Elders R squared

So this week my companion Elder Pajarin went home. He was such an awesome companion and I learned a lot from him.  Now I am in charge of running the zone! It will be super fun and a lot of work haha :) For transfer day 8 of our 10 companionships in our zone changed. So I was up late trying to figure out what jeepneys and trikes people were going to have to take to find their new areas! It was quite the headache to make sure everyone got out safe, but my headache paid off and transfer day went smooth!

My new companion is Elder Ammon Richards. I include his first name because he actually went to Alta for a year! He is in the same stake as the Afflecks, Richards, Newells, etc! It has been soooooooo much fun so far! We have just been telling each other funny stories all the time because we have the same background of life to understand each other haha. We have been working super hard to jump-start our area again! Elder Pajarin and I had 8 baptisms, but now we need to find a lot of new people to teach. We are excited through!

Jessa Villanueva got baptized this week! She has been investigating for like 7 weeks now and finally got the courage and faith to be baptized. She is the sister of our recent convert Jayson. Jayson is the one that bears his testimony every month, works with us whenever he has a day off of work, and is famous in our ward now for the kid that never stops smiling! Haha they are so awesome!

Jayson was the one that baptized Jessa. So, we were helping him memorize the baptismal prayer on our way to the baptism. The funny part about this is that they live in one of the craziest, poorest areas in our ward. We were walking down the street with everyone looking at us (because we are foreigners) and Jayson was just yelling the prayer, "JESSA VILLANUEVA CANAS, HAVING BEEN COMMISSIONED..." hahah I was like hmmmm this probs isn't the best place to be saying the prayer word for word. But I let him practice it:) Then after he said it about four times, he raised his right hand to the square and started saying it!I was like oh crap! But freak it was pretty funny!

Anyway, this week should be another good one! Love you guys!

- Elder Reber

Fiji King👑

Hey Fam!

This week I said bye to Elder Pajarin. We worked hard literally up until his last couple hours of his mission! It was a blessing to be comps with him:) On our last day we went and visited all 7 of our Recent Converts and just talked with them about their conversions. We basically just got to listen to all of them bare testimony to us. It is pretty awesome to see our RCs basically teaching us lessons through their testimonies!!

My new comp is going to be Elder Richards! I'm pretty sure he is from Utah too which will be awesome! 8 out of the 10 companionships in my zone are changing, so it is goin to be a headache for me to get them all on buses tomorrow to get them to their new zones! It will be fun to see change in the zone though!

Cool story of the week! We were coming out of the church one night and a guy yelled at us from his car so we went and talked to him. Apparently he was looking for one of the Fijian sisters named Sister Nai. Turns out he is from Fiji originally but has been living here for the last 4 years because he got persecuted out of his country. He was a King in fiji! That's right we met one of the KINGS of Fiji😂 He had a crazy story of how the muslims kicked him out of the country because he had too much "power." So he has been slowly building a diesel company here in the Philippines to make money to go back and run for the election of 2022 to be the main King of Fiji! Hahaha he was the nicest guy ever. He just misses his family and wants to get back to them even though his company here has like 400 employees now. It was a weird experience😂

Anyway love you guys! I need to plan transfer day out though so talk to ya next week:)

-Elder Reber

P Day Bball

Zone t-shirts

Such a great comp. Forever friends.

The bottle they plunged out of their toilet that hadn't been working. Go figure :)

Wawie Baptism

Kamusta,

This week was the absolute best!! I'll just cut to the point for why it was so awsome... Wawie got baptized! For those of you who don't know who Wawie is, that is my companions brother. We have had permission from our Mission President to teach his family every sunday for the last 6 weeks! Then finally, Saturday night we got to drive 2 hours to Baliwag and attend the baptism. There were tons of people there because they had just finished a ward family home evening. President Hughes also came to watch Elder Pajarin baptize his brother:) I was lucky enough to give a surprise talk in front of all of them😄✌ It was super fun to see them dressed in white together:)

Then yesterday we went and taught his family about the holy ghost. We taught Wawie how he can follow this new gift to make correct decisions when he might be confused. It will be his guide as new trials arrive in his life as a member of the church. Satan is after all of us, whether we are members of the church or not, we have to be on our toes! We focused that lesson toward their parents too though bcause they haven't been to church yet.

At the end of our lesson, we pulled Wawie and Princess (Elder Pajarin's sister) aside and told them that they are in charge of the lesson next week:) We think it will be cool if their parents hear a lesson from their 14 and 18 year old kids! We said their topic is eternal families and their commitment will be for their parents to join them at church the following week! Haha it will be super fun to see what they come up with for a lesson! Then Elder Pajarin and I will add in our testimonies and extra thoughts at the end:) I'll let you know how it goes next week!

That was the main highlights of the week though! I'd love to hear some highlights of your week too!

-Elder Reber

Turn Your Mule-Self Into a Racehorse

Wazzup Fam, 

This week was a very rewarding Sunday! First of all we were supposed to go on splits this Saturday with the ward members in order to invite everyone to church, but they fell through last second. So Elder Pajarin looked at our crazy schedule and went full speed all day teaching 10 discussions:) It was a lot of work, but super fun to be teaching all day. So now we get to the rewarding sunday I mentioned... yep 3 of them came to church! Haha I was like why is it always the weeks we work the hardest that we get the lowest SMA. But then our recent convert Jayson got up to bare his testimony. He is 20 years old and spoke for about 10 mins explaining his conversion story. Everyone was listening so carefully because it was honestly one of the most heartfelt testimonies I have heard on my mission. Sometimes hard work is blessed in ways we don't expect it:)

Then we got to go teach Elder Pajarin's family again. We taught them all about the tree of life. It was awesome because I was just thinking how Elder Pajarin is like Lehi inviting his family to pertake of the fruit:) It was an awesome lesson! His brothers baptism is going to be this Saturday and we are both so excited! Haha is brother used to be in gangs and do drugs, but he has changed sooooo much! 

We had MLC this week. President Hughes really has a way of motivating people. I was trying to explain it to my mom how he does it, but you really just have to listen to him to fully understand! He taught us skills we should expect to find and develope as we exercise our responsibilities as leaders in the mission. He explained it like landing a ship at a dock, how the lighthouse is Christ showing them the pathway, but as missionaries we are the lower lights. We are the guides that show the details to make sure the boat comes into shore safely. He also tied it to us being the little lights on a runway at the airport. Idk he has a way of using stories and object lessons to teach his "pearls." I'm blessed to be in this mission!!

I read an awesome talk that gave me some encouragement this week. I was kind of questioning why God trusts me with this role to try and lead all these missionaries. But I came across President Holland's first general conference talk. He has always been one of my favorites. Anyway he said:

"Brethren, it is impossible to express the overwhelming sense of responsibility I feel tonight. Like the mule who entered the Kentucky Derby, I know I probably shouldn’t be here."

If Pesident Holland felt like he shouldn't be there and God turned him into the person he is today, I know I can become something more if I let him mold me. I have been blessed with many experiences in my mission where I have seen the Lord mold me like a piece of metal hahaha. Freak sometimes it hurts, but I'm slowly seeing progression on myself!

Elder Reber

(Last Week)