Elder Graden Reber: Put your hands together and Praise the Lord :)

This week was quite the success. We had 7 investigators at church, a successful Zone Training Meeting to get the zone excited for the transfer, and got to go on 2 exchanges:) One investigator in particular named Charlie Galvez is particularly special to me right now. He is 17 years old, and is the cousin of one of our recent converts named Prince. Charlie's family is yet to come to church yet, even though he has come 3 times now. We brought him with us to a ward activity on Friday night and I got to talk to him about what life is like as a missionary. I saw his little mind spinning as I explained some of our daily routine of studies, teaching, and watching families change their lives. He sat there for a minute after I finished explaining why I love my mission. Then just said "Elder Galvez... I'm going to be a missionary someday." Nothing that night could have made me happier than that sentence. I remember my Dad told me before my mission that there are some things you can only learn on a mission. I know that special experiences that I have had here in the Philippines will always be close to my heart.

Another fun part of that party was running into a kid named Zach Johnson. He was there with his brother that served in my mission in 2015. Well come to find out, Zach served in the Philippines as well! He pulled up a picture and showed me a pic of one of his favorite Zone Leaders! Believe it or not, the scrub standing next to him was none other than Dwain!! Haha small world!

I got to see two more RMs this week. Elder Moralita (My first DL), and Elder Montamayor (Served with him in Caloocan). They were coming back to visit their areas. It was fun to have an FHE with a bunch of members there. We gave a lesson and of course tied it back to missionary work to try and snag a few referrals😂

We had an awesome trike driver this week that told us he was a pretty religious guy himself. We asked him where he goes to church and stuff and then he just broke out into song... "PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER AND PRAISE THE LORD"🎶 He was clappin and singin to his heart's content! We had no choice but to go a little baptist with him for a min;) It was a fun ride and we ended up getting it like 3/4th of the price because he said we were pogi (Handsome) and fun! People here just crack me up every day:)

We figured out how to measure distances on Google maps last week. So Elder Chambers and I have been timing our mile runs in the morning now😂 We just run on a long 0.2 mile street by our house back and forth 5 times so we still have sight and sound of each other hahaha. I used to have to slow down a lot for my comps so I didn't know how fast I could still go now. Well this week my first time was about 6 mins. Then I pushed harder on Saturday morning and got 5:43:) I was pretty happy about that one seeing that I can still go pretty fast! Then this morning I woke up on PDay determined to beat that time again😂 I did the math and realized what my pace should be to try and get 5:30, that way I knew how fast each lap had to be. I beat that pace though and ended running a 5:15 mile this morning!! Haha it was fun, good to finally run again:)

One last funny story... We had to run home one night because there were no more trikes. We were just bookin it in our church clothes with our bags and stuff. We thought it was pretty funny. Well come to find out, one of the members drove past us that night and were just laughing at us because they knew we had curfew! Haha we're like "woah woah woah you drove past us and didn't give us a ride?" She said they were full and didn't have room. I was like dang talk about the great and spacious building. Driving past us in your car and just laughing at us😂 It was pretty funny:)

Hope you all had an amazing week too!
-Elder Reber