RIAZANg to Baptism July 29,2018

Hey Guys! 

The Rain has been clearing up and the sun is back out! It hasn't been straight raining like it has been and we are back to the heat. Some of the people the sisters have been teaching, their house got flooded.. but its okay now. As for the people we are teaching, they stayed safe from the storms. Honestly i would rather have it hot than rain. I like it better that way. 

As for the title of the email RIAZANg to baptism. You actually spell Riazan's name this way. Their family is doing good! There are about 8 that we are teaching. Riazan has been taking our church invitations really good even if that means he has to go by himself. This week as we taught the missionary lessons and really the basics of the gospel, we did find out some concerns. They had some drug usage before and Law of Chasity problems. But, they are taking the lessons so good and they are always asking us questions. The others don't have any church clothes to wear to church and the grandma is having a hard time taking care of the grandchildren because there are so many. But were trying to help all of them! They are so fun to teach and we love visiting with their family. Riazan has been making friends at church and the branch is really accepting him! He already acts like a member. Hes awesome. We finally got to meet his mom. She works in a different province but shes really cool. So were going to see what we can do about getting him baptized! 

Sister Julie was sustained for her calling as the new Relief Society Secretary! Shes going to do great! Lets keep her in our prayers! We are still teaching her husband and he went to church again but he doesn't really understand the lessons. Were going to make sure hes really ready before his baptism. But they are all doing great as a family. They have their scripture study and family prayers. And Julies Dad stays with them so hes still there for support. 

I was saddened with some of our other investigators this last week. They are loosing interest. I've tried everything to do to teach them and get them interested. But I guess its just not yet their time. We planted seeds tho! No effort is wasted!  

We have been working with the branch to help Less actives with concerns. And people have been getting helped. So its been great! Its great to see the new ministering program in action and seeing people helped. So it was a busy week last week and lots of fun! 

The Church is true! Those were some of the highlights of my week! 

Mahal ko kayo! Have a good week! 

1st district meeting of the transfer! 

Elder Higgs and I

Raizan is the boy next to me.

The following pictures will give you all a good idea of the super typhoon we just experienced here in Olongapo City ( and throughout our entire mission).

Floods are real! 7-22-2018

Well, we got the transfer news this week. My companion, Elder Rigby was transfered to Bagac. My first area! Hes going to love it there. I got a new companion Elder Higgs. Hes from Ogden Utah. So were both from Utah. So its fun! Hes been out on the mission for 6 months. Hes fun to work with and wants to work hard! 

It was sad to say bye to the people Elder Rigby and I got so close together with. Ecspeically Julie and them. Im sure going to miss teaching them with him. And some others. That day was a sad day. We will miss him here in Lubao. 

Sister Julie got interviewed for a calling! She accepted! So its super exciting to see her progress in the gospel! 

We have been focusing and teaching this new family. The Morales Family. And they are so awesome and love listening to us. Risen, one of the grandchildren went to church with us this week and scouted it out for the rest of the family. He loved it and wants to go again next week. And it was great because he told his family all about it! Risen is 14. On the way home from church he asked us when he can get baptized. So i just told him we will talk to his grandma about it haha. He lives with his grandma because his Dad is actually in jail. I love this family so much tho. I'm always thinking about them and they are so fun to teach! 

Noel went to church again. Were going to try and teach him soon and see if hes ready to get baptized. So were super excited for that! He goes to church every week. 

So yeah! The Church is true. It should be another good transfer here in Lubao. Im excited for it! Love you guys! 

Elder Breinholt

Theres a bunch of Typhoons going through the Philippines so our area has been flooding! 

The Morales Family! 

Birthday Dinner for Sister Santiago! With the Sambat Family! Dave went to his mission in LA, Cali. He is so cool. 

​Pet spider ni Donald haha. its huge. 

Bye Bye Sisters! 7-15-2018

Hey everyone! The title of this email is Bye Bye Sisters because this week the sisters we were with in the MTC go home! Its crazy how time flies so fast! 

This week was the Last week of the Transfer. So that means it was our last district meeting. It was fun! Bye Sister Pogotaisidro!! We will miss you! Good luck in Davao! 

We had a good last week of the transfer. We had exchanges with the Zone Leaders and to end off the week we had a Branch Home Evening. It was good! Jeron went! We started teaching him last transfer but then we gave their area to the sisters. So the sisters continued to teach him. So its good to see him progressing. Also Julies sister came to the branch home evening. So it was good to introduce her to members and the Church. Sister Julie ended up cooking for the Branch too! It was awesome. She was already able to use her talents for the good of the Branch. 

It was Sister Julies bday yesterday and she invited us to come over to her house and celebrate. She also invited people from the branch. It was so great to see the fellowship of the branch and how welcomed they feel as new members. 

Well we have transfer news this week. So maybe some change might happen. 

Love you all! Have a good week!

Elder Breinholt

My Swaggin District! 

Happy July 4th! 7-9-2018

I dont know where to start for this week! 

Well last p-day we went and hung out with Elder Jones In Olongapo. Hes been there this transfer so he was able to show me around and we went on an awesome hike! You could see all of Olongapo City. We even took Banjoe with us. His companion is a stud also! Before his mission he worked with James the Mormon! Apparently he made the beats for some of his songs! We had a great time! 

The next morning i woke up with a cold.. so that kinda was a bummer for the rest of the week. But i took some of my medicine i brought from home and i'm feeling better now. We started it with district meeting. I gave the workshop about how we can apply what we have been learning about using the Book of Mormon and we did some practice teaching! It was great! After that we headed straight over to where the Diwa's lived. Their neighbors werent there and it didnt really work out with them.. but we were able to teach them. We read the Book of Mormon with them and shared some of our favorite verses. They are now in 2 Nephi 28! They read every night together! And sometimes they call Noel on the phone so they can read with him too! They are doing awesome! Noel went to church again this week and we were able to teach him on Sunday. He really opened up again about how what we teach doesn't really stick with him because he is so busy with his job.. so sometimes he forgets what we teach. But he wants to learn! So he has a good attitude. Hopefully soon he tells us he wants to get baptized! After that we headed over to Banjoe's family to go eat. I cant remember what we ate because we always are eating there haha. But after that, we decided to watch the Youth Devotional with President Nelson and his wife. His parents liked it and they really liked the songs and we were able to expose them more about the Church. The problem is Tatay isn't able to go to church because he has his security duty every single day of the week. Even on Sunday. But we love them so much and love teaching them. 

Then it was JULY 4th! Happy late July 4th now but, we made sure to celebrate it! We made pancakes in the morning! They were super tasty! We also got to go celebrate the District Presidents mom's birthday with them. They invited us over. So we made sure to talk to a lot of people. One is Brother June. At first i was so confused because he kept talking to us in English.. I was getting annoyed haha! So i didn't really talk to him. But we ended up eating our food. And then talking to the District Presidents nephews. They only speak English because their dad served here and he married the District Presidents sister. They are super cool! But then i noticed that Brother June had a open spot next to him to sit down. So i go back and start talking to him. I started asking about what he does and stuff. He was in the navy in Chicago! When he was in the Navy his sister and their family got converted to the LDS church. So he never really got familiar with the missionaries. He stayed a while in the US but he retired here in the Philippines. When he retired here he picked up on Golf! So we got talking about golf! And he is a member here down the street at a country club! So he invited us to come play with him whenever we had time! So we set it up for Saturday. He got us in here at the country club! So on Saturday we headed down to this country club that is in the Zone Leaders area and played a round of 18 with Brother June! It was so awesome after 18 months or so to be back on the golf course! It was my companions first time ever going golfing! We each had a Caddy with us. (This is someone who's job is to stay with you and give you tips and clean your clubs). It made for an awesome morning that day. We got to know Brother June more and after we ate lunch we were able to teach him! It turns out that 5 months ago his wife died because of a drunk driver. So we shared about the Plan of Salvation. He opened up to us about what he thinks as a catholic..and how he thinks he wont know his wife again..it made us really sad.. but we tried to comfort him with what we know and it made him feel really good. He accepted a Book of Mormon. The small problem is that he lives outside of our mission and were not going to be able to go over there. But were going to continue to talk to him and see what we can do. It was so awesome!! I got to play golf again!! 

We celebrated some more of July 4th with showing our neighbors our American Pride. Our housemate has a blanket of an American Flag. So we whipped it out and put it on the Balcony. We were getting some attention haha it was funny!  We ended it with teaching at Kim's house. And the kids grandma was there so we were able to teach her! We taught about the Plan of Salvation and how they can see their Dad again after this life.. and this life isnt just it. They really liked it and we were able to answer some of their questions. The Grandma liked it enough for us to reffer her to the missionaries where she lives!

We worked hard the rest of the week! We even met a neighbor of Banjoe who told us she wants to serve a mission because she saw how much he changed because of it! We talked to her Dad if its okay with him if we teach her. She said if she wants to we can. So hopefully something can happen there! The dad said he is really busy and he cant get taught. He said he would let us know when he can tho. So that was good! 

So..Those were some of our highlights this week! 

Today Im emailing so late because we had a Zone Activity. We went to the Bamboo Park. We made another Zone tshirt and it turned out really good. We also were able to have some good bonding as a zone! We played some games/other stuff and one of them was to give out a Book of Mormon to someone there. We were all able to find some one there to give on too! We also got to go to a fish spa there! Our feet got eaten by these little fish! It tickled a ton! It made out for a good day! 

Good luck to Connor at school and in Texas! Your going to do great! Also.. Shoutout to Spencer Leavitt for finishing his mission in Argentina! Time really goes by so fast and I hope i can cherish these last 6 months of my mission. Love you guys and have another good week! 

Elder Breinholt 

Mayap a Gatpanapon po! 7-1-2018

Did you guys notice that the title of the email was different? Thats because that is Kapampangan for Good Aftermoon! Here in this area we've been able to pick up some of the local dialect. Its honestly kind of annoying.. because we only understand like a little bit.. but when we speak tagalog to them they speak tagalog with us. So its okay. But yeah the people love it when we try and speak Kapampangan. 

This week was good tho! We got an unexpected call from an RM on monday night..si Banjoe and he told us to come over and have dinner with his family! Banjoe was taught by the missionaries when he was 18 years old but then he started hiding from the missionaries..later the other missionaries that replaced the old missionaries found him too and he ended up getting baptized the second time! His story is inspiring! A year later, he served a mission to Mindanao Philippines! His parents aren't members but they let us teach them and they take discussions. After we ate, we talked to them about the Fall and about Adam and Eve because they are catholics. So we talked to them about the revelation of Joseph Smith and when 8 years old your supposed to get baptized. They understood it. And then we talked to them about baptism but they always get super defensive about their religions..so their just not quite ready yet.. were trying to read the Book of Mormon with them. They are awesome! 

On Tuesday after reteaching the Diwa's lesson 2 we had an unexpected finding opportunity with their neighbors. They always see us walking by so they are super curious..so we introduced ourselves to them and got to teach them! They are awesome and were super happy to teach them. We also visited a part member/less active family after and taught the restoration. There is an 8 year old who is about to turn 9 so hes going to become an investigator because the family doesn't go to church. But were trying to reactive them! So we could reactivate and baptize! Its going to be good. Were trying to replace our old investigators who never progressed and replace them with new investigators. 

On the other days we also had good finding through recent converts and other members. We picked up total 14 new investigators this week. We shared the restoration to one  and her neighbor a member and she started asking about why Joseph Smith has a lot of wives.. And all I said to her is that i've never read that anywhere on the church website. So we just told her not to worry about it.. Her husband too always talks about it.. Super annoying. But we will see if they start reading the Book of Mormon. We followed up with them and they said they hadn't prayed to ask if it is true. So its not looking good hah. But were keeping our hopes up! Were trying to do anything to get people to go to church with us! We also met a former investigator that was taught pretty much everything so we gave her a new baptisimal date..but she didn't make it to church.. shes going to a different church with her boyfriend and his family..so were struggling trying to get her haha! 

Most of our investigators..the doctrine is not the problem..but its the social! It helps us missionaries so much when the members invite and the people welcomed by the members.. nothing much is happening with just us inviting. With our Branch Mission Leader we have been able to come up with plans for members to invite our investigators to attend church. So were hoping to see a change in the work! 

We had Zone Conference this week! Loved hearing the council of the Leaders of the Mission! We learned about how we need to Flood the earth with the Book of Mormon and weve been encouraged to always have a Book of Mormon on us to give away. We also learned about how we need to involve members. And weve been able to apply it! So its good! 

Noel wasnt able to come home this week for church..but they went to church over there where they are working! Were kind of having a problem with him totally understanding the Church..So we've decided to postpone his interview. But hopefully he will be ready soon. Sad. But thats what weve decided to do. 

Saturday was honestly a bust.. We were trying to invite people and do our part as a missionary to get people to church but nothing turned out of it. It was really dis motivating. But we were able to talk about it with the branch and what we can do for next week. That doesn't mean that there isn't any progression.. In fast and testimony meeting Julie and Lex got up and bore their testimony. It was so moving and so good to see their confidence to get up there and share in front of the whole branch! They are so awesome talaga!! We are so happy for them! 

So yeah! Wishing you the best Connor in the new enviroment down there in Texas! Your going to do awesome. We love ya tons! And Happy Birthday to Alynn! How old are you even now ? i lost track haha.

Love you guys! Have an awesome week! 

This lady we always contact always notice how we would be walking everywhere..so she let us borrow her bike. Elder Rigby and I were laughing. Everyone who saw us was laughing too haha. It was funny!  

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Bye Elder Rodgers! Elder Jones and i had a good catchup tho! 

                                   

Elder Furniss! Peace! I didn't yet become a furnite.. I'm ticked..

Branch Child of Record Baptism! We were able to teach the little kid. There family is all members. I especially loved the baptism because right after he got baptized he put up two peace signs haha! We were all cracking up! 

             jeep full of missionaries! 

 This pizza tastes like Costco! It was awesome

The lady in the red invited us over for her birthday lunch! We took a wacky pic! hahaaha

This is Banjoe! 

This is Tuyo! Fish they let dry in the sun! Its actually really good! 

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Elder Breinholt

Philippines Olongapo Mission

Letters & Packages 

Km. 140 National Highway
Mangan-Vaca, Subic
2209 Zambales
Philippines

The rain went away! then it came back...6-24-2018

Hey Family and Friends! 

Well the rain stopped this week and it was super hot again! But the rain has now picked up again! That didn't last too long hah. 

As for the work, it was a tougher week this week to be honest! We had to drop this investigator this week.. he always said even if we come to his house every day he is okay with it.. but when it comes around for church.. he says he cant go.. so we honestly just were so frustrated. so we told him we cant visit him so much..

But we have some other progression! Brother Noel is doing awesome! He is the asawa(husband) of Sister Julie. The mom that got baptized last week. We taught him about the Book of Mormon last night.. and he wants to get baptized.. we are just having a hard time getting the lessons in. because he is always at work. but we are going to try and have the missionaries visit them at their work and read the Book of Mormon with him! Yesterday was his 3rd time at church! But he always asks and brings up the crazy things.. Who did Moses give the 10 commandments to after he came down from Mt Sinai? Why is the Relief Society president wearing a mini skirt? Also Julies dad wasnt helping he was asking us where the gold plates are now.. and where the artifacts of the book of mormon are. SO that wasnt helping either.. but it made for an awesome lesson haha! Its so fun being around them. We love teaching them.  

We have been on the look out for some new people to teach and the Lord is blessing us with it! We've been working hard and I know the Lord is helping us! 

Yesterday at church was also cool because we got to see our investigator Jeron at church! He lives in the sisters area now but Elder Rigby and I were the first to teach him. He is so cool and he really enjoyed at church yesterday! He had full fellowship also! It made for an awesome time at church! 

But yeah that's pretty much all i can think about right now! Love you guys! The Church of Jesus Christ is true! I'm grateful to be a part of the work! Love you guys! 

Elder Jace Breinholt

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Baptism of my housemates in the other branch. 

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Elder Breinholt

Philippines Olongapo Mission

Letters & Packages 

Km. 140 National Highway
Mangan-Vaca, Subic
2209 Zambales
Philippines