One lesson last week, the member was selling water bc it is in a squatter area and they don't all have running water. Anyway, there were some baklas outside showering (in clothes don't worry) but our old member lady just yelled outside at them. Ayy bayad ka muna BAKLA!! which means "Pay first you Gay!" It is just funny how straight forward they are here. Idk it was funny when we were there haha.

This week we had 3 investigators at church, which was a lot lower than I was hoping. We have been finding a lot of pretty good potential investigators lately. I think we could have some big growth in the ward soon if we keep it up. However, I am to the point now that anyone we find I will probably not be here to see their baptism. But that isn't stopping me from working hard!

We met a guy named Neftili Valiente this week. He was actually a referral from the Malabon ward, but he was super cool! He gave us some pineapple juice when we got there and then started asking us questions about the BOM:) He had already read the introduction all the way up til 1 Nephi 3. We were able to help him understand more about our church, and he seems like he will come to church next week! Brother Isias and his wife Haydee came to church last week. The ward actually did a good job at fellow-shipping them even though there were only 47 people at our sacrament meeting! Haha our ward is so small. It is the best though!

We had Zone Conference yesterday. It was once again super good! We are supposed to get smart phones here in like a week or two now! That will be super helpful to have all the ward information and area book with us at all times. We are excited to get those and ready to be obedient. I think it will be super cool to have a smartphone on my mission to help me learn all of the good ways we should be using our devices. We obviously all need to learn how to control our technology and not let it control us. I encourage all of you to think about how effective your time on technology has been lately:)

We had a bunch of good workshops about missionary work that aren't too interesting for you guys haha. But the last one President gave us was dope! He actually based it off of the Dale Carnagie book haha! He explained that we need to all learn to apply those principles in our lives. He went off for like 30 mins about memorization, and how anyone that says they have a bad memory is just dumb haha. Our brains are just like any other muscle, the more we exercise them, the stronger they get. You just have to constantly be trying to grow. He gave us a bunch of different techniques that work for memorization. Then at the end he gave us a challenge to memorize the 30 Human Relation points in How to Win Friends & Influence People:) It was cool bc I have already started doing that haha.

That's about a wrap for this week though! Hope you guys had a good one too! Life is Good:)

-Elder Reber

Tuesdays are buy a pizza get one free. They love to take advantage of this on Zone Conference weeks when their Pdays are on Tuesdays! 

Elder Reber and Elder Smith

Philippines Manila Temple

Still amazed both of our missionaries get to experience the same temple. 

Caloocan Zone conference

This is plant Graden bought and named Reggie. He is thinking he is dying so wanted to get a pic with him before the inevitable. Must be his mothers son. :)