Akong Pinapalanggaon na Fam.
Crazy Week this week. It starts off with a crazy bagio/tropical storm, followed by a new found awesome family, 3 branch combined activity, then to top it off with Erma's Confirmation...
I'm not sure if you heard any news about the tropical storms here in the Philippines, but earlier this week was we had a scale 1 ( it’s 1 out of 3, 3 being the worst) tropical storm hit Panay. It started to rain on Wednesday early in the morning. The rain was super heavy. You know when the rain hits so hard on the roof that you can’t hear anything. That was it. Well the rain continued like that all day. Elder Verzo and I got out our umbrellas and put our scriptures in ziplock bags and headed out. We got soaked as soon as we stepped out of the house. As we were walking to our appointments, we walked by a river that was unusually high and almost coming up onto the road. That was about 5 pm. Later that night coming home we saw a bunch of people gathered on the side of the road. The water that is usually way below the bridge was almost spilling over. The houses right next to the river had water about 5 feet high. There is nothing you can do when there is a flood. The people just watch their houses being filled with water. They took out some furniture and other things so they didn't get wet, but anything else was under water. One house that we saw was at least one story under water. Our apartment was fine because we don't live close to the river so that was fine besides a few minor leaks. But most houses are just bamboo with bamboo leaves for the roof so they got pretty wet. The following day we helped one of our members of our branch take down all their rice that had been put up high as to not get wet from the bagio, so they could eat. All in all it was the worse tropical storm that I have been in, and I guess it wasn't even all that bad. My comp was just like "yeah, whatever, this is normal". There were other areas that were hit worse, and in Iloilo I guess there were a few kids that were washed away by the current of a river. Pretty sad.
We met a way awesome family the other day. We had no set appointments for that day and we were close to "turning around and going back". We were talking about what we would do next. We were standing close by a house on the side of the road and so I just walked up to it and said "Tag Baeay!" That is when we met a new awesome family. The most awesome family ever! We taught just the dad the first time and then set a schedule to come back. The second time we taught the wife and a few of their kids. They have I think 7 kids. The dad said to us "I usually don't let people like you (missionaries) come to our house." But he said "I don't know why I let you in, maybe it’s time" The lesson kind of went long and I was thinking...okay I will just say the prayer, but I thought to bare my testimony and ask the father to say the prayer...and he did! He gave an awesome prayer. We have had a few more lessons with them and some other way awesome experiences but I don't have time to share them all. But the last time we went we asked their daughter to give the closing prayer. Without resistance, ahaha, she gave the prayer. She gave the best prayer. She said. "Thank you God for all the things we learned, thank you that we have another testament of Jesus Christ, God we hope that we can go to church." Boom. Yeah I am way excited about them.
We had a combined activity with the three branches in our ward that we planned. It went well and we were also able to find some people to teach from it. We will see how that goes. Best of all Erma Dangautan was given the Gift of the Holy Ghost this last Sunday.
Welp I love you all and thanks for your letters, videos, and ....love. Talk to you again next week.
-Elder Kirschbaum
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