LETTER FROM RYAN #26 09.22.14.

This week was great! We found a family last week and they WANT TO GET BAPTIZED! SO EXCITED! This week we found 11 new investigators and we didn’t even tract that much. Lately, we have been able to walk by a house and talk to the people and have been able to TEACH THEM! That has happened to all of our new investigators this week! 

This week... The volcano could erupt at any time.  Don’t know if/or when. It could take months. DONT WORRY, I AM SAFE.  My last area is where the people are being evacuated.

The language is really starting to flow and it’s great! Everyone here calls me Nicholas Cage... Random people off the side of the road always stop and say you look like Nicholas cage... ha-ha Even the branch president said that in our council meeting.

The area is really progressing and the branch is starting to work with us more. We explained to them that we just took over the sister’s area. They are really getting involved.

One thing that we have been running into with our investigators is the WORD OF WISDOM! They all love to smoke and drink because that’s what they have been doing for their entire life. There is no age limit to smoke or drink.  We will be teaching a lot of word of wisdom lessons this week! One investigator of ours is 21. She has been an investigator for almost a year and she has such as strong testimony. We asked her WHAT IS KEEPING YOU FROM Baptism and she said, “My boyfriend says if I join the church that we are done we will break up”.  We than had a powerful lesson as Elder Lee Lo and I shared personal experiences. It was a great lesson.

sige mahal ko kayo talaga at nygon mahal ko kapag nagsasalit ako sa Tagalog! Hah i love speaking in Tagalog

Love Elder Hernandez

LETTER FROM RYAN #25 09.15.14.

This week was great! I got transferred and my new area is Oa's in the Ligao zone. My new companion is Elder Lee Lo from Samoa.  He is HUGE!!! His arm is bigger than my face. He is 6 feet 240 lbs. We are in the most north zone of the mission. It’s probably easier for us to go to Naga city than it is to go to Legaspi. My new area has lots of restaurants and has a 7-Elevan in our area. Greatest Thing Ever!!! They sell “REESE’S”.

With the transfer I was also called to be the NEW District Leader! I love it so much! We have 8 missionaries in the district, 4 elders and 4 sisters. Two of the sisters both attended BYU so that is awesome.  My new area is great but it is really far from the chapel. The chapel is huge but far for all of our members and investigators to attend church.  It takes about 30 minutes to get to our area every time we have to go out. We have to take a jeepny or a bus. The last bus leaves 8-9pm to return and that is the best time to try and find families.  It’s a challenge as I wish we could spend that time in our area and not on a bus.

Because of the bus situation, we have to focus the work around the apartment later in the evening. President has made it really clear that we are supposed to have dinner at 5 every day so we can focus 6-9 in the area. That is the best time to work. So instead of going home for dinner, we just eat out which allows us to stay and work longer.  We usually get a small pizza or hot dog.  We need to maximize our time in our area and make some sacrifices.  We want to be obedient to the mission schedule and maximize time in our area.

The town of Oa’s used to be divided into two areas. Oa’s “A” and Oa’s “B”.  “A” used to be the sister missionaries area. However, they were pulled out because we didn’t have enough sister missionaries. We now have area “A” and we juggle 2 areas.  Our investigators in our area are great. We are currently teaching this family. We taught them about the BOOK of Mormon. There is a special spirit when you teach Families rather than one person. THAT’S THE TRUTH! We also found this old guy. He said he had two sons that served missions but doesn’t really know much about The Church. We taught him and HE ACCEPTED TO BE BAPTIZED during our last lesson! I really love my new area. The area is bigger than my last area. We have a giant branch. It has 150 members.

I feel my Tagalog progressing each week. I Love TAG SO MUCH! This week was great!

This is my Dream AREA!!

Love, Elder Hernandez

PHOTOS FROM RYAN 09.01.14.

LETTER FROM RYAN #24 09.01.14.

This week we had zone conference and it was super fun! It’s always fun to see Americans. President (name) showed us the numbers or indicators of the mission before and after the typhoon hit. He said that our indicators have never been higher in Legaspi (where the typhoon hit) in mission history.

Monday around 5 o’clock, we still had the curfew so were just planning to go buy some food and come back and study. I saw these guys playing chess on the side of the road at this shop.  I stopped and talked to them and they asked me if I wanted to play? I said “OF COURSE I WOULD LOVE TO PLAY”! So this guy was pretty good and he was pulling all these cheap rule moves and he was getting pretty close to beating me. I then took his queen and he was so depressed. After that... he couldn’t believe that I was an American playing chess with him also speaking tagaglog.  Soon, about 40 people came over to watch us play and it was getting pretty intense. He soon forfeited and I won.  I WAS LIKE, OH YEAH!

I decided to drop an old investigator of ours that we have been teaching for a while who lives 20 yards from the church. He would give us excuses why he never came to church. He said he believed everything but could not leave his church. So after months of teaching him and him not coming to church, I was fed up and decided to drop him from our teaching pool.  So this morning we were planning how to tell him that we were not coming back as I lost faith in him. However, as I thought about it didn’t feel right.  As I walked up to his door the spirit impressed me to “Not GIVE UP ON HIM AND DONT DROP HIM”. We walked in the room and asked him if he read the Book of Mormon he said “Yes”! He then asked us about death and is there a way we can help dead? We said “Yes”. We began talking about Temples and Temple work.  After the discussion he thanked us and said, “Thank you so much, it is so clear now”. It was such a super humbling experience. It taught me that Heavenly Father will never give up on his children.  Although it is a challenge at times, we must have patience!

It was a good week we have transfer announcements this Saturday. This was the last week of training for my comp so we will see what happens.

Love, Elder Hernandez

LETTER FROM RYAN #23 08.25.14.

WHAT’S UP TEAM?

Another great week in the PINES! This week was great, we taught the most lessons we have ever taught in our entire training! We found 3 families! SUPER PUMPED ABOUT IT! Jonel asked us to start teaching his brothers and sisters. We taught them two weeks ago but his mom didn’t join in the discussion and didn’t really seem interested. We went back this and prepared to talk about service and callings and as we sat down ready to begin, his brothers and sisters joined us. THEN HIS MOM ALSO JOINED US!! ! ! ! ! We asked her if we can share a message with her family.  She said yes!! We shared how GOD is our loving Heavenly Father and how the Gospel blesses families and how our families can be strengthen by the gospel.  It gets better; she said “I got a letter today from Elder Ramada (Jonel's best friend who left on a mission that gave us Jonel as a referral).  She said in the letter that I need to know the Gospel and already had planned for you missionaries to teach me!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IT WAS SO GREAT! WE HAVE BEEN PRAYING FOR A FAMILY TO TEACH! We went back on Saturday and taught her the restoration and it went great. It gets better! She asked, “Why you don’t drink coffee”?  We then explained to her that God gives us commandments for our protection and benefit. This protection comes from obeying the “Word of Wisdom” and she understood. JONEL TESTIFIED TO HER THAT IT IS TRUE! It was great!

We also found an elderly couple and I love them so much. However, elderly Philippino men like to talk! He goes on tangents for days!! We also met this one lady on the street and she asked if we are Mormons? We said “yes” and she said, “When I was in 6th grade the Mormons used to teach us” She is now 33 so we asked if she would like to be taught again? She said, “of course” and we gave her a book of Mormon and got a return appointment. For our return appointment her husband joined us with their entire family. He is Catholic. He said, “I’ve been reading the Book of Mormon... and he doesn’t really understand”.  We taught them the lesson on the restoration. When we got to the point of the apostasy we asked him what happened to Christ's church after he died and his apostles were gone.  He said, “I don’t know”. After we taught him the restoration, we invited him to be baptized.  He said YES!  So Pumped! The family than committed to be taught once a week.

What is hard is that transfers are coming and I will probably be the one that is transferred...... REALLY?  I’ve spent six months here and worked so hard to find these great families and I probably will get transferred.  I love serving here in Bacacay. It was a great week!

Love you guys,

Elder Hernandez