Week 35, Novaliches, Philippines

Hey Family,

So yesterday we found out about transfers and yeah.. I'm staying hahah which isn't much of a surprise hahaha My comp however is transferring which means I have a new companion, Elder Bermoy. All I know about him is that he's from Cebu which means he speaks Cebuano! yeah I don't know much else but yeah :)

Oh, another thing. So I left a redskin in my bag and it kinda melted and made my entire bag sticky and stuff. So like the redskin had been in there for a month plus it wrecked my bag so much I need to buy a new one. The other thing is that it wrecked my photo album :( So if you could, could you send some pictures through email so i can make a new one?

Also there is a photo attached from a Fhe too.

Anyway, so on Saturday, Sister Fe was baptised!!!!!!!!! :)

Our Rc Jay performed the baptism which was super cool too.

Only problem is that the ward didn't organise the baptism like they said they would :( We got to the chapel at 6:30 for a 7pm start. The font wasn't filled, there was no talks organised and our ward mission leader wasn't even there :( So we were kinda freaked out, so we started to fill the font and organise speakers and some other stuff. Next problem, the baptismal jumpsuit thingy's were still wet from the last baptism :(

Anyway, we managed to get the service underway and as the first speaker was talking, we could hear rushing water outside. We ran outside and saw that the valve for the font wasn't shut! And then we checked the font and it was almost empty! So yeah, we had to restart all over again :( 

Anyway, she got baptised eventually and she had a really good spiritual experience in the end so I guess all went alright hahaha

This Saturday we have another baptism for Rolence who is 11, his mother is a Member who was La when I first came into the ward. So yeah we have that which is cool!

Actually in the Baptism photo, Rolence is the kid wearing the Orange shirt!

Also, Yesterday, I killed 30 cockroaches. Yes 30, I counted them one by one. It started off when I found like 2 when we got home, then as soon as a killed one, another popped out. I went and shut our front door and like 3 more came in. This repeated until we had 30..... We have no clue were they came from, it was super weird and super annoying too but yeah like this happened in like 10min too. Like a mini battle hahaha

Anyway I have anew comp that I'm looking forward to serve with and hopefully all goes well! I hope I don't get lost in our area either, I've only been here 6 weeks hahaha.

Have a great week all!

Love Elder Holzworth

Week 34, Novaliches, Philippines

Hey Family,

So this week was quite uneventful and eventful i guess, I'm not really sure hahaha

anyway, next week we are having a baptism!! Her name is Sister Fe and she is a 35ish year old mother :) She had her baptismal interview yesterday and for sure I thought she would not pass it, so here's the story.

So on Friday, we were teaching her about eternal marriage and obliviously, she has the desire to be sealed with family. We explained that in order for that to happen, her husband would have to be baptised as well and then she gave us the most unexpected answer ever. She was like, "oh we're not married yet". I just looked at my comp and I was like "Please tell me I understood that wrong, I thought they were married." and Ng was like, "I thought they were married" Freak, we did not see that coming.

So the situation with baptism (at least what my district leader told me) is that they have to be living the Law of Chasity for at least 4 weeks before their baptism. So that means if your living together you must be married first before baptism. So we were super nervous because now we were completely unsure about her situation. We knew that her "husband" goes away for work for like months at a time and he was away at this time which meant that for the last couple of weeks she had been living LoC but we still were unsure. Anyway, in the interview, she passed! She's been living the LoC but the only problem is that if she was able to live the LoC after her baptism. So now instead of having a baptism this transfer, were going to have a marriage too! hahaha

Anyway, turns out that the elders who taught lesson 4 (which was not me!! hahaha) didn't teach the full doctrine. I guess some elders get to awkward about the topic and teach too simply. In fact, that's a blessing of speaking another language, even though you know the words you are speaking, they don't have that full impact on you if you were to say it in english. Like it's more offensive if someone calls me ugly in english rather than tagalog. It's the same phrase yet one will kinda hit me harder than the other. So yeah, teaching LoC is a ton less awkward because of that, so that helps I guess.

So yeah, Her baptism is set for next Saturday and we're hoping to to the marriage through the church too at the same time but I guess we'll have to plan things out a bit.

Other than that, I'm still trying to get through all the chocolate from the birthday package, I showed Elder Ng a Tim Tam Slam, he enjoyed it hahaha. 

Also Last week I watched the video's on that Usb, Thanksssssss It was so awesome. It was really good to hear your voices :)

Other than that, this week "The Great September Batch" goes home, which is like half of the learship positions, So it means that next transfer something like 12 missionaries will step up to either DL, ZL or STL. Which is a ton. My batch has like 10 missionaries which is average, theirs had like 24, so like half of the mission goes home in like 8 days hahaha.

Anyway, that was some cool stuff from this week :)

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Love Elder Holzworth

Week 33, Novaliches, Philippines

Hey Family,

So I'm 19 now! :D

So Saturday was pretty cool hahaha Thanks so much for the presents!! The ties are awesome!! that and I also received the usb with the video's which I'm about to watch after I finish this email!! It's really quite weird waking up and then opening presents followed by an hour of studying the scriptures. hahaha It was like wow so cool, ties and stuff then it was like well, time to study hahaha. Btw the aussie shorts are so sweet hahaha And thanks Jess for the Lee Sin figure!! That guy is legit my favorite champ in League of Ledgends!! 

Funny thing, when I blew up the Ballons, Emma wrote something like "Maligayang bati, I think that says happy birthday in tagalog"... Elder Ng thought it was hilarious. just the whole "I think that says happy birthday" thing. Btw, that is correct, maligayang bati is happy birthday, maligayang pasko is merry chirstmas too!!

So for my actual birthday, as the in the entire day, I didn't do anything extra ordinary but at night time we went to an active family's house for an FHE which was super super fun. The family is hilarious, it's crazy, they were like my substitue family 

Also I attached some photo's of the cake making. I wrote Ng's name on it for some reason, I don't know. I'm just surprised that I got it made!! It tasted soooo goooddddd..... mannnnn...!! Thanks mum!! 

Other than that, today we're at the Mall where I legit saw every missionary. I saw about 8 elders who are either serving or have served in Sapang Palay, which was super insane!! Also I saw Elder Waltz, who I havn't seen for ageesss (like 3 transfers) which was super awesome.

This transfer is coming to a close soon, President called our ZL today and asked if there was room in our ward to fit an extra Elder. And out of the 3 small apartments in this area, we have the biggest (which is still really small, it's just one room). So we might get an extra companion? who knows. hahaha

Anyway, hope you all have an amazing week!!

Love Elder Holzworth 

Week 32, Novaliches, Philippines

Hey Family,

Thanks for the Birthday wishes!!

And also a Happy Birthday to Emma and Dad too!! I hope you both have an amazing day!

This week was cool :) I've attached photos of me and my comp, Elder Ng. This week I got sick from food which was terrible. The funny part is that it was food provided by the mission..... hahaha

Other than that we had mail run again somehow so I received 2 packages from the Green’s which was super awesome. In one of the packages was one of those magnetic drawing boards (the pen has a magnetic tip and the drawing board has all those hexagon shapes.). Anyway, the board would be fun for kids to use and too keep them quiet during lessons but to be honest I use it more in the apartment when I try to explain things to my comp hahaha.

This week we had zone interviews which were fun and very interesting We had a whole bunch of workshops about teaching and finding and I learnt from it. 

This week Elder NG and I are buying singlets for basketball except we're getting something printed on them for companionship unity haha

I'm not sure if you guys will get the reference but I guess you'll have to wait and see next week when we get them printed.

Love Elder Holzworth!