Fun times at FHE!

These are some pictures of Elder Booth and Elder Sanchez at a family home evening. Elder Booth said that he decided to take some "random pics" of the event. Here they are:

Trying to finish up the meeting house!

Well, this should be the last of the "meeting house project." Elder Booth was able to help put up the roof:

Next were the walls and it looks like everyone helped with that (after posing for the picture, of course):



Now it looks like a game of basketball is in order...

Subject: Hey Again
Date: May 17, 2009

Hey everybody! I enjoyed talking with everybody on the phone. It was nice. Too bad I won't be able to do that again for a while. Time is going by fast, though. Christmas seems like yesterday when I think about it. Before you know it, I will be able to call whenever I want again. Or at least you can call me since I was never very good at that. Well, even here I'm not very good. Sorry about that. We are just lucky that Chad had that card. I talked to one missionary and he said 100P with this one company was 30 minutes. So I went and bought those kind. Then I tried to use them and found out the owner of our apartment used a different company. I guess that matters here. I had no idea. She had some cards, but I guess with the other company 100P is only like five minutes. Oh well - live and learn I guess.

Well, like I said on the phone, everything is going pretty well here. We have a baptism planned for this Saturday, so you will know if that works out in a couple of months since I really don't know when you will actually get the letter I now have to write. I don't know if they will be as long, either. The whole letter writing thing kind of takes forever. So I will do my best to shop really fast and get home so I can start writing. Everything should be good with the baptism, though. They are really good kids that have the desire. The work is really good here, though. We actually should have some baptisms for the next three weeks. All they really have to do is keep coming to church and they are set. That is still the biggest problem here in the Philippines. There are a crazy amount of inactive people. It really does not take much for them to stop coming. They get offended easily.

Sunday morning did kind of stink, though. We went to try and pick up some kids that we were hoping to baptize the first week of June, and ended up getting into an argument with their grandmother. She is pretty set in her ways and really does not want her grandchildren to get baptized. So that really was not the best start of the day. To make up for it though, when we finally arrived at church I was taken aback when I saw one of our investigators there that we have been teaching for about four months. He just decided to get over being shy and go to church. I really could not stop smiling when I saw that guy. I really hope he keeps coming. He is great. That is about it when it comes to our investigators.

I do have one funny story for you. I don't know if you remember, but a long time ago I told you all about this time we crashed a funeral. Well, I ended up talking to one of the girls who was actually at the funeral. She was very nice and invited us back. So of course we set up a time and went back a couple of days later. When we got there I made the mistake of mentioning the old guy that we talked to last time. She said: "Oh my grandpa is the guy that debated with you last time. Just wait here and I will go and get him for you." So we spent the next thirty minutes having to listen to this old guy yell at us about his "true church". My companion was getting kind of fired up. I was just having a hard time not laughing in his face. I don't know, there is just something about a really old man yelling in my face that is funny. Especially when he spends the little energy he has to stand and do it. Well, he actually started to warm up to us a little bit and decided we should all sing. So he asked us if our church had music. Of course we said yes. He then proceeded to get his guitar. Then after he got his guitar he told us to start to sing. We sang "I am a child of God" while he tried to make up music on the spot. Yea. That was just funny. He was dissapointed when we cut it short wtih just one verse. To be honest so was I. It was funny to watch him try and follow along. He did better than I would have, at least. I don't know if we will ever go back there again. Well you never know. I said we would never go back after the first time.

That is about all I have for funny stories. I hope all of you continue to do well. Keep up your faith and stay strong in the church. I love you all and can't wait to get all of your letters in about a month. Thanks for the support and love you all have shown me.

Elder Booth

Awesome Zone Conference!!

At the first of March, Elder Booth and his Zone were able to have an awesome activity at a resort in the Philippines. The name of the resort is: Mambukal. It is a beautiful place, and as Elder Booth mentioned in his letter below, he would love to go back. Here is a picture of the entrance:



Here is Elder Booth in front of some amazing scenery. It's so green there!


Here is a collage of all of the scenery. You can see lots of green, of course, and a really cool tree.


This is some of what Elder Booth had to say about the resort: "My favorite was the bats. They were huge. It felt like Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom." Here's a glimpse of some of the bats he saw (Creepy!):


Here's what Elder Booth said after talking about the bats: "Next were the waterfalls at the resort. There are seven in all, but I only went to the first five." Here's a collage of some of them:

Here are some people hiking down to one of them:


Elder Booth and Elder Hamblin posing in front of a waterfall:


Elder Booth and his companion in front of the same waterfall:


There were also some fallen trees that made some neat bridges. Here's Elder Booth with Elder Hamblin again:


There were also some nice rivers. In this collage of the river(s), it looks like Elder Booth was pretty close to being right in the middle of the river...

All in all, it looks like the elders had a fabulous time hiking and sight seeing. Hopefully they get to go back at some point!

Here's a letter from Elder Booth right after the Zone activity:


Date: March 2, 2009 1:01:46 AM PST

Hey everbody. I didn't really get any letters this week or anything, so I don't really have much too write about for home. From what mom said, it sounds like everybody is still keeping busy.
So things here are still good. The work in Paglaum is actually doing really well. We had a really good week in the numbers. We actually got a referral for some kids whose parents are members that work for the church in Manilla and are active. The kids just have not been baptized yet. So we tried our luck and were very surprised in a good way. We found out they actually went to church every single week. We just have not noticed them. Ya, that was kind of a slap in the face, but oh well. We'll press on anyway. They had actually learned a lot from just going to church and primary so they are very easy to teach. Since they are golden, we went back a second time and gave them a date for March fifteenth. That is the last day of our transfers, so if it goes through I will still get a baptism this transfer. I am really excited about that. They are really fun Girls. One is twelve I think and the other is nine. They have a pretty big family and lots of friends too, so it is fun to teach them because it is a big group of kids in the house.

The rest of our investigators are still doing pretty good. We are just having a problem with them going to church. The only one we can get to church every week is the pregnant one that can't get married because her boyfriend does not want to right now. That is a little frustrating, to say the least. We bring it up every time we go to visit though, so I hope some day he will realize that he really needs to just do it.

We are still working very hard to get new investigators outside of the main part of town because we seem to have bad luck there. We are setting aside days to go to areas farther out and work. Hopefully we can find many people that are prepared. We are going to need to if we want to meet the new goal of four every month. Fasting every week should help. That is actually pretty hard to do in the summer here. I get pretty thirsty, plus my companion is kind of big so he runs out of energy really fast. He has to take a lot of rests on fast days. I guess many faithful hardships will come with many blessings.

This week has been pretty busy in doing mission stuff also. We had Zone Conference on Tuesday. That pretty much took up the entire day. It was a little hard to get to all of our appointments that we scheduled at the end of the day. It was fun though. I really like them. They actually brought in real investigators this time for us to practice the new stuff that we learned. I didn't get to do it, but it was still cool to watch. Oh, and I got to go on splits with somebody in my batch again. This time though it was with Elder Headman, who stayed in the MTC for an extra three weeks for an injury so he was a little behind. Because of this, I had to lead all of the lessons. We were in his area so he at least told me where to go. It was fun though. I am not very good at the language but I can at least get around now. I don't feel as worthless as I did when I got here.

Another Mission activity we had was our zone activity. It was at Mambukal resort. That place is amazing. That is one place I really would like to go to after the mission so I can do all of the stuff there. I took some good pictures so you can see them on the next sd card. I just sent the other one today so you should be getting it in a week or two. I would have sent it last week but the post office was closed before I could get there (sorry).

Let's see. I don't remember a whole lot of funny experiences. I don't really remember if I told you about the crying lady. She was really funny. We went back for a FHE and found the husband drinking and she was asleep so she did not start cyring and shaking her hand at us this time. We wanted to take them special sacrament, but I doubt that will happen since we found him drinking. We did have this one investigator that was drunk though. He kept asking calling me very nice and kissing me on the hand during the lesson. He was a old man that is having problems with his family. So yea, other than seeing some more kids poop everywhere, I have not seen too much. Ya, they pretty much do it anywhere. Oh and here they will wash the diapers and hang them to dry. It is kind of tricky sometimes when you have to duck under some diapers on the clothes line.

Well that is about it. I love you all and thanks for the support. The church is still true, I promise.

Elder Booth