Water for the rest of my life!

Area:  Floridablanca

Companion:  Sister Matelau

Sister Training Leader

                                                                                                Monday, May 5, 2014

Sorry Family & Friends about last week, no letter, I was a little under the weather. However, I'm feeling great now and it felt SO GOOD to be able to get out of the house and go to work! :) 

I would like to tell you about my new favorite investigator here in Floridablanca, his name is Tatay Ernesto Jandoc. He is 64 years old (bikes all the way to church each week which is a good 5 miles!), has lived here in Floridablanca for 20 years now with his wife and his youngest son (30) who is not married yet, and is near deaf. The rest of his kids now are married and have their own families elsewhere. I'm not sure if you remember me telling you about an experience I had with Sister Manilingan when we were on exchanges two weeks ago. We decided to go talk to random people sitting on the sides of the roads and invite them to learn about our message. We have little cards with a picture of Jesus and little kids on it and on the back it says our beliefs in Tagalog. Well I randomly chose to give one to Tatay, who took one look at me and shouted MORMON! I was a little taken back as to most people think we are Jehovah's Witnesses. I then responded yes, he then brought us into the front of his house and continued to pull out 5 book of mormons stacked one on top of the other, full of dust, and placed them on the table with a big smile on his face and just stared at us. Well, since then we have been in very close contact with Tatay, we visit him at least 3 times a week and he has become our most progressing investigator.

Turns out Tatay's WHOLE family has been baptized back when they lived in San Fernando, but once they moved here to Floridablanca 20 years ago, they didn't know where the church was, and there is a HUGE catholic church three houses down, so they just started attending there an have been there ever since. He and his wife have some marriage issues they are working through, he said it is a secret and he can't tell us what they are having troubles with, but then in his prayer at the end of our lesson he asked for his wife to stop lying. I tried not to laugh when he said it because he's just so stinking cute, and it almost sounded like a joke, but he was so serious. Poor old man.

Well, if there's one thing you will need to understand about Tatay, it is that he is a sponge. A deaf sponge, but a sponge nonetheless. Everything we tell him he soaks it in and NEVER forgets it. When the Elder missionaries taught his family dati, they wrote out all of the baptismal interview questions on a piece of paper for them to review and to remember all of the different lessons they had taught them. We had taught Tatay once, the second time we came back we were going to teach him about the Book of Mormon, we did so and then I felt impressed to extend a baptismal goal date. He accepted, and immediately ran over to his calendar and wrote it down. I then suggested that Elder White (senior couple) could baptize him, that made Tay very happy. Tatay will be baptized May 18. 

Friday afternoon Sister Matelau and I went to visit Tatay, we HAVE to have a set appointment with him, and if we are late he gets so mad. We showed up at 2:10, our apointment was at 2, so he decided we weren't going to come and took a shower. We stood out front of his house yelling his name for 15 minutes, we could see him in his house watching tv but he couldn't hear us because he's so deaf and he had his tv blaring so he could hear it. Well eventually he got up to turn off the tv and we yelled "TATAY!!" together and finally he heard us. He looked so surprised, then chastised us for being late haha. Well in that lesson we decided to teach him about the word of wisdom to help prepare him for his baptism, as we are introducing our topic, he just looks at us, and starts teaching us about the word of wisdom, he then proceeds to teach about law of chastity, tithing, then peers at us over his glasses and goes, "sisters, do you know how many questions are on the baptismal interview?" We looked at eachother like, no, i've never even thought to count. He looks at us with a dead serious face and goes, "15." Well little to say, Tatay wins. He doesn't even need us to teach him, he's already prepared! As we closed our lesson with him we reminded him he can't drink coffee or tea anymore. He goes, so what if someone hands me a cup of tea what do I say? We go, 'say no!' He goes, "OH THANK YOU, ONLY WATER FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE." hahah he is the cutest! I"ll snap a picture of him this week and send it to you. You will love the man. 

Sister Matelau and I did LOTS of finding this week and were blessed to meet tons of new families, all of which we have return appointments to teach later this week, four of them tonight! We are very excited and are praying that they will all progress. Our teaching pool has been a little dry and we are excited to get things going, especially families, they are the best to teach! Fun fact: One of the families we found Saturday night at like 830, they invited us inside and fed us carrot juice (my new fav!) and then they invited us over for lunch next Sunday, SCORE. They say they used to always feed the Elders, but they got transferred and no missionaries ever came back. Potential? I'm thinking so.

Well sorry for the rant, I hope you fall in love with Tatay Jandoc as much as Sister Matelau and I have! He is the BEST! To all of you mother's out there, HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, most especially to mine, she's the best, sorry ;) And of course to my beautiful grandmothers. Have a great week, hug your fam, tell em you love em. Bye bye.

Peace & love.

Sister P.